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the-demon-prodigy · 28 days

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oba yozo and warped perception

ok heres an absolutely giant analysis (its 2k words ermm) that i wrote in an essay format! i cant rlly say im proud of its strength as an essay but i do like the concepts i brought up here so i might eventually redo but it took me literally a week so i cant not post it

yozo is my little guy i want to put him under a microscope and study him like a bug/aff

its under the cut :]

TW: su1cide, s3xual a$sault, misogyny (all mentioned, not depicted)

Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, a Japanese literary classic, is told through the writings of the protagonist, Oba Yozo. Yozo is a deeply traumatized and alienated human being, and his perception of both himself and others is distorted by his traumatic experiences.

Yozo makes the judgement very early on in his life that he lacks what constitutes humanity. He separates himself from humans because of this, but unable to renounce their society as he is, he instead opts to display a public facade of light-heartedness and, on occasion, foolishness. Yozo feared that which he did not understand, and he therefore feared people, finding them and their society riddled with unspoken societal guidelines, utterly incomprehensible. (It’s likely that Yozo only feared the unknown so much and only came to this conclusion due to his intelligence, which he is mentioned to have, at least academically. Generally, it would be extremely unlikely that Yozo is an unintelligent character, seeing as how often he pokes and prods at the philosophical and existential.)

Yozo finds himself inhuman, due to how he fails to understand that which humans seem to be born into this world understanding. Additionally, he lacks something in his nature that he believes to be absolutely inherent to humans: a deep, animalistic anger. Yozo never describes being angry throughout the book; he only fears, and fears, and fears some more, until he fears every last thing in this world. It’s likely that this immense fear came only as a result of the life he led. Even in his teenage and adult years, he gauges himself to not be seen as a friend or even a person to some of the people he knew, thus determining that he had never made a friend. And, having been sexually assaulted at a very young age, it’s only natural that Yozo would believe human beings to be cruel and animalistic by nature, hence justifying his fear.

The childhood trauma that Yozo suffered also caused further complications in his life, outside of the obvious feelings of needing to please in order to be ‘safe’. Yozo seems to have difficulty processing/facing outright his emotions and traumatic events, his flowery style of writing carefully dancing around describing exactly what happened to him. I doubt that Yozo has truly suppressed the memories of his childhood, but he at least doesn’t process them correctly. Yozo also does this in regards to things that remind him of his trauma or, in other words, trigger him.

It’s important to note that the presentation of No Longer Human is inherently biased. There is not a single scene told from objective reality, even in the prologue and epilogue which aren’t told in Yozo’s perspective. While the unreliable narration is pivotal to exploring the recesses of the human mind, it’s impossible to grasp exactly what actually happened at any given point. Had Yozo outright lied about certain things? Were there times when he had forgotten important memories that eventually constituted his personality? Yozo himself even admits to having a side of him that exaggerates for effect, not even to his benefit, and it leads a reader to wonder just how much was affected by that trait of his.

In the epilogue, one of Yozo’s acquaintances says that the way that his life turned out was due to his father: “it’s his father’s fault.” However, Yozo barely talked about his father in the book, save for mentioning his fear of being reprimanded, which was par for the course for anyone that Yozo spoke to. Although his father did affect the way that Yozo lived, with the information that Yozo gave, it would be impossible to say accurately that it was his father’s fault.

Although it’s tempting to instead say that Yozo’s unfortunate circumstances only worsened because of him, it’s important to note that Yozo demonizes himself endlessly. Yozo feared humans to the point of decreeing all on his own that he was disqualified from their race, but he still sought out love from human beings. He still wished for connection, but because of Yozo’s deep-seated self-hatred which came only as a result of seeing the most distasteful parts of humanity as a young child and feeling alienated from that, Yozo ended up separating himself. However, Yozo states over and over again that he fakes things, that he has a facade, that he only plays the clown and is not one, but it’s impossible to tell whether Yozo was truly the faker he thought that he was or if that was truly his personality and he simply didn’t know it.

No Longer Human also has misogynistic themes, at times. While Yozo states that this is because he finds women to be boring, it’s possible that he is, once again, being unreliable, and the true reason that he has an aversion to women is because he experienced sexual assault at the hands of women from a young age and, many times throughout his life, he has experienced love with women that failed to come to proper fruition, hence causing his aversion to women and becoming attached to them.

Yozo spends the majority of the book fairly lost, not understanding humans, not understanding himself. So who is to say that Yozo was truly a liar, or that he simply thought that he was? It’s possible that Yozo only internalized the concept that he was a calculating, deceptive young man in order to make the thought that humans would never love him easier to swallow.

Yozo being the intelligent and alienated sort of person that he is, he comes across as slightly conceited at times, seeing as he’s rather opinionated, and internally refers to one of his acquaintances as an utter fool completely lacking in artistry, for example. With this acquaintance, he plays two word games, and his opinions can tell us quite a bit about him. The first game is about tragic versus comic nouns. Yozo believes that, just as pronouns can be divided between masculine, feminine, and neutral, nouns can be divided between tragic and comic. It’s primarily a game of connotation (for example: steamship and steam engine are tragic, while bus and streetcar and comic).

Of the highlights of this game is that Yozo’s first opinion is that death is comic, while life is tragic. This is a reflection of his unique view on death, specifically him seeing it as a sort of cathartic relief, in comparison to life. Yozo views his own life, particularly, as shameful, making it tragic.

The second game is about antonyms. Yozo’s first example is that black is the antonym of white, but the antonym of white is red, and the antonym of red is black. In order to get a different result each time, you will need to repeatedly switch your perspective. Black and white are visually in opposition. Red is only the antonym of white figuratively, however. White is surrender while red is offense, white is purity while red is tainted. Black is the antonym of red in that red is fierce and passionate, while black is empty and void.

These also reflect Yozo’s personality. He is visually the opposite to humans, seen in how an outsider views his photos in the prologue. He is tainted, or corrupted, because of the crime that was perpetrated upon him as a child. Yozo also experiences his emotions in a complex way, sometimes void, like ‘black’, but at other times too heavily, like ‘red’.

(And you, dear reader, may ask, “Aren’t you focusing too much on Yozo’s sexual trauma?” and I’d respond, “No Longer Human is an inherently subjective work due to the lack of representation of an objective reality. Yozo may ignore his sexual trauma more often than not, but I don’t have to, as that kind of experience is part of what created the ‘Oba Yozo’ that we come to see in the novel, regardless of how often it is directly addressed.”)

It’s also important to note that this example that Yozo provides is a one-way street. Black to white, then white to red, then red to black. Red is not the antonym of white, despite the fact that white is the antonym of red, because the antonym of white is black. This disjointed yet ultimately related style of thinking is reminiscent of the way that Yozo fails to properly reconcile all the concepts that he contemplates daily and how he fails to process things that were traumatic.

A highlight of the little antonym game that Yozo and his acquaintance played was when Yozo’s acquaintance mentioned that the antonym of crime was sure to be ‘the law’. Yozo internally scoffs at the concept, and states that crime belonged to a different category. Through the following paragraphs, it becomes apparent that Yozo sees crime as being a moral concept at heart. Whether or not something is a crime is not dictated by whether it defies the law or not, but by an intrinsic judgement system that exists within the heart of all people. He also states that vice is different from crime. Vice is a societal construct in Yozo’s eyes, whilst crime is not. Crime always exists and will continue to, even if there are no people in existence to observe it. Crime may even be above morality in a sense; there exists things that are crimes even to the earth itself. To Yozo, at least.

To Yozo, punishment is the antonym of crime. Through a reflection of Dostoevsky's work, Yozo came to the conclusion that crime would only be paired with punishment if they were meant to be of completely opposite affiliation. The reason his brain works in this way is because of the unique life that Yozo has led. Because the most horrific of crimes that were perpetrated upon him were met with no punishment, it’s only natural that he would see the two as inherently disconnected concepts.

Yozo also loses plenty of people important to him; Tsuneko and his father, to name two. Although the grief that Yozo experiences is very rarely directly addressed by him, it’s crucial to take into account the effect of these events on Yozo. He spends the latter parts of the book impacted by grief, and it shapes the ‘Yozo’ that we see. There is no objective reality in No Longer Human, there is only the clouded lens that Yozo views it through, and this concept permeates the entire story, which means that if, perhaps, Yozo hadn’t lost the people that he did, the second half of the story would be different. The entire book would be different if told from the perspective of someone else; this is where the truly genius subtext of the novel lies, in the fact that almost everything that the viewer ends up consuming about the story is Yozo’s own thoughts, inseparable from the experience of reading the novel.

“He was a good boy, an angel,” is the final line of No Longer Human, said about Yozo by one of the people who knew him. The unlovable, monstrous, deceptive Yozo that he claimed himself to be for his entire life was perceived as an angel by those around him. Yozo accentuated the many ways he had been taken advantage of, the things he had to keep secret, and yet someone who barely knew him was fond of him in a way he would never process as true had he been present for that moment. One might even say that there were a number of people in this world who loved Yozo.

By existing in a world that he determined could only ever be lonely, Yozo’s perception of humans was warped by the multitude of ways that he had been broken by others, and his perception of himself was warped by his personal opposition to the definition of ‘human’ that he had crafted. This is the core of what makes No Longer Human tragic: the fact that Yozo was seeing an emptier world than all others, and he had given up on his life before it began. That Yozo will never see the world that he lived in for what it truly was.

#pls dont let this flop bro i spent a wholeass week on it/lh #☆thoughts☆#☆analysis☆#☆scheduled☆#bsd analysis #bungou stray dogs #no longer human #oba yozo #classic literature #japanese literature #osamu dazai #dazai osamu

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unknown-lifeform · 2 years

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Sometimes I get randomly hit by the thought of how Angeal’s character is just straight up heartbreaking. Like the more you think about his whole life the more fucked up it becomes

We all remember how he grew up very poor, but like we never really mention how he was poor to the point of stealing apples to eat. He had almost nothing. A kid with a too big sword his dead father left behind and nothing else. Shinra was one hell of a propaganda machine, but aside from that, Shinra would actually feed their troops three meals a day and what not. Angeal had his own honor and ambitions plus Genesis’s ambitions on the side to push him, but like how much of a push was the idea that the army might have actually been a step up from what he had in Banora?

Now we all like to laugh at good old mother hen Angeal, but again. That’s kinda fucked. Because we’re talking about someone who joined the army in his early teens, and was already a commander by the time he was twenty or so. This is a kid who has had to become obscenely responsible when he was obscenely young, because he was literally responsible of other people’s lives when he was still a teenager. Not just subordinates, but his friends too. Genesis was always a self destructive mess, Angeal had every responsibility in the world and his idiot reckless buddy too. And then Zack! Angeal was raising a teenager when he was just barely not a teenager himself

Also the poor thing and the mother hen thing also tie together. Use brings wear, tear, and rust, that’s funny too, but Angeal had nothing in his childhood. Just the Buster Sword. It’s one of the few memories of his father, and in itself that would be enough to justify him not ever wanting to ruin it. But also there weren’t many guarantees that if he had gotten the sword damaged as a child he would have the money to do any kind of maintenance on it

You can’t tell me this man wasn’t powered by anxiety for most of his life. He disguised it well surely but Angeal’s inner monologue had to be a constant stream of everything that could go wrong and how to remain in control of a situation and how to protect the few things (people) he had and keep your best friend leashed and keep your pupil leashed and be a good commander and a good SOLDIER and-

Of course he ended up suicidal when CC went down! It wasn’t just the DNA thing, although discovering he wasn’t human had to already be a massive blow. Everything was going down fucking hill and he could do nothing to stop it. Genesis went out of control, Angeal himself had no guarantee he wouldn’t also start falling apart soon, and defecting meant abandoning Zack, who was Angeal’s reponsibility, so another source of guilt. Plus the father he probably had some level of idolization for turned out to not be his father after all, and his own mother killed herself when things started going down

It’s just. His whole life did more than fall apart. Trying to make the situation better was the only thing Angeal could have done for most of his life and now he couldn’t. Even admitting that he could accept himself whether human or monster, that’s only one issue. He failed. At least he did in his opinion, and it doesn’t matter if he had been asked far more than anyone his age should have. Dying was easier at that point than fixing everything

This guy was such a weirdo!! Guy who carries around a sword that weighs as much as he does but never uses it and makes dry jokes and has that terrible teenage boy stubble despite being twenty!!! He’s the responsible one because he’s got enough trauma for an entire town and his friend group includes a literature obsessed pyromaniac, a walking ice block with his own trauma pile, and a human golden retriever

This man deserved so much and needed as much therapy as Genesis and Sephiroth but all he could do was being the therapy for everyone else and in the end he just fucking crumbled

#angeal hewley #ff7 #ffvii #i've got feels #big beefy man who needed love

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cosmicjoke · 2 years

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Alright, so, still haven’t had a chance to watch episode 7 of IWTV yet, but I’ve been made aware of the theory being posited that the final reveal of Louis calling Armand the “love of my life” and some other details of the episode are meant to clue the audience into the fact that Louis is being mind controlled by Armand, and that the inconsistencies in his story, especially regarding Lestat, are a result of this. I like this theory, as it’s truly the only logical, and justifiable explanation for... everything from episode 5 on. If Armand is distorting Louis’ memories of Lestat to have him remembering Lestat as this horrific abuser, that wold be keeping well in line with Armand’s character.

I just finished rereading IWTV, and the last chapter (which I’d forgotten almost entirely since I first read the book years ago) is deeply revealing about Armand’s character and, even more so, I think, Lestat’s character.

I’ve seen plenty of people who I have to assume never read the books, or just have low level reading comprehension, refer to Lestat in the first book at the “villain” of the story, and I’ve already made a post about why that’s an incorrect statement to make. And this final chapter really just drives home exactly why.

Firstly, with Armand, if anyone is thinking Armand incapable of manipulating Louis to the extent in which this theory posits him as doing, in the book, in the final chapter of IWTV, he flat out admits to Louis that he himself forced Claudia out into the courtyard and locked her in as the sun was breaking. Armand killed Claudia, by his own hand. More revealing still, though, is that Armand, earlier, in order to get Louis to agree to go back to New Orleans, reveals to him that Lestat is still alive, and we learn near the end of the chapter that he does so because he’s hoping that seeing Lestat will revitalize Louis’ lost passion and love, specifically, his lost passion and love for Armand himself. He’s banking on Lestat revealing to Louis that Armand was the one who killed Claudia by his own hand. Lestat, however, doesn’t do this. And this brings us again to the fallacy of calling Lestat the villain of the first book. Lestat’s completely desperate and pitiful state which Louis finds him is is a direct result of him having lost Louis and Claudia both, and the way in which he begs Louis to stay with him, and confesses to Louis that he never meant for Claudia to be killed, that he didn’t know what Santiago had planned, once again truly exposes Lestat’s true nature. He wasn’t ever the unfeeling, cold, dimwitted or monstrous man Louis, for a long time, believed him to be. He loved Louis and Claudia desperately, he needed them, not for Louis’ money, as Louis initially believed, but because he so loved Louis and Claudia both. It was just, because of his own, terrible trauma, which is hinted at in this book, but not expanded upon, he never knew how to express it. There’s a point in the book in which Louis explains how, on nights when he and Lestat would go out to the opera, or to a play, Lestat would afterwards show so much human joy and enthusiasm for the experience that Louis would confess to him that he enjoyed Lestat’s company, and after each such confession, Lestat would pull away and not ask to go out with Louis for months at a time. It’s impossible to know exactly why just from reading IWTV, but of course, for anyone who’s read The Vampire Lestat, it becomes clear that Lestat is dealing with a lot of abandonment issues and childhood trauma which causes in him a great and awful fear of being left alone. Of course, it’s a common thing for people who fear abandonment to pull away from those they love, frightened that if that person comes to learn too much about them, they’ll end up hating and leaving them. We get plenty of clues to this being the case with Lestat throughout the first book. He was never just some evil baddie who terrorized poor Louis and Claudia and treated them like trash.

Lestat’s desperate pleas for Louis to come back to him in Paris, and then for him to stay in New Orleans, reflect that. He says to Louis “I wanted to talk to you so much. That night I came home to the Rue Royale, I only wanted to talk to you!”. Lestat always wished he could open up to Louis and express how he truly felt, but he was always too paralyzed by his own fear to do so, early on anyway.

I bring this all up because, contrary to what some people who defend the shows depiction of Lestat would have us believe, Lestat was never meant to be seen as the villain of that story, and so him being depicted as such in the show never would and never did make any sense. It would be an almost unbelievable misreading of the text by the show runners for them not to realize this, and unless they really are just that blatantly disrespectful of Anne Rice’s work, I can’t see them being that stupid. So I think, in light of this, the theory that Louis’ memories of Lestat are being altered by Armand makes all the more sense. Lestat would never hurt Louis or Claudia the way he does in the show, not if we’re talking about the ACTUAL Lestat. He loves them too much to ever do anything even remotely akin it, and he always did. He doesn’t even shown any resentment towards Claudia, despite how deeply she wronged him, and that tells you all you need to know.

Now how that relates back to Armand, and how Armand attempts to use Lestat to manipulate Louis, I think feeds into the theory for the show. Armand shows no qualms whatsoever about using Lestat in order to gain Louis’ love and trust, or to use him to shift Louis into a more wanted state. We first see this when Armand affects disgust with Lestat in Paris, after Claudia is killed, by asking him if he’s “satisfied” with what’s happened in front of Louis, pretending at his own innocence in the whole affair, as if he’s defending Louis from Lestat’s evil. And then of course later, when he thinks by forcing Louis and Lestat back together, it will reawaken Louis lost passion for life and rekindle his interest in Armand himself.

Louis reveals though that he already knows Armand killed Claudia, and he doesn’t care, because he feels nothing for Armand anymore. Hardly the “love of his life”, as he says in the show. Louis would never say that of Armand. By the end of IWTV, Louis’ distaste for Armand is plain as day. He wants him gone, he wants to be away from him, he’s disgusted by him. He even calls Armand out on pretending to be sad about having caused Claudia’s death. Louis knows Armand doesn’t give a fuck.

So, assuming the show is intending to actually have Louis and Lestat end up together, as everyone involved has previously claimed, this would be a logical and justifiable explanation for the seeming character assassination they’ve performed on... well, everyone in this show thus far.

I still think it was ridiculous to go about it in this way, and has done nothing but cause a lot of grief and misery and confusion regarding the direction the show was taking. It’s woefully arrogant for the show runners to think they can go about telling Anne Rice’s story better than Anne Rice herself. The whole thing has been convoluted. I get they want to keep the audience on their toes and guessing, to surprise the audience so they’ll keep tuning in. I get that’s how TV works. But Anne Rice has sold millions of books, and the ratings on this last episode were, I’ve heard, about half a million people. They aren’t exactly pulling fans of the books in in droves, it seems, probably because they’ve caused so much confusion and anger by deviating so drastically from the books themselves.

They should have just stuck to what Anne Rice wrote. It’s infinitely more complex, heartfelt, and powerful than anything the show has given us. But, whatever, that’s how it is in Hollywood. They routinely butcher works of literature, thinking they’re making it more exciting, when really, they’re just robbing it of its heart.

Just read this paragraph from the last chapter, and tell me this doesn’t move you more than anything this show has been able to do:

“Don’t try to speak... it’s all right.” I said to Lestat, who dropped down gratefully into his chair and reached out to stroke the lapels of my coat with both hands.

“But I’m so glad to see you,” he stammered through his tears. “I’ve dreamed of your coming... coming...” he said. And then he grimaced, as if he were feeling a pain he couldn’t identify, and again the fine map of scars appeared for an instant. He was looking off, his hand up to his ear, as if he meant to cover it to defend himself from some terrible sound. “I didn’t...” he started; and then he shook his head, eyes clouding as he opened them wide, strained to focus them. “I didn’t mean to let them do it, Louis... I mean that Santiago... that one, you know, he didn’t tell me what they planned to do.”

“That’s all past, Lestat,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” he nodded vigorously. “Past. She should never... why Louis, you know...” And he was shaking his head, his voice seeming to gain in strength, to gain a little in resonance with his effort. “She should never have been one of us, Louis.” And he rapped his sunken chest with his fist as he said “Us” again softly.

But yes, Lestat was just a big old meanie in the first book, he was just the villain. Sure. Okay.

Anyway, I’m off to start “The Vampire Lestat” next.

#amc's interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire #Anne Rice #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac #armand

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theladyinwhite13 · 8 months

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Hey! Ghost, bonfire and cobweb for the ask game🎃

ghost - is there someone that you miss having in your life?

honestly no. there’s a lot of people that have fell out of my life, and I typically miss them for a while, but in most cases there’s a reason we don’t talk (whether it was their fault or mine) and I don’t think it’d be healthy for me to miss them, bc I might try to justify things that I shouldn’t justify. and honestly I’m better for it. and some people I simply don’t talk to anymore and it’s not really anyone’s fault, which kinda seems like a blessing in disguise for me, bc if we weren’t close enough to make the effort to say in each others lives than I don’t think it’s a relationship I need to continue. like my childhood bff (who I was really close to until about middle school) I moved and we fell out of touch but in hindsight, we wouldn’t get along now! she’s VERY christian (which isn’t a bad thing in itself!) but I have a lot of religious trauma and think I staying friends would’ve been really unhealthy for me! I’m a big believer in fate, and I think I lost certain relationships for a reason, even if I’m still not sure of the reason 🤍

bonfire - describe your dream house.

it’d be the cool aunts house!! I would put checkered pink tiles in my kitchen!! and I’d have the coolest vintage furniture!! there would be crystals EVERYWHERE and I would have fresh muffins on a tray in my kitchen!! I also have always liked the way houses with black exteriors look!!

cobweb - (if you’ve graduated) do you miss high school?

I haven’t graduated yet, but i’m currently doing some college courses and I’ll start my degree next year!! honestly I won’t miss the awkwardness of my earlier teen years AT ALL, however I was always really into math and so I had five math credits by the time I was fourteen, anyways I don’t take any math classes right now and when I start college, I’ll be a communications major, and I don’t think I’m gonna be doing many more math classes in my life, which I’m weirdly sad about? like sometimes I just want to do a geometry lesson and I DONT KNOW WHY, so yeah I’ll miss high school math I guess lol

#asks <3

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ladyoriza · 1 year

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@aynrandslashfiction made a post earlier asking if there were any other black fans of Far Cry 5 and said this in the tags:

#i been seein a lot of uhh… well. you know.#lot of blondes in sundresses and suchnot--#it's a lil…. hm#iykyk

Which has been in my brain all day and I finally got the spoon necessary to talk about it.

Because this is the exact problem I have as someone who likes two other characters with...let's just say it out loud- a lot of appeal to bigots. (Joshua Graham and Ulfric Stormcloak, for anyone wondering- for different reasons. They could be much better in competent hands and I like exploring what they could be).

This isn't even "you're liking this character wrong", it's "you stripped this character of everything they are, reducing them to a ken doll you can act out your Good Christian Housewife fantasy for". Joseph Seed is manipulative, controlling, abusive, and he's not above doing absolutely heinous things for what he believes is right. Rachel Jessop was 17 when Joseph began brainwashing her into becoming Faith. He did that to a child.

Obviously not everyone into the Seeds has a tradwife/tradhusband(?) fantasy. But there's an alarming number of fics out there that fly so close to it that I have to wonder, you know? When Joseph is reduced to a sad middle-aged man that just wants to help but the big mean Resistance just won't stop killing his poor innocent Peggies? (do not mind the corpses upon the billboards and signs, do not notice what he did to the three Faiths, do not even acknowledge Jacob, do not pass go).

When the Resistance just sees poor, sweet, Rook as a tool but Joseph Sees her and wants to take her away to love and safety?

When they're all weirdly antagonistic but Grace and Tracey are outright aggressive and violent towards Rook? Yeah, that's so thinly-veiled it might as well just take the final step into barefoot and pregnant. Actually, there is no veil. Just a head in the sand.

But no, of course, he's just concerned about poor Rook, right? He doesn't want them brainwashed or turned into an Angel or anything, right? (Again, under no circumstances are you to acknowledge the Whitetail region and Joseph's explicit approval of Jacob's brainwashing or the eventual existence of the Judge...unless it was written before New Dawn. Because I'll fault people for bad writing, not an inability to see the future).

I suppose that's a good litmus test, though. If the Whitetails are even acknowledged or if Eli and Staci are just chopped liver.

It's at best a complete lack of nuance. Like, sure Joseph was correct that the bombs would fall. At no point does that make ANYTHING Eden's Gate did acceptable or justifiable. One of my favorite NPC lines is one of the Resistance women saying something like "I don't care how much Childhood Trauma they had, that doesn't excuse what they're doing to us". And she's right.

Look, I don't read much with John or Jacob but I have a hunch this is a problem with all 3 seedlings.

My rambling point is: you can like the bad guy but for FUCK'S sake think about WHY you write what you write. Nothing exists in a vacuum. If you need to strip off all their traits to force them into a box...maybe just make an oc.

#this is why i refuse to look for a fc5 discord server bc i do NOT trust anyone i dont already know #where's that fanfic bingo card #joseph seed #far cry 5

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wouldnt-it-be-hilarious-if-i · 1 year

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About forgiveness

Currently listening to: A Cold Night in Brooklyn by Gatlin

When I was in high school, I was friends with a girl that became one of my best friends. I met her in Zoology, and we became friends because a total protein bar of a guy said the most asinine comment anyone could have possibly said. I was sitting next to her, and she said the darkest humor joke possible. I'd repeat it but I can't remember what the joke was. I just remember she didn't think anyone heard, and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

We were instant friends. To this day, we are great friends, though we don't talk as much as we used to because she works and I'm in school. We connected a lot because of our trauma. We just understood each other. But there have been times in my life where I absolutely said the wrong thing at the wrong time, simply because I only know how to comfort people about things that I can wrap my head around. And death is one of those things that when I was younger, I didn't know the feeling of. It was a trauma I hadn't met yet. I was really lucky in that way.

One night, we were having a conversation about just that. And she was grieving a very real loss. It was like one trauma on top of the other, endless. And I wanted to comfort her.

That year I had lost my childhood dog, the one I practiced reading out loud with and dressed up in my cabbage patch doll dresses and loved like she was my child, who used to sleep beside my bed every night to and keep watch to make sure no one came in (this was a very real fear of mine, so it was much appreciated), and I was trying so hard to be comforting for my friend. Having lost my dog, my sister and my Oma now, I stand by the comparison for myself. But for others, it's not the same and I understand that now. And for her specific situation, it really was NOT the same. It was the wrong thing to say. I didn't realize it at the time. But she rightfully lost it at me, and she threw in the meanest, most hurtful insults at me. At first, they were the reasonable comments, where she got pissed at me for the comparison I made. Totally justified. And then there was the part of her rant that involved insults that were probably the meanest things she could have said. They had nothing to do with what I'd said.

All you do is obsess about girls who will never fucking want you. What do you know about the trauma i'm talking about? You don't have a fucking life. You never have a life.

And she said more. Paragraphs of just straight vitrol.

And then she blocked me and I never saw her at school again. She knew those were some of my biggest insecurities, so it was like a tiny bit of a gut punch. But it was also one of those blow up in your face moments where you just go, "Yeah, not my greatest friend moment." I always say that I'm one of those people who when I am right, I am VERY right. But at the same time, when I'm wrong, I'm very fucking wrong. So, so, so fucking wrong. I'm so wrong that I actually often go back and question every time I've ever been right just to be sure I'm not fucking lying to myself.

She was such a good friend to me that when she circled back around to me a few years later and friended me on Facebook, I waited for a while because I wasn't sure what she wanted. I missed my friend. I'd actually just moved on and told myself that I'd just lost that one. So, after a few days, I messaged her.

I asked if there was a reason why she'd friended me.

She told me she was sorry. That she had been a really awful friend to me, and that the things she'd said had haunted her for years. She went on and on about how she didn't expect me to forgive her, how she knew what she'd done was wrong. And I waited until she stopped typing and said everything she needed to say and said, "Of course I forgive you."

I had forgiven her the moment she said it. It was a douche thing to say comparing my dog's death to her situation, even if it was my weird little on the spectrum ass self trying so hard to relate to something I didn't understand yet on an emotional level. I still don't fully understand the loss of someone when you are child and don't have the ability or the support to handle it on your own. I've gone through a lot of trauma, and I have a lot of reasons to dislike my parent's methods, but my parents prepared me remarkably well for death. It wasn't hard for me to accept my sister's death. I cried, sure. But I'd always been told that those tears are for you, and they're valid. But they're at peace now. And it was a thought process I carried with me and still carry with me.

She was surprised when I forgave her so immediately. And even more shocked when I wanted to be her friend again instantly, and when it was easy for us to pick up where we left off.

The point of this story is a grave error that both of us made. My comparison, and her assumption that I could never forgive her. I think the gravest, most important error anyone and everyone could ever make in any relationship with me is to truly believe that I can never forgive them for something. Anything.

I forgave my sister for leaving me the moment I set foot in her funeral, and every day since, I've found another life lesson has taught me why forgiving her was wise.

I'd forgive my dad if he'd ever once just hold space for me and admit that the trauma he raised me with profoundly affected me. But he has decided that I'm not worthy of an apology, and that will forever determine our relationship.

I forgive my mom for staying with him because she understands what I've gone through, and I understand what she's gone through, and she tries every day to do better even though it's hard.

I'd forgive my oldest sister for the insults, homophobia, and constant scapegoating me to her kids to the point where they insult me using her words if she truly meant it. Or bothered trying to make a change instead of calling me overly dramatic.

I forgave one of my best friends for not understanding my mood disorder and for the amount of times she triggered me knowing what I told her would trigger an emotional response. I knew I'd been toxic, and even more importantly, I wanted our friendship to work and she did too. And it does now. It works so well, and I love that girl with every fiber of my being for that and so many more things.

Just as I am the most stubborn, argumentative, psycho bitch on the planet for like two weeks out of the month every calendar year, I am also incredibly forgiving. The problem is that people don't understand that, and they circle around for years at a time, thinking that trying is useless because I'm still angry, or what they did is something they think is unforgivable.

And it's just not true.

People hurt me often, and I hold grudges for years. Sometimes, there are people (as in almost everyone in my family, I've never felt this way about someone outside of my family) I absolutely do not want to forgive or rebuild a relationship with. But if they asked me to, and truly tried to do the work, I'm always going to be a sucker for it. But the reason isn't entirely because of what they said or did. It's because no one ever apologizes to me. And I sit there feeling that hurt of being left over and over until it festers inside of me, knowing that my pride won't let me beg. It won't let me grovel or give them those hints that I would be ready to accept an apology or call a truce. All of this while knowing that the moment they said sorry, and truly meant it, I would forgive them in an instant.

It doesn't matter who they are, or what they've said, or what they've done. Forgiveness is always an option for me. It's a core part of who I am to forgive and want to work things out. Doesn't matter how long ago it happened, or if that person thinks it's too late now, or they've missed their chance. There is no expiration date on my love for people.

And I wish more people understood that.

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july-19th-club · 2 years

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Recap for Roswell: New Mexico S2E09: “The Diner”: flashback city

4/5 ⭐s

“The Diner” is one of those episodes where Roswell decides it’s going to play around with form and be non-linear, so much of the episode is told in flashbacks within flashbacks: the ‘present’ is Liz at the diner with Kyle and his justifiably angry date; the most recent flashback is Michael and Izzy’s conversation with Walt; all the other flashbacks are either Walt’s stories about the Bronson-Nora-Louise family or Jesse’s stories about why he fucking hates aliens so goddamn much (except, like, not anymore, because he doesn’t feel like it, or so he’ll tell anyone who talks to him about aliens because he thinks people believe him when he’s lying).

We open on Liz, who’s closing the diner for her dad while he’s driving Rosa to treatment. Who should show up on this long sleepless night but Kyle and Steph, who are venturing beyond the confines of the operating theater to beg an old friend to cook them some burgers. Kyle and Liz wind up having a whispered argument in the kitchen about two things they both feel vaguely guilty about: Liz can’t let go of the idea of looking more into alien DNA applications, despite the siblings’ many very good reasons it’s just not worth it. And Kyle refuses to tell his girlfriend that he knows about her very serious condition, until - still frustrated from the kitchen bitchin’ - he blurts it out over dinner. She’s mad he snooped in her records, and was looking for a relationship where her health didn’t come into it, so she walks out. Isobel walks in.

FLASHBACK: meanwhile, earlier in the night, Iz and Michael take his boss, the loveably crotchety Walt Sanders, out for drinks as an incentive for him to open up about his traumatic childhood. We know he was there for Michael when he needed a couch and a meal in high school, and we now learn that he is paying forward the parenthood Roy Bronson once extended to him.

FLASHBACK: we see the day they met. We flash forward a couple months to the day Nora and Louise arrived at their door. We learn they picked their names out of a book, but we don’t learn the names they left behind when they crash-landed. Flash forward again to the week of the county fair, the same week they were discovered. Roy feels it’s been long enough that they’re safe to do a public activity together, and that Nora, being white, has a better shot of winning big with her pumpkin launcher. She says some stuff about how someday the world will move past prejudice, and Roy’s like, “Nice, but we live here.” He also suspects she’s got more going on than a homemade gourd trebuchet, and he’s absolutely right. Like Michael after her, she’s thinking about spaceship construction. As far as she’s concerned, she can’t afford Louise’s optimism about earth, and she has to keep Louise safe to ensure the subsequent safety of some child. One gets the ominous sense that she’s not even talking about her own son here (Michael, of course, assumes she means Max, and is plunged into another episode of abandonment over it).

Flash forward again: after the fair. Day before the raid. Throughout the story, Michael is skeptical that any of what Walt tells him is even real - after all, he’s a drunk old guy, Michael has trust issues, and he thinks it’s entirely possible he’s just coming up with what he thinks they want to hear. But this drunk old guy has been sitting on a bag of undisclosable trauma his whole life, and maybe he’s just glad to have a chance to finally tell it as fully as he’s able. Michael doesn’t want another recap of the massacre, but we go through it anyway, once more with little clarity. Walt, after all, was hidden in a crate against a wall by Nora just before the troops came in, and only knows flashes of what happened next. He’s covering his face for most of the shooting, and still some shrapnel from the crate, losing his eye. But he makes it out of the box, and the barn - Nora, always paranoid and thinking ahead, had opened up the wall in case one of them would ever have to hide in there.

Walt stumbles away, seeing Louise’s body and those of several neighbors before he makes it to the field. Seventy years later he still feels survivor’s guilt. As the only person left who knows the location of the pods, he keeps an eye on them, until one day the siblings have woken up and gone. When Michael is a teenager, he even attempts to put himself down as a foster parent, though his applications get routinely denied; when he admits this, Michael breaks down in tears at the knowledge that the care he was always so starved of was not for lack of someone trying after all.

FLASHBACK: this one from Jesse Manes, from whom Alex demands some transparency re: great-uncle Tripp, who he says was rarely mentioned at home. There’s not much to mention, at least as Jesse tells it - he was murdered some time after the raid by a vengeful surviving alien, and it’s one of the reasons behind one of Jesse’s many brands of bigotry. What little we see of him from Jesse’s perspective is of a fairly nice guy; he’s investing in Arturo’s bid to buy the Crashdown, though he also dispenses advice from the classic Manes catalog: everything you do is a kind of war, and you have to win it. Niceness doesn’t do much to dispel a legacy of violence. What’s interesting is the fact that this scene posits Jesse was once a...well, a less racist guy, before a gradual radicalization. For me, this bit of past humanization is too little, too late...and it’s also coming from Jesse himself, which means there’s every chance he’s bending and smoothing over parts of his personality (both then and now) because his audience is Alex, who’s still looking for any scrap of decency in the man. Also I was right about him being more recovered than he acts like.

FLASHBACK: When Michael and Alex meet to compare notes, Alex agrees that our heroes’ reading of the story they’ve pieced together from mostly secondary sources could be wrong. He’s reminded of his father’s assumption that Michael was seducing him versus the reality of their organic bond, so he takes the concept a step further: under the supposition that Nora and Tripp were, if not lovers, at the very least allies, we get another take on the night of the raid. In this version, Tripp tries to warn the family but is thwarted by his brother, Roy still dies (shot by Harlan), but based on later evidence, Louise made it out, and Tripp let her go. He also seems to be the man to suggest Caulfield-like proceedings in the first place, so we’re still not looking at a bona fide hero, but possibly a more nuanced involvement with at least one alien.

Meanwhile, all in the present timeline, Max is picked up by his old boss Sheriff Valenti when he wakes up from last episode’s attack, disoriented and with Charlie Cameron nowhere to be found. Michelle has had it up to fucking here with his disseminating and his showing up in weird places, and she promptly arrests her ex-deputy and (rather compassionately) Poirots him. Unfortunately for her presentation, which is really very thorough, her correctness about the events of Noah’s death are still super wrong as concerns motive and aftermath, and the more she extrapolates, the more she sees Max everywhere, even places he can’t reasonably have been - like the scenes of all three kidnappings. If I was Max, I’d head off Michelle’s investigating with a good old half-truth: no, he’s never been to Mexico, he actually spent his missing months having a serious heart condition and getting treated for it, which would also nicely absolve him of the kinds of strenuous kidnapping and murdering activity he’s being accused of. But he’s Max, so he does not think to do this. Kyle bails him out with it instead. As a parting act of confidence, Max tells her a little bit about the Noah situation, though how much she’ll believe remains to be seen.

The other Michelle lede is that she wants to talk about the siblings’ childhood, since she knows they were abandoned and therefore have traumatic pasts. Max denies any trauma responses in his recollection (thinking of growing up with his very caring upper-middle-class parents), but Michelle says when she used to visit the kids before they were adopted/fostered out, he was often incredibly upset. She also says he was the wall-drawer, not Michael, who was merely holding the wrong crayon at the wrong time when the Evanses showed up. Apart from reminding us that the Evanses, for all their care, are deeply oblivious people, we have another nod to the idea that Max’s pre-pod time was more ‘small room underneath Omelas’ than ‘happy family he just can’t remember’.

CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCK

Young Arturo in his little bow tie and his eighties decor! I don't have anything else to really say, I just love him is all.

With all of the ways in which Nora seems so similar to Michael, I’m just waiting for narrative confirmation that bursts his bubble completely about her. Even when he’s told things about her that reveal a more pragmatic, and perhaps even opportunist, side to her, he remains painfully hopeful that, if they’d ever known each other longer than three minutes, he’d have loved her and she’d have loved him and they’d have gotten along famously. But nobody’s parents are that uncomplicated. He’s gonna speedrun childhood disillusionment for the second time.

At what point are we going to address the elephant in the Steph: the fact that I’m still pretty sure she’s, if not an alien, at the very least an alien descendant. Her having a serious and (it sounds like) terminal blood disorder’s gonna really put a pin in Liz’s ‘universal vaccine with alien antibodies’ theory.

Michael standing angstily by the bar doorway, posing with his hat and his foot up on the wall, just so that when Alex shows up he’ll see him looking Like That: also big part of the bi agenda. See the boys as they walk on by in-fucking-deed.

(With shrinkingly vulnerable eyes): “You came.” (With the fondest smile a man could ever muster): “You asked me to.” Jesus fucking christ. Ohh we can date other people we can be normal about each other we’re being sooooo fucking normal regular guys behave this way around their old flames all the time. This is normal. Shut the fuck up.

Alex knowing which booth has secret shit stored behind it based on the knowledge that the men in his family are so allergic to aesthetic appreciation or sense of beauty that it couldn’t possibly be just the light hitting it nice.

Line of the episode also goes to Lily Cowles’ delightfully blase Izzy kink convo: “It’s all about the headboard, okay, because decent restraints are gonna turn your cheap furniture into Swedish sawdust if your partner’s doing their job right.” Never change, babygirl. Would love to be tied up and showered in sawdust by you.

#recaps #reviews #really i think 'review' implies less summary of events and more 'analysis' and ive been doing a lot of the former sometimes #so maybe i need to change what these are called #roswell nm #roswell: new mexico #q

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that-is-just-so-typically-me · 7 months

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Definitely right-wing political views come from an unbroken chain of trauma, passed through time and generations from the primal wounds of capitalism and colonialism. It’s as inexcusable as it is for a parent to beat their child as they were beaten growing up. And it is as self-justifying (through the same hideous logic) as parents are who grew up to beat their own children as they were beaten. Their hyper-individualist worldview and grand delusions of exceptionalism and superiority are essentially on a political scale the same things that deeply traumatized people sometimes develop as a (very self-destructive and unhelpful) response to it being incredible unsafe when they relied on someone when they needed them badly, often during early childhood. Basically every white Republican parent at the very least abandons their child emotionally, usually at infancy because they all subscribe to the “cry it out” method which has been repeatedly demonstrated to cause permanently brain-altering damage to the infant brain. Tell them their pain builds character while you ignore or inflict it, given it all a thick coat of cis/binary gender role programing, and you’re teeing up for an adult later down the line with a massive sense of entitlement to inflict suffering because “I had to suffer so you need to because that’s fair” and “Life is suffering, suck it up” and “every man for himself” Hollowed out men who truly take glee in the pain of others, with egos hanging by a gossamer thread, and ready to annihilate anything that threatens it… and their emotionally broken-down wives and girlfriends who feel so powerless that they’ll commit and be complicit in heinous acts to appease their man and secure the (false) sense of protection from the outside world that he says he can provide her. Religious extremism in the mix from childhood is basically the most efficient way to drive the fear to the pitch of a true psychosis which can almost never be unseated, since it is the cornerstone of their entire reality and in their worldview the fate of the apostate is the worst-case scenario.

It’s just the same as when we place the meeting of an emotional need in someone’s hand, relying on them in a vulnerable act, and when they let us down or abandon us, our response is to never open up to or rely on anyone else ever again. It’s one of the most natural conclusions for being incredibly fearful of connection, becoming mistrustful on a community- and political scale, refusing to accept any scenario where it might actual be the safest thing and in our best interest to take chances on policies that could benefit literally everyone, or at the very least, not take something away from someone which wouldn’t eventually net a benefit for them indirectly. As trust is a non-option for them, they of course believe in the absolute necessity of control. The engine behind every abusive system, domestically or in a society: you don’t have to trust someone if you can control them. “She’s not going to leave you if she doesn’t have any friends or believes she is nothing without you”. “They’re not going to rise up and attack us if we demonstrate we will punish all of them for the actions of a few.” The ultimate ways to achieve this is are, of course, colonization, fascism, totalitarianism, apartheid, and eventually, genocide. It is the weak rot at the heart of all evil and it is the most deadly force in this world. I know I’m truly just saying the most obvious things here and we all already understand this by now but I’m just thinking about what a fucking waste it all is when people like this spend their lives destroying as much as possible to feel as in-control as they can.

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lesetoilesfous · 3 years

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Anders and ‘‘Murder’’ in Dragon Age

Ok so I’ve seen this a few times recently and want to break down my thoughts on it.

Anders is a murderer - this is true.*

(*Though there are some really great meta posts proving how by Dragon Age Canon he killed less than 100 people in the Chantry boom. I’m on mobile but if anyone wants to add that please do.)

Hawke is a murderer. Varric is a murderer. Isabela is a murderer. Fenris is a murderer. Aveline is a murderer. Merrill is a murderer. Sebastian is a murderer.

Guys you, you have a kill count. Hawke and their whole gang are a group of dangerous vigilantes who kill people according to their own personal moral judgements.

The difference between Anders’ Chantry Boom and the Kirkwall Crew’s merry decade of mass murder is that a) the Chantry Boom was the beginning of a Civil War b) That Civil War started, in part, to prevent a genocide

(Canonically, Meredith had called for the Rite of Annulment with no good reason. Canonically, she is going to enact it knowing the Circle mages are innocent. Canonically, the Gallows had over 800 innocent people inside including children and the elderly. Not to be utilitarian, but yes, I would kill 100 political and religious leaders in a corrupt, dictatorial, violent theocracy in order to save nearly a thousand innocent people.)

The third difference between Anders and Hawke and the gang’s multiple-hundreds head count is that you, the player, don’t do it. So you don’t excuse him the way you excuse yourself - despite the fact that Anders’ last ditch effort to save over 800 people after ten years of peaceful protest is infinitely more justifiable than Hawke’s slaughter of hundreds of refugees and gangs in a city that is canonically riddled with poverty, prejudice, unemployment and homelessness.

When I say Anders Was Right, I don’t mean, “he’s my favourite character so I’m turning a blind eye to his actions”. I mean, seriously, I think that what he did was the morally correct choice and a necessary one.

I don’t mean that Anders isn’t an asshole. He’s a huge asshole!!! He shouldn’t have lied to Hawke. He shouldn’t have manipulated them. He’s selfish, and ignorant, and often blind to the way his words and actions hurt other people. He can become self absorbed and arrogant. He demands disclosure of trauma, he’s short tempered, he leaps to conclusions, he hurts people’s feelings, he IS blinded to the causes and needs of other communities because of his single minded focus on mages and his own suffering. And a lot of his dialogue towards Fenris and Merrill (however cartoonishly exaggerated, but more on that anon) is unforgivably rude AT BEST.

I think Anders actions at the Chantry were correct and morally justifiable. Does that mean I think he’s perfect? Of course not! His flaws are what make him interesting!!!!

But even if all of this weren’t true - EVEN IF the rest of the gang didn’t canonically have a kill count as high as, or higher than, Anders’ first action in a civil war to prevent a genocide - EVEN in that case.

I also cannot condone Bioware’s conscious, deliberate, centrist, toxic, ableist caricature of a mentally ill, queer character and his fight for civil rights. I…don’t actually think we need a story right now that explains to us how, fundamentally, queer bipolar men are ‘unhinged’, violent and evil, simply for the fact of their resistance against state and religious abuse. Even when they’ve been tortured. Even when children are going to die.

We have this appalling, condescending, imperialistic idea that people - in reality and in fiction, are only allowed to violently resist violent oppression by the state and church if we find them palatable. If they step a toe outside of our personal comfort zones, (themselves constructed by the same imperialistic propaganda we’ve consumed since childhood) we immediately rescind that right - damning an individual for resisting, even if their life is on the line. Even if it concerns the death of children. This is not a moral choice. It’s a social bias.

As for Fenris and Merrill - I struggle to believe that a man who spent ten years providing free medical treatment to refugees, criminals and the homeless never met an elf or learned anything about discrimination against elves. I also struggle to understand how - despite the fact that the Circles are the only place in southern Thedas where elves are not segregated from humans, and where they can reach an equivalent position of authority to humans, somehow Circle mages are most often the mouthpieces for anti elven discrimination.

And by this of course I mean I don’t struggle at all. It’s very helpful for bombastic, oppressive governments like the USA, and all who support them, to set up a false dichotomy between marginalised communities. To peddle the lie that marginalised communities’ biggest threats are one another and not, say, the church or state actively enforcing violence against them. (The Chantry teaches that mages corrupted heaven. It also teaches that elves are inherently more sinful than humans because they are ‘born further from the Maker’s light’).

Once again, apart from the catastrophic failure in internal logic that results in these forced, cartoonish caricatures of Anders as a character - I also disagree with this because I fundamentally do not believe that we need a story about queer people and mentally ill people fighting people of colour but never daring to raise a finger to the people lobotomising them, r*ping them, killing them and driving them to s*icide. I don’t like that story because I don’t think it’s a good one - I don’t think it’s narratively interesting. I do think it’s morally corrupt. I think it’s toxic propaganda. I think it drives us apart.

There’s this incredibly condescending attitude among DA fans towards people who like Anders. The patronising, lazy assumption is that we saw a pretty blonde white man and didn’t engage with the narrative at all. This is rarely the case. We are also adults. We also played the game. We just came to a different conclusion.

#Anders DA2 #DA2 #Anders #DA2 meta #dragon age meta

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poisonheart · 2 years

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Listen, I don’t do “Pain Olympics” ~ I’ve always hated these debates about who is more pitiful and deserving of love and compassion. That I had to read with my own two eyes that people truly believe Anduin had it worse than Sylvanas just because she had a family in her childhood and had “more years of happiness” and he didn’t actually disgust me.

But hey, I’ll humor the Pain Olympics and participate in the race with that same flawed and gross logic. We can justify anything through the lens we want to look through, after all.

Let’s get this out of the way: we are talking about two very privileged characters. People treat Anduin like he’s some homeless orphan who had it rough. As if he’s had to raise himself. Even his servants loved him and were nurturing to him. You can absolutely be very rich and miserable, but let’s not pretend like Anduin was a Thrall level orphan.

(You see why Pain Olympics is stupid? There will always be people who had it worse. It’s a constant invalidating loop. You can’t measure pain. One year of suffering for Person A can feel like the 20 years of suffering from Person B. It’s insulting and invalidating to say Person B is more worthy of compassion just because they “suffered longer.”)

The other wild take I’ve seen in the Pain Olympic race is that Sylvanas has family that loves her now. LOL, bitch where? They specifically chose to make Sylvanas that “survivor who lost everything and everyone, repudiated/shunned/outcast” because it was fun to Blizz. Very fitting for a Horde-aligned character. Need to have lots of misery to later turn into a villain because of Horde things.

Her only surviving sister at that time was Vereesa and not once was she written to care for Sylvanas after undeath. When they finally remembered she existed they chose to use her to drive a dagger of “you’re unworthy and unlovable” through Sylvanas in that awful book “War Crimes” where Anduin was also written to be more than willing to listen and be super compassionate toward this other genocidal orc who actually tried to kill him.

In “Three Sisters” Vereesa and Alleria leave the awful meeting together because obviously, Sylvanas is a terrible monster now who can’t sit with them. There we have Alleria, corrupted by the void up the ass, but Vereesa is totally okay keeping her around because she’s aligned with her precious Alliance.

(And the narrative later proves they were right to think of Sylvanas as a monster because that’s what they wrote her to become.)

Finally, in “Shadows Rising” Alleria is written to be practically salivating to hunt Sylvanas down while employing the same questionable methods the self-righteous Alliance has always condemned the Horde for and no one gave a fuck about it, not even Anduin—the guy who was written to denounce all the atrocities Sylvanas was capable and willing to commit to justify the ends. Guess it’s only reprehensible when the enemy does it, no? Whatever.

Her sisters have been written to be awful. Whatever retcon they pull now about them caring for her doesn’t change the years where that wasn’t the case in canon. You can’t expect the fandom to just embrace such retcon now when they’ve been shit for years, building resentment in the audience.

Sylvanas’ story in Warcraft has always been about isolation, abandonment, and darkness, yet finding the strength to go on in spite of it—even when all she knew and loved was taken from her. To rebuild and forge ahead. Of course, Blizzard is retcon central, so who the fuck knows what’s canon anymore.

Now, let’s shift to Anduin while still participating in the Pain Olympics race. You know what he’s had? A support system. He has people who love him, who went to literal hell for him, and who will be there to help him overcome this new trauma. When he has flashbacks and nightmares about all he did while subjugated, he can reach out to literally anyone and find some comfort. He won’t be an outcast or shunned or deemed a total monster for the things he did or what’s happened to him. He will never get to experience that isolation. He got the good end. And we can’t pretend like that’s solely his merit. He’s even given his father and surrogate orc dad to help him beat the domination magic in the end.

You know who didn’t have that when it happened to her? Sylvanas. You know who won’t ever have that because now she’s done “mass murder” and lost all rights to compassion because of it? Sylvanas. And it is the consistent Blizzard narrative. Unless you’re like Anduin or Calia, processing trauma like a doormat, Blizzard writes characters as unworthy. Their intention works when you have so many people saying Anduin is more pitiful than Sylvanas because his 19-20 years of life have all been awful compared to her who at least knew happiness and family in her childhood and simply threw it all away for revenge. Yes, that’s a genuine take I’ve seen thrown out there. Not even joking.

When Anduin comes back home to his castle/city/people after being dominated, he will be surrounded by people who love and support him. Because that’s the kind of character Blizzard writes as worthy of all that ending.

This has been painful. Participating in Pain Olympics to write all the above sickens me. Trying to quantify misery made me want to puke. In the end, both are characters who suffered. Both have gone through pain and loss and I don’t think it’s fair to try and measure it and use the results to weigh who deserves compassion. But that’s what Blizzard wants. That’s why they made Anduin the listener of Sylvanas’ life story.

This is the reaction they live for and thrive on. They want to further vilify her under the guise of “look, we’re giving you her back story to explain what we couldn’t put in the game for five years” while uplifting yet another precious Alliance NPC because they’re the only ones worthy of squishy feelings and sympathy in this franchise. It doesn’t matter how the book ends or what he ultimately thinks of her. If you are agreeing with “Anduin is more pitiful” you’re playing precisely into the kind of thing Blizzard/Golden wants you to think. Congrats.

#sylvanas windrunner #man when I look at this pile of shit and think of how FF14 handled villains and compassion #seriously Blizzard needs to fire their entire narrative team #even Anduin has been butchered #so many characters have been ruined #even villains #queued post #if you think Blizzard loves Sylvanas I don’t know what to tell you #if you think they favor her after all the shit they’ve done to her character I don’t know what to tell you either #edited because I wrote this angry and sleepy

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eugene-not-flynn · 3 years

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Reframing Cassandra

So maybe this is a nonsense idea, but I’ve been thinking about it the past couple of days re: Cassandra. Specifically... what could have happened if Cassandra had been assigned as Rapunzel’s personal guard, rather than her lady in waiting.

Some thoughts and wonderings below the cut. Warning for negativity in terms of how Cassandra’s canon arc unfolded over the course of the series. Disclaimer that these are just my personal thoughts, and should in no way make anyone feel bad for disagreeing. This read on the changes is also in-keeping with canon ships.

Without further ado...

I think it had the potential to change a great deal about what I, personally, didn’t really like about Cassandra’s canon arc and development.

Cassandra as an Individual

This is strictly a personal opinion... but I just don’t find the “she always felt like she was chosen second to Rapunzel” as a particularly meaningful or powerful narrative choice for her. I think it... functionally paints Rapunzel has a naive victim of Cassandra’s ambition, which I don’t think is fair to either female character.

I don’t mind the notion that Cassandra feels like she has something to prove. But I feel like pitting that sense against the Lost Princess of Corona is a disservice to both. I’d rather see it stand in contrast to the other guards.

I think it would be a stronger framework for that subplot of her character arc to be that she feels like a second-rate guard because she’s been assigned to protect one person rather than be an actual guard/given a leadership role. (Of course, this is no actually small task, and I think Cass would come to understand that with time).

I think also that it would feed into her overarching plot and role and relationship to other characters, which I’ll more about in a sec.

Cassandra and Eugene Tension

For the most part, I didn’t have a problem with that Cass and Eugene argued/bickered a lot. (I do wish there was more moments that counterbalanced it, but I digress)

But I didn’t quite understand where the animosity was coming from, and I kind of wish it had been explored more.

And I think that if Cass had been Rapunzel’s personal guard assigned by the king, then Cass’s distrust of Eugene (and Eugene’s corresponding frustration with her distrust of him) would make sense and also provide room for interesting growth between them.

Because now Cassandra’s literal job is protect the princess, and what evidence is there that Eugene isn’t just playing some kind of long game?

Meanwhile Eugene feels like time and time again he tries to prove how much he has changed, and everyone seems willing to believe him but Cass? And can he really blame her? Or fault her?

I just think it would also have that much more impact to hear Cassandra tell Rapunzel in season 2 that there’s no way Eugene would betray her like that (when Cass harbored that distrust of him for so long), or that moment in Season 1 when Cass gets knocked down and Eugene goes charging in to the fray to help her).

Cassandra and Rapunzel Tension, Fall Out, and Reconciliation

So Cassandra has plenty of moments already in canon where she tries to protect Rapunzel because she’s her friend. But I think coloring those moment by a sense of obligation rather than just friendship could help develop the growing resentment towards Rapunzel that Cass starts to feel, especially pressing into Season 3.

You also get the added dynamic of them both often being at fault for miscommunications and the disintegration of the relationship because Rapunzel almost certainly has issues with accepting “protection” because a lot of her childhood trauma is wrapped up in a neat little bow with the label “its to keep you safe”. So she doesn’t always want Cassandra to protect her, and she can take care of herself.

Meanwhile, Cassandra didn’t ask to be Rapunzel’s guard, and she doesn’t listen very well, so when Rapunzel does stupid stuff and is reckless, that puts Cassandra at a certain level of risk as well. (She also might see Rapunzel’s recklessness as a slap in the face in the sense of reading it as “I don’t need you”, even though Rapunzel is the one person that she’s supposed to protect?)

And I think directing that anger and resentment towards Rapunzel makes more sense--at least to me--if it’s not about other people and their reaction to the two of them. Because one thing that always bugged me about her canon arc is that while some of her anger towards Rapunzel is justified... I think a lot of it just... isn’t.

I just think there could be an interesting story to tell where Cass feels like she’s always trying to protect others (specifically Rapunzel) and nobody is trying to protect her. So Cassandra eventually starts seeking power as a means of self-protection.

I think Zhan Tiri can still play the roll she does in Cassandra’s betrayal in the sense of telling Cass what she most wants to hear as a means of manipulation. But I think fear is a powerful tool in that respect, and turning Cass’s main motive as a villain to be one of fear (like Varian’s is grief to an extent) makes her a more sympathetic villain than her canon arc.

I think also that such a turn makes it easier/more believable, in my opinion, for Rapunzel to hold on to that hope that Cassandra is still a good person. Because Rapunzel would understand what it’s like to be afraid and to feel like you need protection, and if she can recognize that Cass is scared--and that’s what’s motivating her through her villain arc--then I could understand why Rapunzel refuses to turn her back on her.

I also think that makes for a stronger reconciliation moment for them, and even if Rapunzel still uses her power to bring Cass back, I think the idea of “Rapunzel now chooses to actively protect the life of someone who did that so often for her and felt it was never reciprocated in full” a more powerful end to their friendship arc.

#tangled the series #tts #tangled #cassandra #just some thoughts that have been rattling around my head for a few days now.

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no-name-district · 4 years

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I just need to vent.

[And before y'all come for me: murder is bad, terrorising a country because of your childhood trauma is bad, retraumatizing you family (again because of your childhood trauma) is bad. We understand this. Accountability is important!!! Anyway]

1) "Child raised in household where he and his siblings were labelled as 'successes' or 'failures' and treated as such fails to see younger brother as human. More at 11" No but really, can we really expect Dabi to fully view Shouto as human when even Endeavor didn't for the longest time??? If you grow up subjected to extreme dehumanization, do you ever really learn to see people as fully human? If we look at how he treats the league, Hawks, ANYBODY we see that he has two boxes: useful and useless. He really only develops (tolerates, really) relationships if the other party has some utilitarian value. So is it suprising that he sees Shouto as a pawn in Endeavour's schemes and nothing else? No. Is it fucked up? Absolutely. 100%. But it makes sense becAUSE THAT IS LITERALLY??? HOW ENDEAVOR TREATED THEM??? FOR YEARS???

2) "He doesnt think about his family!!!Hes selfish and evil!!!" Yeah. He's a villain. He does evil things... But in all seriousness, the Todoroki situation is so fucked up that everyone ends up hurting another family member whether they wanted to or not. Fuyumi just wants to forget and move on, but that will hurt Natsuo because he (rightfully) refuses to do just that. Natsu wants to burn that bridge, but that would hurt Fuyumi, Rei, and Shouto because they're all more or less determined to stay for the time being. Whether anyone stays or leaves, stays quiet or speaks up, another Todoroki is going to be hurt. And just think for a moment, what if it was Shouto who exposed the abuse? Fuyumi? Natsuo? Rei? They're all victims and they all deserve the right to hold their collective abuse accountable and IF THEY HAD they would still be hurting the rest of the family. Exposing your abuser who happens to have a lot of power, fame, and prestige is going to be messy. Dabi just chose the MESSIEST most DRAMATIC way possible [ which was 100% a dick move] Point is, this process was going to be a shitshow regardless, I just hope everyone has a therapist on retainer.

3) "Childhood trauma doesn't excuse murder!!!!!" It does not, but it does explain quite a few things. Its the same reason FBI profiles on serial killers includes upbringing: childhood trauma doesn't give them a get-out-of-jail free card, it lets the rest of us figure out what went wrong and how we can make sure it doesn't happen again. Thats the thing about villains in this series: they're what went wrong. They're a testament to what went wrong in hero society. They're what happens when you let children slide to the cracks. Its much like that one quote: "If the village turns its back on a child the child will burn the village to the ground to feel its warmth". DABIS ACTIONS ARE NOT JUSTIFIED BUT THEY AREN'T RANDOM EITHER and his backstory isnt an excuse its an EXPLANATION. Dabi is quite literally telling us how he got frim point A to point B and we should listen lest we want to see all the Dabis and Togas and Shigarakis that hero society has created and will continue to create unless someone fixes the damn system.

4) The last thing I wanted to mention is that this is, quite literally, a "dont you ever want to go apeshit" moment. Ive seen some posts where people say yes, this is what abuse victims want. Burn him to crisp. Fuck him and fuck everyone else. Is it a selfish and destructive mindset??? Of course! But guess what!!! Dabi was abused half of his life and forgotten for the rest of it!!! He never learned to be kind and generous!!! He never learned to think about how your actions affect others!!! He never even learned to think about how his actions would affect his own wellbeing!!! He has no fucks left to give!!! And its HORRIBLE!!! Because so may people can see themselves in him. Its horrible because a lot of us understand the madness and sometimes we want to go apeshit.

This entire chapter was absolutely fucked and i loved every second of it.

#bnha boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #my hero academia #bnha 290 #mha 290 #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #dabi #dabi is a todoroki #todoroki touya #todoroki shouto #todoroki family #don't take this seriously #its just some thoughts

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

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3H and Bleach: Where the Fuck am I

So, I’m finally hunkering down and trying to write out this post lmao. I’ve mentioned here and there how my personal experience with the 3H’s fandom is similar to my experience with the Bleach fandom’s in more than one way, and - look. Like, I get there’s definitely a semi-universal thing that goes on across all fandoms. I don’t mean for this to say that this only happens within these two fandoms, because duh, of course they don’t. But!! This post is partly me wanting to air years long annoyance towards the Bleach fandom that just so happens to coincide with my feelings towards the 3H fandom, sooo... yeah lmao

I’ll probably be skimming over some bits about 3H, since most people who come across this will already be familiar with what I’d be talking about in that regard vs Bleach, so just a heads up

Note: This is gonna talk about Bleach which will spoiler territory (writing this off the cuff so not sure where this is goin’ yet lmao but I know that much), so if you don’t wanna see that then don’t read this post lol, I know for sure I’ll be spoiling something ahhhh... noticeable, lol

Ableism against the mentally ill

Now, most people reading this post will be familiar with the blog and how this very, very much applies to 3H, but for the sake of this post I’ll lay it out anyway with a brief summary

Dimitri and Rhea are both characters within 3H that suffer from severe trauma that heavily impacts their mental state. Both are the sole survivors of a horrific slaughter, with that slaughter redefining who they are and leaving a permanent marker within their minds in some way (Dimitri with having auditory and visual hallucinations, Rhea with having obsessive tendencies towards bringing her mother back from the dead). Specifically in CF, both characters are set up in the plot as antagonists, with both characters having to relive their trauma in some way due to the actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them (for Dimitri, having his home be razed to the ground and everyone he cares for dying around him, for Rhea having someone use her mother’s mutilated remains be used to end her and her race) and express extreme anger towards Byleth and Edelgard before they are killed to progress/end the story

Now, uh, sad shit right? Not exactly fuckin’ happy sunshine rainbows. These two characters are put through the wringer and are then murdered. They are rightfully not the fuckin’ happiest because of what happened to them before and what happens to them within the present story. But we’ve heard it all before: “They were crazy!” “They couldn’t be reasoned with!” “They had to be put down out of mercy because they were too ~far gone~ to live happily!” “They needed to be killed for the good of everyone!” It’s an extremely ableist rhetoric that gets passed around the fandom as though it’s totally fine to directly state that mentally ill people should be put down if they’re deemed a “lost cause.” Especially worrying because. You know. If they are a “”””lost cause”””” then it’s directly and specifically because of actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them.

But how does this remind me of Bleach? What kind of similar extreme, worrying ableism exists there? Well, let me introduce to best girl a certain character with... a reputation, to say the least:

Meet Momo Hinamori.

Holy shit it’s so weird writing this out because I’ve been wanting to for years but have never worked up the nerve to do it lol

It should be noted, in the Bleach verse there’s two worlds out of three - Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, though I’ll only be talking of the former - that deal with “souls” (the essence within a living human). Souls age far more slowly than human bodies do in terms of body, not necessarily the mind (so a teenage soul will likely behave as such for a long while) so keep in mind that I’m going to be using numbers that may seem weird to someone who hasn’t seen Bleach lol. With that out of the way, here’s a similar, if longer for context to those who haven’t seen Bleach, summary for Momo’s character as it relevant to this post:

Momo is a character in Bleach that grows a deep admiration towards Sosuke Aizen, a respected captain of the military force called the Gotei 13. She comes to views him as the most important person in her world due to him both noticing and paying direct attention to her as well as saving her and her friends’ lives during a training mission gone wrong while she was younger. Note that “younger” here means 40 years ago from the start of the story. Aizen would praise her all the time, allow her to sleep over in his quarters, would drape his cloaks over her when she looked cold, and would overall treat Momo as though he was his daughter for most of the time we see them interact in the beginning portions of the show. Note that none of this is sexual in nature, nor is it ever implied to be seen as such. That’ll be important later in this post

To make a long story short, Aizen comes to betray her. He stabs her through the chest and shows and tells her that she never meant anything to him, throughout the 40 years they’ve known each other (which, mind, for a soul Momo’s approximate age 40 years is still a noticeable amount of time), and he was only using her to help bolster his image as a loveable captain so that he can hide his plan from everybody that much easier. He did horrible things to Momo - from setting her alarm clock back to a later time so that she would more likely come across his pinned, bloody fake corpse. to framing her childhood friend for the apparent murder and tricking her into fighting that friend, to far later in the series tricking that friend into stabbing her (hypnosis shit, to sum that up) for literally no stated reason - that ended up mentally breaking her. She couldn’t believe that the last four decades were all nothing but lies and she fell into a deep denial about Aizen’s true nature - someone else made him do everything he did, she must have missed something that would have warned her about Captain Aizen’s unfortunate situation that forced Captain Aizen to hurt her and everyone else. This denial would take the majority of Bleach’s entire runtime for her to get over completely, with her having hiccups in her recovery even as she works up the nerve to fight him.

Now, uh, also not the fuckin’ funnest of times to be had here. The deep, long-running mental and psychological manipulation of what approximates as a teenage girl from a trusted older figure is something that is very clearly horrific and bad of the older figure, right? Like, we’re on the same page here on that?

This wouldn’t be in this post if that was the case. No, Momo was the one constantly on fire for what happened to her. She was one of the most hated characters in the western audience, and there were endless jokes about “lol look at Momo, the pincushion!” “Crazy bitch Momo, better watch out!” making fun of her and her trauma relentlessly. If you managed to find a Momo fan in the early 2000′s you should have also bought a lotto ticket because holy fuck, everyone hated her. She acted in a startlingly real if deeply uncomfortable way in regards to years long manipulation and she was lambasted for it. She didn’t immediately get over decades long psychological abuse and she was called useless, weak, a horrible representation of female characters, stupid - you name it, she was likely called it. To this day I still tense up when I hear that someone likes Bleach and they mention Momo at all because I’m always thinking “does this person think this abuse victim is dumb for being abused?”

Dimitri, Rhea, and Momo are all victim-blamed to a disgusting degree in the 3H and Bleach fandoms. Dimitri and Rhea are always hit with “well if Dimitri hadn’t have fought back against Edelgard/Rhea caused the “”tyranical systems” in the first place, nothing would have happened to them!” and Momo was constantly hit with” well, it’s not Aizen’s fault Momo was so clingy to him, what could he have done!” and I get so fuckin’ mad dude.

But for Dimitri and Momo specifically, there’s one thing in particular that caught my attention:

The “Rejection Theories”

This had my head spinnin’ a bit when I first heard it, cuz I had managed to avoid the theory for a while in the 3H’s fandom, but apparently a sizeable amount of people seem to believe that Dimitri wasn’t just mad at Edelgard in the Holy Tomb because of... you know *waves hand* fuckin’ everything, but that the primary reason for his anger was that Edelgard... rejected his advances to her? And that the dagger he gave to her when they were 13 was a phallic symbol of baby Mitri’s want to have sex with Edelgard? And. Like. What in the fuck are you talking about.

But like?? Bleach did this shit too with Momo?? It was also a sizeable amount of people - not everyone, but a noticeable amount - that believed that Momo was just mad that Aizen wouldn’t sleep with her? You’d see it pop up in fics so often, that Momo would want Aizen to fuck her and she’d “go crazy” when he denied her and Momo was actually just this shallow bitch who wanted a good fuck like... what.

Like, when I first heard the Phallic Dagger take the first thing that came to mind is “wait Momo was also accused of just wanting to have sex with the person who traumatized her wtf”

“Actually it was the perpetrators that should be forgiven because lonely and also some shit about ruling better”

Those in the 3H fandom know how often the “Edelgard was lonely!” line gets thrown by just about every one of her stans. Edelgard was lonely and couldn’t trust anyone, so of course she did what she did! If she had someone near her she could trust she wouldn’t have acted like she does in the rest of the game! Nevermind that she “gets” this in CF in the form of Byleth and still acts just as shittily as she does in the other routes, or how being a little lonely doesn’t fuckin’ mean you get to start war. But anyway, we also hear that Edelgard was justified in doing what she did because her ruling Fodlan would have lead to more peace in the end, once she got rid of the power structures in place now (except that doesn’t happen but whatev I guess lmao)

Aizen? He was lonely too! He was far too strong for anyone to truly be able to understand him, and so he tragically fell down a dark path. If he had known someone who could be considered an equal to him he would have never done all the horrible things he did. And the Soul Society is unjust! It needs to be reformed! So him slaughtering hundreds of thousands of souls at the minimum to harvest all of their power to use as his own is justified because it’ll be used to create a more just society under his rule!

Like. Y’all. Lowkey? I’m so fuckin’ glad Edelgard proved herself to be just as fuckin’ awful with Byleth as without because this shit drove me up the fuckin’ wall back in the day. There was 0 ways to prove that Aizen would damn sure be just as fuckin’ bad if he had an “”equal”” to stand by him than if he didn’t, and I get to kinda be right because without fundamentally changing these characters’ backstories they would not give two flying shits about whether or not they had someone “equal to them” (which is still kinda degrading to think about anyway).

Now, this is where I move away to a different topic lol

A split in the narrative cause divides in the fandom

With 3H houses this is really fuckin’ easy to point at: there’s 4 routes, three consistent stories and one radically different story, and that difference in story causes heavy contention within the fandom. It’s very obvious so I won’t go over it much.

But how in the fuck is there a divide in Bleach? It’s not a fuckin’ Choose Your Own Adventure manga, it’s an anime and manga showing off the characters of Bleach’s stories and interactions (with, you know, plot and shit thrown in).

Well. It’s more accurate to say the anime told a story about the characters, and the manga told... the story about the characters.

In terms of plot, the anime didn’t change much from the manga, but hoo fuckin’ boy, did they change shit about some of the characters. Specifically, they changed a shit ton about three characters: the two main protagonists, Ichigo and Rukia, and another main character, Orihime.

Orihime. Got. Fucked.

The anime would make her far more ditzy and clumsy, her crush (turned growing love later on in the story) for Ichigo during more deeper moments that showcases her feelings for him were downplayed if not removed entirely in exchange for talking or thinking about food, key moments she has with Ichigo early in the manga were cut or deadass changed to something else in the anime, some key moments with her relationship with Rukia were cut, her backstory was watered down - so much of Orihime was fucked with in the anime (her fuckin’ introduction was changed drastically). Meanwhile Ichigo and Rukia were given moments that didn’t exist in the manga, they have filler arcs (remember those lmao) that would be stuffed with shit ton of moments for them that have no basis in the manga, other characters would change their behavior from the manga to reflect a sort of “thing” going on between Ichigo and Rukia.

Look, guys, the anime fucked up so bad the fucking mangaka, Tite Kubo, has said he gets stomach aches watching the early anime because it was that awful. And this divide between the anime and manga’s portrayal of these three character helped spawn the ship war of Bleach: Ichiruki vs Ichihime (oh but more on that in a bit). It tanked Orihime’s popularity because people thought she was the stupid dumbass that would stumble ass first into situations when that wasn’t her character at all. And because the majority of anime watchers only watch the anime... yeah, you can see where this went. So just like in 3H in Bleach you have these radically different tellings of the same characters that drove a big-ass wedge in the fandom

Marketing

Imma be transparent, like I’ve said before I managed to avoid nearly every marketing tactic for 3H so it’s a tad hard for me to speak personally, but from what I’ve been told Edelgard was heavily marketed towards the player base pre-release. She was the poster child of 3H, she got the figma, she was in the spotlight - unless you cleansed your board of 3H content you knew exactly who she was. On top of that, it doesn’t stop in-game - loading screen messages would assume you picked BE, Adrestia is the first option to pick when you want to impress one of the lords in the prologue, the BE class is the first option to pick in choosing which route to play, every character has some moment in the game post ts where they express sympathy with the woman who waged war on them for five years (even characters with no business doing so, like Seteth entertaining the idea that maybe Edelgard isn’t that bad during Myrddin). With all of that good PR for Edelgard in and out of the game it heavily impacted how people saw her, and much of it is used by stans to justify her being a good guy (mostly in the game marketing) despite everything else in the game clearly showing that Edelgard is the bad guy

With Bleach in that regard... you have Ichiruki

holy shit it’s so weird talking about Ichiruki i’m still lowkey nervous about talking about them lmao

With Ichiruki stans, they would cling onto outside material that promoted Ichigo and Rukia together as proof that their ship was going to be canon. Spreadsheets, calendars, poems (some of which didn’t even apply to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship but they insisted they did anyway), novels - outside material that either wasn’t canon or didn’t pertain to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship. They would shove it in the face of Ichihime shippers that “see, we have all this stuff for us! We ain’t starving tonight!” when the canon (note: in the manga particularly) would clearly show Ichigo and Orihime’s relationship being the one that leans romantic in multiple significant ways. They would latch onto irrelevant shit that ain’t had nothin’ to do with anything and wave around as a paragon of romance when it literally wasn’t even canon

Just fuckin’ ignoring the creators deadass

Creators and developers of 3H: Edelgard is the typical Red Emperor the only difference is Girl

Stans: that’s just a headcanon

Kubo: Ichigo and Rukia have a platonic relationship and I’ve publicly said this since 2008

Stans, now, to this day: Ichigo and Rukia were robbed

Making people reject what they’re stanning for

I’ve seen a few people express that the more they interact with the fandom and see what her stans are doing, the more they grow to dislike Edelgard despite (some) initially liking or even loving her. To put it simply, the same thing happened with Ichiruki - hell, this happened with me with Ichiruki. I can’t fuckin’ stand the ship anymore because every time I think about it I’m reminded of the absolutely rancid, disgusting things Ichiruki stans have to done to others in the fandom, and even after nearly five years after Bleach has ended I still tense up when someone says they like Ichiruki over Ichihime precisely because of the behavior of the stans, just like I side-eye people who say Edelgard is the best lord. Do they like them because they simply prefer them over the other(s) and they’re not totally fuckin’ bonkers, or are they totally fuckin’ bonkers.

And, like, that’s not fair! I know that! But I can’t help but think that when such a loud amount of people act in such deplorable ways just because someone didn’t like a bunch of lines on paper/pixels on a screen.

To all the nice Ichiruki and Edelgard fans, hope y’all are havin’ a nice day.

Long, crazy ass explanations as to why X =/= X (and if anything actually means Y)

Teacher theory for 3H. How Edelgard totally didn’t hire Kostas to kill Dimitri and Claude and was only thwarted because Claude booked it, but how she definitely actually meant to simply scare away the teacher that was with them so that Jeritza could be pulled from his already existing position in Garreg Mach to teach one class so that Edelgard can kinda keep a sorta closer eye on exactly one of the other classes (and just do shit all about the other one I guess), because Jertiza’d be able to gleam so much from teaching a class for a few hours a day I promise

But for Bleach, you also have one particularly infamous theory positing shit that don’t real, with enough renown to be known by a specific name, and that’s the Lust Arc = Fail essay

To explain what the essay is about, I have to set the scene up a bit. Imagine, you, with your tiny little monkey brain, are watching Bleach, and you get to the part where Main Boyo is fighting against Villain to save Girly. Other Guy is there too - this is important. Main Boyo tries his hardest to fight Villain, but is ultimately shot through the fucking chest with a laser from Villain and dies. Like, for bit actually dies. Girly breaks down, has a straight up mental breakdown because she always “knew” that Main Boyo could do anything, and now he’s been killed and is dead in front of her. She screams out Main Boyo’s name, hysterically begging him to save her and protect her because holy shit the love of her life has been brutally murdered in front of her what the fuck. But Main Boyo, from literally beyond the line of death, hears her pleas and snaps back to life as a monster, with the sentence “I MUST PROTECT” repeatedly running through his head and being the only sentence he ever says while in this form, with him fucking destroying Villain and even going so far as to directly hurt Other Guy when Other Guy tries to stop Main Boyo from utterly stomping on Villain. Girly is the only person Main Boyo does not directly hurt, and when Villain is damn sure gonna fuckin’ kick the bucket that is when Main Boyo reverts back human. Everyone is more than a little shocked at what happened, but it’s clear from how relieved Girly is when Main Boyo comes back safe and sound that while this event fundamentally will change their relationship (and it does), it is still one that is extremely strong and they won’t let it get between them (and they don’t).

Now, when looking at the summary, you, with your absolutely miniscule peanut of a brain, might come away thinking, “Hm, Main Boyo might kinda care for Girly given that he literally rose from the dead to protect her and only her and went back to normal once she was safe” and you poor fool would be oh so wrong, because actually, this is all proof that Mian Boyo doesn’t care for Girly and that Villain actually cared more for Girly than Main Boyo ever could.

Without diving too deeply into the absolute lunacy of the Lust Arc = Fail essay, that was its main premise. That Ichigo, after rising from the literal dead directly after Orihime begged and pleaded that he protect and save her and then going on to protect and save specifically her (as Uryu - Other Guy - is also a friend of Ichigo’s and got his fucking arm cut off by Monster!Ichigo), is proof against Ichihime being romantic in any way and was not, in fact, a fuckin’ giant neon flashing sign that read THESE TWO ARE GONNA GET TOGETHER. It was the dumbest shit ever, but Ichiruki stans, much like Edelstans with Teacher Theory, clung to it like white on rice. It didn’t matter how much it was utterly debunked, it didn’t matter how the base premise was stupid as fuck, they point to it as the pinnacle of meta for their respective fandoms in their respective spaces.

And all of this leads me to um... the one I’m kinda the most worried about?

Stan Behavior

Edelstans are their own unique brand of awful in that that the shit they spew is particularly... worrying (”genocide isn’t bad if they aren’t human and also they kinda deserved it” “imperialism isn’t that bad really” the mentally ill should be put down if they’re deemed ~too far gone~” among other... wonderful takes...), and their behavior is also quite shitty, harassing content creators that go against the Approved Opinions (Ghast) or forcing people to take down fanart and in general infecting nearly every Rhea space with all kinds of disparaging comments no one asked for. They actively make the fandom a worse space, and when they flare up it’s almost always noticeable (again, Ghast)

Bleach?

Oh boy.

Guys. If you weren’t there for the Canonization of Ichihime (2016). You dodged a fucking bullet.

The outrage was out-fuckin’-rageous. Their behavior was some of the worst reactions anyone has ever seen come from the canonization of a ship in a shounen. This includes, but is not limited to:

Someone tearing apart all 70+ volumes of Bleach and burning it in their bathroom

In fact, multiple people tearing up Bleach and burning it, while keeping the Ichiruki moments and taping it to their walls

A Rukia cosplayer, in Rukia cosplay, printing out the final color spread of the end-game couples and their friends lounging about - with colored ink and all - and burning it, while filming herself doing so

Ichiruki porn being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being accused of grooming a 15 Orihime cosplayer with no proof

Tite Kubo being accused of lying about his various health issues

Ichigo and Rukia being drawn cheating on their spouses with each other - and some of that also being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being chased off Twitter by Ichiruki stans... again

Ichihime shippers getting sent death threats

Ichihime shippers getting called delusional for thinking their ship had a chance before the endgame couples were revealed, and then being called delusional for thinking their ship had any real basis and wasn’t pulled “out of nowhere”

Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because of Orihime being shown in an apron in the last chapter and Ichiruki stans jumping to the conclusion she became a housewife, and then Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because when it was revealed that Orihime has a job in a bakery to pay for college later they insisted what Kubo should have done was have Uryu, who’s a doctor at that point, pay for Orihime’s college instead of having Orihime pay for it with her own money

And mind you, this is only the stuff I’ve personally seen and experienced

I am hoping and praying that Edelstans never get as bad as Ichiruki stans did in 2016, but with how otherwise similar they are my hopes are dwindling more and more. I guess I can take solace in the fact that they aren’t quite... that bad yet? In terms of actions, at least? Their sentiments though are infinitely worse, so like... cool

#what the hell do I even tag this #i guess like #fandom observations #fandom critical #fandom criticism #yeah shit got BAD in the Bleach fandom in 2016 #and I fear what the return of the anime is gonna have in store #things already don't look good in the 3H fandom so like... yeah #wanted to get the Bleach rant off my chest for a long ass while now lol so glad I could do that #again wanna reiterate that this isn't exclusive to Bleach and 3H this is just my experience with them

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californiannostalgia · 4 years

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Tangled the Series Character Analysis: Childhood Trauma POV

I can't believe Tangled the Series really created two incredible antivillains and threw them in direct contrast with the pre-existing golden couple. I love what the showrunners did with the main quartet, so I made a very subjective analysis post about it from a Childhood Trauma POV. (Spoilers, obviously.)

The Boys

The series' focus is on Rapunzel, and by association her direct opposite, Cassandra, so the boys get comparatively less screen time. But it doesn't take long to figure out that Varian is meant to be a parallel for Eugene—these are two people dealing with the absence of parental guardians, struggling to reconcile the lives they previously had with their changing ideals in relation to a less-than-perfect Father Figure.

They both respond to the helpless state of being young, alone, and powerless by trying to take back power in any way they can. Eugene reinvented himself and buried his desires for a family. Varian throws in everything he has into recovering what he lost, because he's a child and the best solution he can think of is to return to the familiar safety of his father's presence. A significant portion of his desperation is fueled by fear of his father’s disapproval, because as much as Quirin loves Varian, he wasn’t the dependable voice of support. Varian needs approval from outside sources, which was also Flynn Rider’s purpose in life, once upon a time. (Again, parallels.)

Throughout the series, the boys' relationship with each other transforms from exasperated incomprehension to easy understanding. The process is hastened as Eugene lets himself realize he cares a lot about troubled kids who remind him of himself. He becomes aware that children should not be required to survive on their own like he and Lance had. Spurred on by his significant other's love and encouragement, Eugene is able to acknowledge the adverse affects of his childhood on his life and start moving on. His extending a ready hand to Varian is his process of healing. Though Eugene's first priority will always be Rapunzel, he truly wants to save Varian from the uncontrollable volatility of risky decisions because he knows that downward spiral intimately.

Of course, there is a difference between thieving from the rich and planning the destruction of a kingdom. We'll get to that later.

The Girls

Rapunzel and Cassandra are the biggest driving forces of narrative power in the show, and they are survivors of child abuse. Every one of the main quartet has Parent Issues, but Rapunzel takes the crown (figuratively speaking) with this one. She was kidnapped and groomed into a life-giving doll, and she was only able to escape her abusive adoptive mother through incredibly traumatizing means. For Cassandra, it was neglect, and even her loving adoptive father couldn't leviate the scars left on her childhood mind.

They're a classic case of Golden Child vs. Scapegoat, which is a common case seen in siblings raised by Narcissistic parents. When one child is "favored" more than the other, the kids experience vastly different childhoods, resulting in resentment that stems from their inability to understand each other. Rapunzel and Cassandra are both jealous of what the other had—Rapunzel wants Cassandra's casual, practiced ease with freedom and personal agency, while Cassandra wants the attention and respect that Rapunzel is given by the status of her birth. Because they're unwilling to speak candidly about the unique hardships of their childhood, what results is a series of miscommunications that put a strain on their friendship.

Cassandra and Rapunzel both want the other in their lives, but how they attempt to make that connection is very different. Cassandra wants to be a helpful, essential force in Rapunzel's life. Unfortunately, Rapunzel has been raised on the idea that when push comes to shove, no one will help her survive. Cassandra interprets Rapunzel's desire for independence as Rapunzel scorning the connection that Cassandra is attempting to create. Add in some manipulation from an ancient evil, and Cassandra decides she is done exhausting her emotions for Rapunzel.

Rapunzel, on the other hand, wants absolute honesty in her relationships. Gothel raised her on lies, so she spurns deception. But Cassandra knows the merits of protecting herself by holding her opinions in, which is where the misunderstandings occur. Rapunzel cannot trust someone who isn't completely forthright with her. She's tired of dealing with liars, and she grows afraid that Cassandra will cause her the same pain as Gothel did. But the thing is, Cassandra is not Gothel, and Rapunzel loved Gothel. She couldn't save Gothel, but maybe she can save Cassandra. It's not too late.

Rapunzel doesn't know when to give up on Cassandra because she is aware that she and Cassandra are similar people. Giving up on Cassandra would feel too much like giving up on her own hopes for a happy life. Rapunzel can't let Cassandra be unhappy. This princess cares too much, loves too hard. She never learned how to write people off because you can't survive a childhood like hers with that much cheer if you don't hang onto your optimism like a goddamn lifeline.

This is Rapunzel’s method of taking back power for herself: saving others. Rapunzel could have been Cassandra. Rapunzel is trying to believe she herself is worth saving—therefore, Cassandra must be worth saving as well. Rapunzel's significant other is giving her a stable source of love and support, but without a proper resolution to Cassandra's struggles—a final proof that despite Gothel's influence, they can both be happy—Rapunzel would feel incomplete.

The Golden Couple

At the end of the day, Rapunzel and Eugene are fundamentally good people. If it comes down to it, they would be unable to sacrifice the world for their own desires. (Eugene's thievery doesn't count as an expression of true desire because it was literally his method of survival. An expression of true, selfish desire for him might've been something like manipulation and abduction for the purposes of making people stay, but Eugene is not Gothel and he would never do that to anyone in a million years.) (On a side note, Rapunzel's selfish desire might've manifested in the abandonment of all duties and personal connections in favor of eternal exploration, or revenge towards a kingdom that failed to save her, or a thorough destruction of authority figures—but she loves people too much and would never be able to forsake her family.)

Life threw a lot of rocks at them, but these two came through it marginally well-adjusted. They affirmed their love for each other in a violent, unforgettable manner, which makes it easier for them to trust in each other's affection. Eugene would've been okay with never finding his biological father, just as Rapunzel had been okay with her biological parents' inability to protect her. They have no wish to punish the world for what they suffered. They’re content with who they are. They're just glad they made it, that they're finally allowed to love someone without being afraid. They're each other's saving grace.

The Antivillains

This is the difference between Hero and Antivillain: Cassandra and Varian are willing to punish the world for what happened to them. There’s a very faint line between justified retaliation and venting. In their desperation and anger, they cross the line, and they’re unable to stop themselves once they get going. Unlike the Golden Couple, Cassandra and Varian refuse to settle. They want what is owed.

Also, they really, really hate themselves. (This is important.)

Varian believes Quirin is the ultimate source of affirmation. The fact that he lost his father by way of his own dangerous experiment, coupled with the fact that no one prioritizes his call for help in the face of national disaster, is enough to make him feel isolated from the world. Though he is burdened with a growing sense of remorse for his deeds, he doesn’t stop resorting to drastic, harmful measures to get his father back until he is forcefully stopped by betrayal from his allies. He finally makes the full transition from “antagonist” to “protagonist” when Rapunzel risks herself to save Quirin from the rocks. If Quirin could not be saved, there’s a possibility Varian might have stayed an antagonist, unenthusiastic though he may have been in his villainous role. As long as Quirin is trapped in those rocks, Varian remains the villain who put him there.

With Quirin safe, Varian allows himself to take huge steps in healing. He slowly rediscovers his self-worth, one that is separate from Quirin’s approval. Rapunzel—and by extension, Eugene—play the friendly, supportive role to Varian’s ingenuity, helping him along in his quest for self-acceptance. Varian still has trouble working through the heavily ingrained self-hatred, but he recovers enough confidence in his own judgment that he takes Eugene’s warning to heart and is able to install a safety device in his father’s helmet, just in case.

This is the Varian who meets Cassandra in the Tower that once belonged to Gothel. At this point in time, Cassandra has been manipulated into thinking of herself as weak and unimportant in comparison to Rapunzel. Her adoptive father, much like Quirin, was too gruff to be vocal with approvals. Her efforts have not been met with successes. She feels like a failure, and she hates feeling like a failure. This is Cassandra’s method of taking back power: by turning herself into someone unforgettable. If she can make something of herself, she’ll finally be able to prove Gothel wrong. She can be just as special as Rapunzel, if she’s given the chance. She wants that chance.

Similar to Varian, Cassandra doesn’t stop her downward spiral until her supposed ally and mentor betrays her and forcefully takes her power away. Only when there are no options left does she allow herself to admit that she was wrong. She is then rewarded for her honesty with Rapunzel’s love and trust. Armed with a new confidence, the sisters vanquish the evil together in an epic showdown that will long be remembered. Cassandra finally gets her dramatic hero’s tale.

Rapunzel and Eugene have an internal compass that lets them make snap decisions. They don’t have the healthiest self-esteem, but they can at least stand by what they think is right. Comparatively speaking, Cassandra and Varian have terrible self-esteem. They don’t trust their own judgment and are heavily influenced by outside forces. Without the constant barrage of trust and affection from Rapunzel, who is akin to a blazing sun when it comes to personal loyalty, these antivillains might never have reached their redemptive ending. They wouldn’t have been able to let go of their twisted priorities without outside influence. Can’t blame them for it, though.

It’s no surprise that Cassandra and Varian are relatable to many people. Who wouldn’t want to reclaim what was taken from them during childhood? (Of course, the problem occurs when you start hurting others to reclaim what you lost.) Their journey is a different kind of vulnerable from Rapunzel and Eugene’s journey, and it’s extraordinary in its detail. This show is essentially a long exploration of the various ways a parent can mess you up and the coping methods of kids who want to become more than their past, which is totally up my alley of expertise. I’m grateful I got to watch them grow taller than their trauma.

Finally, here’s a parting gif of Lance, because I love him and he’s a well-adjusted ray of sunshine. We all wish we could be as mentally stable as Lance—the main quartet included.

#tangled the series #rapunzel #cassandra #varian #eugene fitzherbert #character analysis #my thoughts #child abuse #trauma recovery #when the villain origin story is self-hatred

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princeanxious · 4 years

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Trust is a Fragile, Fickle Demon.

Pairing: Analogical

Fandom: Sanders sides

Warnings: hurt/comfort, happy ending, mentions of childhood trauma, mentions of mental abuse, mentions of abusive parent, mentioned of past betrayed trust, trust issues, let me know if i missed anything!

Wordcount: 1.9k words

(A/n): this is sort of a short one, idk that im very proud of it, its written a little differently than I normally write so let me know if ya’ll like it? I tried!

Trust was something earned, gained, given, not expected. At least, to Logan, thats how it’d always been. The omega had learned young the mistake of trusting anyone so readily, a freely given token of connection that only served to hurt him in the long run.

Even now, Logan was aware his upbringing had been slightly rougher than his common peers. His therapists all readily, or subtly, pointed out that his alcoholic alpha of a single father who never should have been a parent to begin with was undoubtedly the root cause of many of his issues.

First of all of them was the lasting trauma of the emotional abuse he’d endured as a child and teenager. Never smart enough, never quiet enough, never clean enough. He was never enough, he was never going to be enough. He was a weak, broken, and useless omega in his father's eyes, and would never amount to anything more. And while he never wanted to believe it, often said he never believed any of it, he could only confidently say he didn’t truly believe even just part of it by the time he was 23.

Another was that he’d never been given any freedom to do as he pleased when he was younger. He never got to visit friends or do anything more fun than read at the library(and boy did he read any chance that he got back then). His first real social outing was when Roman, his then longtime college roommate and current best friend, had playfully offered for him to come join him to go buy icecream at midnight. But, that story is better saved for a different time.

All you need to know is that, that midnight ice cream became a bi-weekly routine, and the other omega learned more about Logan than he thought he’d ever get out of the closed off nerd that night. Perhaps one could even go so far to say that Roman was the reason Logan ever even dared to go to a therapist in the first place.

Logan had become very stunted from the childhood neglect he’d endured. Omegas had many self-soothing mannerisms built into their primal instincts to comfort themselves when stressed, like purring when upset(was well as when happy or content!) and nesting to decompress or hide in a safe zone when stressed. And well, Logan had pretty much stifled his purring by the time he was 14, and.. Completely stopped nesting by the time he was 9.

There had been no point, and both had become increasingly dangerous to do as he grew older. Anytime his father caught him purring, the Alpha would berate him for being ungrateful, seeing it as a weakness. And no matter how well he’d try to hide his safety nests, his father would inevitably find them and destroy them. Far too many afternoons were ruined when he came home to find his father in a drunken stupor and his newest safe haven wrecked beyond repair, and stinking to high heaven of alcohol and aggressive, angry alpha pheromones.

So he gave up. He gave up trying to make the nests in hopes for comfort, in hopes for a safe haven to hide away. The longest he’d gotten was hiding away in his closet for periods of a time before his father decided it didn’t deserve a closeable door anymore.

Roman had been horrified, and promptly dragged the other omega into his own nest in distress. They spent hours like that, Logan sobbing and tucked up tenderly into Roman’s protective embrace as the omega purred and crooned comfortingly enough for the both of them.

It would be Roman to encourage Logan to begin nesting again. They’d made a whole day out of it, going out and buying brand new nesting materials along with comfort food and rented movies. Slowly but surely, Logan rebuilt his nest for the first time in a little over 10 years, and he was in heaven. And day by day, every time he came home to it intact and undisturbed, Logan’s psyche was assured just a little more that the nest was safe, that he was finally safe.

And no one could really be surprised that Logan became viscerally protective of his nest, even more so than the average omega, at that. The first time they realized this, one of their mutual friends, a beta named Patton, had suddenly come close to his nest in excitement over the new addition. Logan had snarled loudly and aggressively before he’d even processed moving to guard his nest from the approaching threat. When Patton had taken multiple careful steps back in shock, Logan finally snapped out of the defensive mindset and realized what had happened. He’d apologized profusely, and was quick to try and make amends.

Patton understood the justified reaction after some light explanation and waved off the apologies immediately. Logan, though mortified at his own surprising lapse in control, was grateful that there had at least been no hard feelings in the end.

Safe to say, their friend group and subsequently any new friends made in the future would be warned, “Don’t approach, or touch, Logan’s nest.” And it was fine. Things were even looking up, Logan had started truly healing, and trusting people started to become a little less difficult!

So it would really come as a surprise to everyone, let alone Logan himself, when he started developing a small crush on the kind and patient(if a little anxious) Alpha who nearly daily visited the library Lo worked at to study. It was an honest shock, but, perhaps it wasn’t the worst thing in the world..?

Logan had never seriously considered dating another until Virgil came around, and the prospect of dating an alpha was frankly terrifying. But, Virgil was nice, he was caring and gentle with him, and yet unwaveringly respectful. He’d listen to Logan ramble about stars for hours and never interrupt him, only asking questions when Logan’s voice lulled or allowed him to speak. Virgil encouraged this, wanting Logan to open up and ramble and talk without fear of being shut down.

Roman had told Logan it was obvious Virgil was crushing hard on Logan, that they both had it bad for one another it seemed. Of course, nothing had to come of it if Logan didn’t want it to! But the thing was, he did. He did want something to come of it, if at the very least they could just remain friends.

It took a few more months, but Virgil eventually worked up enough confidence to ask Logan out, and the unwavering, almost immediate ‘Yes,’ had almost taken Virgil off guard. They wouldn’t share their first kiss for another few weeks, but neither of them minded.

Virgil slowly but surely was given the whole story, and expressed his own quiet outrage in the form of promising to never let that happen again, nor let Logan’s father near him again. It was a protective sentiment that almost scared Logan, but the protectiveness was born out of love and compassion, not selfishness and hate. So he let it slide, and contently tucked himself into Virgil’s warm embrace with a soft “thank you,” and the first very soft but very happy purr that he’d let out in years.

This alpha, he’d find him telling himself a year and a half into their relationship, this alpha was the one that would be allowed into his nest.

It didn’t bother Virgil personally, that he wasn’t allowed into his omega’s nest. No one was allowed near the nest except him, and even then he still got growled at plenty. He was completely aware that Logan had a deep instinctual fear of the destruction of his nest, sewn by the only parent he’d had growing up doing just that out of malice. Logan had made strides in his journey of healing though. The omega was confident in himself, and refused to be pushed aside or spoken over. Logan was highly independent, even during his heats, which made Virgil feel all the more love for him to be let into his omegas life.

Logan wasn’t dependent on him like society demanded he be, and Virgil didn’t mind in the slightest, because he knew Logan. He loved this omega and knew said omega loved him back. That was all that mattered to either of them.

It took another half a year before Logan finally tried breaking down some of his protective walls over his nest. He was tired, so tired of the separation. Having Virgil's scent heavily entwined with objects in his nest wasn’t enough anymore. At two years into their relationship, Logan’s instincts didn't feel the need to growl at Virgil for being near his nest anymore. He wanted Virgil in his nest, and that thought was jarring to realize.

And when he’d brought it up, Virgil had been quick to assure him that he didn’t have to force himself to let Virgil in, that Logan’s safe space was sacred and he never wanted Logan to feel pressured by anything to let him in.

Perhaps Logan kissed him soundly after that, and was reminded just how much he really loved Virgil. Virgil's insistence for Logan's comfort coming first only made him want to pull his alpha into his nest that much more.

But still, he agreed to take it slowly. Every day, Virgil would scoot a little closer to the edge of the nest, would hold Logan’s hand and stroke his hair, even sometimes daring to slowly lean over and kiss him with prior warning.

It took a full week to really prove to Virgil during their progress that they were ready to take this next step, that Logan truly and fully trusted Virgil and wanted him in his nest.

And when it finally happened, they’d made a little date out of the occasion, setting up snacks and candy, ordering take out and lining up a few documentaries to watch on Virgil’s laptop, getting into their nightclothes.

Virgil had been beyond nervous, and Logan understood why. They managed to soothe each other as everything fell into place, and Logan carefully walked Virgil step by step into his nest. With careful movements, they sat down and Virgil let himself be carefully arranged as he was leaned back into the nest. It took a second for Logan to finish tucking things against Virgil and pull a weighted comforter over them before he finally settled himself onto Virgil’s chest.

Despite their original nervousness towards the idea, everything felt right, now. Logan felt so unbelievably safe now that he was tucked into his alpha’s arms within the cocoon of his nest. It was amazing in its own right. And it takes Virgil chuckling lovingly for Logan to notice just how content they both are.

“You’re purring like crazy, L,” he murmurs with a smile, running his fingers up and down Logan’s rumbling back, “If you’re not careful you might fall asleep before we even get through the first documentary.” Logan just grins back, tilting his head to peck Virgil on the cheek.

“I see no downside to that, V, considering I’ll be falling asleep in my alpha’s safe embrace. What more could I ever want?”

Virgil flusters and hides his face in Logan’s hair as the omega laughs, hugging the other closer. Logan eventually does fall asleep in the middle of the second documentary, cuddled close and relaxed.

And really, there was no other place Logan would rather be.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #virgil sanders #analogical #luka writes #trigger warnings may apply #tw abuse mention #tw neglect mention #tw trust issues #tw childhood neglect #tw childhood trauma #hurt/comfort #happy ending #let me know if i need to tag more!#omegaverse au

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