#you know that scene in Brave

[draken-rotzi]

[cantpickyourgenre]

I believe Bobby is coming back from the dead because I think we deserve to live in a world where Kenneth Choi gets to act his ass off by playing a simultaneously relieved/joyous and angry/furious Chimney, who feels like he has to thank Bobby, but also scream at him until his throat is sore because it wasn't fair to make that decision! he's going to say they should have played rock, paper, scissors and Bobby will chuckle because he thinks he's joking like silly haha Chimney, but Chimney is like "no, we should have discussed it, you died and I didn't even get to say thank you. you died and I owed you a debt I didn't even know about. you let me carry that" and he has to wrestle with the guilt of knowing that Bobby would do that for him, not just theoretically, but actual concrete proof that Bobby would die to save him. which they all know on some surface level that they'd die for one another, but it feels like such a far-off concept until it isn't. but Chimney also has to deal with the gratitude because Chimney is also so incredibly thankful that he didn't die. every step of the way he wanted Ravi, Bobby, Buck, and Athena to commit crimes, because he loves his life and he wants to keep living it. he's so overjoyed that he got to go home to his wife and kid, and that comes with its own guilt because how can he be so happy to be home when Bobby DIED. does that make him a monster? that on some level he's HAPPY that Bobby did that? and now he has to FACE Bobby. so he tries to be the Before Chimney who gets people whimsical gifts, but how do you give someone balloons about choosing your life over theirs? and he spirals because he's different now and Bobby is here and he has so so much he wants to say but all of it feels contradictory and unfair and he would normally go to Bobby for advice. so he does. he goes to Bobby and he says "what would you do, if you were in my position?" and Bobby just says "whatever you need to say or feel, I understand" and that just makes Chimney even more upset because what he needs is for none of this to have ever happened. its like they all got a re-do, but kept the memories and the feelings and now he has nowhere appropriate to put them. anyway, Bobby lives and we get Chimney angst yay <3 forever and ever.

[alphaketoglutaricacid]

Shed your skin and come back to us

[chibiveneficus]

IT'S LITERAL ROBOT NOISES

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

Ephemer + combat

[staying-elive]

It's no secret that I loathe Sabra/Ruth and think that role should've been filled by Sharon Carter, but it just makes so much sense!

As former SHIELD and CIA, there's no reason to doubt that Sharon could've manoeuvred her way into being Ross's head of security or some high position. (If a foreign former Black Widow can, Sharon definitely can.)

Plus, it could've continued her being secretly the Power Broker. Especially since adamantium is now on the table, i think we could've easily tied those plots together. If she's a weapons dealer/crime lord, of course she'd want to be whispering in the ear of the US president in order to get close to that.

And Sam uncovering that plot? Betrayal! It could've shown Sam's traits in believing the best in people, particularly those he considers friends, and his loyalty, and being betrayed could bring about some end of act 2 angst but by the end, recommits to his belief in people can be better. (Throw in Bucky a little, being suss on Sharon cos I love the TFATWS moments where he seems jealous of the Sam/Sharon flirty moments.)

Ohh, if the Sharon reveal happened after Joaquin is shot down, you could still have the beautiful hospital scene, Sharon enters as Bucky leaves ("Well he's a ray of sunshine/friendly as always /sarcasm). And then maybe she says something that triggers Sam's suspicion and then bam Act 3 action! (Dunno how the Leader and Hulk Ross still tie in, but idc it's a Cap film, not a Hulk sequel).

Actually, the more I mull over this, the more I'm remembering this rather excellent SamBucky fic called Spycraft for Beginners.

I mean look at this shady queen. I've seen Revenge

Basically, I'm realising I want a beautiful Frankenstein of Brave New World and this fic to add to my incredibly-specific-mental-rewrite of the MCU which is canon compliant in all ways except the things i personally have a grudge against. 😂🤣

[petrichoraline]

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

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

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

Who is sending the jet?

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

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

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

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

Who is sending the jet?

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

They are all on fucking strike.

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

Who is thinking to send the jet?

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

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

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

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

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

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

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

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

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

b. Private Income Streams

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

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

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

2. Distribution of Funds

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

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

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

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

It is not a popular employment option.

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

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

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

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

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

On that note:

b. Agencies.

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

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

END OF ASIDE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

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

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

All those guys are on strike.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. So that happened.

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

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

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It has never actually been down to them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s that they were together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[achingly-shy]

AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D SEASON 1 -> SEASON 3

[wreathedwith]

Beautiful Possibilities: The Abbey’s ‘Beautiful Possibility’ series through a fandom studies lens

I’ve been reading Faith Current’s Beautiful Possibility series, a new serialised piece of writing – also available in audiobook/podcast format – on accepting the possibility of an explicitly romantic relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and an assertion of the wider ramifications for our culture at large that the acceptance of this could possibility offer.

This series has not yet concluded, and my writing here is offering neither a line-by-line critique nor an examination of the plausibility of the series’ central premise. Rather, what I want to consider at this point in time comes from a perspective different to that of the series’ author: that of a long-time active participator in fandom.

The Beautiful Possibility series’ interplay with mythology intrigued me, especially in part 1:3 (which is the part I will be focusing on here) because of my interest in fandom studies. Unlike most stories that we would consider ‘folklore myths’, two members of The Beatles are currently living real human people (and the other two aren’t exactly denizens of ancient history). For those four men, and for a relatively small inner circle of other people, The Beatles is a deeply personal story. The Beatles is also, of course, a shared story retold endlessly, well-known – at least in its fundamentals – by millions the world over.

What’s also a shared story? Absolutely anything fandom gets its hands on. By the author’s own admission, she “[doesn’t] really fit into either” (Part 1:3) mainstream Beatles studies or the fandom side of things, and so, naturally, Beautiful Possibility is not written from a fandom studies or fandom participant perspective – nor does it claim to be.

There are several aspects Beautiful Possibility that caught my attention from the perspective of a participant in fandom. The first is its anonymising and obscurating citation of fandom, by referring to it as “countercultural Beatles studies”. This is protective of fandom in a way that I personally appreciate (i.e. from those who are in no way familiar, immediately dismissive, and would come by on any clickable link solely to gawp and laugh), yet also serves the purpose of protecting (that is, legitimising) the author’s own work, primarily by reducing any even very hazy link between Beautiful Possibility and works clearly delineated as fiction – even if those same writers are also digging up genuinely new information and factual analysis.

It was also a pretty surprising approach to me: the general concept of ‘fandom’ has massively mainstreamed and, to a degree, commercialised over the past decade or so. Although RPF continues to often receive (and/or require) special or additional protection, perspectives on RPF have continued to shift. (For an up-to-date overview of the history of RPF and the state of things today, read The RPF Question by Sacha Judd (Fansplaining).)

To be clear, the majority of my active fandom participation has been RPF, and I’m personally very much of the ‘lock it all down and keep it solely to its intended audience’ school. And yet I’m also buoyed by the increased accessibility of fandom, and the kind of genuinely exciting and vital research that is being carried out by fans: not only am I thinking here of the Beatles RPF crowd fitting things together that have previously remained unjoined, but also the fandom-to-scholarship pipeline (with academic community engagement!) and getting to experience other fan’s original research that I enjoyed as part of the fandom for AMC’s The Terror and its attached true story.

A second example of something I found distinctly ‘unfandomy’ in Beautiful Possibility 1:3 was this commentary on edited photographs of John and Paul together:

Unlike writing about the lovers possibility, the fake “kissing photos” are without question unethical… The fake photos hurt John and Paul and the ability of serious researchers to prove the credibility of the lovers possibility.

I would say that it is of course helpful for these to be clearly labelled as manips (aka “fake photos”) just as fic is identified in its own context as a fictional work – to help me build my own personal narrative interpretation and understanding, I want to know if a photo is real or not. However, I don’t agree with the sentiment expressed above. I understand that we are far beyond the days of photoshops posted to LiveJournal and well into the horrifying era of GenAI infecting everywhere, but providing that the manip is labelled as such it in no way hurts “the ability of serious researchers” to prove anything, at least any more so than lines from fanfiction breaking containment and being presented as genuine quotations from real people (which sometimes happens). This sentence also results in a strongly implied separation of fans and “serious researchers” into two entirely separate categories, when they can often be one and the same. (For more on The Beatles RPF in a fandom context specifically, both now and then, check out The Beatles Live! by Allegra Rosenberg, also on Fansplaining.)

Sources that are especially potent for fannish interpretation and transformative works also require an absence or some remaining ambiguity, but that absence is not a necessarily a “wound” (as the distorting of John and Paul’s story and the refusal to acknowledge the damage of this distortion is characterised by Beautiful Possibility). That absence is something to be filled in, elevated – marquetry, kintsugi – something that for whatever reason the source material didn’t include but did (probably unintentionally) nevertheless leave space for.

The part of Beautiful Possibility 1:3 where I most acutely felt the absence of a fandom perspective is the following:

As I opened myself to the possibility of John and Paul as a romantic couple, I could feel a part of me that had been numb for as long as I could remember come alive with a new sense of hope and creative energy and a deep effervescent joy — not unlike the feeling of falling in love. The possibility of a romantic affair between John and Paul quite simply set my life and my soul on fire, and this feeling has stayed with me for over three years and counting with no sign of fading away.

To me, this glow is what I’d call ‘fandom’ – it is not unique to John and Paul and by now I’ve felt it many times over. I, and many others, have also felt (and made) the comparison between how one feels falling headfirst into a new fandom and falling head over heels in love with someone.

The author does not need to be all things to all people, and of course one person’s unique perspective yields a unique body of work. But it is this section where it feels most relevant to bring in a fandom-familiar perspective, because the near-total uniqueness of John and Paul and The Beatles and their impact on the world is a central pillar to Beautiful Possibility’s thesis. The wonderful feeling the author has written about experiencing is felt by many – about John and Paul, but also about many other narratives and other characters.

Myth and folklore aren’t important because of what percentage of the total characters or story may or may not be real. They’re important because they tell us stories that have stuck around and been reinterpreted many times over. Antimatter was theorised to exist before it was proven because it explained a gap, because nothing else would make as much sense as its existence. There isn’t even that level of a leap of faith here, because the love between John and Paul on at least some level is clearly evidenced, but the attraction of proving the veracity of romantic feelings is often that there is nothing else that is as good or as all-encompassing an explanation. It can’t heal the world, it can’t conquer death, but it can heal those affected, it can make sense.

Even if you believe John and Paul were in romantic love that was in some way consummated, even if this is somehow one day proven beyond reasonable doubt, it is already far too late: they cannot be joined back together. It’s a mystery that can only be solved after the fact, with a modern lens: and therefore it’s not John and Paul that’s helping. Like many mythical protagonists, John and Paul are, and will only become more so, archetypes newly reinterpreted in the light of our own times.

Fanworks can bring John and Paul together, and that is in order to heal our fannish hurt and satiate our desires, but reality is left untroubled. And that’s okay. The noticing in and of itself is to heal more widely in some sense – to convince the sceptics, to satisfy through the resolution of a mystery – but only up to a (lance tip) point.

Beautiful Possibility’s perspective proclaims John and Paul, the ultra-famous white male geniuses, as the “lifeforce love” source – transgressive but subversive – forming the foundation of a myth that, should we recognise its reality, can offer salvation for us all. The fandom studies perspective, and probably the folklore studies perspective too, would say that it is our veneration and continued reinterpretation of the story that gives it its continuous power, whether or not the events within that story ever really happened.

The Beatles without their attendant cultural veneration would have remained in the past as echoing music in an empty room. The ruinous nature of the fruitless quest for the Holy Grail for those who come to believe in its genuine, literal existence is to be found in that definite article: ‘the’. Only one. How could it ever be possible to find one small object in the entire world? What if the belief that there is one best or ultimate source of anything as important as world-healing love is just as limiting?

Modern-day fandom as it stands would barely exist without the modern consumerist culture it centres around and interacts with, and yet (as per good old Henry Jenkins) by its very nature fanfiction also counteracts, is “repairing the damage” of corporations’ control of contemporary myths, thereby intrinsically rejecting the assertion that there is one single correct, centrally-controlled, true narrative. There are many, simultaneously. All of them can feel true. Or none of them. And then you can go and write your own.

Of the thousands of fandoms that there are, every fandom has its source – a novel, a movie, the publicly available personas of a group of real people – but finding one of these sources is not the end of our quests. It’s the start.

[forwhump]

a/n: ;-; I feel a little silly introducing myself on a writing post but I feel sillier just starting to post my writing w/out any sort of introduction at all, so hi ! I’m Tina ! I’ve semi recently gotten introduced to the whump community because the content I create has been whump the whole time I just didn’t know it & thought I was alone in it !

now that I realize I’m not, I figured I might as well start posting my blurbs somewhere ! I don’t know if it qualifies as conventional whump, but is there such thing as conventional whump ? so what the hell

I put my two favourite oc’s through the horrors so often I have so much whump content w them & it’s just going to waste in my google docs & my notes app ! I’m chronically shy about posting my work online but I figured somebody out there might see this & maybe even like it so what’s the harm in sharing !

if you do see this & maybe even like it, yay ! I’m so glad ! thank you for even reading it <3

tw/cw for aftermath implied rape, mentions of being gutted

Wren has always been beautiful.

Silas had always thought so. Even at Wren’s worst, even when it wasn’t wholly appropriate to think. Silas had thought so since that very first day, since he was dragged into this place clawing and biting, since Wren had looked up at him from his place in the common room and smiled at Silas, sympathetic, as he was dragged into hell.

It was striking, even then, even disoriented and scared and confused. Wren was a bright spot, a glimmer of light in a bland, grey prisonscape. He’s beautiful like no other person Silas has ever seen, beautiful in a way reserved for the sunrise and the moon, so beautiful it actually gives him an eerie, kind of inhuman quality, even now, even still.

Wren has always been beautiful and Wren is beautiful still. But this —

There is nothing beautiful about this.

It’s ugly. It hurts something low in Silas’ chest.

It’s a film strip that’s been double exposed. Wren’s always been beautiful, and so particular about his hair; Wren has fairytale hair. It’s impossibly long, fairytale long, and the colour of snow, kinda, but he’s always so particular about it, he takes such good care of it, something that’s only his, something that belonged to him before this place, something they let him keep, and his hair always shimmers, perfect, iridescent. Silas has always found it kind of hypnotizing. Wren’s always so careful about how he braids it.

His hair is a mess. It had been pulled up into a ponytail with a piece of pink ribbon that’s gotten mostly lost in the tangles of his hair. Loose strands stick to his face, his throat, his waist, the insides of his thighs with tears, spit, sweat, semen, blood. He’s wearing some demeaning little pleated skirt, the same pale pink as the ribbon, and it’s short, it’s so short, and there’s so much visible skin that Silas can see almost every bruise, big and purple and splotchy and broken, like road rash. He can see all the blood tracked down the insides of his bruised thighs. He can see handprints. Tooth prints.

How is this happening? How did it get to this?

“Wren,” he hears himself say.

“Leave me alone.” His voice is the flattest Silas has ever heard it. He doesn’t lift his face from the carpet.

“Wren.” He doesn’t know what he’s gonna say. What can he say? He reaches a hand out, almost instinctive.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Wren —“

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Wren snaps, almost screams, and he finally lifts his head as he flinches away.

Most of the left side of his face is that same broken, road rash bruise. His mouth is swollen. His eyes, from crying. He doesn’t have hickeys, but proper, scabbing bite marks, bruising his jaw and his throat.

So much bruising. So much blood.

Silas knows what to do.

He struggles with that, sometimes.

Wren was allowed to keep his hair; Silas was, as well. It’s all Silas got to keep.

No part of Silas is the same as it was when he got here; no organ, no arterie. Silas isn’t human anymore, Silas is a weapon, but he tries, oh my god, he fuckin’ tries, if nothing else he tries, and he’s getting better, he thinks. He just struggles sometimes with human emotions, with feelings, thoughts, with what to do, what to say.

He knows now, though. What to do.

No part of Silas is really human anymore, but most of him is all still attached. His left leg, however, isn’t, and the replacement he’d been given, as a massive, inhuman superfreak, is heavy and deadly and fuckin’ uncomfortable. It pinches. Silas hates it almost more than anything. Unless he absolutely has to wear it, he gets around in his chair. It’s how he gets back to his room, where, without even a groan of displeasure, he makes quick work of his superfreak prosthetic.

On his own, he stands. Onto his chair, he piles one of his crewnecks, a favourite of Wren’s because of how cartoonishly large it fits him. Silas piles his comforter on top. From Wren’s room, he grabs his hairbrush and a pair of his joggers. Their clothing is the same dull grey as everything else in hell — prison grey, Silas thinks of it.

He limps his chair back to the common room. He folds the sweatshirt and joggers over the back, brush hooked in one hand as he holds open the blanket. “Okay,” he says. “Come.”

Wren’s head is down again. He’s right where they dumped him, a pile on the common room floor. “Leave me alone, Silas.”

Silas frowns. “No,” he says. “Come. I won’t touch.”

Slowly, Wren lifts his head. He blinks up at Silas with huge, wet eyes. “What?” He says, less sharp but a bit more broken. “What are you doing?”

Silas shakes the blanket at him. “Come.”

He isn’t expecting the way Wren’s face crumples, or the way he sobs. Softly, he says, “Wren?”

Wren turns his face away, but when he sobs, he sobs, “Silas.”

Folding the blanket and the brush back onto his chair, Silas limps around it to slowly, awkwardly maneuver himself onto the carpet next to Wren. Within reaching distance, but he’s careful not to touch.

Wren doesn’t lift his face and sobs into the carpet.

Slowly, Silas lies down, on his back next to him. He reaches out, he doesn’t touch, but he invites, and without looking at him Wren shifts into his arms and sobs into Silas’ shoulder.

Silas covers his back with a massive, gentle hand and lets him cry.

He cries for a long time.

Eventually, his sobs soften to sniffles and the hitching of his back slows under Silas’ hand. He says, into Silas’ grey sweatshirt, “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Why?” Silas asks.

Wren’s chest hitches. His voice cracks when he says, “I’m disgusting.”

He frowns. “You’re not disgusting.”

Wren hiccups out a sob.

“Wren,” Silas says, “you’ve held my organs inside my body for me. This is nothing.”

He sobs again.

Silas thumbs slowly across his back, over the stiff, ripped material of his shirt. “Let me take care of you this time, Wren,” he says. “Please.”

“You shouldn’t have to take care of me,” he says softly.

“I don’t,” Silas says. “I want to.”

Wren’s small fist curls into Silas’ crewneck. Into his chest, he whispers, “they really hurt me, Silas.”

“I’ll take care of them,” Silas promises. He already knows how he’ll do it. It won’t be slow but it will be painful. “Let me take care of you first.”

Wren doesn’t answer him, but he nods into Silas’ shoulder.

Softly, Silas asks, “can I pick you up?”

He nods again.

Gratefully, gently, Silas lifts Wren into his arms and from there, into his chair. He pulls the grey blanket around his shoulders and Wren sinks into it gratefully.

The bathroom is cold, and the water doesn’t get hot, but it gets warm, so Silas runs it warm before he limps across the bathroom to gather an armful of towels. He held Wren to his feet, and leaves the towels in his place.

“You don’t have to do this,” Wren says softly.

“So?” Silas says.

He blinks up at him, a bit taken aback.

Supporting most of Wren’s weight, Silas says, “do you want my help getting undressed or do you want me not to touch you?”

Wren blinks up at him again, sniffling. “Would you help me?” He asks, so soft he’d barely spoken.

“I’ll do anything you ask me to,” Silas answers.

Wren makes a soft sound, and Silas is careful not to touch any of the bruises as he bumbles through small buttons and zippers with huge hands. He helps Wren out of his ruined skirt and into the lukewarm water. Silas doesn’t undress, but he follows him in, letting Wren lean hard against him as he lathers a washcloth he hands to him before getting to work untangling his hair.

It’s a careful few hours of effort, because Wren has so much hair and it’s so matted, caked with blood, grime, semen.

Silas is meticulous. He brushes it out. Washes it. He isn’t a great braider yet, but June had been teaching him the basics, and he can struggle his way through a sloppy French braid. He tugs the elastic out of his own hair to tie it off, and once he’s done, Wren turns to look up at him and he’s crying again.

“Wren?” He says.

And Wren surges forward, pushing his face into the hollow of Silas’ sternum, arms tight around his waist.

“Thank you,” he whispers into his wet sweatshirt.

Silas cradles the back of his head with one hand. “It’s okay,” he says.

In truth, he would die for Wren in a heartbeat. This is nothing.

[sweaters-and-vertigo]

i have a teeny, tiny superiority complex because i didn’t watch the atla live action.

[amelikos]

Anyone has any ideas or interpretations of that one Friede scene in the current opening (at 1:20 here) and what it could mean in terms of future events and for the character?

[wordswhisperinthedark]

If Bravern doesn't get an OVA imma riot

[timothylawrence]

Rocky workout scene except it’s me trying to gain the courage to publicly post a wyll x tav fic

[myfandomhalf]

Season Finale

Sick and tired of reading about people say that Dazai knowing about the plan beforehand somehow takes away from the genuineness of the skk moments

You mean you WANT Dazai to choose to kill Chuuya for the greater good and then not give a shit immediately after?? Ignoring the speech for a second, the reason he was able to be so carefree after “killing” Chuuya is because he KNEW Chuuya was gonna be okay.

First of all, Dazai knowing Chuuya wasn’t gonna die doesn’t take away from his speech. He replayed all those memories for himself, nobody else was seeing what was happening in his head. He was GENUINELY upset at the idea of losing Chuuya and having to put Chuuya through that, DESPITE knowing Chuuya would be okay. He was STILL upset. That’s way better than him thinking he just killed Chuuya, sparing him a thought, not even crying (bc no that wasn’t a tear) and then just moving on being silly as if nothing happened.

And then the other speech him saying that they’re destined to - do you seriously think he’d just make that up for shits and giggles? He was being serious. If he was gonna play it up for Fyodor’s sake he would’ve said the most emotional out of pocket line to ever be written, which to them would be related to him leaving Chuuya behind. But no he just said they’re destined to do something.

Dazai talks a lot about the past to Chuuya (Chuuya does not participate) but those two are clearly emotionally constipated bc they never have a conversation about what they mean to each other (which I think is bc Asagiri is not ready to reveal that yet). This was clearly Dazai taking his opportunity to say what he REALLY thinks / feels forcing Chuuya to listen without the commitment. Bc if anyone gets the ick later he can use the convenient excuse of “oh I didn’t mean that” which is bullshit.

And I do think an element of this idea that it’s worse that Dazai had everything planned comes from the misunderstanding that Dazai has completely changed since he was in the port mafia. Dazai just tends to make “better” (as in more objectively good) choices, but he very much still puts on a front. You guys do realize that his silly persona is just that right? A persona? He’s literally being fake every time he’s silly. That’s not his real personality. He’s a morally gray character. He never became a purely good person and he never will. It makes MUCH more sense that he planned everything out with Chuuya beforehand.

He met up with Akutagawa before getting arrested, he probably did the same with Chuuya.

And yes, this means he DID use and manipulate Sigma the entire time. Why wouldn’t he? Sigma has an ability Dazai needed. I’m sure Dazai planned for sigma to not die bc in his role as a detective it’s part of his job to mitigate losses of innocent lives, he knows this, but also bc Dazai needs to know what sigma learned. I genuinely hope there isn’t anyone out there thinking Dazai wouldn’t manipulate sigma bc he cares about him? He just met him. He has no personal investment in him. But he WILL make sure sigma is alive bc of the aforementioned reasons.