#& there's never going to be one that we have that's acceptable for very long

[azzibuckets]

This is sort of a long and specific request but I just have this idea of an ansty fic idea for pazzi or reader.

azzi gets her wisdom teeth out and she’s like all loopy and when paige takes her home, they are all cuddled up. Azzi talks about the love of her life in third person and paige doesn’t realize it’s her until she does… but basically she’s like heartbroken until then.

loopy in love [pazzi]

paige bueckers x azzi fudd

a/n: i know i said i was taking a break from pazzi fics but god bless anon for giving me the best prompt i’ve ever read

word count: 1.5k

masterlist

“Make sure she takes acetaminophen or ibuprofen if she feels any pain,” the nurse instructed. “She can also sleep with an extra pillow tonight to support her neck and help circulate blood flow.”

“Alright, thank you. I’ll keep all that in mind,” Paige said gratefully. She looked over at Azzi, who was slumped in the chair. Her eyes were dazed and her cheeks swollen with numbing from anesthesia, but Paige’s heart warmed. Azzi had never looked cuter, she thought.

“I understand you guys are basketball players?” The nurse looked up from her clipboard of sheets with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah. How long is she out for?”

“No strenuous activities for at least three days, and definitely no cardio for five. We don’t want any rebound swelling or bleeding,” the nurse explained. “Other than that, you just need to sign her release form, and then you guys are good to go.”

Paige nodded, accepting the paper the nurse handed her and starting to work her way down the page. The nurse walked over to Azzi. “Make sure to keep biting on the gauze, okay hon? Your girlfriend can help you replace it with a fresh one every 20 minutes.”

Paige’s head snapped up from reading the fine print. “Oh, uh, we’re not dating.”

The nurse looked taken aback. “Oh! I’m so sorry! I just assumed…” she stared uncomfortably between the two of them. Paige flushed, knowing that the way they’d entered the office a few hours earlier hadn’t exactly looked very friendly. Paige’s hands had been wrapped around Azzi’s waist as she’d whispered reassurances in her ear.

“No, it’s okay.” Paige scratched the back of neck. “We kinda get that a lot.”

The nurse nodded awkwardly before hurriedly making an excuse to leave the room. Azzi wrinkled her nose, eyes following her out. “Did she think I had a girlfriend?” she slurred.

“She thought we were dating,” Paige breathed out a laugh as she signed the form.

“Ew!” Azzi gagged on her saliva. “I’m sorry, but we could never be together.”

“Geez,” Paige muttered, trying not to let the younger girl’s words sting too much. “I didn’t think I was that that revolting.” Paige turned the form into the receptionist before helping Azzi out of her chair. “Up we go,” she said softly. Azzi stumbled, but tightened her grip on the blonde’s arm to keep steady.

In the car, Azzi stared moodily out the window. Paige chuckled; she’d expected for the anesthesia to make Azzi more quiet and subdued, even though a part of her had wanted a loopy and crazy Azzi to laugh at. “You okay?” she asked.

Azzi started sniffling, and that’s when big tears started rolling down her cheeks.

“Woah.” Paige almost braked the car. “Hey, Az, what’s up?”

“I miss her!” Azzi cried out, folding her arms like a grumpy toddler. “Everything hurts and I can’t feel my tongue and there’s blood and I just want her.”

Paige’s heart sunk. She knew she should be supporting Azzi right now, who was so out of it from the drugs, but she couldn’t help but welcome back the burn of jealousy she’d gotten so familiar with the past few years. Pining over your best friend in secret was not an easy thing, but it was something Paige had become awfully good at.

“Miss who, babe?” Paige asked gently. “I can call whoever you need.”

Azzi dramatically threw her head in her hands. “Nooooo!” she wailed. “You can’t. Or else she’ll know.”

Paige bit her lip. “Know what?”

“That I’m in love with her!”

Paige sucked in a breath. Lately Azzi had been acting distant, coming back to their apartment late at night and making excuses for missing their movie nights. Paige had had a creeping suspicion that Azzi was talking to someone new, had been spending her hours with a new girl or guy she’d met. She’d tried to respect it - she knew Azzi would come to her and tell her if the relationship ever evolved into something serious. She always did. And now here Azzi was, confessing in her stupefied state.

“You’re in love with someone?”

Azzi leaned her head gloomily against the window. “You don’t understand, Paige.”

Paige hesitated. “I understand. I’ve been in love before.”

“No,” Azzi insisted. “You don’t. You don’t understand.”

Paige laid her hand over Azzi’s in an attempt to pacify her. “It’s okay, Az,” she soothed. “We don’t have to talk about this right now. Let’s just get you home first, yeah?”

Azzi snatched her hand away. “Of course you don’t wanna talk about it,” she grumbled, shifting in her seat to move further from Paige.

Once they reached their apartment, Azzi seemed to be in a slightly better mood. “I’m hungry!” she exclaimed as soon as the door closed behind them, immediately making a beeline for the kitchen.

“Uh uh,” Paige denied, running so she could stand between Azzi and the cabinets. “You’re not allowed to eat anything for a few hours.”

Azzi pouted, her bottom lip sticking out. “Pleaseeeeeee?” she whined.

Paige stifled a laugh at how adorable the younger girl was being. “I’m sorry, but no,” she said firmly.

“Ugh!” Azzi aggressively brushed past Paige, knocking her shoulder as she stormed out of the kitchen. “You hate me.”

“Quite the opposite.” Paige followed Azzi as she flopped angrily down on the armchair. “Stay here, alright? Imma go get some pillows and blankets for you and we can watch a movie?”

Azzi didn’t respond, staring grumpily at the dark TV. Paige rushed to gather the softest and biggest blankets she could find. She cursed at herself for not setting up the couch earlier. Now Azzi had to sit there waiting for her. Once she got everything, she threw it on the couch and tried to make it the most comfortable, padded blanket and pillow ridden couch in the history of all couches. “Come on Azzi,” she encouraged in a sing song voice. “Sit on the couch. It’s super comfy.” She patted the couch.

“Will she be there?” Azzi asked hopefully.

“Be where?” Paige’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“On the couch. With me.”

The blonde rolled her eyes, trying to hold in her exasperation but failing mightily. “Are you talking about that girl again?”

“Yes,” Azzi breathed out dreamily. “I think she’s it. She’s the one for me. I can’t stop thinking about her. Even before the surgery she was the last thing on my mind.”

Azzi sounded way too detailed right now to be talking randomly from being hopped up on drugs, which finally confirmed Paige’s suspicions. There had to be an actual girl that Azzi was talking about. She made a note to ask about it later, when the anesthesia wore off. Azzi had never spoken about anyone like this before, so this girl must be a big deal. A hot shot, Paige thought moodily to herself. But she’d support Azzi, like she always did whenever she started something new with someone. Don’t let her know, Paige reminded herself.

“So? Did you call her?” When Paige didn’t respond, too lost in her thoughts, Azzi’s bottom lip started to tremble. “You said you would!” Paige rushed to her, rubbing her back in the way she knew the dark haired girl liked.

“I don’t have her number, Az,” she said gently. “I’m sure we can get her to come over later, though.”

“She’s so pretty and she’s so kind,” Azzi said, now sobbing again. “I just want her here. Everything is always better when I’m with her.” She leaned into Paige’s embrace.

“Come on, Az, let’s sit on the couch, alright? Let’s put on a movie and you can try to sleep the anesthesia off,” Paige prodded. At last, Azzi got up from the armchair and sat reluctantly on the couch. Paige grabbed a blanket and wrapped it tightly around the younger girl. She made sure to stuff extra pillows under Azzi’s neck. “Comfy?”

Azzi nodded. Her tears weren’t flowing as heavily anymore, which Paige took as a good sign. “What do you wanna watch?”

Azzi perked up. “Cinderella.”

“Cinderella? When did you get into Disney?” Paige laughed, but she put it on.

Azzi nestled into Paige’s chest. “Cinderella looks like her,” she sighed happily. “Which is why I like it.”

Paige’s heart started beating rapidly. “What does she look like?” she asked slowly.

“She’s blonde. Has the bluest eyes ever,” Azzi murmured. “And she’s sooo good at basketball. You would love her.”

Paige bit the inside of her cheek. Was this really happening? There was no way this girl Azzi was speaking of was her. She felt excitement rush through her, but she tried to tamp it down. She wasn’t the only blonde, blue-eyed basketball player in the world. Feeling slightly guilty that she was interrogating her best friend in this state, she asked, “What’s her name, Azzi?”

Azzi inserted her leg between Paige’s so that their bodies were now intertwined. “Why does it matter?” she muttered, her words muffled by Paige’s shirt.

Paige softly traced the parts in Azzi’s hair with her finger. “I’m just curious, babe.”

Azzi yawned, sleepiness taking over her. “I can tell you later. If you want. Maybe.”

“Oh, we are so talking about this later,” Paige said under her breath. But for now, she continued playing with Azzi’s hair as Cinderella played in the background, lulling the girl to sleep.

#azzi fudd #paige bueckers #uconnwbb #pazzi #wbb #wcbb #friends to lovers

[professor-beaker]

(Warning: very long rant about growing up religious and aroace. Might delete this in an hour. Idk)

Dear mom and dad,

Do you remember when i was 14, and had my first kiss? You probably dont- for you, it was just another sunday. He was one of my only church friends, and he pulled me, alone, into one of the music rooms after sacrament meeting. You encouraged me to go with him, because you could read the signs i couldnt. He was very polite, but when we kissed and he grabbed my hand on the way out, it felt more wrong than anything id experienced before. I ran back to you, crying, and you walked me through rejecting him. You basically told me that i was just too young, that it would get better, but it certainly didnt feel that way at the time. Every time youve reminisced on it since, it was only to laugh at my expense. At my naievety.

I tried to take your words to heart. I tried to listen each time our church would preach about how essential families were and each time you told me how happy you two were. It didnt work.

Do you remember when i was 15, and i told you, mom, that adopting sounded way better than having biological kids? You got so offended, and i had no idea why. I still dont. You told me it was a natural part of life, that we were supposed to bring children into this world. I tried to explain my reasoning- why would i want my own children when there are those who are suffering on their own? When the thought of procreation made me sick?- but you dismissed it. It was just another day.

Do you remember the brief period when i was 15, when i dated a girl? I assume you dont, because you never found out. I lived in constant fear, because the comments you would make at the dinner table described lgbtq+ as an affront to God, as unnatural. I had thought that men were the problem, and she was my first real partner. But nothing changed, it still felt wrong, and we fell back into only being friends. I hadnt told you about that until today, because i knew exactly what youd say about it. I knew exactly what youd say about me.

Do you remember the boy i met when i was 16? The one with the curly hair and the kind smile. You were always pushing me toward him, because you saw how he looked at me (i saw, too- and i didnt like it). He took me to homecoming, and prom, and danced too close to me for my liking. You always asked if we were a thing yet- and when i said no, you smiled knowingly. I hated that smile. And you smiled that smile for years.

I reconnected with him when i was home over winter break. We hung out once, i told him my sexuality, and he barely reacted. When you asked how it went, i told you i rejected him romantically, but we were still friends. Do you remember what you said, mom? You said, "so you broke his heart and left." I cried that night.

Do you remember when you found my aroace pins a month ago? Im at college in a different state- a religious college you wanted me to go to- and you still made it your priority to berate me for it. I dont know if you could tell how angry i was over the phone, but when you said "asexual and things are just looking for attention", it broke my heart.

Because i figured it out when i was 17. Because it took me two years to finally accept it in a religion that very strongly emphasized the family unit. Because i finally felt accepted, i felt heard, i wasnt being dismissed at every corner. Because i had something to explain why i was like this.

Because i finally didnt feel broken.

I never doubted that you loved me- not once, ever, in my life. Not until you started degrading me for something i couldnt control. Not until you started pressuring me to date people i would much rather be friends with. If youre not going to love all of me, then do you even love me at all?

I hope you know that i still love you, despite everything. But i hate the way you talk to me now, the way you talk to others about me. And i hope that one day, you, too, will realize that im not broken, or affronting God, or unnatural. I hope you realize that im still your child.

I hope you realize im still human.

#aroace #aromantic #asexual #arospec #aro problems #aro #ace #lgbtq community #lgbtqia #lgbt pride #religion #literally just a rant #i am not expecting notes on this at all

[deerlottie]

🐰 — you're the one (that im dreamin' of)

summary: ever since that stupid kiss with jackie, things have gotten worse. you just wish she liked you back. warnings: fluff with angst, childhood best friends to lovers, pining, dysphoria mentions/internalized transphobia, timeskips. not proofread a/n: 3k WORDS HOLY FUCK????? this is my first fic that ive done that has gotten to be this long im amazed wtf! this is definitively a favorite of mine now, and i hope you all enjoy it <3

you're just sitting next to each other on the couch watching a movie, you don't know why your heart is beating so fast.

maybe it's because her shoulder is touching yours, and every time she finds a joke funny, she leans into you while laughing, causing you to sweat and nervously laugh along with her.

god, you need to get over your little crush on jackie. well, it's not little at all, actually - you know you're in love with her, which is 10x worse. but the worst part is the voice in the back of your head telling you that she'd never be with someone like you. someone trans.

you know it's not true - jackie was very supportive when you came out to her in middle school. she was the only one defending you from shitty kids and let you stay at her house for a while when your parents found all your binding stuff and threw you out. of course, you had to go back eventually but they made you throw out anything related to that 'sinful' shit.

jackie would sneak you some of shauna's flannels when you'd reach the bus stop so you could be yourself outside of home, and you always chalked that fluttery feeling in your stomach when she called you handsome down to gender euphoria. which is partly true, but you secretly wished she would've called you her boyfriend instead.

but even so, you'd have to swallow the bile that rose to your throat when senior year of high school started, and you'd see her talking to jeff - to a real man. you know that there wasn't anything going on between them, but your stomach would churn when she would mention how cute he looked that day. it made you angry - at her, at jeff, at your parents, at yourself.

so angry, that you would start ignoring her. being too close to her got to your head and it was getting hard to ignore your growing feelings for her. but this is jackie we're talking about, and she cornered you until you spat out some pathetic excuse that you were just busy with homework to ever go see her. she didn't buy it for a second, but she saw how uncomfortable you were and didn't want to press you about it. you somehow made it through the rest of the school year with only seeing her a couple times while hanging out with mutual friends.

now, it's your freshman year at rutgers which jackie begged you to apply at so you could be college buddies, and to be honest, it wasn't your first choice, but you applied anyways. and it was the only one you got accepted to, so you had no choice in the matter. coincidentally, you and jackie had the same history class, so it was only natural that she had asked you to come over to her house to reconnect.

which was a bad idea.

"have you ever kissed someone?" jackie speaks suddenly, turning to you while twirling her hair around a finger.

you splutter for a second, gulping hard. "u-uh, no, i haven't. have you?"

please say no, please say no.

"me neither." she smiles, and if you hadn't been too embarrassed to make eye contact, you would have seen the way she glanced at your lips. you hum at her response and nod before turning your attention back to the movie.

a beat passes.

"wait, we should totally practice on each other!" she says it as if it were a huge revelation. she's looking at you with sparkles in her eyes and an innocent grin, reaching for the remote to pause the movie.

"what?" you squeak out, scooting up and sitting straighter on the couch, swallowing hard as you look at her. your hand shakes as you bring it up to scratch at the back of your head. "are you serious?"

"of course," she rolls her eyes. jackie leans in closer to you and grabs your hands, and if she heard the nervous breath of air you let out, she chose to ignore it. "i mean, it wouldn't even be awkward, right? we've known each other since we were kids. and besides, it's just a little practice, no harm done."

oh, if you only knew.

you think about it - really, think about it. you don't wanna kiss her just because you like her. you know that would just cause more problems with your feelings for her. but at the same time, you've barely gotten to know anyone while at this college and the only girl you talk to here is your classmate who sits beside you in art, and she only asked for a pencil one time. so, who knows when the next time you'd be given this opportunity to kiss another girl, let alone jackie taylor.

of course, there would be no other option you'd pick besides kissing her, even if that means destroying your friendship with her forever. for you, at least. she'd go on with her life and you'd be stuck dealing with all the emotions and be lucky if you don't suddenly explode with them.

you nod slowly, choosing to ignore the sinking feeling in your gut. your lips tremble as you speak, and a cold sweat consumes your body. "s-sure. it's just practice." you try to convince yourself of it, but it doesn't seem to work that well.

jackie giggles and claps her hands together, wiggling her toes as she gets in position next to you, and you nearly back out of it as you feel her breath hit your lips. she places her hand on your shoulder for a second, picking at the fabric of your shirt before trailing her hand to your neck and pulling you in for a soft kiss.

your brain immediately shuts off and you can hear the wires crack with electricity as her plump lips move against yours. you have no choice but to let her take control of the kiss, jackie giving you experimental pecks before getting brave enough to stick her tongue in your mouth.

you moan at the feeling, eyes widening with embarrassment as you pull away, wiping your lips with the back of your hand. you can't look her in the eye as you stutter out apologies, but you wish you could because the only thing you can focus on is how swollen her lips are.

"how was it? was i good?" she asks hopefully, leaning in and anticipating your response.

"mhm." is all you can say.

she raises her fists in a celebratory manner, proud of her newly found skill. she buzzes with excitement, looking lost in thought as she replays the moment in her head. she grabs the remote and turns to you again, seemingly mistaking your frozen state for some sort of expectation on her part.

"you were good too." she reaches out and touches your arm, eyebrows furrowing at how suddenly you get up.

"sorry-i just," you wipe at your nose and clear your throat, looking anywhere but her. "i forgot i have an early class tomorrow, and i don't wanna stay up late."

"oh, okay." she nods, trying not to sound disappointed. she watches you walk away and calls out your name, remembering something. "wait! you should come to my party that i'm hosting in a few weeks."

"what party?"

"it's just a small party with friends and their friends, probably. it's to kick off our first semester of college." she smiles and shrugs, bouncing on her tippy toes. "i really want you to be there with me."

"and shauna!" she adds quickly. "her semester at brown doesn't start for a couple more weeks so she's coming over to visit. she's been asking about you too, i don't know why she's suddenly so interested in you." she crosses her arms, looking annoyed.

"i'll try to show up, but don't expect anything." you tell her, giving her a small smile. you feel your heart skip a beat at her excited squeal and hug, awkwardly melting into it.

you walk out the door and can feel your emotions building up, kicking a stray rock on jackie's sidewalk before you let out a heavy sigh and wipe your face.

"fuck!"

the second you get to the party, you make a beeline straight for the drinks.

jackie's front door was unlocked when you arrived and for now, she was nowhere to be found. you're not entirely sure why you decided to show up in the first place - you've been a mess since that kiss you had with her all those weeks ago. it's all you can think about and replay in your mind, and some of your grades have started to slip. the thought of seeing her here after successfully avoiding her, which was surprisingly easy with a clever lie about being busy with classes, made you want to vomit.

you gulp down your 4th shot, grimacing at the burn in your throat. you pull out your phone and check the time - 9:49 p.m. you could stay another hour or so, take advantage of all the free drinks, maybe say a quick "hi" to jackie and shauna and then leave.

"should you really be drinking that much?" you hear a raspy voice tease from behind you.

speak of the devil.

you turn around and are face to face with shauna shipman, one of your best friends from elementary school. the last time you had spoken to her was a couple of days before high school graduation, and it was about jackie, because of course it would be. she had urged you to grow some balls and ask her out before any other person with brains would. you chickened out, that same voice in the back of your head saying she would've rejected you. of course, you've kept up with her through texts, but you haven't really had the time or heart to respond to all her questions about how it's going with jackie.

you roll your eyes and bashfully smile at the sight of her, clad in her iconic plaid shirt, which you're pretty sure is the exact one jackie gave you that one time. you shake your head to rid the thought of her, bringing shauna in for a hug. you inhale the scent of her cologne, sighing against her shoulder as your mind spins.

"i've missed you, shipman." you pull away from her and grab another shot, ignoring how she scoffs and rolls her eyes. despite this, she reaches out and grabs herself one, clinking it against your glass before you both swallow it down.

"you look good." she compliments, punching your arm and scanning your body over. "i heard that you've been on T for a while now, congrats. i like the little baby beard thing you've got going on." you swat her hand away from your face as she tries to touch it, chuckling at her antics.

"oh, thanks." you say with fake earnest, scratching at your stubble. "i've only been letting it grow out for 6 months now, no big deal."

"i'm sure jackie loves it, she's always had a thing for beards." shauna replies, smirking at you.

your smile drops a bit at the mention of jackie and you clear your throat awkwardly, looking away. shauna looks at you quizzically, wondering what she said wrong. you shake your head, pouring yourself another shot before sighing.

"it's a long story." you slur, the alcohol finally catching up to you. she grabs you by the hands and leads you through the crowd of people and into jackie's backyard, pulling a chair out and sitting you down.

"well, spit it out."

you end up spilling your guts to shauna about your feelings and what happened with jackie, surprising yourself for being able hold tears back as you pour your heart out. she rubs your back comfortingly as she listens to you talk about everything, her heart hurting as you mention your internalized transphobia.

she opens her mouth to speak but another voice calls out for you.

"there you are!" jackie yells, stopping in her tracks when she sees how close shauna is to you. her annoyance turns into concern when she notices how drunk you are. "i've been looking for you everywhere."

you giggle at her, looking up with a dopey smile and rush to your feet. "jackieeeee, hi."

"how much has he had to drink?" jackie looks at shauna, growing more concerned. you stumble into her arms, and she catches you, trying to keep you still as you mumble incoherently into her neck.

shauna shrugs, wondering if she should intervene. you're nearly black out, but she knows this would be the only way on earth that you'd confess to jackie. "maybe 4, 5 shots?"

jackie scoffs, rolling her eyes. she grabs your face and looks at you with a soft expression. "i'm gonna take you back to my room, okay? you can rest in there until you get sober enough."

"noooo," you pout, letting yourself get tugged by her back into the house and up the stairs, which you nearly trip on. you huff and puff as she pushes you into her room, feeling old memories come back at being in here. "you're no fun."

she ignores you and guides you over to her bed, pulling the covers back and helping you get in. you have no energy to fight back as she tucks you in, moving stray hairs out of your face and kissing your forehead. she leaves for a second to fetch you water, forcing you to drink some.

"why did you have to ask me to do it?" you ask suddenly, hiccupping and closing your eyes as you feel yourself get tired.

"do what?" she says quietly, running her nails over your scalp as she watches over you.

"ask me to practice kissing." you mumble. "i hated it. i hate you."

"i'm sorry." she apologizes, feeling a pang of sadness at your words. "i never wanted to make you fe-."

"i think i'm in love with you, jackie."

she freezes, her movements stilling as she processes what you just said. she swallows down what she really wants to say and shakes her head, blinking away tears. "you're drunk, you don't mean that."

"i do. i've known since middle school, i just could never tell bring myself to tell you because you'd never date someone like me."

"shut up." she gets out of bed, releasing a shaky sigh and fixing her hair. she feels her stomach drop as you give her a dejected look and turns around to face the door. "you can sleep here tonight. i'll come and check on you in the morning."

she walks towards the door and opens it, not looking back to you as she whispers a "goodnight." you're too drunk right now to care about what you just did, so you close your eyes and sleep.

you wake up with arguably the biggest hangover ever and groan, covering up the creeping sunlight with your blanket. wait- not your blanket, jackie's blanket. you sit up, feeling your heart sink as you realize what happened last night.

shit.

just as you're about to get out of bed, the door opens and in walks jackie, looking surprised at you being awake.

"i've checked on you like 5 different times, and you were always asleep." she chuckles awkwardly, sitting at the foot of the bed and fingering the loose thread on her pajamas. "i didn't know if you had classes today but i figured i'd let you sleep in anyway."

"thanks." you mutter, licking your dry lips and reaching for the water she brought you last night and taking a generous swig. you glance at the clock that reads 2:33 p.m. and sigh. you do have a 3 o'clock class but you really don't think you can handle going anywhere today.

the room is filled with uncomfortable silence as you both sit and pretend like you're not glancing at each other. you fumble with the water bottle before you gather the courage and speak with a small voice.

"i'm, uh, i'm sorry about last night. i wasn't thinking." that's as best as you can do without feeling like throwing up.

"did you mean it? what you said about me?" jackie scoots closer, removing the water bottle from your grip and placing it back on the nightstand. you internally scream as you make eye contact with her before looking away, feeling too nervous. her hand covers yours and you feel a shock of electricity, nodding your head slowly as you glance back to her.

"y-yes." you finally say, voice breaking. "i meant it."

you watch as her shoulders relax, closing her eyes and sighing out. she looks to you with a half grin and playfully shoves you, bouncing to her knees on the bed and holding you by the shoulders. "you're an idiot."

"excuse me?" you furrow your eyebrows, looking at her like she's crazy.

jackie shakes her head and pushes you back so you're lying down the bed and gets onto your lap, her lips meeting yours in a sweet kiss. you feel like you're having a fever dream between the hangover and jackie kissing you, but you welcome it, placing your hands on her hips and kissing her back.

you spend at least 5 minutes catching up with a long awaited makeout session, jackie pulling back with a satisfied grin. she rests her forehead against yours and caresses your cheek with her hand, looking into your eyes with a loving expression that makes your heart flutter.

"i was waiting for you to confess to me all these years, you know." she mumbles, kissing your nose. "i was starting to think you were gay or something."

you chuckle, tracing random patterns on her back. you lean up and flip her over on her back, smiling at her sound of surprise that flies from her mouth. you place your arms over both sides of her head and kiss her gently, pulling back only slightly.

"well, here's my confession. jackie taylor, i've been in love with you since we were in middle school. you would make me the happiest man in the world if you went out with me. what do you say?"

"hmm," she ponders, giggling as you pinch her side. she brings you in for another long, sweet kiss, getting sidetracked as she stares at you.

"i say yes."

#.myworks #jackie taylor thoughts 💭 #yellowjackets x reader #jackie taylor x reader

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

man i saw this and i was gonna write a whole post abt how maybe the problem for these ppl isn’t that ed wasn’t punished enough (even tho that’s what they say) maybe it’s that it’s a poorly-executed redemption arc but they don’t know how to verbalize that.

and that would actually make sense bc ed doesn’t have a redemption arc in s2. bc the show does not think ed needs redeeming. even at his worst and most harmful to the people around him the show is deeply sympathetic towards him and gives us sooooo much screentime dedicated to showing us that everything ed does he only does bc he’s hurting. which doesn’t excuse any of what he does but it does shift the narrative framing away from an actual redemption arc, where a character needs to like, learn why the things they did were bad and try to make amends. but ed never needed to learn anything, he knew his actions were unacceptable and that’s why he did them. he was trying to be the most horrific monster he could be in hopes that someone would get sick of him and kill him.

so then i went looking for an old post i wrote abt redemption arcs to talk abt why ed’s s2 arc probably reads like a poorly-written redemption arc for ppl who are expecting an actual redemption arc and. i change my mind actually. because “is this character willing to accept that their behavior is harmful, to make amends for their past behavior if at all possible, and to try and become a better person?” yeah we see ed do all of that tho.

Accept Their Behavior Is Harmful: i mean aside from the fact that ed knew this the whole time, we also see ed talking to fang about how guilty he feels for how he treated the crew. but like this isn’t zuko slowly unlearning an entire lifetime of fire nation propaganda, ed doesn’t need a season(s)-long arc abt this. He Already Knows

Make Amends For Their Past Behavior: like literally the whole thing with getting pushed off the ship!! wearing a sack and a collar at the crew’s behest!! he’s very much trying to make amends!!!!!

Try To Become A Better Person: there’s a lot i could talk abt here but just on a surface level, he’s trying to quit his job where he attacks and steals from random innocent ppl for a living. like objectively that job does not make you a good person. and also that job makes him miserable and when his mental health is in the shitter sometimes he hurts other ppl in his efforts to hurt himself so like!!! he is very much trying to not be the kind of person who forces crew members to fight to the death anymore!!!!

so yeah, thinking this was abt a “poorly-written redemption arc” was giving these ppl too much benefit of the doubt lol they just want to see ed grovel and suffer for an entire season, which was never going to happen lmao. the show thought izzy had more to apologize for than ed and that’s why ed’s apology was one sentence and izzy’s apology was a whole speech on his deathbed. the show thought izzy needed more punishment for his actions than ed did and that’s we see izzy get put through the physical ringer in the beginning of s2 and ed getting beat to death by the crew happens off-screen. ppl can argue all they want abt how ed did so much worse than izzy but at the end of the day the show disagrees with those takes and that’s why it treats these characters the way it does. die mad about it.

#txt #meta #ofmd meta #edward teach #ed teach #edward teach born on a beach #izzy hands #izzy critical #link #s2e01 #s2e02 #s2e05 #s2e06 #s2e08 #if this post is in the izcourse tag no it isnt u just dont know how to use tumblr

[vigilskeep]

hi! ive seen you talk about your surana a bunch but i dont know if ive seen her full story. what were some of the pivotal decisions she made? i love hearing you talk about your ocs, theyre always so in depth and thought out!

oh thank you!! :) my surana is my Eldest Daughter from my very first full playthrough of a dragon age game, so i think a lot of people newer to the blog (like... from less than a year and a half ago probably lmao) have less of the context in complete form. so i will attempt to summarise!! it may be... long...

minerva surana is a manipulative, driven elven circle mage, heart-breakingly willing to sacrifice whatever she believes is necessary for her Grand Goals, who is often so busy playing 5d chess she forgets she’s a twenty-one year old with no experience of the world outside the tower

okay it did turn out fucking long the rest is under the cut its like 9 bulky paragraphs enjoy

her family were tevinter liberati, elven slaves who had devoted themselves to buying their way out and very recently succeeded. her parents were desperate to see her and her elder sibling grow up knowing only freedom, and sent their children south with another part of the family while they remained to pay off the last of their debts. the journey was long and difficult, and they had little left when they ended up in the denerim alienage. in a twist of bitter irony, magic that might have made minerva someone of value in the imperium saw her freedom once more revoked in the south. minerva remembers nothing of tevinter, and only a few fragments of what came next: of light through the vhenadahl’s branches glinting on a templar’s blade, of her sibling fighting them and being knocked to the ground, terribly still, with blood in their hair, and of her grandmother saying what she might have said many times on that long journey south: we can survive anything, as long as we never look back. ironically, minerva often took that to heart by denying all memory prior to the circle.

young apprentice minerva was a sullen child, with few friends; karl thekla took an elder brother’s interest, and jowan clung to her talent. she only really flourished when, after her terror of her natural gift for spirit magic saw her self-hatred turn dangerous in her early teens, first enchanter irving took an interest. he was a father figure to her, and he showed her how to channel her power into control, and her distress into ambition. newfound devotion to elemental magic saw her hailed as a prodigy, and surely a future first enchanter with irving’s tutelage. (only irving considered her too headstrong for the role. he never told her, fostering the drive he had cultivated, both fearful for the state she might return to if he didn’t, and curious as to what else she might become.) she grew up arrogant and beautiful and deeply loyal to the circle, learning that it was only the weak and the defiant who would fail to thrive there, and convinced she was neither. many of her peers wanted to be her, and few of them wanted to spend much time in her company. except jowan, still the little brother hiding in her shadow, and halliserre amell, a rebellious rival with a winning smile, who made up for their lack of her discipline and raw power with sheer brilliance, and whose heated arguments eventually developed into... ah, something else heated.

not long before the start of the game, amell told her they were going to accept tranquillity. it didn’t matter how clever they were; with their weak magic, they would die in the harrowing. they’d only been so defiant of the circle before because, having accepted their fate, the risks were nothing to them. furious and unable to admit it was because she was in love, the last thing minerva ever said to them when they were whole was that they were a coward not to try. when jowan told her he feared he too would be made tranquil, minerva was still recovering from the loss, not to mention flushed with even more arrogance than normal from her own successful harrowing. she had been the perfect circle mage all her life, twice as good as everyone else to make up for every rumour about where she was from. surely she had earned one defiance. surely she could save this one thing, her oldest friend. and she is a loyal person, in her way, emotion powering her fierce drive, incapable of abandoning what she has set her heart on. irving, from whom she had learned everything, was ahead of her every step of the way. he arranged for her to be taken in by the grey wardens. she had proved herself as headstrong and unsuitable as he had feared—and she was shocked and bitterly betrayed to finally see that—but he also believed this might bring her to where she would truly belong.

as a grey warden, minerva’s highest concern is perception. when the stakes of the game are revealed, she has enough hubris to see it as a chance to not just save but change the world. defeating the archdemon isn’t enough. she needs to be seen defeating the archdemon, at the forefront, as an elven mage; she has enough idealism to believe it will really matter for her and people like her, and enough shrewd cynicism to consider what she may have to sacrifice to achieve it. mostly she approaches problems with the skill for diplomacy and management that irving taught her, with that good good Master Coercion skill. she gets many of the “better” and certainly more peaceful quest outcomes, not always motivated by altruism, but determined to be remembered well when she leaves each faction behind. her one great sacrifice of this goal to be seen as the perfect mage is when she takes up blood magic, determined after she sees its power that she alone can handle it, to get the job done and keep what’s hers alive fight after fight. but that only makes her more dedicated to her actions elsewhere

the real test and most pivotal moment of her arc is at the landsmeet. she has arranged anora’s marriage to an alistair hardened for the role (once more following irving’s example, learning to teach ambition as he had taught hers. is there love in that, or just selfishness? she doesn’t know). all that matters is that the joint rule neatly fulfils her desire for compromise to please all parties. but then she struggles between two aspects of her goal: she wants to be seen, personally, as the victor; she does not want every noble in ferelden to see her kill the hero of river dane with magic. she knows how that scene will be remembered, in the end. when riordan suggests recruiting him instead, it seems the perfect solution to everything, the salvation of the day. and then she realises she’s broken alistair’s heart, just when he’s breaking hers. she is incapable of backing down in front of them all (it’s only to alistair, her alistair, but she can’t do it—not to a human, and not to someone part of her will always see as a templar—not when everything she wants was so close.) he abandons her for the throne she taught him to want. she goes on with loghain in the party, and eventually—unable to let loghain snatch the final sacrifice from her grasp, and realising she does want to win and live, after it all—convinces him to do the dark ritual.

in terms of her most important relationships with companions: minerva traditionally romances zevran, who is in many ways uniquely her match having learned the same bitter lessons with the crows that she learned from the circle, and who is so dear to her and capable of lightening her heart when no-one else can. i’ve also experimented with the idea of her romancing alistair, to really dramatise the Landsmeet Divorce and capitalise on future political shenanigans where she could one day be his mistress, but more traditionally they are simply an extremely closely trauma-bonded pair of people who are incapable, at least that year, of really understanding each other deep down. it falls into a pattern where she loves someone with all that fierce drive, enough to die for them, but she will always prioritise what she thinks they need over what they are saying and what they want, often with misjudgements and terrible consequences for them both. it was true with amell, it’s true for many others

she has something very intense and homoerotic going on with morrigan, she has a strained relationship with leliana and wynne, and she has respect and comradeship and a fair bit of fundamental disagreement with sten and loghain. the awakening squad are the people she will consider family for life, most notably nathaniel who she started out not liking at all and is now her work wife, her right hand, can finish her sentences, etc.; anders, who remembers her as karl’s annoying teacher’s pet telltale little sister and is still sometimes baffled by who she’s become; velanna, who makes minerva her most genuine self by having regular screaming matches with her as a sign of affection; and oghren who tried to quit drinking at the same time she tried to quit blood magic, leading to many conversations that deeply baffled everyone around them.

the “current” minerva surana is a sharp-tongued leader who was born for the role of warden-commander, who loves her work and that it matters, who has a truer confidence that is less blindly arrogant and more willing to admit to mistakes, who has worked her breathless way up to h*lding h*ands in public with someone she loves, who has finally learned the hard lesson that the world needs more than an heroic example who followed all the rules to truly be bettered... and who, as rebellion brews, has never been one to sit back and watch while others changed the world

#minerva surana #i THINK thats everything major... it must be #minerva enjoyers who im sure remember more of my posts than me tell me if i missed anything crucial writing this in one sitting #shes my babygirl. thats crucial. #i didnt cover the exact details of her quest decisions bc i think abt changing them a lot #def bringing the sides together in nature of the beast. bhelen supporter and she rlly cultivates that alliance she loves orzammar #ive never played it but in retrospect i believe she wouldve killed connor #and. saved the circle. given that the other option is [checks notes] murdering her dad for the crime of [checks notes again] being tortured

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi! I haven't read the iwtv books so could you explain what you mean by Lestat keeping Louis and Claudia as mortal as possible? And it's something that Marius advised? I wouldn't mind any spoilers!

Have a nice day!

Hey!

So to expand on that a bit:

After Lestat was turned against his will and after he encountered the Children of Darkness and Armand he tries to find Marius, Armand's maker (and a true ancient, them calling Armand ancient is very funny to me tbh^^) to find some (more) answers.

Ultimately he does manage to rouse Marius' interest, and Marius raises him from a dirt nap and takes him to the island where he lives and cares for "Those Who Must Be Kept". (We know that also happened in the show in some kind of manner, because Lestat refers to TWMBK in ep7.)

Marius tells Lestat his life story, introduces him to Akasha and Enkil.

And he gives him advice (from "The Vampire Lestat"):

"If you mean to survive, you must live out one complete lifetime as soon as you can. To forestall it may be to lose everything, to despair and to go into the earth again, never to rise. Or worse. . . " [...] "Then do as I advise. And understand this also. In a real way, eternity is merely the living of one human lifetime after another. Of course, there may be long periods of retreat; times of slumber or of merely watching. But again and again we plunge into the stream, and we swim as long as we can, until time or tragedy brings us down as they will do mortals. " [...] "Exactly, make them in love. And make certain they have had some lifetime before you make them; and never never make one as young as Armand. That is the worst crime I have ever committed against my own kind, the taking of the young boy child Armand. "

But he also gives him a warning:

"You know why not. I can't have you or anyone else know the location of Those Who Must Be Kept. And that brings us now to something very important: the promises I must have from you. " "Anything, " I said. "But what could you possibly want that I could give? " "Simply this. You must never tell others the things that I have told you. Never tell of Those Who Must Be Kept. Never tell the legends of the old gods. Never tell others that you have seen me. " I nodded gravely. I had expected this, but I knew without even thinking that this might prove very hard indeed. "If you tell even one part, " he said, "another will follow, and with every telling of the secret of Those Who Must Be Kept you increase the danger of their discovery. " "Yes, " I said. "But the legends, our origins . . . What about those children that I make? Can't I tell them- " "No. As I told you, tell part and you will end up telling all. Besides, if these fledglings are children of the Christian god, if they are poisoned as Nicolas was with the Christian notion of Original Sin and guilt, they will only be maddened and disappointed by these old tales. It will all be a horror to them that they cannot accept. Accidents, pagan gods they don't believe in, customs they cannot understand. One has to be ready for this knowledge, meager as it may be. Rather listen hard to their questions and tell them what you must to make them contented. And if you find you cannot lie to them, don't tell them anything at all. Try to make them strong as godless men today are strong. But mark my words, the old legends never. Those are mine and mine alone to tell. " "What will you do to me if I tell them? " I asked. This startled him. He lost his composure for almost a full second, and then he laughed. "You are the damnedest creature, Lestat, " he murmured. "The point is I can do anything I like to you if you tell. Surely you know that. I could crush you underfoot the way Akasha crushed the Elder. I could set you ablaze with the power of my mind. But I don't want to utter such threats. I want you to come back to me. But I will not have these secrets known. I will not have a band of immortals descend upon me again as they did in Venice. I will not be known to our kind. You must never-deliberately or accidentally-send anyone searching for Those Who Must Be Kept or for Marius. You will never utter my name to others. " "I understand, " I said.

Lestat goes to NOLA after and tries to follow Marius' advice - and heed the warning.

That is the why.

The how...

Lestat never shows them the full extent of his powers. He lives with them in a house, as a family, not as a coven. He tries not to be the "coven master" for long stretches of time (going so far as to leave his home for example). He hides the more monstrous aspects of their existence, as well as the cruel implementations/rituals other covens have. Since Louis is very much also "poisoned by the notion of the Christian God" he does not tell them much either, probably half for fear of Marius and half for the gut feeling that the knowledge he has would actually not help much.

That is what I mean that he keeps them as mortal as possible.

They live with mortals, in their midst, masquerading as mortals, having hobbies, and interests, going to theaters, cinema etc. He makes his fledglings from and through love, and tries to live a "life" with them.

As good as he possibly can.

(The downside is, of course, that Louis and Claudia unfortunately have no concept of what awaits them with the other vampires. Which is exactly why Lestat did not want them to go to... Paris.)

#honeybreadbee #ask nalyra #iwtv s2 #iwtv #amc iwtv #interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire s2 #the vampire chronicles #vc #vampire chronicles #marius de romanus #armand #lestat de lioncourt #advice #book quotes #the vampire lestat #mortal lifetime #lifetime

[green-eyedfirework]

Dick slowly pulled the longsleeve on, keeping his movements even to avoid flinching or showing a grimace of pain on his face.  His teammates wouldn't care if he was injured--would, in fact, sneer at him worse, though Dick could feel Desmond's eyes on him, relentless in smug satisfaction.

The Bludhaven Blockbusters had lost, not that it mattered much to them in the standings.  It was a well-fought game--the Blockbusters had a great offense, courtesy of Dick, but the Jokers' defensive lineup was no, ha, joke.  The score had been close, no team getting more than a two-point lead, until the last period, where Desmond let in an astonishing number of goals.

Almost like he'd been paid off to do so.

"Ready to make up for our loss, Grayson?"  Someone wolf-whistled from the other side of the locker room.  "You have to be good for something, and clearly winning isn't it."

Dick had scored four goals despite the Jokers' defensemen attacking him like a school of piranha on chum.  The fact that they'd marked him so closely had let the rest of the line-up score as well.  Desmond was the one who lost the game.

Not that Dick was stupid enough to say that out loud.  He was well aware he had no friends here.

Dick finished changing into the longsleeve and sweatpants and closed his locker before walking out of the room.  His side throbbed with fierce intensity on every step and he had to force himself not to limp.  He was pretty sure he'd broken something when he'd been shoved against the boards, elbow slamming into his side, but there was no way he was going to go to the medic to get it checked out.

He'd get this over with and ice it in his hotel room.  Along with the rest of his injuries.  And whatever else he picked up along the way.

"What took so long?" Redhorn barked the moment he stepped out.  "Come on, they're waiting."  He marched off, not looking to see if Dick was following, and Dick had to jog to keep up.

His whole body ached, but nothing as much as the hollow inside his chest.  Dick loved hockey.  He loved the ice.  He loved the game, as brutal as it was, didn't mind limping away with a broken rib or five in exhilaration.  He'd been prepared to accept the messy politics of the game, the omnipresent corruption, the money, the paparazzi, and even the more unsavory aspects, like the winner's room that was all but an open secret in the league.

Dick didn't think he liked hockey any more.

The ice was no longer an escape, winning didn't bring any joy, and Dick could feel a part of himself get leached away as he fell over and over in the same trap, stuck in the mire instead of skating above it.  And all because of one scorned woman.

"Richard," the low voice called out from the darkened corridors.  Dick flinched, but he managed to suppress the hiss as his chest tightened.  Redhorn paused as the woman unfolded herself from the shadows, striding forward with a bright red smile.  "Mi amor, you played so well today," the woman hummed, catching his face and kissing both cheeks.  Dick didn't move, carefully frozen still.  "It's such a shame we lost, no?"

Dick didn't say a word.  In a world of sharks, Catalina Flores was the biggest one in the shiver.  Desmond's orders had probably come directly from her.

"It is a shame," Catalina murmured, voice dropping even lower as a manicured fingernail stroked down his cheek.  "I wish you did not have to do this, Richard."  Lie.  "Won't you change your mind, mi amor?  Come with me and I promise you'll never have to do this again."

Dick stepped back, controlled so it didn't look like he was jerking himself free of her grip.  "No," he said, the same thing he said every time she made this offer.  Even the first time he could tell she was bad news, but he didn't realize how bad until he'd seen the consequences of spurning her.

Catalina's smile dropped away to a hard look and flashing eyes.  "Very well," she said, voice cold.  "Enjoy your time with Wilson, then."

Dick had to fight not to blanch.  Wilson?  Slade Wilson?  One of the oldest players in the league, still at the top of his game, strong and fast enough that rumors of doping had swirled unconfirmed for years?  The Jokers' star defenseman, and the very same defenseman that Dick had outwitted with a flashy trick to get his fourth goal?

He could still remember the seething fire in Wilson's eyes.  The man had checked him twice as hard after Dick had shot the puck through his legs, and he was the reason half of Dick's left side felt like it'd been crushed.  And that had been Wilson on the ice, with restraint.

Dick felt faint.  But Redhorn was moving so Dick had to follow behind him, leaving Catalina and her burning glare behind.  The numbness was coming on fast this time and Dick welcomed it, cocooning himself in the fog so he didn't end up hyperventilating.

It had been a couple of weeks since the Blockbusters had lost a game, since Dick had been on the receiving end of hatred and not just scorn, and a part of him wondered how long he could survive this.

Catalina wasn't going to stop.  She clearly wasn't getting tired of him, and his frequent rejections were just making her angry.  Maybe he should give in, accept whatever protection she offered and sell his soul.

He was already in hell anyway.

They approached a plain door and Dick suppressed the panic and hung on to the numbness.  It was getting easier and easier to draw himself down into it, and harder and harder to come out.  "Get to the hotel when you're done," Redhorn growled, turning away without a glance.  "The team's leaving at six in the morning."

That was it.  No instructions on how he was supposed to get to the hotel, or what would happen if he was late, or any kind of support at all.  Just abandonment in the middle of the Jokers' stadium.  Dick luckily knew his way around Gotham, but he wasn't sure how many pieces Wilson would leave him in.

Dick waited until the sound of Redhorn's footsteps had faded away before he reached out and knocked on the door.

The sound felt muted.  Disconnected.  Everything was moving a step behind his mind and Dick blinked when the door opened to a silver-haired man nearly twice his size.

Part of Dick was fascinated by the disparity.  As a winger, Dick was smaller than his teammates, built for agility and not so much for slamming people against the boards.  Wilson was clearly built for his job, a steel wall of muscle towering above him, with ice blue eyes scanning over Dick before settling on his face.  "Come inside," Wilson said.

The room was tamer than most others Dick had seen, looking more like a hotel room than a sex dungeon.  There was a drawer set next to the bed that was clearly for supplies, and a mini fridge, and what appeared to be an attached bathroom.  Dick followed Wilson all the way to the bed and stopped when Wilson turned to face him.

"So, Bludhaven's hotshot new left wing," Wilson said.  This time, his scan was more of a leer, gaze dragging over his body.  "Think those flashy tricks of yours are cute, kid?"

Dick didn't answer.  He knew better than to engage.  Wilson already wanted a punching bag, he didn't need to make things worse.

"I'm surprised no one's beaten that out of you yet," Wilson mused.  "Though I suppose it's my turn to give it a go."

Dick didn't back away as Wilson stalked closer, no matter how much he wanted to.

"You shot four goals," Wilson said, eyes burning.  "How about we start with payback for each one?"

Wilson's grip was stronger than Catalina's, easily shoving him back against the bed as he bent down.  His kiss was equally aggressive, harsh and plundering, and Dick retreated deeper into the fog and let it happen.

There was no point to the fear, it wouldn't save him, it didn't tell him anything he didn't already know.  All Dick could do was try to brace for the pain that was going to follow.

Wilson shoved, hard, and Dick fell back on the bed, sinking instantly into the soft material.  He barely managed to struggle up on his elbows before Wilson crawled on after him, straddling his thigh and shoving him back down, big hands wrapping around his ribs.

Dick couldn't help the gasp of pain.

The grip disappeared immediately, but the throbbing pain was high and searing and Dick instinctively, ineffectually, tried to curl up, hand pressed to his ribs and blinking against his prickling eyes.  Fuck, that hurt, and Dick was suddenly concerned about his ability to take this punishment.  They hadn't even gotten started.

"What happened?" Wilson demanded, still straddling Dick.  "Are you injured?"

"I'm fine," Dick said thickly, or tried to say, the pain made everything even more disconnected.

Wilson just scoffed, tugging at his shirt.  "Get this off and let me see.  I don't want your team to accuse me of damaging their precious star forward."

The numbness made it hard to muddle through that sentence as Dick obediently tried to pull his shirt off.  Was Wilson saying he wasn't going to injure him?  Clearly he didn't know the priorities of Blockbusters' management very well, which was great for Dick if it meant Wilson wasn't going to be that rough.

Dick hissed as he tried to pull the shirt up, it was more difficult when he was practically pinned to the bed, and he ended up letting go and trying to breathe past the black spots in his vision when the pain grew too large to ignore.

"Christ, Grayson," the harsh voice said as Dick stared at the ceiling and tried to blink the stars out of his eyes.  "Why didn't you get this treated?"

"It's fine," Dick said, and had to stifle a gasp as Wilson pressed down against the throbbing ache.

"You're black and blue all over, and you haven't applied anything.  Why didn't you go to the medic first?"  There was something approaching alarm in Wilson's voice.

"I'm fine," Dick repeated.  Amy would've slipped some painkillers in his bag and he could ice it when he got back.  "Why do you care?" Dick couldn't stop himself from saying.  "You're the one that caused it."

Silence.

That was a stupid thing to say.  Especially when he was flat on his back underneath the defenseman, utterly at his mercy.  A slow, creeping cold slithered in past the numbness and Dick couldn't even shiver.

Wilson hadn't moved.  His fingers were still resting lightly on what was probably a black splotch on Dick's chest, just waiting to dig in.  Dick had the sudden--and chilling--realization that the state of his body probably gave Wilson a very clear picture of how little Blockbusters' management cared about his injuries, as long as he could still skate.

"Look, can you just get on with it?" Dick said, brain-to-mouth filter completely on vacation.

The fingers moved up, skating across his ribs up to his collarbone.  "I didn't cause this," Wilson said, quiet.

Dick didn't know what he was pointing to.  He tried to crane his neck past the balled-up fabric of his shirt to see, but the movement just pulled at his ribs.

"The one that looks like someone tried to take a bite out of you," Wilson clarified.  "What the hell, Grayson?  Got a vampire partner you haven't mentioned?"

"Don't have a partner," Dick exhaled, flinching as Catalina's image popped before his eyes.  He thought he knew what Wilson was pointing to, but a lot of the Blockbusters liked to use teeth.  Liked to mark him.

"Then who the hell did this to you?"  A pause, and Wilson's voice grew darker.  "The Blockbusters haven't lost a game in weeks."

Dick exhaled and reached for the numbness again.  It flooded him, stronger than before, until it no longer mattered that he was pinned underneath a man that intended to fuck him as payback for scoring past him.  "Doesn't matter," he said, voice light and almost floaty.

"What doesn't matter?"  Wilson sounded thoroughly pissed off now, but that was a problem for Future Dick.  Present Dick was dissociating too hard to care.

"Winning or losing," Dick said.  Introduce the idea of sex for punishment, normalize it, and people would twist it for all manner of things.  Winning just meant that Dick would go to the person on the Blockbusters' line-up that wanted him, and there were a lot of people that wanted him.

Wilson's fingers disappeared and his weight shifted off.  Dick waited for him to come back, another hard kiss, more bruising touches, more pain.  He wondered if he could get back to the hotel before six.  He wondered about how Bruce was doing, whether he watched Dick's games or just blocked out all mention of him after Dick had left his coaching to make it on his own.  He wondered if it would be this bad on any other hockey team.

He wondered if he could go back in time, to little eight-year-old Dick Grayson who loved the ice, and shake him and tell him not to go into hockey.

Wilson was taking an awfully long time.  Dick lifted his head up, and lifted all the way up to sitting when he didn't spot the defenseman anywhere in the room.

A bang of the door showed where he’d gone.  Wilson was glowering now, fury roiling off of him like a stormcloud, but Dick could only stare, unconcerned.  He didn't even flinch when the man advanced on him.

"Get up," Wilson ordered harshly, pulling Dick to his feet and tugging his shirt back down.  "Come with me."

Dick didn't try to fight the casual manhandling and merely trotted after Wilson.

They were leaving the room.  Dick didn't understand why, and everything was moving too slow for him to form the words to ask.  Wilson seemed to know where he was going, darting frequent glances back as if to check that Dick was still there, and Dick followed him, confused and unable to care.

The hallways weren't familiar, but they were starting to get noisy and when Wilson pushed through a door to the sound of loud conversations, Dick realized he'd brought him to the Jokers' locker room.

The thought should've caused shrieking alarm.  Instead, all Dick could feel was a dull pang as he obediently followed Wilson inside.

"Done that quick?" someone jeered as they strode further into the locker room--the majority of the team was still here and Dick's gaze skipped past faces, deliberately not counting them.  "Oooh," there was a chorus of wolf whistles as they spotted him behind Wilson.  "Did you bring him to share?"

Everything felt so far away.  Even the ground.  Dick felt like he was falling and falling.

"Shut up," Wilson snapped.  "And go get Fries."  Wilson turned back to Dick and pushed him back to an empty bench.  "You, sit down."

There was another round of heckling.  "Did you break him already?" someone laughed, followed by crude comments about their relative sizes.

Wilson ignored them, crouching in front of Dick.  "Can you raise your arms?" he asked.  Dick started to lift them but they started trembling the moment they reached shoulder level and Wilson grabbed his arms and pulled them down.  "Never mind," he said, "lean forward and duck your head."

Dick did as he was told, forehead hovering next to Wilson's shoulder as the man curled his fingers in the back of Dick's shirt and pulled it up.  He managed to get it off without any input from Dick, and Dick watched as his arms speckled with gooseflesh.

He didn't feel cold.  He didn't feel anything.

Dick didn't hear laughter anymore.  There was a low whistle and footsteps and suddenly a small crowd surrounding Dick and Wilson.  Their faces were all blurry.  Dick didn't try to make them out.

"Damn, Wilson, what did you do?" someone asked, hushed, and there was a minor scuffle when Wilson aimed an elbow at the speaker.

"Fries is on his way," another voice called out.

"Why didn't you just take him to his own team?" someone else muttered.

"Couldn't find them," Wilson said, voice hard and flat.

More silence.

Another voice, quiet.  "Jones said that he didn't see any of them still here when he left."

A round of sharp inhales and low what the fucks.  "They just left him?" someone asked, sounding horrified.

Wilson was watching him, stare narrowed and intense.  Dick held his gaze, still and quiet, waiting pliantly.  His eyes were a cold blue with flecks of gray.  He had wrinkles on his face.  His hair wasn't actually all gray, some of it was a blonde so light it was indistinguishable at first glance.

"Something's wrong with him," someone said abruptly.

"Uh, yeah, we can see that something's wrong with him--"

"No, I meant, look--" something snapped in front of Dick's face.  He blinked but didn't move.  "See?  He hasn't said anything since he got here.  He hasn't even twitched."

"Wilson, what the fuck did you do?!" the tone was higher, harsher.  Wilson broke his stare with Dick and straightened to turn on the speaker, an argument of growls and hisses.

Someone else settled in front of Dick, bald, with a crinkled frown on his face.  "Hello, my name is Victor Fries," he said, voice slow and calm.  "Can you tell me where you're injured?"

Where wasn't Dick injured was a better question.  Dick mutely pointed to the giant developing bruise on his side, because that was what had caught Wilson's attention.

Dick didn't flinch when Fries began prodding at the wound, tiny jolts of pain fizzling out in the numbness.  Fries frowned, and then frowned even deeper when he met Dick's gaze.  Dick didn't realize that the volume of the argument between the Jokers had risen and fallen until someone abruptly sat down on the bench next to him.

He turned, blinking at Wilson.  Wilson glowered back.  "Well?" he rumbled, turning the glare to Fries.

Fries looked upset.  "Richard--can I call you Richard?"  He waited for Dick's slow nod to continue.  "Do you know where you are?"

Of course Dick knew.  "Jokers' locker room," he rasped.  There was abrupt silence, which was the only reason he realized how noisy the room was before then.

"That's great," Fries smiled tightly.  "Are you feeling cold?"

Dick looked down at his goosebumps.  "No," he answered honestly.

Wilson made a low growling sound.  There was a scuffle of movement and something soft hit Dick in the face.  It was the purple and black of the Jokers' colors and Dick stared at Wilson when the man wrapped it around his shoulders.

"Richard," Fries said, and Dick's gaze swung back to him, ignoring the towel.  "Judging by the bruising, I think you have some broken ribs, though we'll need an X-ray to make sure.  I've been informed that your team has already left, so I can drive you to the hospital and you can call them to meet you there--"

"No."  Dick's fingers were trembling.  He stared at them, lost in the shudders.

"Excuse me?"

"No hospital."  Dick had to clear out his throat.  "I'm fine."  He was so tired.  Everyone was staring at him, and he didn't know why.  He just wanted this night to be over.

"Richard, you really need to get it checked out--"

"I said I'm fine."

Wilson scoffed loudly at that.  "You're not fine," he said, daring Dick to argue.

Dick had to let go of the numbness, pushing up to his feet, but exhaustion swooped in to take its place, leaving him ragged and still distant.  Clearly Wilson didn't like the bruises, but there wasn't anything Dick could do about that.

"You don't get to tell me that," Dick said evenly, watching Wilson's eyes flash and knowing he'd be paying for that soon enough.  "You won.  You get the night and nothing else.  So either take your spoils or leave me alone."

The locker room was dead silent.  Dick realized he had a towel around his shoulders, one of the big, soft, fluffy ones, and he suppressed the urge to huddle further in it.  It was cold and he had to fight not to shiver.

There was probably a more diplomatic way to play this, he could've gotten that ride and then ditched them there, but Dick was so very tired.  He just wanted it over with.

"Fine," Wilson snapped.  Some of his teammates made protesting sounds, but Wilson levered up, shooting them all dark looks.  "Fries, give me some painkillers and an ice pack."  The medic mutely did as he was told, shooting Dick undefinable looks.  "Come on, Grayson, let's get back to the room.  Can't miss out on my spoils."

He twisted the words into a nasty sneer.  Dick would've felt afraid if he had the energy to, but he didn't even have enough to imagine what Wilson had planned.  He just followed the man silently back through the same hallways, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, until they were back next to the bed.

"Take these."  Wilson handed Dick the painkillers and a bottle of water.  Dick thought about pointing out that Wilson didn't have the authority to drug him either, but lost the impulse under the exhaustion.  He swallowed the pills.

"Now get in bed."

Dick crawled up on the bed.  "Do you want me to take off my pants?" he asked, trying to stifle a yawn.

"No."  Wilson casually manhandled him until Dick was on his back, on a pillow, watching Wilson draw the covers back.

Wilson got in after him, and pressed the folded towel to Dick's ribs--Dick hissed at the sudden shock of ice, but then gradually relaxed as the numbing set in.

"What do you want me to do?" Dick said, or thought he said.  It was getting more and more difficult to keep his attention focused on Wilson.  The man was shifting on the bed, sitting next to him, drawing the covers over them, a warm, burning presence at Dick's side.

"Close your eyes," came the order.  Dick followed it.  Maybe it would be easier if he wasn't watching.

He didn't know when the darkness slipped to unconsciousness.

#my snippets #sladick #hockey au #winner's room #dubcon #protective slade

[tenderleavesbob]

Hyrule's era broke Legend's heart. It upset everyone, but Hyrule knew that it hurt Legend the most. No one was sure of everyone's place in the timeline, although Hyrule thought that both Time and Warriors knew more than they let on, but everyone was pretty sure that Hyrule's era took place after Legend's. Legend looked at Hyrule's era, plagued by blood and shadows, and saw only his own failure.

There was so much pain and grief in Hyrule's era, but there was light and hope, too. Hyrule fought hard to show everyone that. People were hurt but healing. The land was poisoned but was recovering. They were leaving Ganon's shadow to walk into the light.

The dangers remained very real, though, and too many wounds bled in a way Hyrule's magic couldn't heal. Hyrule still had to try.

The gash on Warriors's arm was deep and had bled more than Hyrule liked. Warriors wouldn't let him touch him until after the others were healed. He said it wasn't that bad and it wasn't life-threatening. Both were true. Warriors was a selfless man and always wanted everyone else tended first. That was true, too. Neither was the reason that Hyrule agreed and let Warriors sit beside Time until everyone else was healed.

Warriors's shield took the brunt of the hit, but his lower arm was badly bruised and blood still streamed from his upper arm. Time stopped applying pressure when Hyrule returned to them. Hyrule watched Time look at Warriors and raise an eyebrow, and he watched how Time didn't go to check on Twilight until Warriors nodded.

'I'm okay,' Warriors was saying. 'It's okay.'

It reminded Hyrule of all the wounds his magic couldn't touch as he knelt beside Warriors. Time had helped strip Warriors enough that Hyrule could assess Warriors's injuries. Hyrule kept his own hands above Warriors's skin and avoided direct contact. "You're going to need to rest," Hyrule said. "We have time before dinner if you want to take a nap. Sky is already sleeping."

Warriors smiled at him. It would be so easy to think he was fine. "I'm tired but not that tired, Traveler. Thank you, though."

Hyrule smiled back and watched the bleeding slowly stop. It had to feel strange but Warriors didn't show it. He rarely did. "No sword practice for the rest of the day! Don't pick up anything heavy with this arm. I'll check it out again in the morning, okay?"

"Of course." Warriors said it easily. The first time Hyrule had healed Warriors, he had been so tense that Hyrule was afraid he was only going to make things worse. Warriors kept watching Hyrule for sudden movements and only grew tenser if Hyrule accidentally touched his skin. He was better now. Hyrule could even hug him sometimes.

Some wounds only time could heal. Hyrule didn't like it, but he accepted it.

When the gash was healed, Hyrule moved his hands down to Warriors's bruised forearm, but Warriors pulled away. "It's just a bad bruise. There's no reason for you to tire yourself out over it."

"I'm not tired yet, and I want to." Hyrule didn't move, though, until Warriors sighed and relented. He didn't heal without permission. He didn't touch without permission.

Hyrule met some people on his travels who were wounded in ways he didn't understand at first. He didn't understand the whispers or why some people were so frightened of him. He never thought of himself as scary. He didn't understand how the clothes were torn but there were no matching wounds on the skin. He didn't understand why some people looked at other people just like they looked at the monsters.

It took time, but he understood. He tried to learn new ways to heal.

It didn't take long for the bruise to fade from Warriors's arm. Hyrule grinned at Warriors, and something inside him lit up when Warriors smiled back, tired but sincere. "Thank you, Rulie."

"You're welcome, Captain. If you don't want to sleep, Four found some books in the last town."

It was slow going, but sometimes, healing took time. Hyrule hoped that Legend and Warriors both understood that. One day, everything would be okay again.

#lu warriors #tl scribbles #lu Hyrule

[anxiousdreamcore]

I saw that recent post you made writing out how you view all the Avatar characters, and in it, you mentioned that your opinion of the characters has changed a lot in the past year and a half (I can't believe it's been that long since ATWOW!)

So how did your opinion of the characters change and why? Who changed the most radically? I'd love to hear your thought process!

Warning: yapping ahead

My opinion changed as I began consuming content from different people in the fanbase, as I sadly started out my journey relegated to mostly the recom side of the fandom.

A very specific vision I’ve formed was one of him and Neytiri. Two individuals forced to be close by circumstance, and not necessarily liking each other but they’re known each other for so long that they know each other, you know? The way I see it, they can’t pretend to be strangers, and their argument in the high ground comics, which is the only time any of the children oppose Neytiri makes me think that this is the dynamic going on between them.

Being a Spider fan outside of the recom space was a horrible experience for many of my mutuals, and I heard from more than one person that just liking the character earned them death threats, so I kept to the only space where he was actually liked, which uh…may or may not have been a bit of an echo chamber.

First months after ATWOW came out the opinions were extremely polarising and there was little depth to go around. I realised later on though, I didn’t have to pick a side and didn’t have to force myself to forgive Quaritch, because I never wanted to. I didn’t have to see him as either a 🥺baby gworl🥺 or an emotionless monstrosity.

As I said before, the essays made by Quaritch fans sold me at first. They seemed to provide a lot of proof and I was on board with the identity crisis theory, but as time went on I believed it less and less. Looking at the movie with fresh eyes months later, I formed and opinion of my own and that is — That recom Quaritch is an amalgamation of his past self and the Na’vi instincts/perspective of his new body. He’s a fucked up soup that is, in a way, different than his human predecessor but not different enough to be considered a wholly separate creature. If human Quaritch was a dying garden then recom Quaritch is that same garden decayed to the core, with one single flower emerging amongst the rot, not yet consumed by it. (That flower being his fatherhood obv)

I went from seeing him as a man perhaps capable of redemption and seeing value in Pandora, to a man who, while not enjoying it per ce, obviously doesn’t give much of a damn about the moon or its habitat or its many cultures. All that matters to Quaritch is that these things matter to his son, so he’ll entertain them and go easy on the destruction, just for him. He doesn’t yet accept Pandora, not fully, but he accepts that Spider does so.

The way I began to see it, Socorro is somewhat his only functioning organ. A breathing lung in an otherwise dead body. Miles hasn’t felt anything but manic happiness and rage for as long as we knew him on screen, and that only changed when he stood in the boy’s presence, constantly challenged by him, and brought out of his comfort zone over and over again. He needs him to be remotely alive and likeable to the audience. He needs him to be something more than a chained army dog.

That brings me to my next point; my other big change in perspective was one of his dynamic with Spider. The more I analysed the franchise the more I came to conclusion that Miles is just an unbearable softie for him, and it was really the deleted scenes and the fact that Spider has a new bow in the ikran taming scene that sold me. He not just likes Spider, he loves him, to death. His sacrifices might not seem sufficient, but for his character, they‘re very much drastic, as Miles is traditionally not a loving person.

Quaritch is canonically a traitor to the RDA because he jeopardised his mission three times in a row, all for a single child. His inner father and colonel are constantly fighting each other, as he knows what he should be focusing on, but can’t resist being a father; having priorities of his own. He was an old fool who thought he could have his cake and eat it too; make Spider safe and happy and be a colonel at the same time, but in the end he made up his mind on what matters more, and it’s Spider. The way I see it now is; Quaritch is only truly loyal to Spider. He can hate it, but he can’t run from it.

#atwow #avatar way of water #atwow quaritch #recom quaritch #miles quaritch #atwow spider #spider socorro #avatar spider #avatar 2 #avatar the way of water

[rweoutofthewoods]

hey mere! so i just go around to reading tennessee baby and i just wanted to express my … disappointment i guess? don’t get me wrong here i love previous work vm usually u do jeggy so so much justice and i usually have such adoration for your characters but this one is really rubbing me the wrong way as james is essentially grooming reg and its promoting teachers and adults in general abusing their power with children. cause regulus might be of age but he’s still a child in comparison to james and just in general like 17-19 are still children they are teenagers and don’t have a fully developed brain and so the way you’re making it seem as if it’s regulus doing is just WRONG. like i don’t even have other word for it. and yes i get the whole don’t like it don’t read it but… how do you feel comfortable promoting stuff like this in the first place to your audience who previously hasn’t gotten the impression that you’d promote such violence in your fics yk?

anyways, i’m only sending this in hopes that you may have something say about it i guess cause as of right now i’m not sure if i’d even feel comfortable reading anything else you’d write in the future which is just heartbreaking to me as i’ve been following along with you for so long now!

If you have read my writing before then I hope you know that I don’t write anything as black and white. I write things that are purposefully wrong and the characters are supposed to be in the wrong.

This is something I run into a lot that is very frustrating to me because I can’t force anyone to understand my work. But I understand my work.

That is to say I’m not writing Tennessee Baby with the intention of saying any of this is good or alright. I’m not writing it to act like my characters are in the right. I don’t write things to be moral lessons on how a person should act because why should I? I plan my writing, I exist for it, I have thought out every single little detail and exactly what I’m portraying. which as the fic goes on, I think everyone will find is the exact opposite of “promoting violence” or any of this behavior to my audience.

So two things.

1. The fic is incomplete and very early in the story. Their relationship is just beginning and we’ve barely gone anywhere. It’s a bit premature to judge me morally on a story I’ve barely begun and I WILL touch on all the things and I’m not painting my characters as their actions being okay. But it takes time to write a story. You know who thinks regulus in control and at fault for their sexual relationship? REGULUS. In his pov only… maybe think about that and think about all the ways I’ve showed how he IS a kid despite being a legal adult. I know exactly what I’m writing, trust me. I think you don’t, and I can’t blame you bc the fic is so early in the plot, but it would be nice for people to trust me. Bc comments similar to your concerns pop up regarding a lot of my WIPs and I always know exactly what I’m doing and what my intentions are. So it’s a tad frustrating often feeling the need to defend my writing choices when ik if we just wait and read on everything will become clear.

2. I did warn multiple times exactly what the fic would contain and that it is immoral and it’s MEANT to be. None of this is supposed to be acceptable behavior and I have never acted as if it is.

So really I guess I’m a little disappointed in your response. If it’s not your cup of tea that’s fine! Not judging! It isn’t a nice happy unproblematic fic. If u went happy moral fluff there’s a million other fics for you. But this is the writer I am. I always HAVE been. I’ve written multiple cheating fics, I’ve written age gap, I’ve written characters killing people. Does that mean I believe in infidelity, murder, and student teacher relationships? no 😭that’s not how it works, and the things I write don’t morally define me at all. In fact most of my writing teaches a lesson. if you can’t understand that and don’t want to read my work anymore that’s fine, but I hope you consider why people might choose to purposefully write things that are wrong.

#mere answering things ;) #fic: tennessee baby

[gauloiseblue]

Ok so, you don't have to do this if you're not accepting requests. But I am way too insane about IOFAB and idk why. It has been in my head since the beginning of May. I couldn't focus for weeks, that's how good it is (it didn't really help that the Kendrick v Drizzy beatdown happened).

Can we have more stuff in the IOFAB verse? Maybe something from König's POV (this guy has to be aware that he's just making her hate him even more)? Maybe life after the last escape/shooting incident can't believe the guy actually did multiple rounds with a bullet in his shoulder that's gotta hurt, pregnancy, or kids? Or maybe domestic horror fluff (if that's actually a thing)? Or something about how he managed to keep reader as his lawfully kidnapped wife (this guy definitely put trackers in her ring)? I just realized that I keep referring to reader/darling as his wife even though they ain't married yet Or maybe even an alternate timeline in which deals with what would happen if they did meet but those guys had to actually disclose that they found those survivors which would mean König would not be able to have her?

IOFAB König is so different from the other yandere Königs because he actually shows his hand right in the beginning. Like he's not just some oWo shy guy that is a yandere that goes “maybe I should keep you here with me so that you wouldn't leave me, schatz haha jk... unless 🙂”. He just straight up “You're with me now. Sooner you accept it, the better it will be for you”. He wouldn't hurt reader but he definitely wouldn't hesitate to drop kick a kitten or even his children if they would somehow aid her in her escape.

Something something he would put the world at her feet but wouldn't ever let her see her family ever again. Something something you could put the world through eternal winter and starvation but he won't ever let his goddess go, not even for 6 months. Something something he would hunt her down in their next life. Something something God never blessed him so he's taking one of His blessed angels for himself. Something something he's worshipping the ground her chained feet walk on. Ok now this is getting too long. In short, this guy warrants the “Why are you like this” microscope and “You're not a human nor a dog but a secret third thing” and you don't have to but if you want to, please please please please please can we have more IOFAB?

Zero, you're now officially the number one fans of IOFAB XD idk if I should be glad or concerned about it.

I mean, if you wanna theorize about their future and stuff, I'll gladly answer it. But for me, the story already ended here. I don't really plan to write a continuation of it. Maybe I'll write a lil bit of it in other people's POVs but that's it.

As for König's POV, I think we've covered a lot about his psychology. Like, of course he knew she hated him, but it wouldn't last. If he keeps on giving her what she needs (tolerance, space, care, etc), she'll eventually come to love him, or at least tolerate his presence. It's like a 'trust the process' situation.

I won't really write about pregnancy and kids, because it's more fun when I let the reader decide what's best for her. My actual HC is she'll only have 1 kid, and it's a boy. That's it.

There are 3 endings that I've thought about, it's either; (1) she manages to escape with the help of the maid (The Handmaiden storyline, wlw), (2) she's staying with him until the end (Göth's dream), (3) she's rescued by the third party, there's a possibility that he or the reader dies in this scenario (the realistic ending). But I won't make either of them canon, bc where's the fun in that?

As for the AUs, I haven't got the right idea for it. I think yours is good, but I honestly don't know where to start 😅

Personally, in my humblest opinion, I think shy yandere shouldn't exist in fiction. I fucking hate it, because it's very manipulative in the cheapest way. Like, they'd appear "harmless" like a weirdo, but would go 180° at any given chance. And what makes me hate them the most is that they'd go back to their shy shell when they're being cornered. They can't and won't take any responsibility for their actions. Oh, he kissed you without your consent? Well, that's your fault bc you seduced him (even if you didn't). Every time I read about a shy yandere man, I just wanna bash his head with a bat. Like, you're not fooling anyone with that attitude. Just take what you want and admit it, even if it means you have to be ruthless.

I must admit, IOFAB König does hold a "secret third thing" vibe, because I don't think he exists irl in terms of personality. He's like, if patience is taken too far, and if patience is the source of horror. He doesn't really worship her, but he views her as the rarest and the most exotic thing. If you ever read about the exotic animal keeper, or the curator of the rarest arts, then you'll understand why he behaves that way. They're very patient, and they're very possessive of their treasure. If the tiger that they keep bites their arm, they won't put it down. They'll find a way to tame it—they'll try to win its affection instead. If one particular art requires so much maintenance, and so much cost to keep it in good condition, the curator would pay for it. They won't abandon the art piece, because they know how much it's worth. That's how König views his wife.

I know it sounds like he's objectifying his wife, but sometimes humans love their things more than other humans. I'm just using that feeling as the base for IOFAB König.

Maybe I'll write about the domestic horror stuff, but I still don't know how, so no promise 🤔

#little-shit-with-zero-control ask #cod #call of duty #konig x reader #IOFAB #personal rant

[duendepika]

MHA Chapter 423 Commentary

I want to start by saying that I love the series. I really do. That's exactly why this chapter is so damn heartbreaking. What drew me to this series were the themes of saving everyone, of atonement and understanding and compassion. All of that was abruptly thrown away this chapter. I can’t take anything else in the story to heart because it’s lost its heart.

Only some of this can be explained by the terrible pacing of the chapter, as the content should have been in 5+ chapters. What it comes down to is the way the deaths of Shigaraki and AFO were handled by both the protagonist and the author. It’s not that they died, as I expected both to and take no issue with that. It’s how their deaths were written. AFO’s in particular leads to the crux of the problem: when the main villain dies alone and unloved, it calls into question the story’s message and themes.

Under a cut because this is long, but I'll start with Shigaraki before moving onto AFO and the general themes.

I’ll discuss Shigaraki first, as this one is less of a problem (though still very much of one) for the story as a whole. Shigaraki's death scene was far too short and remarkably callous, and he will remain forever incomplete even if "revived". We have seen very little, if any, introspection on his part during this entire war. We didn't see him grapple with learning AFO controlled even his birth. We didn't see him interact with his grandmother. We never saw him learn anything from Deku. We never saw him confront AFO. We never saw him come to terms with anything. Right up until he died in 419, then formally died in 423, he held the same rage. Realizing "wow, I was an angry kid after all" only to follow it up with bragging about being destructive to the very end is not character development. His death was not heroic, as he was more or less “killed” by AFO earlier and he only rallied for one hit. He didn’t sacrifice himself in any way, and it’s hard to consider his final punchdown on AFO particularly heroic under the circumstances.

Deku's final conversation with him was fairly cold, especially considering how he's spoken of him up until now. Saying to the very end that he'll never forgive him and mysteriously failing to say he wanted to save him was very damaging to both characters. Not once does Deku mention his goal of trying to save him. It's as if his goals suddenly changed when they no longer became possible to attain, as if he'll magically be shielded from any failure (a common theme with all heroes except for Hawks and Ochako, though the latter may well be negated if Toga lives). Some recognition of the goals we've been told about for the last 300+ chapters would have been nice, even if Deku just made a casual apology for not being able to "save" him. He seems almost dismissive of Shigaraki in the end despite repeating tirelessly throughout the story that he will do everything in his power to save him.

I also see a lot of assumptions that Tenko will simply return. If this happens, which is always possible, it would be the most outrageous asspull in the series. His body is completely gone. Unless he regained his original quirk and it's "Resurrection", it's not going to be believable in any sense (and a suspension of disbelief is necessary for fiction; we all know it’s a superhero story, but that doesn’t mean the author can do absolutely anything and we have to accept it). That, too, would be absurd because if AFO had that quirk all along he would have used it here. An argument can be made that he used it 6 years ago, but this is also questionable because a] he only used it once, b] given the Oboro/Kurogiri situation, it seems that Garaki can actually raise the dead. I don't know what Tenko returning would even do. We saw his dying words, and they were unrepentant, and Deku's final interaction with him was cold and detached (unlike, for ex. Shoto and Toya which was only hostile on one side, and Ochako and Toga which was openly affectionate). Coming back isn't going to undo any of that.

AFO dying with no character resolution whatsoever was an even bigger issue in terms of the greater narrative. As with Shigaraki, his death is not the issue; it was clearly going to happen. It’s the how. He died begging for his brother to love and look at him. His brother died condemning him. AFO died as he was born - unloved - despite having a very "human" awakening only a few chapters prior. This was made clear but how he changed how he told his brother he loved him. He shifted from the more formal and very rarely used “aishiteru” to the very personal “daisuke” because, after chasing him for a century only to lose him, he finally understood that what he felt for his brother was love.

He was vulnerable in a way he never had been before, but Hrksh opted to throw him away instead of bringing closure to his character. Consider how his original body died in 410, screaming about how he feels hatred. This time he died begging for love. It was futile either way. Yoichi, the only person he ever loved (albeit in a demented way), rejected him. All the other vestiges manifested faces, but Yoichi denied his brother this last chance to see him. AFO's last panicked meltdown clearly indicates that he simply can not conceptualize love in a normal way, which makes him more pitiable and, ironically, human, than it does make him evil.

The argument can definitely be made that this was a "fitting" end for him, and on some level I can appreciate that, but whether it’s satisfying is irrelevant. This ending does not fit the story of MHA, which carries certain themes. All other significant villain characters were granted some level of compassion, an attempt to understand them, by both the author and the characters. AFO was granted none of this. The main villain in a series about helping and saving others lived and died unloved by all. He might have been "born evil" depending on how one interprets chapter 407, but hrksh made it clear that he never had a chance in life. His backstory is objectively the most tragic and miserable of all, and he was the one character denied any compassion in the end. If the worst of the worst dies alone and unloved, then how can we say the story is truly about saving others, even those who don’t conventionally “deserve” it?

Furthermore, Deku's offhand comment about him being a lonely man comes across more as an insult and a mockery than any attempt to understand him. He "gave" AFO the chance to speak to Yoichi one last time, but it was a farce to distract him so he'd be easier to kill. There was no compassion there, only calculated manipulation. Granted, it's possible this comes down to pacing and what should have been 1-2 chapters was crammed into 1 page, but with no actual exploration of AFO's character on Deku's part, we have to take it at face value. Realistically, Deku should have sought to understand AFO hundreds of chapters ago anyway, if he really cared about saving everyone. In retrospect, not even considering the possibility of trying to figure out the why and how of AFO is a major failure on the part of the heroes. This goes back to how the author has set AFO up to take the fall for everyone without considering how it will compromise the central theme of the story.

Even as recently as chapter 416, Hawks remembers how important it is that we see everyone as united and understand one another. Strangely, nobody bothered to try and understand the main villain.

Ultimately, if the narrative is pinning all anguish and suffering in the world onto a single character, the origins of that character must be understood by the heroes to ensure someone like him isn't created again. By only bothering to understand and save those AFO supposedly created (even though he only created Shiggy), the heroes are healing symptoms and not the disease. There is no internal consistency within the story. He died largely a mystery. We will never know his true goals, as the closest we got was Aoyama's description, which AFO even said was not quite accurate. We also never learned his true motivation, as his reaction to Yoichi dying again indicates it’s not that simple. Which again, means it will just happen again because no characters made any effort to understand. It's like hrksh went for generic, mindless evil but screwed up with his relationship with his brother, ultimately turning him human. His goals and motives can be guessed, but given that this is a shounen, in-depth analysis should not be required to understand the final villain's goal.

This is made even more infuriating when you consider that AFO’s worldview is based on comic books. Shouldn’t this be something hrksh would want to explore, given the entire series is based on comic books? Without ever telling us the truth about his motivation, we lose the chance for the meta-analysis we were promised, one which had notable fan appeal regardless of character interest. AFO's abrupt ending also means we will never get any further explanation of quirks, the singularity theory, or their origin. AFO as the originator held all the mysteries there. Sure, maybe we'll get a monologue from the doctor later, but that's unlikely. And sure, you can argue that those things "aren't important", but they are. Many dropped plot points genuinely don't matter anymore, but these do given their significance throughout the series.  Essentially, all worldbuilding went out the window with AFO.

In the end, there is no sense of anything changing after this war. The chapter byline suggests that now with AFO dead, everything will be perfect, which is of course probably what we'll be told. The "cycle of suffering" has miraculously ended, because apparently all of it originated with AFO despite him having absolutely nothing to do with the creation of most villains.

The reality is that nothing in Deku's final battle addressed the failures of society and what can be done going forward to minimize people becoming villains. He completely ignored any attempt to understand the supposed root of all evil (AFO), suggesting he doesn’t actually care about fixing any deep-rooted societal issues and instead only cares about Shigaraki specifically. And even then, Deku did very little for him. When he entered the vestige world, he shielded Tenko from his father and tried to physically stop him from killing his family. That's it. Immediate, reactive, physical behavior. No reflection, no analysis, no acknowledgement of the deeper issues at hand (yes, it's a battle, but that never stopped hrksh from including that kind of thing before), no recognition of what Tenko went through in their final conversation. In this sense, Ochako and Endeavor have done a far better job at being heroes than Deku, which is a serious issue from a narrative perspective.

Rezzing Tenko might give us some flashbacks of neglected aspects of his character, granted with lost emotional momentum, but the bigger issue is how Deku handled his death. The same can be said for AFO, though unless Yoichi also returns, that's totally pointless. Giving Deku a second chance to redo everything with Shigaraki and/or AFO can't change the fact that the first time around, he failed to connect. He didn't know he'd get a second chance. Therefore we have to assume he was "doing his best" in 423, and that “best” was mediocre and contradictory to his character.

At the end of the day, we ended up with what should have been 5-8 chapters crammed into one, at the most critical moment of the series. Because of this, major plotlines and characters were thrown out the window and with them, the central themes of the entire series. I think there are ways it can be partially fixed to the point where the chapter is no longer a story-breaker, but given how this was handled, I don’t expect those paths to be taken. The only way to really salvage this is to have the chapter retracted, which of course won't happen.

#mha 423 #bnha 423 #mha commentary #mha analysis #eh

[trans-androgyne]

Ok as a trans girl I thought I'd throw out some opinions on egg jokes cause I've seen you post some things from one perspective and I'd like you to hear mine. What I'm gonna say is NOT MEANT TO ACCUSE YOU OF SAYING THIS STUFF !! It is just some observations I've noted from various communities

I've noticed a lot of the backlash surrounding egg jokes has been specifically about the concept of someone being a trans woman being inherently perverse and sexual, as compared to, say, gay jokes. Both of these sorts of jokes come from the same place (ex "I see myself/friends in this person, haha they're just like me/them") but one is much more socially acceptable than the other. If I see a man in a crop top with neon pink booty shorts and say "lol he's so gay" , nobody really cares other than the occasional "you can never assume anything about anyone" person. If I see a guy with long hair awkwardly looking at feminine deodorant and say "lol he's such an egg", that gets a stronger reaction from all sides of the community than the previous situation. There's a lot of people saying things like "let me be feminine" which,I agree! Men should be allowed to be feminine! But if a trans woman sees her pre-transition self in the way a man acts and jokes about it, that isn't something that should be as heavily policed as it is now.

There is a very large stereotype that trans women run 'feminizing cults' that recruit men and manipulate them to start estrogen and such, this is a transmisogynist conspiracy and what a *lot* of backlash from egg jokes leans into. Obviously, if you yourself aren't comfortable being called an egg or anything like that, then by all means tell anyone who tries to make that joke with you. If they're a good person they'll just go "oh, ok, thanks for telling me" and stop joking about that with you. Block the tags, curate your online experience, but I think a lot of people expect trans woman to fully stop making these jokes because of some disgust they feel from it, and attributing that disgust to mean there's some inherent moral stance on egg jokes, which there isn't

Also for context I am a trans girl whose egg was cracked via egg jokes lolll

Thank you for sharing your perspective. I think a lot of discomfort at egg jokes is in fact coming from a place of transmisogyny. I do not care about the vast majority of egg jokes. I think they can sometimes be reinforcing the gender binary, but honestly so can other popular trans jokes. I personally get uncomfortable when people are publicly speculating on the activities and gender of a specific stranger just going about their day because I would hate if that was me. I don’t care if people make those jokes with their friends. But enough people have passed around this deodorant example that if the deodorant person is a cis guy they’d probably feel pretty uncomfortable about it! Same with other cis guys who already feel insecure about expressing femininity for fear people will think they’re less of a man. As a trans guy I already get nervous people will see me pick out feminine deodorant (it just smells better) in the grocery store aisle and misgender me about it. People thinking it would be okay to speculate about me online as a result if they mistook me for a cis guy would be awful to me. I think we should have a genuine conversation about what constitutes violating a stranger’s privacy. But we desperately need to watch the transmisogyny in these conversations because a lot of people’s takes sound suspiciously like “trans women are groomers” rhetoric.

#when it’s okay to bring up transness to a friend you think is an egg is a different conversation than this to me #egg jokes #transmisogyny #intracommunity issues tag #ask #mine #long post

[bnhaobservation]

Ramblings about the Shigaraki family

So, the past time I was rambling about the Shimura family, the Takami family and the Himura family.

Well, I guess this is the time to remble about the Shigaraki family (as the family of All for One and Yoichi, not the family of Shigaraki Tomura).

PREMISE

In creating the history of the Shigaraki family Horikoshi went as unrealistic as he could get and more. Their backstory is basically a HUGE request for suspension of disbelief on how children, and more specifically newborn, work.

For start the children shouldn’t have survived and, to continue, assuming their survived Yoichi wouldn’t have probably grown that way, never mentioning the framing seems to blame All for One for things that are actually not his fault for no good reason (I mean, there’s PLENTY OF THINGS we can blame All for One for, why trying to do so for things that aren’t his fault?).

So I’ll split this analysis in two, first I’ll put the ‘in reality this wouldn’t have worked’ part, so as to get it out of the way, then I’ll go back to the siblings and re-analyze them pretending all the highly unreal things in their history are, by some miracle or extremely unlikely and unexplained reason, possible.

Mind you, this first part isn’t meant to be a complain, merely a list of what clashes with reality. Mangakas can ask their readers to suspend their disbelief and accept unreal things to happen in their story… the problem is this makes harder for readers to them analyze the characters’ behavior because they can do or are expected to do, what a normal person can’t do and this makes the message the author wants to deliver harder to pass.

Lastly... what follow is just my humble opinion. I'm not Horikoshi, I don't own the truth so feel free to think differently.

And okay, let’s start.

REALITY CLASH

Now… we’re told the Shigaraki twins lose their mother short after being born. All for One manages to steal her Quirk before she dies, which okay, he might have done unconsciously… even though the other times he did so, he seemed to do it with purpose (as he needs to turn on and off his Quirk when he does so) and needing time remaining holding his victim for a while which doesn’t seem the case here but whatever. Quirk magic.

Now… the babies are then left lying on the ground next to their mother.

The problems really start when the flood of the river sweep them away. We’re asked to believe All for One managed to use his Quirk to cling to his mother, remaining on top of her and therefore out of water while at the same time holding his brother’s arm and keeping him as well on top and out of water.

We start with the first problem.

To use his mother’s Quirk to stab her, he should manage to hold his head still as he pierces her… but a baby takes about three months after birth, to develop enough neck strength to hold their heads up. They won't fully control it until around six months. More likely, if he were to activate his mother’s Quirk, he won’t stab her, he would end up pushing himself AWAY from her, never mentioning figure out he has to use it on his mouth and on his right hand to manage to hold on her. Newborn don’t use their mouth to hold themselves at something by biting it (they don’t even have teeth!) but to suck and are still trying to figure out they can grasp things and how.

All for One to figure out he can use his mouth and hand to hold himself and that he can strength his grip by using his mother’s Quirk which he has just stolen and shouldn’t know how it work feels highly unlikely if not outright unrealistic.

Now… a corpse can float as long as it doesn’t fill itself with water. Since it’s raining and the river’s waters aren’t quiet and she has on top of her two babies (newborns weight from 2,5 kg to 4 kg) not only I wouldn’t expect the corpse to take long to fill itself with water but also to be a very unstable raft.

Even if a baby’s grip is pretty strong and Yoichi should weight much less than him, adults on an unstable raft have problems to hold each other… never mentioning this requires All for One to see Yoichi (newborns’ vision isn’t as good as when they’re adults), acknowledge that Yoichi is something he wants to keep, grab Yoichi and keep on holding him despite the unsteady surface he’s on.

But whatever, let’s assume he could do all this.

Babies need to eat about every 2 to 4 hours. How are the twins getting milk? In theory someone should have picked them up and, since society is still in place, brought them to an orphanage where they were cared for. The story though seems to want to imply from that moment on they survived on their own which is… well above a baby’s abilities as newborn don’t even know how to crawl.

Horikoshi then tells us All for One was imbued with hubris and disrespect for others from the moment of his birth and views everything within his reach as his own possession… as if this were a thing that All for One was born evil. Problem is… this is how all the infants see the world and it’s only around preschool age (but sometimes it drags on longer) THEY ARE TAUGHT the world doesn’t revolve around them, as well as to empathize with others. They’re all like that and meant to be taught to grow out of it, it’s not something that’s characteristic of All for One only or of evil people only.

In the scene in which All for One beat people and Yoichi tries to stop him Yoichi is missing his milk teeth meaning he just started being of school age (you lose milk teeth at 5/6) and the two seem to live on their own, meaning they aren’t in an orphanage.

Long story short, when All for One was a newborn being as selfish and egocentric as he could was absolutely normal and since apparently no one taught him that it wasn’t the right behavior, it was unlikely he would stop… and here comes the second problem as… Yoichi instead somehow learnt it!

Yes, it could be because All for One is taking care of Yoichi so in a way Yoichi has someone to act as a caretaker but… All for One shouldn’t even have known how to take care of him, that Yoichi too, like himself needed to be feed! We’re told Yoichi is weak and sickly, this would mean he shouldn’t have survived if not properly taken care of meaning he needed food, staying in a warm, clean place, and possibly medicines and so on. There should be an adult in this story taking care of them in their earlier FORMATIVE years, but there’s no mention of this, to the point that it’s ALL FOR ONE WHO NAMES YOICHI and is aware he’s his sibling and the same goes for Yoichi… who doesn’t give up on his older brother because he has faint memories of All for One’s hand holding his arm when they were newborns and wants to believe his brother’s grip had been gentle and kind. Note that people don’t have memories that date to their birth… and if All for One’s grip had been gentle and kind, Yoichi would have slipped from his grasp and drown. That wasn’t the moment to be gentle but to hold tight but neither baby should remember the whole thing so not only a gentle grip would be unrealistic but shouldn’t be remembered.

Apparently Yoichi has no other nice memory of All for One… even though it’s supposedly All for One who takes care of him because we see him as a kid finding hard to stand so it should be All for One who provides him with food and clothes.

Also, although it’s just an explanation the fact that All for One stole the nutrients provided by his mother while they were in the wombs seems to speak ill of him but Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome is a pregnancy condition that involves imbalanced blood flow between identical twins. The imbalance deprives one twin of the nutrients it needs while providing an excess of nutrients to the other twin and can be fatal TO BOTH. It’s not a sign one of the babies is greedy, it’s a sign the pregnancy is having problems.

All for One has plenty of faults but he’s not born evil due to a pregnancy condition or having the exact same mentality all the newborns have. The framing instead seems to want to paint him as such. Of course there’s the possibility Horikoshi wants his readers to realize this, that the framing is unsympathetic because it’s meant to be unreliable. I don’t know but, for me, it doesn’t really work well.

To make up for it the framing for Yoichi is extremely positive but… Yoichi is actually presented as a fundamentalist Hero, the kind that would make Stain happy with his Quirks can’t be used for personal gain (Heroes use their Quirk to save people but gets paid to do so, hence they get a personal gain. If Quirk use has to be completely selfless we go back to Stain’s ideals of how being a Hero can’t be a job), but he fails at being a positive figure in All for One’s life as he can’t influence him positively in the slightest.

Last but not least, Yoichi claims he’s teaching himself how to read. While it’s possible to teach yourself how to read, generally you need someone to help you connect the written shapes of letters (or, in his case, kana/kanji) to the sounds. If the kids are alone without a supervising adult reading for them, and therefore indirectly giving them help to connect the kana/kanji to the sounds they make and give them reading directions, they shouldn’t even be capable to know in which sense the reading should go… actually it should have taken Yoichi time even to figure out if the manga should have been read in the western or in the Japanese manner because no one was there to help him figure out this or in which order to watch the images and this isn’t always easily intuitive.

Anyway, with this we end the part where I discuss the points in which the past of the Shigaraki twins distances itself from reality to the point it goes from highly unlikely to completely unreal without additions/adjustments Horikoshi didn’t seem to plan to include.

Due to this part I don't know if my analysis can be reliable because I tend to make them according to how the mind, the psychology and the development of people work in reality in addition to what it's told in the story. If the story distances too much from reality... well, I can easily be lead off track in my interpretation so consider yourself warned.

IF WE TAKE THE STORY AT FACE VALUE AND ACCEPT THE UNREALISTIC

The first relevant thing about the Shigaraki twins is that they’re alone in the world from the start, having only each other as company.

Even when they were in the womb and technically were with their mother, she was unaware of their existence and lived an unstable lifestyle which, in a way endangered them, never mentioning she died once she gave birth to them and left them alone in the open, under the rain and in a hostile environment as rats wanted to eat them and the river flooded short after, which yes, saved them from the rats but could have killed them as well.

If in the story this was meant to be a formative experience for the twins (in real life it hardly would be but we’ve discussed this part already so let’s pretend it would), All for One at the start of his life was presented immediately with lack of care and help and a world that’s a danger to him. In order to survive he has to take care of himself, he has to steal his mother’s Quirk and use his mother’s body to survive. As he does so he chooses to also save the other misfortunate creature that was with him from when he had a spark of life, his twin brother.

It’s not like Yoichi is presented as nurturing or caring or helpful toward him (quite the contrary, Yoichi throw things at him when he thinks All for One is doing something wrong and shares with him the fact he’s reading comics only when All for One catches him doing so)… it’s just Yoichi is there, with him, and doesn’t mean to harm to him in a world that either ignores or tries to harm him… and somehow All for One recognizes him as ‘family’. Yoichi is like a Teddy Bear to All for One, in a way he’s his security blanket. Yoichi was his sole companion, the only one in the same situation as he was and, apparently, All for One felt Yoichi should feel and see the world like he does. He wants Yoichi to see the world like he does.

All for One’s mentality of seeing everything else as his own possession, hating those who wouldn’t care for him when in need and wouldn’t provide him with anything is the one of an infant and he’ll never graduate from it… except in regard to Yoichi. Although he still labels Yoichi as a possession, the latter is of no use and provides him no care and yet he can’t let him go nor feel disgusted by him. All for One will label his feelings for Yoichi as ‘love’. It’s clear it’s not healthy love, the one in which you care for the other and asks for nothing back, it’s selfish love, the one in which you think you own the other and the other has no agency in this.

What about Yoichi instead?

While All for One is the one who has to fight for their survival… Yoichi doesn’t. He gets saved by All for One. Where All for One doesn’t have anyone to help him, Yoichi has someone. If we’ve to accept no adult took care of them… Yoichi’s survival was entirely dependent on his older brother (and, later, Yoichi will also get saved by Kudō). All for One is clearly a terrible caretaker as selfish as he is, but he still is Yoichi’s caretaker. Yoichi has better clothes than All for One has (his clothes fit him when All for One has some cloth tied around himself), we see Yoichi as a child can’t seem to be able to move (he seems to be crawling on the ground) so he can’t provide himself for food, which means All for One goes out of his way to search food for him too.

I’ll stretch things a bit and assume that, since Yoichi is weak and is being provided for, this helped him to feel empathy with other people who are weak and therefore, when said people get abused by his brother he feels bad for them and so he didn’t want All for One to hurt them (it usually doesn’t work like that in real life but it happens all the time in manga so let’s assume that’s what Horikoshi is going for).

Yoichi though, is unsuitable as a morality pet (I’m not looking down at him, ‘morality pet’ is the name of a role trope/archetype in tales) who will lead to All for One becoming a good person.

In fact All for One will claim he wants to become a evil overlord because he wants a world that exists for his sake and his alone. Basically no one cared about him when he was in need so he now wants to force the world to do so. His wish is an answer to the pain he felt when he cried and screamed and no one came to help.

He wants to be loved and nurtured the way he wasn’t as a kid (being loved and nurtured is a kid’s PRIMARY NEED and if the kid doesn’t get it, there’s a GIANT size chance the kid will receive serious psychological damage that will carry over to adulthood) but, since he didn’t receive such things, he didn’t even know how to ask for them or what actually he’s looking for. He’s still an infant in a way, instead than trying to become a person that can be loved and nurtured by others, he just wants to impose himself over them the way a newborn wants, making everything ‘all for his sake’.

So All for One wants to identify with the person whom, he thinks, has what he’s missing, the evil guy of the comics whom everyone serves, even if out of fear (talk about comics having a negative formative impact on him). This is his power fantasy, only All for One has power enough he can turn his fantasy into reality.

Yoichi has a different dream, he wasn’t completely neglected, he was (poorly) taken care of but he’s powerless so his power fantasy is becoming the Hero who’s fighting hard against a enemy and will eventually gain power enough to defeat him. The comic is formative for him too, as it gives him the idea good should always prevail on evil as the Hero will eventually win… THROUGH FIGHTING THE BIG BAD.

It’s meaningful that when Yoichi sees his brother hurting others he throws a can to him, attempting to hurt him in retaliation (and only ending up on being hurt back)… where Midoriya, in the first chapter, stood in front of the boy Bakugō was hurting and it’s Bakugō who attacks him. Midoriya focused on protecting, Yoichi focused on attacking.

Now I’m… not sure if this is done on purpose or it’s a flaw on Horikoshi’s part but in the story we don’t have Yoichi giving All for One a single meaningful speech or do a single meaningful thing that could have a chance to move his brother enough to make him change his path. I mean… we get All Might preaching about how Yoichi has a strong sense of justice… but the way all this is shown is merely by having Yoichi refusing to join his brother and giving him moral speech like how meta powers shouldn’t be used for personal gain ( “異能”は私利私欲に使うべきじゃない ‘“Inō” wa shiri shiyoku ni tsukaubeki janai’) and how bad it is that All for One is doing this to fulfill his own personal desires… which is not really convincing to me because:

- in the BNHA superpowers are used for personal gain as Heroes get paid and it was Stain the one who complained against it but the story set up Stain as an extremist, not as someone who’s right…

- the problem isn’t really that All for One is trying to fulfill his own desires (there’s nothing wrong in fulfilling your desires!) but that his own desires are harmful to others…

…and can’t be convincing to All for One because it basically doesn’t answer to All for One’s needs, but just tell him what he can’t do. Yoichi doesn’t tell him ‘I care for you, I want to take care of you, if you were to help people and let them know you they would care for you and help you too so you don’t need to do this’ but ‘don’t do this because it’s morally bad’ even though people around them is using their superpowers for personal gain and acting to fulfill their own desires at their expense. It’s not a solid argument for an ordinary person, for someone who has the maturity level of a newborn like All for One is… well, totally ineffective.

We’ve the same problem when All for One calls there two people and turn them into his allies by HELPING THEM, giving them what they NEED to stop being in misery.

Yoichi’s “Don’t do it…! There’s no coming back” (ダメだ…!戻れなくなるぞ ‘Dame da…! Modorenaku naru zo’) is the opposite of persuasive as those people don’t want to come back, they don’t want to go back as they were, they were miserable as they were, like Lady Nagant they hope that the world All for One will bring will be better than the current one because the current one is terrible to them.

There’s no understanding of what moves others nor the presenting of other better options available.

Yoichi is not persuasive at all, with such words he can’t hope to change anyone’s mind… though I don’t know if it’s a flaw in Yoichi or a flaw in writing (as in Horikoshi believes Yoichi’s ‘noble’ words would move others but they don’t work on All for One because the guy is a bad guy and they don’t work on those people because they’re weak and so they fall prey of All for One).

Anyway, due to Yoichi’s inability to drive his point across (possibly because he is unable to see the needs of All for One and empathize with them so doesn’t know how to respond to them in a way that would move his brother), Yoichi is unable to positively influence his brother. He remains, unyieldingly, in his ‘noble’ position, but doesn’t get a single progress with his brother.

All for One also doesn’t make progresses. He’s vocal about how he loves Yoichi, but doesn’t actually know how to love people because, again, he’s as mature as a toddler. He jails Yoichi, forces a Quirk on him thinking this will help him see things his way, but, even though he actually gives a much better speech than Yoichi, he doesn’t understand him and why he’s refusing.

In a way the twins are similar, they both have a power fantasy and aren’t willing to compromise on it or to genuinely try to put themselves in each other shoes to REALLY meet each other middle way.

In theory it makes sense they can’t, due to their upbringing they weren’t taught to do so, to reach each other midway (which is something very different from what All for One is doing in chap 193), to compromise and find a way to be they both can accept.

Ultimately Yoichi escapes, supposedly planning to fight his brother and All for One ends up murdering him… and then regretting it immediately after because again, his outburst that cause Yoichi’s death is the one of a little child who doesn’t see the consequences of his actions.

All for One saves Yoichi’s hand, he chases what remains of Yoichi in form of his Quirk for YEARS, he hates Kudō who took Yoichi from him to the point he didn’t just murder Kudō but all the women and children who were close to him so as to make sure to end his bloodline, he feels empty inside without Yoichi.

It’s ironic because, even though I think Horikoshi’s idea is to have both brothers love each other, it’s actually only All for One the one who shows his love. Sure, it’s a VERY TWISTED, VERY SELFISH form of  love, in fact, if All for One’s interest for Tenko can be compared to the one of a predator who took a young child and manipulated him into doing his bidding, his love for Yoichi can be compared to the one of a selfish, jealous boyfriend who would kill his girlfriend should she look at someone else.

With this I’m not saying All for One’s love is incestuous, because it’s not represented as sexual (or even romantic) in nature. All for One’s warped love for Yoichi is likely meant to be the reflection of a childhood need, it’s twisted and selfish because it’s comparable to the one of an infant for his mother, not of an adult man for a potential partner.

Now… very likely since All for One is so psychologically damaged Yoichi’s love wouldn’t have managed to compensate and make All for One a normal person but the bad part in the story is that Yoichi is never shown giving him love.

I’m not saying he should have done it when All for One was trying for world domination but, in the flashbacks about their childhood, along with the scene in which he threw a can at him, there could have been a scene in which he… I don’t know, covered him while he was sleeping or cuddled close or bandaged his wounds or something. Instead it seems if All for One hadn’t caught him, Yoichi would have kept from him even the fact he was reading comics.

It’s, I fear, a problem in writing, possibly Horikishi assumed it wasn’t needed to show it because Yoichi is a good person so of course he would love his older brother, it’s just All for One who’s not catching it up and being content with what Yoichi is giving him, and maybe for Japanese readers it’s obvious but… as a western reader I can’t see it.

Yoichi’s love instead is hardly depicted. Yoichi is this paragon of virtue that wouldn’t yield to him but… he’s not shown giving him (brotherly) love, we’re only told he wouldn’t give up to him due to his wish to picture All for One held him gently when they were newborn. I’m confident he loved his brother because that’s what’s socially expected of him, so Horikoshi likely gave him this trait despite how Yoichi can’t forgive what All for One did but… it’s not really something the story digs into, in a way Nana shows more care for Tenko than Yoichi for his brother. Again, possibly is a narrative problem, All for One is meant to be the ultimate evil so Yoichi has given up on him, we’ve to be satisfied with him dying, if his brother were to weep for him we might feel bad… but still this doesn’t paint Yoichi as a brother who, at a certain point had loved All for One, we just have a box saying something along the line but no visual proof.

Yoichi will go and develop attachment for his saviors, Kudō and Bruce, and for Midoriya, who represents the perfect Hero Yoichi believed in (and, likely, for the past One for All users), where All for One can’t really attach to people, not even to Tomura whom he raises to be similar to him (he leads Tomura to kills his family by accident and rage, in the same way he has done with Yoichi, and All for One gives him their hands same as he was holding Yoichi’s hand, and raises him into his beliefs telling him it’s okay to kill people) and who loves and respect him. To All for One, Tomura is just his next body. For him his ‘friends’ are all ‘expendable’, which includes Machia and, likely, Garaki. None of them can replace Yoichi. None of them can provide him with the love and care he needs to satisfy his soul. There’s probably no way to provide him that, his idea if he were to have Yoichi back he would feel fulfilled is likely doomed to fail, he can’t fill the black hole there’s inside his soul, if he were to have Yoichi back he would delude himself he’s happy but he would still crave for more. It would never be enough because it would never be healthy.

Yoichi instead… doesn’t need him, he’s satisfied with dying as a Hero. Yoichi is focused on his goal and while his goal is a good one for humanity… it remains a power fantasy for Yoichi to feel fulfilled all the same… which, I fear, is a flaw in writing. Probably Yoichi needed to be developed more, instead than remaining a stereotypical representation of noble ideals, he needed someone to dig more in his humanity, in his flaws, so that he would feel more human and less Mary Sue… but, I guess, there was no space in the story for this. Yoichi, as well as the other All for One’s users, aren’t really that important in the story, Yoichi is more like a plot device, the one who creates One for All and the one who gives a motive to All for One to chase the One for All users, instead than a character.

It’s probably also due to this that his reunion with All for One at the end of the story feels weak.

All for One has learnt nothing, he’s still the same as he were at the start, but he’s also desperate to have Yoichi back, he begs Yoichi to shows himself to him… but Yoichi basically shrugs it off, he’s more interested in praising Midoriya for offering them a final salvation… and with them I’ve my doubts it includes himself and All for One but I think he includes himself and the One for All users (‘Kyūsai’ 救済 means “relief; aid; rescue; salvation; help”… but also “salvation from suffering based on Buddha's teachings” meaning they finally might stop being trapped in between life and death and move on) who get to punch and destroy All for One fulfilling their lifetime goal and then can finally stop being vestiges. Yoichi also claims he couldn’t guide his older brother but again we stumble in the old problem. His effort to guide him was hardly shown and there is little regret in his words. Where the Todoroki family tried to stop Touya but also was there to express their love for Touya, Yoichi just seems interested in stopping All for One, no love involved.

So in a way it’s ironic, differently from the other families I looked at, here there are no parents who damaged their kids or pushed their values on them… but just two siblings who failed to love and support each other in an healthy way. One focused on becoming a noble person, the other decayed into a terrible person and, while in a way everything can be traced down to blame society (they were left without a caretaker with the world being in chaos and anti Meta mobs hunting people) the story really doesn’t focus much on this.

In the end, Midoriya’s final words about All for One being just a lonely man (‘sabishi’ 寂し meaning “to feel lonely” “to miss someone”) seem to miss the target. Midoriya knows nothing about All for One and his real problem wasn’t just he was alone (as he’d been bad even when he had Yoichi) but that he was ‘unraised’. No one raised him, cared for him, taught him to be a better person from when he was an infant. This caused him to become unable to establish healthy bonds with others and, therefore, to develop a healthy way to live.

So yes… he’s lonely because he doesn’t have Yoichi or anyone else… but that wasn’t his problem. Society has abandoned him instead than teaching him to care and so, as a result, he never learnt to do it.

Of course, due to the framing, it can be that this wasn’t what Horikoshi aimed to represent, it could be that he just expected All for One to learn those things by himself like Yoichi did… even when it’s normally not how it works. But well, this is a story so he can go as unreal as he wants.

So well, I guess that’s all for the Shigaraki family, which, in hindsight, wasn’t really that developed and, if Horikoshi hadn’t written those flashback chapters, I guess I wouldn’t have tried writing about it.

I hope you’ll forgive me if this isn’t as deep as I usually write this sort of meta but, not only there was little material but part of the material was ‘too unreal’ to make a realistic psychological evaluation of the characters and their motives… or just too vague so I tried to do my best but I might as well have failed. Many apologies for it and thank you for having read this piece till now.

#boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #Shigaraki #Shigaraki Yoichi #Shigaraki Tomura #All for One #BNHA Ramblings

[keruimi]

Her Breaking Point

Pairing: Semi Eita

Warnings: Angst with a happy ending. Slight mention of self-harm

Note: It feels like he is very out of character but I think it really suits him the best. Not proofread. Hope you all enjoy it!

_____________________________

I am known for being the girlfriend of the popular student of the Academy.

Semi Eita.

A talented musician with flawless volleyball skills that makes anyone love him.

Including me...

Ever since we became a thing, I was the happiest among the two of us.

An average student that have no talent nor knowledge. I just simply did my best just to be accepted in the academy.

But I have no forte.

I treated him right. Treated him better than I did with myself.

I loved him more than who I am.

The never-ending judgement whenever I walk through the hallways. The doubting snickers from what I can really give to my boyfriend.

Everyone questioned our relationship.

The whispers were so cruel that even I questioned his feelings.

He have nothing to love on me.

I have a bad personality, I'm not good at anything.

I simply have no worth to be with him.

Yet I tried my best to not be possessive on every action he did. I wanted to trust him.

I don't want to suffocate him with my worries that it would make me look paranoid.

That I allowed him to talk to any woman who approached him. Never prevent him from receiving the gifts that were meant for him.

Until the new manager of the volleyball team arrived in his life.

A woman who simply at his worst times when his mind started to break down.

A woman who soothes his worries with the words he needed to hear.

Comforting words that should be stated by me.

His volleyball training became a stumbling block for us to have our alone time together.

Meaning more time with her.

Those thoughts never left my mind when I started to walk back home.

If it weren't for the strict coach. I could have at least be persistent.

Always remind him that I still exist. That our relationship still exists.

Yet a feeling that I am sharing my boyfriend so easily started to occupy my mind. That I don't care who he was with.

But it really hurt me.

When after those moments with her, he started to really become distant on me. When it feels like the relationship label was the one left for me to assure myself.

The more I watch from the sidelines, the more I notice how their relationship improves. While ours started to deteriorate.

Until it started to feel like there were no 'us' in their world.

He treated her better. While I watch in the sidelines because I couldn't force myself in.

It was not my place to be jealous or ask for something when she was there more than I did.

It made me feel so damn inferior.

Until the last straw truly threw every faith I held for our relationship.

When one day, waiting in the park as cloud started to gather in the sky. When minutes turned to hours.

Until I finally accepted the thought...

Of him forgetting our second anniversary.

I can hear my footsteps on the wet concrete floor as the rain poured hard on the place.

It was cold. Very cold.

I thought I should let it slide like usual. I let it slide because they focus on winning the spring interhigh preliminaries.

I gave him space for him to focus on.

But I realized that I was never his distraction.

When with the slight gap between the gym doors clearly displayed the bond between my boyfriend and their new manager.

They were laughing at the bench during their break time as they had talk with the team.

It made me realize, I was never part of it.

I was never part of his passion nor his life.

It was just a temporary feeling that he seemed to have forgotten long ago.

That I realize there's no use in our relationship anymore.

When he looked at her the same way he did to me when we both fell in love with each other.

I unknowingly let go of the umbrella I was holding as my biggest fear finally drowned me.

I made no effort to keep our relationship stable. I simply let him slip away from me because I don't want to be a possessive partner.

I don't want to let jealousy take over that would make him think I never trusted a man like him.

And I knew I shouldn't give him my entire faith.

I felt my feet step back little by little before I decided to turn my back on the gym.

With trembling hands and anger blooming in my chest. I throw my phone to the ground as I stomp on it many times to ease the uncomfortable feeling in my chest.

The jealousy, the hatred, the pain, and the heartbreak.

I don't know how to remove them from my chest.

I'm so jealous.

I thought if I had nothing to give, I could at least be understanding of him. I can make him feel free without restraining him from anything he wishes to put his mind to.

But it was damn difficult.

The rain, the heavy breaths, and clouded mind was the only thing I remember until I see red in my vision.

That brought me the present where a hand held the scissors that cut through the skin of my wrist.

Yet it didn't ease the pain I'm feeling.

It was simply impossible to forget the pain.

Forget everything in the world around me.

I heard knocking on the door of my dormitory as I heard his muffle voice which fueled the anger within me.

It hurts. Why did I make myself for granted.

"Y/n, answer me please"

The time when I finally started to hate him.

I felt the blood on my wrist trickled down on my hand as I slowly sat down on the floor of the living room.

I don't want him to enter my heart anymore.

Avoiding the man became easier, when I got sick the next day and that turned into a week until I'm finally suitable to attend classes again.

"Y/n? Are you really fine to attend class today?"

I heard my dormmate ask me as I pulled the sleeves of my uniform to hide the marks I gave to myself as I felt a tear escape from my eyes.

It's really tiring to hide everything.

"I'm fine"

I wipe the tear that manages to escape and find the courage to face the outside world again.

I conserve myself by finally starting to respect my space instead of tiring myself to make anyone like me.

When it is only temporary.

"Y/n, someone's looking for you" my classmate uttered when the last class was finally finished.

I looked on the window when I heard her words as the reflection of the mirror showed his silhouette approaching the table as I didn't bother looking back at him who settled my things on the side before he sat on my table, waiting for all of the students to leave before he started to talk to me.

"Y/n.."

"Let's break up" I decided to bring up the thing that prevented me from being who I was.

A relationship that should only be considered a label and title, not a sign of rights.

Yet amidst the anger, it felt like my heart ached when I uttered those words.

"Can we please not go there?" I heard him muttered yet I never bothered to focus my gaze on him.

"Why not? Its the best decision I can choose"

I felt his breath hitched from my words as I stood up from my seat to start packing my belongings so I can escape towards the comfort of my own bedroom.

"Y/n please, I didn't mean to forget about it. I was so busy and tired that it slipped from my mind but my presents and plans for our anniversary are already prepared at that time"

"So?" I snap at him as I finally turn to look at him.

"How does that change anything when your presence is not there? You wasted my time Semi" I watch how his eyes glossed from my words as I looked back on my bag to close its zipper before I felt his arms surrounded my body making me stay still in my position.

"I'm sorry please. It won't happen again. I'll do anything, just stay. I can't bear losing you" he cried out but only one word appeared on my mind.

"Liar..." I felt that word slip from my mouth as a whisper as I heard a sob leave his own lips.

"Y/n"

"Get off me" I removed his arms from before I took the straps of my bag when he kneeled in front of me that made me halt from my steps.

"Please, give me a chance. I'll do better. Just..." He bit his bottom lip as I felt my chest started to feel heavy that made my hand turn into a fist.

"You don't know how much I suffer when I choose to stay." I started off as I looked out to the window where the sun hid behind the clouds that block the light I need to calm my mind down.

"You don't know how worthless I felt when I chose to stay. Why don't you just ask your manager out?" I glanced at him down who looked up at me as he took a hold of my hand.

"I don't like her that way, Y/n. I promise"

"Promise and promises. But was never fulfilled." I look at him with glossy eyes.

"I never felt like I was yours to begin with. I never feel like I am your partner. Other than the first few months of our relationship before that time started to fade, what else did you give?" I snatched my hand away from his grip as I took deep breaths to calm myself down.

"You never tried giving me the time I needed because of practices. You never give boundaries to other women just because I stayed silent. Don't you know she became my biggest insecurity?" I stuttered out.

"Semi Eita, out of everyone. You are the person who made me feel like I'm not deserving of any love."

"Let those words sink in"

And I left the room in tears as I found my way back to my dorm.

I want him to leave. Leave and never look back like what he always did.

But it became difficult when he started to give his time to pursue me again.

Yet where will this end up again. That painful cycle will just repeat once again.

"Y/n, I brought you lunch since your dorm mate told me that you have been skipping lunch for weeks." His voice was so soft that I thought it was not the Semi Eita I once knew.

The hot headed, and competitive person I knew.

I slightly pushed away the bento before I continued working on the script for a grouping as I heard a sigh before he rested his head on the table.

"Y/n, it hurts"

It felt like those words made me want to stop from continuing my work as I felt the urge to just let out everything.

The pain I heard from his voice. The exhaustion was so evident that it feels possible that the moment he will stand up, he would lose consciousness.

"I badly miss you" his voice tremble followed by a weak sob that made me stop from typing on the keyboard.

We both feel like strangers to each other.

It felt like we couldn't see the person we once loved so much before.

"Stop it Semi. You're losing yourself"

I heard a low laugh before his hands reached my own ones.

"I really love you Y/n. I really do that why it hurts so badly" he stuttered out as I felt him tighten his grip on my hands.

"Is there really no other way to make things right?" He whispered as his grip loosened before he drew circles on my hands that began to remind me how much these small moments meant everything to me before.

But right now, it was something I never seek for anymore.

I got so tired that I'm not sure if that love I held from him is still here.

I don't know if it still existed.

Yet a part of me doesn't really want to lose him. A part of me questioned whether I acted too quickly.

Times when my mind became my own enemy just because of him.

Moments when I chose him over me.

"Semi-"

"I love you" he whispered that cut me off as I stared at his features that focused on the hand he was caressing.

Is it worth giving him another chance?

Just for the love that bloomed between the two of us before?

Those were the words that I thought to myself before. When that heartbreak and anger took over my heart until the love and happy memories I created with him saved the relationship I chose to leave.

I sighed in relief as I felt his thumb slowly apply the cream on my wrist as I leaned back my body on him who supported me from behind as my thoughts started to drift to the past.

I don't want to make him feel the feeling I felt before. The feeling of losing yourself because of love.

Because at that time, he was really so different from the man I loved.

The time where he would kneel in front of the dorm just to let him into my life once again.

The time he started to give me flowers, gifts that he usually never gave me. And even taking one flower from it so he knows when to buy me a new one.

The time when he never left my side no matter how much I wanted him to leave. The time he completely chooses me over the things he needs to finish.

It was those small things that made me want to give our love a second chance. A chance where we could be the better person for the other.

Where I can start to learn to speak for myself, say anything I wanted to say so the other would be aware of what could hurt me and what couldn't.

I was not that persistent that it became a miscommunication of feelings. Those miscommunications became a reason for small mistakes to be completely noticed.

It was a tiring memory but the warmth he radiates from his body as he soothes the wounds in my wrist.

He brought it up to his lips and left a small peck on it before giving a peck on my neck then to the corner of my lips making me smile and turn to look at him to give a quick kiss on his lips.

That break up became the reason for him to look after me better. Make the first move about everything if I started to hesitate on my words.

He finally made me content and secured.

A relationship that once hurt me. It became something we started to really cherish.

A bond that confirmed that...

He is mine and I am his

#haikyuu anime #haikyuu #angst with a happy ending #hq anime #hq #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyū!! #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu semi #hq semi #semi eita #semi eita x reader #eita semi #Spotify

[coraniaid]

Top five btvs headcannons?

Hmm. Lots of options to choose from, but let's go with:

Of all the deaths we see on the show that the characters are weirdly blase about and never talk about again (which is most of them) the one I feel should matter most is Kendra's. The writers very obviously don't care about Kendra at all (in a way that makes me pretty angry if I think about it for long) but, at the same, the only way I can reconcile my idea of Who Buffy Is As A Person with the events of the post-Becoming seasons is to try to persuade myself that Buffy is thinking about Kendra a lot of the time, and that this meaningfully affects her relationship with Faith in Season 3 (and, for that matter, with Dawn in Season 5 and the Potentials in Season 7 too). Because, yes, Faith represents a lot of Buffy's own supressed thoughts and desires, and yes, there are lots of parallels in Season 3 between Faith and Angel. But the very fact Faith exists as a Slayer at all should be enough to remind Buffy of the Slayer who was called after her and died before her. How could that not bleed into her relationship with Faith as a person? How can Buffy not look at Faith and be constantly thinking of the Slayer she failed to save? (According to the show's writers, the answer is: very, very easily.[1])

Sort of a meta-headcanon (a headcanon schema?), but: as far as possible, I like to believe that the Buffy characters who are meant to be friends might actually talk to each other sometimes. And when we don't see various personal conflicts get resolved on screen, yet everything seems back to normal later (especially between seasons), I tend to assume they just talked things through a bit off-camera. Probably Buffy and Xander had a conversation after Dead Man's Party which involved him offering a grovelling apology, which is why they're still on speaking terms later that season. Probably Joyce and Buffy actually talked a bit about her being the Slayer before Faith, Hope & Trick, so that Joyce's claim to have "tried to march in the Slayer Pride Parade isn't as absurd as it seems to be on the face of it". Probably Giles and Buffy talked about the Cruciamentum a bit after Helpless, which is why she's forgiven him by the time the next episode starts and she never brings his role up in it again. In particular, this is why I kind of hate the reveal in Season 7's Selfless that Xander never admitted to his Lie in Becoming, and that Buffy just spent the last five years thinking Willow decided to try to cast the spell to restore Angel's soul again without asking Buffy's permission or giving her any warning she was about to try it beyond "kick his ass".

There really isn't any evidence for it in canon and I suspect it's ultimately purely the invention of one of the early 2000s Fuffy writers, but I really like the popular fanfiction conceit that there is some sort of mystical connection between Slayers which (in a way that varies a little depending on the writer) gives them some additional awareness of the other Slayer's presence or emotional state. Not just because I'm enough of a sap to think that that's kind of romantic (although I am and I do), but because it's a nice way to explain away some slightly contrived bits of plotting in the show (all three Slayers have a way of finding each other very quickly when the plot requires it). In the same spirit, though with perhaps a little more evidence in canon, I like the idea that Buffy and Faith's shared dreams don't just happen when we see them, but have basically been going on ever since Faith arrived in Sunnydale (or at least since Faith's coma). Also, relatedly, I still like this headcanon I posted last month.

Sort of an anti-headcanon in some ways, but I refuse to accept that Buffy's memory of trying to tell her parents about vampires back in LA -- and being briefly institutionalized as a result -- (which was revealed/retconned in Season 6's Normal Again) is real. I think that (whatever the show claims) it had to have been a false memory implanted by the same demon that was giving her visions of still being there. Say what you like about whether or not the Joyce we see on the show was a good parent, but this is just blatant character assassination of the worst sort. It completely changes how we have to see Buffy's relationship with her mother and makes several scenes and outright plot points absurd (even if Joyce is the sort of monster who could forget about having her doctor locked up, even after learning that actually Buffy was always telling the truth, why would a Buffy who had been through that still keep a diary in the house she shares with her mother where she talked about the supernatural or prominently put up crucifixes in her house or make jokes about 'saving the world from vampires' when her mother asked her what she was thinking? why would she care about her mother's opinion of her at all? why would she wait until Season 2 to run away from home, and why would she ever come back?). Taken seriously, this just totally undermines a major part of Buffy's character and one of the most important relationships in her life. And for what? A stupid "maybe this is all a dream?" ending to the episode that means nothing and never goes anywhere. No, fuck that. Didn't happen and I simply refuse to believe it did. (I also strongly dislike the idea that it's a false memory caused by Dawn's presence; Dawn doesn't deserve to be blamed for that and her existence isn't meant to have had that big of an impact on the world.)

[1] Actually if I'm being totally honest I suspect that if you polled most of the show's writers with this question the answer you'd get back would be "who's Kendra?"

#btvs #thanks! #asks