#To me that's emotion-driven. Or...personal desire-driven? Not a bad thing at all but very different from Janeway & Tuvok who | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alienssstufff · 9 months

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Hello! Could you tell me more about Charlie being a heart player in your Homestuck AU? I'm really interested to see your thought process ahuu (P.S. LOVE YOUR ART IT'S ADORABLE!!! 💖💫)

Sure! I've already spoken about him HERE though consider this current ask as a deeper dive now that we know more about him.

SLIME AND THE HEART ASPECT

To define: the Heart aspect concerns itself with identity and emotional intuition, and how one views themselves. Ironically enough Heart concerns with the mind itself in contrast to its opposite the Mind that deals with rational thinking, and the persona that one consciously puts on for the world. Wwhwh which is why I like comparing q!Slime (heart-player) and q!Quackity (mind-player) so much because while they are in ways similar, their places of concern are very different.

"They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds." -- Hiveswap Extended Zodiac

About Slime he's a very emotionally driven person with everything he does he puts his all into it, and those motivations often originate from how he feels about the situation. Big examples being HIS love for his daughter, HIS resentment for his wife back during the trial, and while these motivations involve other people. If it weren't for any outside intervention, a lot of the decisions he makes are absolute, thinking if he were to do things like kill the other eggs out of love and sacrifice q!Mariana because he couldn't forgive what she did, not to mention send HIMSELF into eggxile because he hates himself - that these solutions were his only way out. His determination is both his strength and his flaw in the sense his thinking can be so clouded by the one emotion - and that's what makes him such a Heart-player.

"Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story." - Hiveswap Extended Zodiac

A/N: these next parts as go more in depth about Slime and relationships with other people with a dash of classpect lingo in there. The answer is above you, you do not need to read anything below ToT [ more undercut ]

Other than his emotions, identity (like Heart-players do) to Slime's character is also very important when thinking about him and the problems that stem from his self-image. It is the reason why Gegg exists to Slime as this separate entity - similar to what splinters are to Dirk Strider, Gegg is a division of Slime. I've spoken about Gegg and Slime's roles in under THIS thread, an extract:

Gegg is not only a coping mechanism but the part of him that still wishes to be loved- and when he is it’s addicting but it comes at a price for his honesty (and his literal voice). When he is Gegg there is a unique way he carries himself - he’s confident, ambitious, and a little silly the kind of thing that draws everyone near and he does so because he’s new. Charlie has messed up so many times he feels like a lost cause, and becoming Gegg exists as his second shot at life crime-free. Gegg is the part of Slime that embodies his desires, and Charlie is the part that represents what he believes he needs…. Or smth like that.

SLIME AND THE HEIR CLASS

(debunk) Alternatively Slime could also be a Prince of Heart (one that destroys the self) though based on peer review on that classpect's goals, I feel pinning Slime's goal as 'destroying heart' is a little too morbid for his story. Mind, you being a Prince of Heart isn't completely a BAD thing - I just don't feel destruction of heart is neither the right message or answer for Slime's problems. Furthermore, Slime does not ghost his opposing aspect (Mind) like the prince class usually does, Slime is NOT a rational thinker -- he is moved by the heart more than anything. A/N: 'ghosting' in classpect terms means to appear as the player's opposing aspect on surface level. Eg from the surface Dirk elicits Mind characteristics when in reality he is Heart. (LOL I just learnt what this was today)

Which leads to Slime's association as an Heir of Heart instead. This is the ability to invite the manipulation of the heart, and in other words quite literally become their aspect (yknow typical Slimecicle PC behaviour).

Slime being an Heir of Heart means he is easily swayed by his emotion as it changes constantly to new situations like from the Trial, to Eggxile, to the Elections and so on. He is also very empathetic to others and it is the way that he cares about them is what influences the choices he makes based on what HE thinks is best for the situation NOT because someone else told him to.

Notes from outside sources: "An Heir of Heart would have an amazingly well developed sense of compassion and empathy, and in fact may find it hard not to empathize with even the most evil and hurtful of people." -dahniwitchoflight This part connects especially to his friendship with Quackity (both of them), that while he was suspicious of his intentions throughout the debate Slime still sympathises with Quackity because he is his friend and the history they share goes too deep to abandon (psycho4psycho solidarity). Same goes for Slime and q!Foolish during the election debates. He doesn't hold any grudges for him when he understands that his apprehension stems from fear (something Slime has felt many times before).

"ASURA: The Heir of Heart is naturally protected by their splinters. The Heir’s splinters would exist as unruly spirit-like guardians who look out for them. In times of need the Heir can make physical manifestations of their splinters" - creative-classpect I absolutely love this take on splinters and heirs! Especially with Gegg in a way he to Slime acts as a guardian Slime will turn to him on the defensive. Honestly the ideal relationship between Slime and Gegg we might not ever see u_u

"The Heir of Heart is one who inspires change in the emotions and souls of others. They cause people’s emotional state to change for the better. Bringing out good emotions and allowing people to express their inner and true selves." - classpector

Looking more into Gegg's story during the Election arc we see examples of this power through his debates. His speeches inspiring change and consolation amongst other candidate runners to rally against the Federation. Yet at the same time these speeches can evoke fear, bringing out their true nature - like Foolish trying to shoot him, ElQuackity despite being a political rival instinctually diving to protect Gegg, influence on q!BBH to push through his paranoia and support Gegg while he was still in the running thus making that care package. Gegg was able to inspire those around him, and in the long run inspire Slime to one day love and accept every part of himself.

DAPDUO and Psicologoier Therapy Session: An interaction I think often about being the interaction between Slime and q!Roier (Melissa) during the therapy session with Quackity and how well it represents the difference in interactions between two Heart-players (Heir and Witch) and also how well it's a juxtaposition on where these two characters are in life despite having the same aspect. [You can read about q!Roier's classpect HERE]

QUACKITY: Well maybe her (Melissa) more than anybody can understand us. SLIME: Melissa, do you ever think feel like you wanna be someone else? MELISSA: No :3 SLIME: Do you ever wish that you could ever get a fresh start? MELISSA: No ^_^ SLIME: Do you ever think you could be sexy Peter Griffin? I do... MELISSA: Nope! x]c SLIME: Do you ever feel like everyone hates you - because everyone like tells you that they hate you no matter who you try to be it's always wrong? MELISSA: Hm actually! Nope! :D

On one hand for personas such as Melissa, Roier is very attuned to them and works alongside them - whilst with Slime and Gegg it was a constant struggle to maintain control and cooperation until the very end as there were characteristics in both Gegg and Slime that Slime was struggling to accept.

SLIME: WELL MY HOUSE WAS ALREADY ROBBED. I GOT ROBBED OF A DAUGHTER. SO NOW I TRY TO FIND MEANING IN ANYWAY I CAN AND RIGHT NOW THATS FUCKING GEGG. SO IM SORRY IF IM NOT THE SON YOU WANTED ME TO BE!

SLIME: Everyone hates me. Every single person on the server I tried I tried and they all hate Gegg.

Oh shit and also:

SLIME: But... What if there's a chance Gegg really could make a friend, and that takes it away? QUACKITY: Gegg has one friend already - Quackity. SLIME: Then Gegg... Will help the friend that loves Gegg.

Evidence that as a Heir of Heart Slime's emotions can be easily swayed. This comes up again after the QSMP Dinner with ElQuackity showing the difference between the motivations between someone of Heart and someone of Mind who recognises the vulnerability of Heart.

I'm sure there's more things to unpack with that session, not just for Slime but for Quackity and Roier as well and 100% recommend watching it for yourself. Grabbed these from the QuackitytooVODS channel and the session starts at the 1:01:50 mark.

Did an analysis on Dapduo in THIS ask which while doesn't reference classpects it alludes to their dynamic as Heart and Mind.

If you made it this far: congratulations. I'm so sorry.

#ask stufff #stufff rambles #(like a lot. be careful)#slimecicle #classpect #qsmp #qsmpblr #insanely long maybe I'll draw a picture for your troubles one day my bad XP #i love qSlime a lot ok

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onehundredandeleventropicalfish · 2 years

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so, anyone who knows me from previous blogs knows i’m an absolute music nerd who’s worked on both film score and musical theatre book before (and is still working in that vein, though i’m combining it with script writing these days)

and, god, i would be doing such an injustice to whoever is writing the soundtrack for the sandman if i didn’t talk about it at least once, because it’s one of the best tv scores i’ve ever heard, i wanna teach this as an example of how to do it right

i’ll be here for days if i try to cram all of it into one post, so i’m gonna focus on episode six, the sound of her wings, because that’s the one that really gripped me

(under the cut though to save dashboards bc this is still me and it will still get long)

so, to break this down, there’s a lot of different ways to add musical motifs (leitmotifs) into tv, but sandman is a show that does it (mostly) by character. in this episode we see a lot of dream’s motif, death’s motif, desire’s motif, and a slight appearance of johanna’s when the earlier constantine shows up (hob doesn’t have one, but i’m betting that’s deliberate). which makes sense for such a character driven show, especially in a story that’s got many anthology aspects - not much stays the same in this show but the characters, they are the through-line, and even the changing characters from episode to episode help give each episode its own musical feel

(people have said that sandman would work better with weekly episodes than binging, and this is part of why - they're very self contained, each episode a new vibe, and whether you notice it or not the soundtrack is contributing to that)

back to our episode 6 breakdown - so this is death’s motif, in its simplest form. and (barring a little of dream's when he's explaining why he's upset) this motif is the only motif we hear in the entire first half of the episode

the reason i’d wanna teach this is mostly that it’s not easy, developing a motif without making it stagnant. it’s actually the first thing we ever covered when i studied music composition, because they really wanted to get it into our heads - anyone can make up a melody, but our brains notice patterns. and the really effective patterns consist of, at most, four notes. in a sense, the notation i’ve added above is actually the motif four times, just phrased as a question, a pause, a question, and an answer. and developing a motif into a score means changing it enough to give it direction, but keeping it similar enough that it’s recognisable. and that’s a hard thing to do! but we spend a full 20 minutes with just this motif, and it not only never gets boring, it’s developed into such a beautiful moving score, going from this very simple theme that just exists in the background to a huge emotional orchestral piece

and in terms of what it's actually doing character wise, i wanna focus on those gaps in the original. bc those are some long pauses between each three note repetition. and i think that is a good representation of death, and her patience, this theme isn't trying to rush you into anything, it's just sitting there reliably for when its time comes.

but as we go through that development, those pauses start being filled. it's still just as much about death as ever, but we understand it more. and the development starts to take on a more hopeful character the more of these snapshots of people's lives that we see. and the music is telling us how dream is feeling, as he goes from not understanding death, to learning a lot more about her, to being overwhelmed by how easy it is to care about these random people in the last moments of their lives, and how death isn't a bad thing

it simplifies back down, near the end of their walk, because she's still the same person she was at the start of the episode, it's dream that's changed, but it doesn’t go entirely back to the motif we heard at the start. those gaps are now filled by gentle woodwinds, the understanding remains. and as soon as we say goodbye to death (specifically “i thank you, my sister”), we switch immediately to dream's motif

(technically, dream has two, but i associate one more with dream and one more with the dreaming, so i'm talking about the former)

now, we’ve heard this one a lot already, it's the title music for the show, here it is for the sheet music fans (you may notice it’s asymmetrical, the contrary bastard)

and we’re about to hear it even more - it's playing constantly from that goodbye right up until the start of the flashback (in more medieval sounding instrumentation than usual, alluding to the fact that hob is at the forefront of his mind), and we’ll hear the same thing coming back out of the flashback, too

now, within each flashback scene, there largely aren’t repeating motifs. and i mentioned this was probably deliberate - the music we hear in the background of each scene is fitting to the time period, and i think that in a way is hob’s musical identity. the thesis statement of sandman as a story is that you have to keep changing to keep living, and you have to keep living to keep changing, it’s why hob’s never ending immortality isn’t angsty like so many other immortals - he’s going to keep changing and keep living and it’s always going to be worth it. so his musical identity changes too, relative to wherever and whenever he happens to be living.

but then we get the moments where dream’s motif overtakes that -

1389, we actually get death’s first, when we first hear hob talking about how death is stupid and he’s not going to die, and it switches to dream’s with “why would any sensible creature crave an eternity of this?” (and back to death’s with “very well, little brother”, all three play off each other for the rest of that scene)

1489 is very much hob’s scene, there’s elements of dream’s motif in the arpeggios that pick up after “it’s fucking brilliant”, because now he’s caught dream’s interest, but it’s still largely the 15th century music, we only hear dream’s motif properly once he gets up to leave, and hob has to shout after him “you never told me who you are!”

in 1589, it starts to creep into the music (though still in hob’s native instruments), when shakespeare says “to give men dreams that would live on long after i’m dead”, and it overtakes it fully when dream leaves the table

the only moment in the flashback sequence which doesn’t have era appropriate music, is 1689, when hob is telling the story of how miserable the last 80 years have been. the music matches his mood, but it’s using modern digital instruments - this isn’t hob, not really. and while there’s no element of dream’s motif in this scene that i can spot, when we get “death is a mug’s game”, that’s when we switch back to the 17th century instruments, because this is the hob we know, the one who is always willing to live, no matter what

1789, dream’s motif when dream says “you need not have come to my defense”, through to the rest of that scene, this one stands out as a moment where he's not grabbing power, but sharing it

1889, when else - it comes in with “then i shall take my leave of you and prove you wrong”

1989, it’s so faint. it took me a minute to actually confirm that was dream’s motif - it doesn’t show up at all in the main scene, but when we switch to the view of dream in the cage, we hear a very hidden version of it, changed to the point of being almost unrecognisable

and then 2022. and we hear it in full again, but not just it in full. it gets an orchestral, uplifting development, both in tribute to the fact that this scene is very hopeful and heartwarming, but also explicitly mimicking the development death’s motif had when dream was watching her work, realising how much he cared about these random people, realising how much he therefore cared about people he’d known for much longer. her influence and her lesson is extremely present here, as she was the one who pushed him into returning

and as that scene ends, the music overlays with Desire by Bob Moses and Zhu, which is the cleverest part of the whole episode

because yes, the song is named desire, and has the word desire in its lyrics, telling you who this is, and yes, in an episode that has so far been full of medieval or orchestral music, the EDM is a sharp vibe twist, which fits with both desire’s character and the fact that their gallery in the show is styled to be very modern art/avant garde compared to dream's more renaissance style

but that’s not all it’s doing

because here’s the thing about desire. they absolutely have a motif in this show, that plays in the background every time they are on screen or talked about. but it’s not a melodic motif.

desire’s motif is the sound of a heartbeat

(often with accompanying ambient synths, but no melody)

and you don’t notice it when you’re just watching for the story, but every time you see desire on this show, there is a heartbeat playing in the background. and if you listen to this particular song, the dance beat is also mimicking a heartbeat, allowing it to blend in perfectly with desire’s existing motif, which is also playing in the background here

it’s just. brilliant

#like this was the most surface level analysis i could do! this is a rabbit hole that just keeps going i could be here for WEEKS #it's so wonderful #maybe i just gotta start doing a series of music breakdowns #next week: the corinthian and how he gets existing songs rather than his own score/motif #to represent the fact that he's constantly trying to mimic humanity but isn't #the sandman #1x06 #dream of the endless #death of the endless #hob gadling #desire of the endless #mine #sandman score analysis #music

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parulite · 3 months

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repost and rate your muse's traits out of 10 in each category !

COMPASSION: 9/10. Driven by a deep desire to alleviate others' suffering (when she isn't too wrapped up in her own head), Kiri chose the path and rites of a healer. Right now she mostly deals in physical ailments, but she hopes to build the skills of spiritual aid too.

BITTERNESS: 6/10. There's a general sense that she's carrying a lot of confusion and discontent. She feels estranged from her peers and even her family, and doesn't understand why she is just so different. Why it had to be her.

HAPPINESS: 4/10. Really going through it™ with the awkward teenage years, made much much worse by the re-arrival of the RDA and the destruction of so much of her home. She lost two dear friends; the shaman of songs who lived deep in the forest was killed by the inferno of the arriving ships, and in the months that followed the first ikran Kiri was bonded with was shot and killed by a SpecOps soldier (& that's really only the beginning...)

POLITENESS: 5/10. Generally knows her place and respects tradition and those with more experience than her, but isn't afraid to give a little lip and form her own opinions. Occasionally prone to nyeh nyeh nyeh and sticking her tongue out. Currently going through a little bit of a "everyone in my family is so embarassing" phase.

MORALITY: like... 8/10? I don't know. She has a set of beliefs she lives by and holds to them. But .. as things are changing around her, choices are getting harder, and she's pushed at these lines in the name of protecting and defending her loved ones. As well, I have.. a thought about that some of that... being able to hear and feel Eywa is driving her to make choices she would have shied from just a year ago. Which begs the questions of if they're her morals, or something else. Which sounds very scary to me.

PRIDE: 7/10. Working on lowish personal self esteem/ego, but has high value on her home, her family, her clan, her planet. Does not take kindly at all to insults and shaming; does not take these things silently, either. She will at least try to stand up for herself, but she's twice as active when standing up for/with others (especially her family. Especially Neteyam.)

HONESTY: 8/10. A little sneaking away here, a little keeps-things-to-herself there, but mostly honest about her choices. She aims to be reliable and trustworthy, someone people can come to, and in general just doesn't like to lie. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

BRAVERY: 5/10. There will be much worrying, and grumbling, and hesitance. Will notably step up much more directly when it comes to defending others, especially her siblings and, presumably, other/younger children. Otherwise, she'd much rather make peace and/or flee than fight.

RECKLESSNESS: 4/10. Fairly sensible on her own, a little absent minded sometimes but not particularly prone to risk taking. Also susceptible to following others (i.e. Lo'ak and Spider) into nonsense out of a reluctance to miss out, but it almost works out because then she can act as a voice of reason those situations and at least slow them down a little.

AMBITION: 3/10. Genuinely just wants to live a 'normal' life, a quiet life she feels she belongs to, in harmony with nature.

LOYALTY: 8/10. Bends her personal values for the sake of others.

LOVE: 6/10. Deeply emotional, but afraid to commit to it. She withholds herself a lot, often hiding behind a vague leave-me-alone attitude (that she, of course, secretly and silently wants people to ignore, and see her through it anyway. But only if they're going to really love her. You know how it is.)

SENSE OF FAMILY: 7/10. Very connected to her parents and siblings and loves them dearly. Also feels ostracized, being 'technically an orphan', and every now and then is afraid that she is not quite as much of her parents child as her siblings are, like there is somehow a difference between them and her that means she doesn't really count.

ATTRACTIVENESS: I...... Don't want to use a number in this instance? She doesn't strike me as having a high opinion of her own looks, but I don't think it's necessarily a point of focus for her. I do think, though, she's got a lot of features that could be considered more human-influenced, such as her four fingers and smaller nose, defined brows, and smaller canines. This probably effects others' opinions of her beauty, but I doubt (at least among her own clan) as much as she thinks it does.

AGILITY: 9/10. Mostly she likes to take her time and tends to sort of ...drift around, but when pressured or excited, she's light on her feet and difficult to catch. Notably, she's an incredibly quick climber, and excels at moving over both the forest floor and higher pathways among the branches. She's still learning & building her skillset but I imagine she's showing signs of this in the water, too.

#my name is hannah and i love to steal dash games and talk about my kids #echoing spirits 〈⋄〉 dash game.#a song for every moment 〈⋄〉 headcanons.

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funkymbtifiction · 2 years

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Enneagram help (3 or 6? I'm torn!)

Little ask about Taylor (sorry lol!): Do you think ESTP 3w2 361 is most likely for Taylor then? I also thought she could be a 6 because of her strong focus on loyalty but what you said made a lot of sense so now I think 3w2!

She seems generally likable and not polarizing in terms of her fans (not outrageous and inoffensive), which usually indicates a 369.

COVER (in true 3w2 fashion, even tho I am anon): As a 3 and 6 hybrid + high Fe type, I really resonated with the Anne Hathaway note ;) I am not in any way famous/probably do not wish to be as famous as Anne, but I think I would also mention splitting my pants on television if I were famous to be relatable and give people a moment of laughter and also give them a moment of thinking "Oh, she's just like me! She's very human and has errors and laughs/talks about them!"

6s want to be relatable, 3s do not. Famous 6s self-deprecate so people think "aww, she's just like me" in order to downplay being famous. Why? They want to fit in and be included and not alienated or to seem in any way pretentious. This is core 6 territory, not 3.

On the other hand, I put a bow on the things that are my *actual* flaws when talking about them (I find it easy to talk about my feelings to people, but very difficult to admit that I haven't been successful even though I don't think I'm any better than anyone, I'm just so scared that people might think I'm incompetent/not cool at all if I fail LOL) and I spin things around positively.

A 7 wing can also be this way, along with a 6ish desire to be taken seriously.

I've probably made too many image management mistakes to be a 3 but I am always thinking about social presentation and my biggest fear is being seen as a "nerd" or someone who's not socially adept and not good with people. I know I am, but I am so scared of making public mistakes.

Fear drives the head types, thus a lot of thinking and strategizing and planning and avoidance of making mistakes through anticipation (if X happens, I should probably do Y to save face). But you are an EFJ, so of course you are thinking about how you are coming across. Fe-doms dial into their audience and to other people and want to be liked and seen a certain way, regardless of their Enneagram type.

My parents and friends would say I'm a 3 for sure, but I think I have also been a 6w7 in a lot of situations. Sometimes I feel like whatever enneagram is best for the situation, I become. Whenever I settle on an enneagram type, I kind of unconsciously emulate it but I have always known I'm an EFJ and have been one so I have a lot of difficulty detaching from my emotions and relational situations that require me to be emotionally "there" so I don't relate to 3 in that way.

What your friends see is different from what you feel inside, and the motivations that lie behind your behaviors. A 6 would think about not wanting to seem arrogant; a 3 would see arrogance as part of self-esteem, because they know they do things well enough to deserve the right to be arrogant. They are competency-driven (I have to be the best at this; I have to give the best interview; job performance; be the best wife/husband/lover/friend; I need to wear this hat today!). And yes, 3s are somewhat distant from emotions and can fear closeness because that person might peel away their layers and find... nothing. And that idea of being nothing inside scares them; they don't know what defines them, outside their accomplishments. If I didn't have all of these things to offer you (fame, success, money, achievement, blue ribbons)... would you still love me??

I think I'm more dependent stance than assertive stance -- I like leadership but I am too worried about looking bad to take risks that an assertive stance type probably would, such as starting a new unpredictable trend that COULD be cool, or running for student body president because what if people don't like my speech and can't connect to me/don't want my leadership? What if I'm "cringe"? TLDR: It's easy to joke about little mistakes or even typical ones, but it's hard to open up about other failures, especially in the social realm, if I'm with people who i haven't really given my "true self" to? I think I might be a 3 but also could be a 6.

My guess is a core 6w7. A 3 is not this open about their fears of failure in a public forum where they know people are going to read whatever you wrote / what I respond to it, and make judgments about them. The core 3s I know (yes, even with loud 6 fixes) are constantly modifying their image when talking to me, making sure that I know they are hard-working and successful or desirable in some way... and if I see the 6 second-guessing and freaking out, they quickly cover it up with enforced self-confidence so my impression of them is not "scared" or "self-doubting." The image management is constant with them and it's perceptible to others, but you are very open and honest with me about your fears and failures and wanting to be seen as relatable, even if you hunger to be extraordinary.

#question #enneagram #enneagram 6

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lubdubsworld · 3 years

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物の哀れ ( ‘the sadness of things’.)

Characters : Alpha! Jungkook x Omega ! OC.

Genre : Arranged Marriage / Temporary contractual Marriage.

Warnings : Non- Con/ Extremely Dubious Consent . High functioning alcoholism. Genre related consent issues. Implied suicidal thoughts.

Summary : A recently widowed Jungkook agrees to a contract marriage to keep his company afloat. His grief overwhelms him and it is hard to look at his new wife as anything other than an intruder .

[ Author’s Note : 物の哀れ ~ Mono no aware can be translated as ‘the sadness of things’. It comes from the words 物 (mono – thing) and 哀れ (aware – poignancy or pathos). The ‘sadness’ in question comes from an awareness of the transience of things, as taught by Zen Buddhism. When we view something exceptionally beautiful, we might feel sad because we know it won’t stay so beautiful forever – but appreciation only heightens the pleasure we take in the beautiful thing in that moment. ]

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3

“Yoongi left a bunch of painkillers for you. He said you can take up to three per day.” Jin said calmly , carefully slipping the sleeves of my t shirt over my wrist as i held my arms out for him. He slipped the shirt over my head gently but his arms hit my shoulders, jostling me. I swallowed the whimper of pain that shot through me at the movement. Mina was now awake, happily wiggling around on her rocker.

It was a little past seven in the evening and Jungkook wasn’t due to arrive for another hour .

“I could sleep on a bed of rusty nails right now. I’m so tired and i don’t know why. “ I whispered, staying still as he carefully drew the fabric down over my ribs, before stepping back.

“I’ll sleep in the nursery with her. You should take the bed. You’re in no shape to be up and taking care of her when she wakes up. Jungkook’s asked me to stay here during the day because I’m not going to be performing for a couple months anyway and I’ve been losing my mind, rattling around that huge ass mansion all by myself. ”

The phone rang, startling both of us.

I groaned before moving to get up but Jin oppa held a hand up.

“Stay in bed. I’ll go see who it is.”

I watched him disappear out of the room, settling back against the pillows and reaching for the ice pack in the small cooler by the bed. I had to ice my ribs every hour or so and while it didn’t seem to be helping much, I definitely appreciated the temporary numbness it offered.

Jungkook’s guilt had driven a new wedge between us and he hadn’t so much as looked at me in three days.

I wasn’t sure entirely if this was a good or bad thing. The fact that he seemed to be considering that he had to get his emotions under control to stop hurting the people around him was a welcome change. But the idea of going back to being ignored and treated like furniture , wasn’t really all that appealing.

“Jungkook’s parents are on the way.” Jin’s voice broke through my reverie and i jumped.

I resisted the urge to sob out loud .

Mr and Mrs. Jeon were on the opposite side of the grief spectrum and just as annoying.

Where Sooah’s parents were intent on making Jungkook remember their daughter as often as possible, Jungkook’s parents were intent on making him forget her.

The only thing the two of them had in common was a burning hatred for me.

Jungkook’s parents had wanted him to quit the company and sell it when it went into loss but Jungkook had categorically refused because that would result in all of his employees getting laid off, and back then Jungkook had been nothing if not ridiculously compassionate. Jungkook’s parents firmly believed that if it hadn’t been for me, their son would be back in Busan, letting them raise their granddaughter.

“Great, that’s great. Did you tell them their son is not around?” I grimaced. I’d only met them three times in total and the last time was in the hospital two months ago when Jungkook had crashed in the middle of a board meeting, weeks of starving and dehydration catching up to him. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, getting cursed out in front of the doctors and nurses and it probably won’t be any fun in the privacy of my home either.

Jin gave me a sympathetic smile.

“He’s already told them he’s on the way. I’m going to take Mina out on a walk. Give you guys some privacy. Shoot me a text when they leave.” he said gently.

“Can’t I come with?” I begged and he laughed.

“That would be a bad idea, even if it weren’t for the cracked rib. Just relax. Smile and nod and let them spew whatever nonsense they want and then they’ll leave. ”

I opened my mouth to tell him how many flaws there were in his plan when the doorbell rang.

“And that’s my cue. Text me, yeah?” Jin moved to pick Mina up from the rocker before reaching for the baby carrier on the table.

I debated the pros and cons of staying in bed and finally decided against it, gently throwing my legs off the edge and raising myself up to a sitting position. I heard vague voices by the front door, Jin’s sweet tones mingling with Jungkook’s slightly gruffer ones.

I heard the door close and the stillness of the apartment was as oppressing as ever. I could hear him quite clearly though. The clink of the keys as they hit the bowl, the small click of the door as he locked it.

i could imagine him, exhausted from the day’s work, briefcase held in one hand while the other tugged on the knot of his tie.

I imagined for a second, what it must have been like for him with Sooah. She was a bright , incredibly cheerful person. Everyone kind of faded into the background when she was around. Sooah had always been the first to smile at a stranger, the first to laugh even if the joke wasn’t funny. The first one to stand up to help someone in need.

I swallowed, clutching the sheets to ground myself.

I guessed that she must’ve always rushed to greet him at the door. I could imagine him wrapping both arms around her waist, drawing her into a hug or even a kiss.

How was your day, Kookie? (I’d heard her call him that, once when they had been at my father’s house for a charity dinner. )

I wondered if perhaps the very sight of her would have taken away all of the day’s exhaustion from him. Perhaps, he would forget all the ways his company had been failing back then at the sight of her beautiful laughing face. Perhaps losing his company hadn’t been as terrifying as losing his job.

And perhaps once he lost her, he just couldn’t bear the thought of losing his life’s work too. And so he’d agreed to meet my father’s demands.

My fingers began trembling a bit .

I could imagine her moving around the house, pregnant and glowing, laughing as he nuzzled into the curve of her belly. Had he perhaps pressed his lips to her skin, whispered sweet endearments to his daughter through the fabric of his wife’s clothes? Had he perhaps loved Mina, deeply? WAs it just his grief that made it hard to be near his wife. Or was it perhaps me? Me holding the baby that should have been in his beautiful wife’s arms.

The wife he had been so madly, deeply in love with.

Love, I thought vacantly.

It wasn’t something I had ever felt, for anyone until I’d began caring for Mina.

But what Jungkook had with his wife was something different wasn’t it?

The love a man had for a woman. Laced with desire, longing and passion. A love that made you put their happiness over your own.

Love like that had never been in the cards for me.

Ever

I was an Omega. Rare and hated and known for being selfish and greedy. People didn’t love my kind. They avoided me. They always assumed I would take advantage of them. My peers growing up had treated me with so much contempt.

The girls would whisper how I was trying to seduce their boyfriends. The boys would call me a tease, even when I stayed far away and did nothing to attract their attention. I’d gotten used to it. It didn’t bother me. it was the way of the world for me. Ad it wasn’t like I could honestly deny some of it.

I looked at handsome alphas and wanted them. I wanted to be held and cherished. To be bought pretty things and cared for. It had taken decades for me to beat that part of mine into submission. To remind myself that if I ever let that part of me out, it would destroy me.

But love? Being in love with someone?

I didn’t know what that could have been like for Jungkook.

Or maybe I had but I couldn’t recognize it because I’d never received it myself. Whatever the cause, it was for me, a fairytale. It was hard to imagine people loving each other so much, to the extent that they would die for each other. ( Jungkook’s words still hung in the back of my mind : that he had wanted to follow her even in death )

Jungkook was right.

I could never know what his loss was like.

Because I would never know what he had lost.

It felt a little like being dipped in an ice cold lake in the middle of winter. My skin broke out in shivers, hair standing on end and I felt my throat go dry so swiftly. I’d never wanted to run away so much. I wrapped a hand sound myself, scooting back on the bed again. I reached for the blanket, wanting to pull it over my head and curl into a ball.

Shut out the world and all the things that didn’t make sense.

“Are you alright?” Jungkook’s voice broke through the haze in my head and I swallowed. He had an alpha’s voice and my body responded even if my mind resisted. It didn’t happen all the time. Jungkook couldn’t control me. But sometimes when I was feeling vulnerable, instincts took over . I was already dropping the blanket and smiling softly.

“Mina’s out for a walk.” I croaked out, surprised at how awful my voice sounded.

I felt the press of something against my fingers and I blinked, staring at the glass of water Jungkook was pressing into my hand.

“Don’t worry, I called them and told them not to come over.” He said quietly , watching me drink with still trembling fingers.

I swallowed and stared at him.

“I... Thank you. “ I said fervently, feeling a few knots come undone in my gut. I couldn’t really stand up to Jungkook’s parents the way I did with Sooah’s parents. Because Jungkook loved them deeply and hurting them would be the same as hurting him.

“There’s a party in a couple of days. It’s my birthday. I’m turning 34. Yugyeom’s organizing the whole thing, so I’m going to hire a babysitter for Mina, because Jin hyung will be there too and you need help caring for her anyway. You can stay home and rest. ” he said .

I scoffed.

“I’m going to come with you.” I said firmly.

Jungkook frowned.

“What?”

I glared at him.

“I’m not letting you go to a party organized by your shit for brains friend, Jungkook. You’ll probably end up getting drunk out of your mind and killing someone and I’m not going to hang around to clean that up. I’m coming to that party and I’m making sure you don’t have more than one drink. “

Jungkook’s frown deepened into a scowl.

Did you ever look at your wife , like this? With so much loathing? I thought stupidly. Or did she only ever get to see the sweet and wonderful side of you? Did she ever annoy you the way i seem to every second of the damn day ? Did you hate certain things about her too? Or was she so perfect that you could only feel love ?

“ I can take care of myself. Its my birthday , I can do whatever the fuck I want.“ He snapped.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“Not unless you’re a five year old kid in the sandpit, which you’re not. You’re an adult and when you make stupid decisions as an adult, very real people end up paying for it. You’re old enough to know this Jungkook and for once, just listen to me. You can drink, fine. But I’m going to be there and if I see that you’re getting drunk, I’m going to bring you home. You either agree or I’m going to call Yoongi oppa .”

That made him pause.

“Fine. Fuck you.” He snapped, turning on his heel and stalking out of the room. A few seconds later I heard the door to the shower slam shut.

I wanted to follow him and shake some sense into him but before I could decide if it was worth jostling my body, when another sharp pain lanced through my ribs.

Oh great.

I took deep breaths the way Yoongi had taught me. Apparently, pneumonia was a thing that could happen, so i had to breath carefully to reduce the risk of that happening.

The birthday party organized by Yugyeom was going to be a whole entire migraine inducing disaster. I could already feel the headache come on. It still amazed me that Jungkook was friends with him and his cronies.

Yugyeom and his friends were the typical; brain dead alphas who thought themselves superior to all other ranks. Even worse, they viewed omegas as objects: fucktoys to be more precise and I bristled when i remembered the way he had always stared at me.

Well, if he stepped anywhere near me, I would kick him in the teeth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Jungkook’s mother turned up at home the next day, I wasn’t entirely surprised. I wasn’t surprised but it didn’t make things any more pleasant.

“We’re willing to take Mina for a couple of days if you would both need time to prepare for the party. This is the first big event Jungkook’s holding after Sooah’s passing and we want it to be perfect. As his wife, i hope you’ll do your part.”

Mrs Jeon’s pinched face did nothing for my already frayed temper.

“There’s not much i can do with a cracked rib, mother.” I said politely. It stung, having to call this bitter, cruel woman mother but then, such was life. It was late afternoon and Jungkook was probably sitting in the comfort of his air conditioned office, being flattered and doted on by his smitten secretary while I sat here entertaining his vicious mother.

“Nonsense, you’ve probably just scratched it. I know how you omegas like to exaggerate. “ she waved off my injury easily. “ There are so many details that need to be decided on and its unfair to drop all of those responsibilities on poor yugyeom’s head. Why don’t you go with him and help out a bit?”

The idea of going anywhere with Kim Yugeom was easily the most repugnant thing to me.

“I’m sure he knows Jungkook much better than I do. If i interfered, I’d only be getting in his way.” I said politely.

Mrs. Jeon hummed.

“Well, its good that he’s agreed to the party at least. That woman never let him meet with Yugyeom or his friends when she was around.”

That woman being Jungkook’s late wife.

I felt a sudden fondness for her. Clearly she had also recognized Yugyeom for the absolute pig that he was and kept her husband away from his rotten influence . But unlike with her, Jungkook didn’t actually care about me. So I had no way of stopping him from meeting the idiots. Yugyeom’s family was rich and reputed and it was clear that the Jeons wanted the friendship and the connection. Why else would they keep pushing for it so much?

“Is there any particular reason you’re here, mother?” I said finally, after hearing her babble on and on about caterers and invitations and what not.

“I was hoping to meet Mina...why isn’t she here?”

“I’m not able to care for her well, what with the rib. The doctor has advised me to rest so Jin oppa takes care of her during the day. Jungkook picks her back up on his way back from office. I can send her over to your place with him this weekend.”

“That would be fine i suppose. Have you spoken to the decorators about changing the portraits put up in the house?”

I blinked.

“Sorry?”

“The penthouse, we’ve got it back now right? why don’t you move there. We have a cook and a housekeeper .”]

“this is closer to Jungkook’s office.” I had no idea where the penthouse was and could only hope it was farther way.

Mrs. Jeon frowned.

“This apartment is too small. Not to mention, you still have Sooah’s photos everywhere in this place. Surely that’s not healthy. Get rid of them and put up pictures of you and Jungkook.”

Jungkook’s parents didn’t know that our marriage had an expiry date. i wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad thing. But they saw me as nothing more than a way to get rid of Sooah from the deepest recesses of Jungkook’s mind.

“I’m sure, with time...Jungkook can make that decision by himself. When he’s ready for it.” I said gently, beginning the fresh throb of pain near my temple.

“Nonsense, Heejin. Men won’t ever move on until you force them. Have you considered getting pregnant?”

I jumped about a foot into the air.

“I...what.” I croaked out.

“You need a child too. He mated you. He owes you that. I’m going to tell him that he better do his duty by you.” She said firmly.

“Please don’t.” I shouted, stunned out of my mind. Was this woman even sane?

“Why not?” She frowned looking at me like i was the one being unreasonable.

Why not? Because its barely been four months since he lost his wife of seven years to childbirth. Surely, you don’t think the remedy to that is to have him go through it all over again.

“ Mina is still small, mother. I’m sure we can wait a while. Maybe after she’s one or two.”

Jungkook would probably move on by then. Of course he would. Grief was overwhelming but it was also finite. It did get smaller over time. Easier to cope with. Jungkook would eventually be able to navigate his life around his grief. He would learn to make new connections and who was to say one of those wouldn’t be a compatible match?

So two years from now, there was no reason Jungkook shouldn’t meet another lovely woman, a beta maybe and eventually expand his family. Of course i would be nowhere in the picture at the time. But that was fine.

I remembered something I’d read somewhere, a while back.

If two people are like ships that pass in the night, they meet by chance for a short time , then do not see each other ever again.

Like ships passing by each other in the night, I reminded myself. That's what Jungkook and I were.

“Well, if you think that’s wise.... fine. But now that Jungkook’s doing well, why don’t you entertain people more often? You haven’t had a dinner party here yet, have you?”

And so it went on, over an over for a whole two hours until I was wrung out from sheer exhaustion, my head throbbing and nails having dug half moon indents into my palms from fisting my hands too hard.

By the time i finally closed the door on her face, I couldn’t help but sag against the door, sinking to the floor in a heap, cracked rib be damned.

I glanced up at the solo portrait on the wall. The one my mother in law had wanted gone.

“She must’ve really hated you, huh?” I said casually pulling myself up to my feet and moving to the dining space to stare at her face more closely.

She was dressed in her wedding gown, a fitted mermaid dress with lace and satin detailing. She had a bouquet of white lilies in one hand, elbows bent and the blooms resting on her shoulder while her other hand curved around her slender waist.

Beautiful was an understatement, I thought vacantly.

“ You look like you didn’t put up with people’s bullshit. That’s cool I guess.” I smiled a little. “ You know in another world, we may have been friends.”

I bit my lips.

“Yugyeom was shitty to you too huh? He seems the type. i’m glad you kept Jungkook away from him. I wish you’d somehow help get him away again. He doesn’t listen to me. Thinks I’m trying to control him or something. ”

It was ridiculous. What was i doing.. Why was i talking to a framed picture on the wall. God.

But now that I’d started, I couldn’t quite stop.

“About what happened with Jungkook... I don’t want you to think i was seducing him or anything. And when i said that I hated him calling your name when we... well you know why i said it right? It wasn’t anything personal...i was just pissed. I don’t enjoy the sex by the way... I don’t think he does either but he’s an alpha and you know how it is…they need that release or they kind of lose their mind .. So trust me we both hate the principle of it.... but at least he cums and well I don’t. He’s never made me cum. That should say something about how we feel about each other.......”

“Uh.. Should I come back later?” The voice near the doorway was so unexpected my heart jumped right to my throat and I screamed, stumbling a bit to the side.

Min Yoongi stood framed by the door, one hand wrapped around a bouquet of flowers and the other clutching his bag and stethoscope. He still had his white coat on over his shirt and slacks, hair mussed like he’d run his finger through it.

It took me a second to remember that Yoongi had a key to the house.

Another second to remember exactly what I’d been doing when he came inside.

Good God.

Had he heard the part where I’d talked about Jungkook not making me cum? Surely not? Oh Please no.

“Jungkook told me to check on you. That you couldn’t sleep last night? Are you in a lot of pain?”

Jungkook and I had shared the bed in his room last night and I had apparently, tossed and turned and whimpered through the night in pain. Or so Jungkook claimed.

“Uh... I’m not sure. He said so... so..”

“you guys sleep together right?” Yoongi asked casually, taking his coat off. I stared at the way the material of the shirt strained over his shoulders, my throat just a little dry.

Yoongi smelled so ridiculously good. He was a doctor and he was so handsome and kind to me. The attraction would have been there even if i had been a beta but as an omega, the urge to just fling myself at him and beg him to make me his, it was kind of horrifying.

Tamping down that part of me, I gave him a casual shrug, heart still pounding.

“Yeah. There’s just two bedrooms here and one is Mina’s nursery. So ...” I finished awkwardly, watching him move around and place his bag on the table before unwinding the stethoscope, placing it around his collar.

He gave me a small smile.

“I’ll just take a quick look and check how your breathing sounds. that okay?” He asked gently.

“Oh... sure. You need me to take my shirt off?” I asked curiously.

He gave me a quick little smirk.

“Not for medical reasons no.” He winked.

I felt blood rush to my face along with guilt. What was I doing? This was Jungkook’s best friend!! His hyung. Someone he trusted and I was his....

His what?

Nothing. I was Jungkook’s nothing. When was the last time someone had flirted with me . Someone who wasn’t a grade A creep.

Yoongi moved closer, sitting down on the kitchen stool and beckoned me to come stand between his thighs. i moved, achingly aware of how much more potent his scent was up close. He looked up at me through sooty black lashes, a small smirk on his lips, feline eyes warm and open .

“Put your hands on my shoulders, yeah?” He prompted.

I hesitated, fingers shaking just a little before reaching out to rest on this shirt. I kept the touch feather light , the softness of his shirt the only thing I could feel.

He hummed and bending down to lightly tug the hem of my shirt out of the waistline of my jeans. I bit my lips to stop myself from squirming.

He glanced up , eyes meeting mine and holding my gaze.

“You good?”

“Uhuhbuh.” I stuttered and he grinned wider, pulling the fabric up to the curve of my breasts. He lightly ran his finger tips over the bruised skin , humming thoughtfully .

“You’ll be fine in a few weeks. Hang on.” He pulled back, plugging the steth in his hear before holding the other end up to my chest. He pressed it against my skin, just before the underwire of my bra and it was unexpectedly cold .

I jumped, fingers curling on his shoulder and squeezing down.

“Hey.. what’s wrong?” Yoongi whispered, hands reaching for my waist, gently holding me steady and I flushed. He looked genuinely worried , lips turned down and brows furrowed and i felt absolutely stupid.

“Sorry. Sorry.... It’s nothing.. i just.. it’s a little cold.” I laughed nervously and his gaze softened.

One hand still curved around my waist, he brought the diaphragm up to his mouth, holding my gaze as he gently breathed warm air all over it.

My throat went instantly dry and i had to swallow. He pressed it against my chest again and this time it was so much warmer. .

“Better?” He prompted and i nodded, guilt and discomfort churning in my stomach. What was i doing? I had no business indulging him. i had no business indulging any man. Ever.

I looked away, pulling my hands up off his shoulder, pushing his hand off my hip as well . He didn’t say anything his shoulders stiffened at the subtle rejection.

A mantle of awkward tension settled over us, a small thundercloud of regret and that threatened to rain misery all over us. I wanted to kick myself. He was older than Jungkook by four years. Thirty eight years old.

Did he have a girlfriend? Oh god, what if he was martried?

Nausea threatened.

“Your breathing sounds fine. Are you practicing those breathing exercises , I taught you?” He asked casually and I nodded . I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

“Hey...” He said gently and I flinched.

“I’m sorry.” I blurted out. “ I didn’t mean to lead you on or tease you in any way and I’m sorry if i came on to you ...”

“What?! Heejin, stop. That’s bullshit. You never did any such thing. This was all me.” He said firmly.

I stared at him.

“I know you’re married but... your marriage, its going to end right? Eventually.”

I made to step back but he grabbed my waist again, this time a few inches over my jean and his fingers on the bare skin of my midriff made me want to melt. He had long slender fingers, a surgeons hands, and the press of it on my skin felt so foreign and gentle and different and good.

“We don’t have to do anything. I just... I thought we could get to know each other. Over coffee or dinner.”

I wanted to sob at the unfairness of it all.

Because Yoongi was beautiful and handsome and so good and so much more than I could ever even dream of, but he was and would always be so intricately woven with Jungkook and with Jungkook’s life. And I couldn’t imagine anything more messy than sticking around and watching Jungkook and his daughter forget me and move on.

“It’s.... probably a terrible idea. “ I said roughly, shaking my head. “ Its the kind of idea that would never end well.”

“Are you sure? Because unlike Jungkook, i could probably make you cum.” He winked and I felt my face flame red.

“Oh God...” I hissed, stumbling back. This time he let me move away, merely chuckling and reaching for his coat and bag .

“I won’t bother you again. But the offer’s always open, yeah?” He smiled again. “ You need me to send over more pain meds?”

I shook my head mutely, begging him to just leave already.

He nodded and held his hand up in a casual wave before walking out of the door. I collapsed on the stool and dropped my head into my arms , groaning.

What had i gotten myself into.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn’t actually see Jungkook for a couple of days. The meds knocked me out and he worked overtime, only arriving after I’d slept off and leaving before i woke up. Jin brought Mina around everyday and there was something absolutely exhilarating about watching her clutch at her little teething toys and rattles, gummy smile peeking out every few minutes.

On a whim, i told Jin what had happened with Yoongi and much to my surprise he actually laughed.

“About time . He’s been pining for what three years now?”

I gaped at him, completely thrown.

“I..he.. what.” I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what I had heard.

“He saw you at that art exhibition you put up in the Hyatt . By the way, don’t you paint anymore?”

I flushed.

I had no proper response to that. What could i say? That my painting had just been yet another way to control me, only appreciated by father when he could use it to make more money. And that part of my marriage contract included that I wouldn’t paint or make any money off my art for the duration that I stayed with Jungkook.

It was just yet another way my father reminded me that he controlled him. I didn’t fight him because he would win anyway. And the only thing he loved more than controlling people was winning battles that were always rigged in his favor. i wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. I would soldier through this awful marriage and at the end of it , i would disappear without a trace.

I shook my head vaguely and Jin hummed.

“Yoongi doesn’t understand art but he hung around the entire nine hours , morning to night . Three whole days of him just pretending to look at the artwork while secretly making moon eyes at you.”

I could only stare in sheer disbelief.

“i... i never knew.”

“How could you? Yoongi’s idea of courting is pretending he doesn’t exist and fading into the background. “ Jin rolled his eyes. “ He tried approaching your father to officially court you but your old man shut that down rather brutally.”

I swallowed .

“I... I’m sorry.” i said feeling foolish. Three years...what? I couldn’t think beyond the shock of the information.

“Does Jungkook know?” I asked , scared.

Jin shook his head.

“Like I said Yoongi never made it known . He was afraid it would make life difficult for you. He didn’t want any rumors around because everyone knew your father was looking to offer you to someone rich and young. Yoongi was what , fifteen years older? That’s quite a difference.”

“Thirty eight isn’t old.” I said sharply and Jin’s brow went up.

“Oh?” He questioned teasingly and I flushed.

“Jungkook is eleven years older. What’s another four more years?” I shrugged.

“You’re interested then.” Jin said thoughtfully. I recoiled, shaking my head quickly.

“I...what? No. No I’m not. “

“Why not? If it isn’t the age, then there’s no reason to say no. Yoongi is handsome , settled and a great guy all around and besides, your time with Jungkook is finite right?”

“I... I won’t cheat on him.” I said firmly. “ i can’t... I... besides, Jungkook and I... we’re... we have sex.” My ears turned red, “ I can’t do that with two guys... I’m not like that. “

Jin nodded.

“Its alright.. Heejinah ...I’m sorry if i pressured you or anything. You don’t have to do anything. I know you have a lot on your plate right now. Yoongi probably got carried away . More than likely he’s going to panic and avoid you for a year just to recover.” He laughed and I smiled reluctantly.

“He’s nice I don’t want to hurt him. “ I said softly.

“ Sometimes that’s just inevitable . People get hurt no matter what we choose.” Jin gave me a sad little smile. “ Jungkook is just as nice a gy as Yoongi. If not better. He’s just...not in the right headspace to show that side of himself to you. I wish you’d known him before Sooah. He used to be this...playful and funny kid. We all went out of our way to keep him safe. Sooah was just as amazing. Usually , we try to find flaws in people our friends date right? Well trust me Sooah was hard to dislike .” He laughed, eyes misting over as his gaze landed on her portrait over the mantle.

I followed his gaze and swallowed.

“Do you think Jungkook will ever get over her?” I asked simply.

Jin hesitated.

“Someday? Probably yes. But it won’t be easy. He’s ... He feels things deeply. He always has. He loved her deeply, he cared for her deeply and so its only obvious that he’s going to feel the loss of her presence very deeply too.”

I nodded.

“Its his birthday tomorrow.” I said softly. “ I have a gift for him. Well its not a gift from me, but a gift nonetheless. But I’m not sure if I should give it to him.”

Jin gave me a surprised look.

“What do you mean?”

I smiled bitterly.

“Just that sometimes fate can be very cruel when it chooses its players. I’m forever wondering if he would be better off or worse without me in the picture and I just can’t decide.”

“Different. He would just be different.” Jin said calmly.

There was nothing else i could say to that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yugyeom had rented out the rooftop restaurant in one of the poshest Hotels in Seoul and although the party was a pool party, I hadn’t bothered dressing for it. I wore a plain sequined top and burgundy skirt that fanned out around me knees.

The place was teeming with people his age , friends acquaintances and business partners. The women had changed into bright , skimpy bikinis and lounged about in the brightly lit pool tossing a ball around .

The older people were being hosted by the Jeons on the lower level of the restaurant in a posh ballroom. Jungkook and i would have to visit them later but for now I was content sipping a mocktail, leaning against the bar while Hoseok and Lisa flanked me on either side, pointing out who was sleeping with who.

Jungkook was in the pool with Yugyeom and Jimin and it was impossible to tear my eyes away from him. He looked happy almost, laughing and shaking water out of his hair as he moved around with the strength and agility of an Olympic athlete. Yoongi was in the pool as well and on the opposite team with Jin and Namjoon....and it was increasingly obvious that the half a dozen bikini clad women were there simply for an excuse to touch the handsome alphas as they worked up a sweat.

“Jungkook is such a competitive bastard.” Hoseok laughed. “But I don’t know what’s gotten into Yoongi today. i can’t believe he’s in the pool. “

“Of his own volition. “ Lisa added. “ usually someone has to strip him and toss him in.

Yoongi kept glancing at me every few minutes. It was impossible to miss. It was also impossible to miss that at least three of the six women in the pool were trying to get into his pants.

I sighed and turned back to the bartender asking for a refill. when i turned back around, Jungkook and Yugyeom were climbing out of the pool and Jin was moving to the opposite side to take their place with Jimin.

“Jungkook and i are going to go get a drink. Anything for you , beautiful?” Yugyeom reached out to touch me and I almost fell in my haste to get away from him.

“Keep your hands off me.” I snapped . Jungkook frowned.

“No need to be rude, Heejin , he was just being polite.” He said softly and i smelt the alcohol on his breath.

“Don’t drink too much Jungkook.”

“Oh come on, beautiful., Its his birthday let him live a little...” Yugyeom laughed and I glared at him.

“I’d rather have him live longer “ I snapped. “ And that can’t happen if you keep trying to give him alcohol poisoning.”

Yugyeom rolled his eyes.

“Is she always this dramatic, Jungkook-ah.” Yugyeom laughed. Jungkook didn’t laugh but he gave me a look that said, ‘ please don’t make a scene’ and I bit my lips.

I didn’t want to ruin his night. He looked ....so close to a normal person tonight and whether I liked it or not Yugyeom had contributed to that. The music was apparently Jungkook’s favorites only, the pool because he loved volleyball in the water and the buffet had all his favorite foods. Yugyeom had gone out of his way to make the party perfect and i suddenly felt like the troll stomping on Jungkook’s happiness.

Swallowing my own instinct to drag my husband away from the alpha who had his arms around him, I turned away and walked off to the pool. Yoongi’s face lit up when he saw me.

“Hey there, angel. Here to watch me kick some ass? “ He cupped his hands in the water, before tossing a handful of water at me. I blinked in surprise, laughing a little.

“I’m just here to cheer Jin oppa. “ I said impishly, moving over to the lounge chair near his side of the pool. Yoongi’s pout was adorable and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Maybe I could stop worrying about Jungkook for a while. Yugyeom wasn’t dangerous. Even if he got a little drunk, I was still here. So were all of our friends.

It would be fine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it wasn’t fine.

An hour later, I found Jungkook in a room filled with cigarette smoke and light music, yugeyom and his friends scattered around the place with a few beautiful women lounging about on their laps.

“You said one drink Yugyeom...he’s completely out of his mind.” I said shrilly staring at where Jungkook sat on the couch , shirtless and laughing as some girl in a bikini ran her fingers up and down his arm. She had one leg draped over his thigh. I felt sick at the very sight of it.

its because he’s drunk , I told myself. He’s drunk and can’t consent, that’s why you feel sick, nothing else.

Yugyeom gave me an easy smile.

“Guy just wants to have some fun. Reina’s a friend of mine. She’ll take good care of him don’t worry. She’s the birthday gift i got him. “ He leered.

I resisted the urge to punch him in the face.

Glaring at him,

“Jungkook, we’re leaving. Come on.” I made to move towards him but a hand shot out, gripping my wrist like a vice.

“Not so fast baby.... I already paid for her. You can’t just waltz in here and take away her livelihood.” He sneered. “ Unless you want to take her place. This is a special bar you know. All these lovelies, they have something in common with you.”

I stared at him frowning.

“What does that mean?”

“I hired them from an omega escort agency...you know because that’s all you omegas are useful for anyway.”

I rolled my eyes, yanking on my wrist.

“You and your medieval ideals can go to hell. I’m going home. Jungkook!!” I yelled again and this time Jungkook turned eyes landing on me.

“Heejin?” He slurred.

“We need to go home, Jungkook.” I said firmly.

“Now?” He blinked. I nodded.

“Yes now.” I made to move away but this time Yugyeom wrapped both arms around my waist, pinning me to his body. Pain , sharp and unbearable shot up my ribs and I whimpered. He was squeezing too hard and God what if the cracked rib just snapped?

Panic began setting in and I yelped.

“Let me go you bastard.” I struggled to get away, staring in disbelief at my husband .

Jungkook was standing but he swayed dangerously. There was no clarity there and his eyes were hooded. He was drunk. Really, really drunk.

“Jungkook tell him to let me go!!” I yelled , trying to tamp down the panic that was rising up my throat.

“Don’t worry Kook. Just gonna ask her to wait outside for a while. Why don’t you finish your conversation with Reina.. i’ll entertain your wife for a while.” He drawled and i felt my entire body go ice cold at that.

Jungkook was blinking rapidly, the words clearly not registering and genuine terror began to bleed into my veins. Jungkook couldn’t even fathom that i was in genuine danger here, let alone help me. Oh God, why had i come alone? Where were the others??

Yugyeom held me tighter and i swallowed a groan . My ribs felt like they were on fire.

“Let’s take this somewhere private, Heejin?” He whispered into my neck and i couldn’t believe it. Yugyeom was drunk yes, but was this idiot also insane?

“Wait...no.. Yugeyom don’t be a fucking idiot. If you touch me, that’s fucking rape...You can go to prison for that .” I shouted, trying to drill some sense into his head. He wasn’t going to risk prison to make a point was he??

“Not if you seduce me angel...and you’re going to... Or I’ll just tell people you did...same difference , right?” he whispered.

And then he began dragging me off to the corner and my eyes fell on a side door leading out of the room .

If you let him take you there this is going to become frighteningly real, a voice screamed in my head and I inhale deeply, ready to scream loud enough to get the attention of everyone in the damned building.

The door opened just as I opened my mouth and I froze, watching Mrs Jeon walk into the lounge, looking lost.

“What is this place?” She muttered out loud looking around and the arms around me fell away so fast, I crashed to the floor.

“Heejin-ah!” Yoongi’s voice came from right behind her and I flinched, willing my shaking legs to stop trembling.

“Mrs. Jeon...” I muttered, voice strained and ribs throbbing.

“Heejin? What is going on here? Where’s my son?”

“Fuck... Jungkook-ah...” Yoongi moved to get him and I took a deep steadying breath.

Years ago , I’d taken a self defence class and one thing i’d definitely enjoyed learning was how to throw a punch. And It wasn’t something i’d forgotten.

Planting my feet firmly , i lightly rotated my hips, a subtle shift, before engaging my core , drawing all the fury and helpless rage inside me into my fist. I pulled my shoulders in and took a deep breath. Punch past your target , i told myself. You’re not just going to break his jaw you’re going to put him in the hospital tonight.

“Mrs. Jeon, Jungkook had a great time toni-” His voice was all i needed to hear to know exactly where his mouth was behind me.

i relaxed my muscles as i threw the punch, contracting them just as my fist landed on Kim Yugyeom’s face.

The satisfying sound of flesh on bone felt like music to my ears and Yugyeom’s sharp cry of sheer agonizing pain even sweeter.

He crashed to the floor in a heap and I could feel my fist throb like hell. I was going to bruise so badly. But it was worth it.

“That was for telling me that you were going to rape me and tell everyone that i seduced you.” I said calmly.

Yoongi let out a noise of disbelief.

“What the actual fuck.....” He shouted.

“Yugyeom what the fuck man? Are you out of your damned mind?” One of his friends yelled. Yugyeom merely groaned.

He couldn’t answer, blood trickling down his chin and hands cradling his jaw, whimpers falling out of his mouth. My own fist throbbed like hell so the damage had to be significant.

Mrs Jeon looked horrified and when she opened her mouth i quickly held a hand up.

“I’m not doing this. Not tonight. “ I said calmly. Jungkook was quiet, the way he always got when he was drunk and I groaned.

It was going to be a long night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We need to talk.” I said calmly and Jungkook swallowed.

“Heejin, I’m -”

“Hear me out first Jungkook.” I said sharply. “ I don’t need your apology, it means nothing to me because it means nothing to you. You’re not sorry that you didn’t help me last night. You’re just angry that you had to help at all. You don’t give a fuck about me. I know that and I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is you getting drunk to the point that you don’t even recognize that someone’s in need of help. “

I took a deep breath.

“If you did it to me, you’ll do it to your daughter too. Yugyeom is going to get you drunk someday when you’re taking care of Mina by yourself and then when she needs you, what are you going to do?”

“You’re right... I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk -”

“I’m only here , talking to you , because of your daughter. If it was just you, I wouldn’t give a damn because you’re an adult and if you make your bed , you can just lie on it. It wouldn’t bother me. But Mina...she’s not capable of making the right choices. She need a father who can make the right choices, because whatever shitty choice you make, your daughter is going to be there along for the ride whether she wants to or not. You drive your car off a cliff tomorrow , she’s going to be there in the car seat laughing because she doesn’t know the consequences of your choices. “

I clenched my fists to keep my voice even. To stop myself from yelling.

“I have something for you. “

I grabbed the brown paper wrapped canvas from under the table.

“It’s a painting . Your wife commissioned me to make this a year ago when she got pregnant.”

He froze so eerily still that it made me nervous.

“At first , i wasn’t sure if i should be giving it to you because well... because i was marrying you ... I wasn’t sure that it would be right, coming from me ...because I was taking your wife’s place after all...”

i laughed.

“Now I know that's just bullshit. I don’t have a place in your life. I’m a nobody. This isn’t about me. This is about you. She told me back then that you were nervous about being a father. That was all she said. And she wanted me to pain this. “ I held the canvas out to him.

“You can see it. I’m going to go stay with Jin oppa for a few days. I want you to see it. It shows how your wife saw you. The kind of father she hoped you would be. I want you to see it and make a choice. You can either get the help you need. “ i took a deep breath, “ Or I’m going to tell Yoongi that you’re incompetent to be a father. He’ll file charges , “ I had to close my eyes to get the next words out, “ and you will lose custody of your daughter.”

Jungkook inhaled sharply, hands curling into fists on his knees.

“i hope you make the right choice.”

I wrapped both my arms around myself and walked out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s note. :

I’m so exhausted I’ll tag people tomorrow!

.@girlinthemikrokosmos @xius-exos @sugainfireslex @yunkichiee@kpopstudybee @ephyraaaa @peachoney9795 @ggukkieland @veronawrites @blr1004 @tinyhoagiepartylover @btsis7okay@squishyjk @itsdingdong @emmmui @honeeybunneey @yeonkiminnie

@just-me-and-myselfs @delicate-snow-flake @kpop-lore @beautifulvirgobutterfly @sumzysworld @btsmylife21 @teresaisla

.@melrosaeparker @taestannie @dchimminie @ meraki--life @somewhereinthestarss @mawwnsterr @kookiesbreaky @chimchoom

#jungkook smut #jungkook fics #jeon jungkook #bts fanfics #bts smut fic #bts smut #bts fics #bts #jungkook #bts scenarios

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hamliet · 3 years

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Dabi’s Missing Heart

So I’ve been seeing two main responses to Dabi’s character as portrayed in BNHA 292, both of which I feel touch on a very surface understanding of his character and role in the story despite seeming like opposite takes.

Take #1:

Dabi is an unfeeling monster created to show the redeemability of Shigaraki and Enji in contrast with his true eeeevil villainy! He will never be redeemed!

Take #2:

Dabi is a sweet softy who did nothing wrong! He will never be redeemed because of this chapter which is so out-of-character!

Note how they both have the same endpoint. I’m not actually gonna address the redemption question much because I can’t fathom what this panel foreshadows if not Touya’s salvation (alive):

I’m not looking to debate this either; I’m just putting it here because I know it’ll come up if I don’t.

Instead, I wanna address Dabi’s character. He’s my favorite, and I’ve been asked a few different times whether I enjoy him as a villain or as an uwu poor baby, and my answer is always both.

Dabi is a villain. This chapter’s rampage is, in my opinion, not remotely out of character for him. But neither is it the summation of his character, and he surely is not meant to make Enji look good by comparison.

So, who is Dabi?

Dabi is kind of a flaming jerk, and that’s why I like him. He’s an abuse victim who gets to be angry and crass and sharp. He pushes people away because he doesn’t want to open up to them and get burned (heh). He’s just like Shouto in that, except with a dose of murder.

Believe it or not, this is a very realistic response to abuse, and very common too. It’s good to see that representation. If the writing was indeed just “he’s bad get rid of him,” well, that would of course be a terrible representation. But seeing a mean victim get redeemed? Now that’s some good sh*t I’m here for.

If you want a sweethearted, misunderstood soft victim, there is one in MHA, and that’s Shigaraki. Dabi is not these things, but that does not mean he’s not a victim or that he’s somehow an unfeeling monster.

You see, Shigaraki is a heart character. Dabi’s the mind. (Heart and mind characters are a literary pattern that is utilized in literature across the globe; it’s not an eastern/western cultural thing. It has its roots in alchemy.) The problem is that you can’t have a heart without a mind nor a mind without a heart. If you lack one, you’re missing half the picture, and you won’t accomplish anything.

We see this with Shigaraki in his quest to look for ideals, something to believe in, purpose to justify/enable acting on his feelings/emotions.

Dabi, in contrast, has conviction and ideals, but eschews any kind of personal connection and care.

So, both Shigaraki and Dabi struggle to unite heart and mind--but they need to do precisely this.

It’s not a coincidence that Shigaraki expressly envisions both Dabi and Himiko when musing on what his purpose is.

Yet Shigaraki is able to unite more easily with Himiko as opposed to Dabi because Himiko is also a heart character. She claims to be motivated by extreme empathy that warps around to become a lack thereof (wanting to be who she loves).

Shigaraki’s motivations are basically revenge for hero society not saving him--which encompasses both a deep internal and external (societal) need for empathy and a need for better ideals. Shigaraki needs Himiko and Dabi. They’re a trio, and all of them need each other to grow. But Himiko, being similarly driven expressly by emotions, is easier for Shigaraki to understand and work with.

The irony is that Dabi is actually a very, very emotional character as well. But what he does (as is typical for a mind character) is repress them, compartmentalize, dissociate. He constantly pushes people away, yet admits privately, to himself, that he’s primarily (and paradoxically) motivated by family. This is emotional, yet Dabi claims he “overthought” and, according to other translations, “snapped” can be actually be read as “went crazy” as a result over overthinking (note: both are mind allusions).

Dabi repressing who he is--Todoroki Touya--is symbolic of him repressing his emotional side, because again, family and emotions are tied together for his character. Now his identity is acknowledged, and Dabi claims to be losing his mind (again), claims that he can’t feel, and yet is completely consumed by emotions. Like, does anyone think he’s being methodical and calculating this chapter?

It’s not just negative emotions (rage, hate) that drive Dabi in response to his family. His seeking belonging and emotional connection is present even in a chapter where he tries to murder two members of his family and laughs off the risk to the life of another.

See, Dabi first asked Shouto to validate his pain:

But like, given the circumstances, of course Shouto doesn’t really respond well. How Shouto responds is this:

Shouto’s words are triggering. And keep in mind I am not blaming Shouto: he’s in shock and he’s a kid. I’m merely trying to explain how it likely comes across to Dabi.

You’re crazy. Your feelings don’t matter. You don’t really care about Natsuo! You’re a villain and that’s ALL you are. Not a brother or abuse survivor. Just a villain.

So, uh, yeah, Dabi then retreats back to being unable to feel, dissociating as has always been his coping mechanism. But that’s not all: Dabi’s been repressing for so long that of course he’s gonna go a little insane in response to the dismissal of everything he’s trying to point out. Why wouldn’t he? His family dismissed his pain back then and now again, and so, without that heart, without those emotions, principle is all Dabi has. This has been present since long before Stain’s ideology came into his life:

Now, he answers this question of existence through Stain’s ideology. Purpose is all he has, and to him, Shouto and Best Jeanist are dismissing that too. Why are they dismissing it? Best Jeanist dismisses him for an ideal: the overall good of hero society. Shouto has a mixture of this ideal and also like, genuine shock and pain.

Back to Dabi. Dabi’s summation of himself and his purpose is incorrect and harmful to himself and others. I’m not excusing him or justifying, just explaining. It’s a tragic reflection of what Endeavor raised both Touya and Shouto to be (and thereby ironic that BJ uses an ideal to dismiss him):

Instead of being raised to be the symbol of hero society--as Endeavor intended--he exists to destroy it. The root is the same: Dabi assumes he exists for hero society, as a tool. He dehumanizes himself, hence why his quirk physically harms him (which also fits his almost religious zeal for Stain’s ideology). But it is not all Dabi is. He’s not a tool, he’s a person, but to acknowledge he’s a person involves acknowledging his heart/emotional desires, and that gets to my next point.

Dabi’s not a reliable narrator about himself. At all. I’ve written about Dabi and dissociation before. So let’s look at Dabi’s devotion to his ideals, the ideals he puts above people and claims he only cares about... because there are moments where Dabi goes against those ideals.

For one example, Dabi’s gone against those ideals when he’s allowed his personal need for revenge (an emotional/heart motivation) to overcome his longterm plan. Like, he was fully about to get himself killed here, even though that would likely mean no one would know the corruption of the Todoroki family and hero society, just for the chance to prove to his father that he hurt him.

In addition, I’ve talked before about how Dabi’s the only character in the entire damn manga to comment that maybe using child soldiers is not okay. While it’s not explicitly stated, it’s reasonable to conclude that Dabi considers the abuse of children in hero training a sin of hero society that ought to be purged (hence, part of his ideals).

That said, I have also pointed out that Dabi has gone after children in the past when it benefits his mission (Bakugou would like a word). So let’s look at four examples of Dabi and his principles concerning kids--since, after all, he claims to be motivated by heroes who hurt kids.

Firstly, Dabi’s “save the cat” when he spared Aoyama.

Why did he spare Aoyama? We can only speculate, but it seems quite likely there are two reasons: 1) hurting Aoyama would not add anything to his overall goal of downing hero society, and 2) a terrified, cowering kid might just have been a teeny bit familiar to Dabi. Here, his ideals--destroying hero society--either take a backseat to a reflection of his personal pain (and)/or his ideal of not abusing kids directly contradicted his ideal of bringing down hero society. But the important part is that in this instance, Dabi chose mercy and the goal of bringing down hero society was jeopardized as a result.

So then why did he attack Tokoyami, Nejire, and Shouto this arc? Well, Dabi does things he knows are wrong for the sake of accomplishing his overall purpose. He does things he knows hurt himself for this purpose. This isn’t new. If he can’t be acknowledged, can’t exist as a person with emotions, then he at least will ensure he still has a purpose.

In addition, let’s look at what sets Dabi off in all of these instances. (Again, this isn’t me saying “well actually Dabi’s justified.” He’s not. I’m just pointing to what’s in the text to explain the machinations beyond “bad guy do bad.”)

Dabi tries to reason with Tokoyami, pointing out that Twice was doing essentially what Tokoyami is doing: trying to save his friend(s), but Tokoyami doesn’t listen (also again: not me saying Tokoyami should have listened--realistically, in this situation, it makes sense Tokoyami trusted his mentor!)

Only after his reasoning was rejected did Dabi go to flames mode. He could have just let Tokoyami save Hawks, but instead he really wanted to kill Hawks and that overrode his other principles. Was this just because of his furthering his goal--killing the #2 hero would help destroy hero society--or because of a sense of personal revenge for Twice? That’s open for interpretation (in my opinion, it’s likely a mixture, because again, it tends to intertwine more than Dabi likes to think it does). His principles and/or emotions are brushed aside, and Dabi Does Not Like That.

Dabi does this again with Shouto this chapter, asking him where he stands on their family issues, and gets brushed aside, and then Shouto goes into his rage mode and Dabi responds. Again, not saying Shouto is rational here or that he should side with Dabi’s murderous plan, but like, his words really don’t come across well to Dabi.

Dabi going after Shouto after explaining things, asking Shouto for help, and then having his pain dismissed is pretty much a repeat of Tokoyami. When Dabi’s pain is dismissed, he says fine, let’s aim for the highest principle possible: making Stain’s will a reality, and damn any emotional ties.

Dabi’s obsession with ideals, you might say, is a smokescreen to cover his own pain. Far from feeling nothing, he feels very deeply. (I promise I’m getting to Nejire.)

So what does this indicate? Well, that Dabi does have a heart and a conscience. But when he lets his heart act, when his heart reaches out, he gets burned. His heart jeopardizes his overall purpose, so he most often dissociates himself from it. But by pretending he doesn’t have a heart, he dehumanizes himself, and he projects that dehumanization onto others (see: seeing Shouto as an extension of Endeavor, when that’s actually the precise image Shouto is trying to shed).

It’s not a coincidence that Shigaraki has been unconscious during the entire confrontation with Endeavor, nor is it a coincidence that Himiko has been MIA. But, Shigaraki wakes up a bit this chapter not only when hearing Dabi spout about how hero society needs to burn, an ideal/the thing Shigaraki lacks, and through a less important but still-ideal-driven character in Spinner asking him to accomplish his supposed ideal of destruction, but when Dabi saves Shigaraki and Spinner.

Dabi doesn’t burn Nejire for lols (not that this makes it better because it doesn’t) or even for ideals. He burns her to save Shigaraki and Spinner, because they are his links to full humanity right now.

(Again, this is also dissociation and projection: Endeavor did this! No, Dabi, you did. You’re perpetuating violence against kids rather than stopping it.)

But anyways, when Dabi calls upon heart, Shigaraki wakes. He lends Gigantomachia and thereby Dabi and the league power.

Dabi can only grow and actually accomplish anything related to his ideals (fixing hero society) through accepting a heart--even though that will likely mean some painful surgery to shift his ideals to accommodate said heart, because pure ideals don’t leave much room for humanity. He needs to feel to actually change anything, because right now he’s just making things worse (hence, the need for saving and redemption).

I know the League aren’t the protagonists of the serIes, but their complaints aren’t exactly incorrect either (if anything they’re almost a little too valid). But through growing together, Dabi, Shigaraki, and Himiko might actually be able to accomplish something, and get themselves in a place where they can be reached and saved by Shouto, Deku, and Ochaco. Because to be saved, the kids will have to acknowledge the villains’ pain and complaints, and do something about it.

#bnha 292 #bnha meta #mha 292 #mha meta #dabi #todoroki shouto #todoroki touya #todoroki enji #hado nejire #toga himiko #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #best jeanist #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha theory #mha theory #league of villains #spinner

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recurring-polynya · 3 years

Text

Once again, I am thinking about the dubious claim that people make from time to time that Renji would have gotten better character development in the TYBW arc if Byakuya had died. The thing is, though, that Renji did get excellent character development in this arc, particularly with respect to his relationship to Byakuya, it was just very subtle and I want to talk about it.

So, the first thing I want to point out is that the captain-lieutenant relationships is one of the major themes of the TYBW. A lot of this is sort of weird and awkward, but this is perfect, actually, because captain-lieutenant relationships are, for the most part, weird and clunky and awkward. Take for example, the part that I always make fun of, where the captains are told not to go to bankai, and Hitsugaya, Komamura, Byakuya and Soi Fon immediately go to bankai-- but they all do this on the assumption that they are luring their opponent into a trap to see how this works, and that their lieutenant will somehow ??defeat them anyway?? (well, except Soi Fon who seems to think she can one-shot her Quincy). There’s Sasakibe’s funeral, where we find out that Yamamoto cared far more for him than we ever imagined. Kyouraku returns Nanao’s zanpakutou to her and stands behind her as she defeats an opponent he can't. Iba carries Komamura’s body off of the battlefield as he loses the last of his humanity. Isane struggles to keep her head above her grief because that’s the burden Unohana left her with. Rose avenging Kira. Hitsugaya and Matsumoto fighting and (sort of) dying together. The Zaraki-Yachiru thing. The Mayuri-Nemu thing. Momo and Shinji actually got to have a relatively normal one, which they each deserved, but at least they got to have normal one together. Anyway, that could be an entire essay, but as usual, I only want to talk about Renji and Byakuya.

Renji’s introduction as a character happens in stages. Initially, he sort of appears to be Byakuya’s sidekick-- he's here to do the dirty work during Rukia’s arrest, while Byakuya stands by and calls the shots, but even early on, it’s clear that Renji’s a little hung up on Byakuya. He’s trying to impress him, and gets more embarrassed and self-conscious as things go progressively pear-shaped. When Byakuya finally enters the action, Renji’s thought bubbles reveal that he’s watched Byakuya for a long time, that he knows all his moves. When we get the Renji backstory reveal a few issues later, we learn that Renji’s goal is to defeat Byakuya, which he seems to feel is necessary to seeing Rukia again, even though there has never been any sort of causal link revealed between these two things. Don’t get me wrong, if Young Academy Renji had tried to continue to be friends with Rukia, I think Byakuya would have kicked him out on his ass, but it’s clear that a lot of Renji’s hang-ups are internal-- he doesn’t want to face Rukia again until he can stand against Byakuya. I think the origin of this is that he simply wants what’s best for Rukia, and he can’t stomach the idea of asking her to leave her rich, noble family for him, unless, of course, he’s somehow better than Byakuya in some dimension, and the only thing Renji’s ever considered himself good at is fighting.

Even more interesting is that he’s chosen to go about this by... studying the man’s every move and becoming his lieutenant. But for as much energy as Renji has put into learning Byakuya’s favorite combat moves, he doesn’t actually know anything about him as a person. He’s shocked when Rukia predicts that Byakuya won’t lift a finger to help her, and then horrified when this actually comes to pass. A few chapters later, as he’s running Hinamori through, Aizen comments that “Adoration is the state furthest from understanding.” I would probably classify Renji’s feelings towards Byakuya more as admiration or idolization, rather than adoration, but I think this statement is also very true of Renji and Byakuya’s relationship. Unlike poor Momo, Renji gets a little more time and opportunity to do something with this information. With a little Ichigo-forced soul searching, he realizes that he’s not going to come out the hero of this story no matter what, but if he doesn’t do something, Rukia’s not going to come out of this story at all, and even if he’s not really ready, he’s spent 40 years trying to figure out how to beat Kuchiki Byakuya, let’s hope all that was good for something.

The Byakuya-Renji fight has no direct impact on the events of the Soul Society Arc. It makes Byakuya show up to Rukia’s execution 5 minutes late and without his scarf. Renji gets healed, so it really doesn’t matter all that much to him, either. You could argue that they both wasted a bunch of energy (that they could have used to fight Aizen later) but it’s primarily a character-driven moment of them both drawing lines in the sand about where they stand, vis a vis Rukia. Byakuya wins this fight, and he wins it handily, but he’s wrong, as he comes to realize a few issues later, when Ichigo kicks his ass and tells him he’s a bad brother, a lesson that Byakuya will take to heart for the rest of the manga. Byakuya claims that the difference between Renji and himself is class, but the real difference between is the heart, and in the long run, Renji is the real victor of this fight.

The hospital scene is an interesting footnote to this. Byakuya defeated Renji, but Byakuya was the asshole and everyone knows it. There’s an expectation that perhaps Renji will quit or perhaps Renji will give him an earful and perhaps even Rukia will choose to leave the family, either to go to the Living World or to be with Renji (and Byakuya would deserve this), but instead, both Renji and Rukia give Byakuya another chance, which is not, I think, a place Renji ever expected to be.

Rukia and Byakuya building up a sibling relationship after this is fairly straightforward (although I’m sure it had its weird moments), but Byakuya and Renji now have this profoundly awkward relationship where Byakuya is obviously in charge, but he sort of depends on Renji as a personal compass because he’s shit at dealing with people and he doesn’t want to screw stuff up with Rukia again. Take for example, the part of the Hueco Mundo arc where Orihime is kidnapped and Rukia and Renji desert their posts to come help rescue her. Kubo takes to the panel-space to tell us that Byakuya has tacitly approved this. As a clan head and a captain, a person who is entrenched in the hierarchy of Soul Society, Byakuya couldn’t possibly go to Hueco Mundo-- but he can turn a blind eye while his sister and lieutenant scurry out through the Kuchiki family senkaimon. Renji, for his part, tried to go to Hueco Mundo through official channels and got shot down. We don’t know what Renji would have done if Byakuya had explicitly forbidden him from going, but it doesn’t matter-- Byakuya enabled Renji to follow his heart here, because Byakuya can’t. Rukia would have gone to Hueco Mundo regardless. She cares about Byakuya, but she doesn’t depend on him for validation the way Renji does.

I said this was going to be about the TYBW, so let’s get to that. Early in the arc, we’re shown several scenes where it’s clear that Byakuya respects and values Renji as a lieutenant, but he’s also pretty damn patronizing to him. Renji is the first one to engage As Nodt, and when Byakuya shows up, he acts surprised that Renji hasn’t taken him out yet, but then proceeds to take over the fight (real, “stand back, fives, an eleven has arrived” energy). After Byakuya then loses his bankai like a doofus, Renji wants to take point so that Byakuya can figure out As Nodt’s attack and Byakuya won’t let him... and then proceeds to get thrashed.

This has to be one of the most emotionally charged fights in Bleach. Byakuya is losing, and Renji jumps in, absolutely incensed that As Nodt would use Senbonzakura against Byakuya. Renji isn’t doing great, but he’s not doing terrible when Byakuya gets up and tries to help Renji, even though he’s a big bloody mess. As Nodt reacts by shredding Byakuya into chunks, and Renji just loses it, and if Mask de Masculine hadn’t shown up and kicked him halfway across the Seireitei, I daresay Renji would have killed himself trying to take down As Nodt.

This is where I usually make the point that if Byakuya had died to here, it would have broken Renji into little pieces, but that’s not today’s essay. Instead, everyone goes to the Royal Realm, and by virtue of the fact that Byakuya is injured worse than everyone else, Renji has to go forward without him or his approval.

In typical Renji fashion, the thing that motivates Renji here is not glory or heroism, but the desire to accompany Ichigo, the need to be with his friends in their times of trial. In fact his companionship here is absolutely essential-- at Hikifune’s, Ichigo expresses deep doubts that he’s doing the right thing, and Renji reminds himself that if he wants to protect others, he has to take care of himself first.

At Nimaiya’s however, Renji and Ichigo are split up because they must follow their own paths. The other extremely interesting thing that happens here is that Renji’s sword is reforged. Byakuya shattered one of Hihio Zabimaru’s joints the very first time Renji used them in combat. Renji brushed it off at the time, saying that he could get by without it. Even though Byakuya has long been his motivating force and his mentor, he’s also been held back by his connection to him. And at this point, it’s gone.

I really wish we got to see where Renji and Rukia meet up again, but we don’t. Unlike with Ichigo, though, Rukia doesn’t seem to need anything from Renji. They travel together, fight together as equals, wear matching outfits, like you do. Oh. Wait. After all this time, in the 493 chapters between Needless Emotions and Blue Stripes, Renji can finally see himself as an equal to Rukia. They get. bankai. Together.

I want to emphasize that it’s not really anything about Rukia herself that allowed Renji to make bankai, it’s the fact that he’s finally managed to move past the feeling that he’s not enough. Defeating Byakuya would not actually have solved this problem, and having Byakuya dying in front of him wouldn’t have either. Renji gets criticized for losing a lot of his fights, but that’s such a key to his character. He’s not always the strongest, he doesn’t always win, but he keeps fighting for what he cares about. He struggles with his need for approval, for external validation, but Renji is at his best when he doesn’t have time to think about that, when he’s just fighting by his friends’ sides against impossible odds, doing what he knows in his heart is right.

I think people tend to make a little more than is strictly necessary of the line where he tells Mask that he’s “a villain”, I think he’s most just making fun of Mask’s own self-aggrandizement. On another level, though, this is just Renji being at ease with himself. Byakuya typically enters a fight bloviating about the honor of Soul Society and “how dare you raise your sword against me, the 28th Head of the Kuchiki” and even Ikkaku had the whole deal about telling people your name before you kill them, but Renji is more like “you beat up my friends, so I’m gonna break your face,” like there’s no ego in it, just you’re there, and he’s there, and then you’re lying on the ground and he’s taking a nap somewhere. This is so different than the insecure, posturing young man he was at the start of this series and I love this growth for him.

Even after he eventually meets up with Byakuya again, something has changed about their dynamic. The group gets split up and rejoined two or three times, and Renji and Rukia always stay together while Byakuya ends up fighting alongside others, Hisagi and later Hitsugaya and Zaraki. This is cemented in their last scene together, where Rukia and Renji try to stay with Byakuya and he sends them off to fight with Ichigo by saying “your help is not needed here.” In some ways, it’s an echo of Byakuya sending them off to Hueco Mundo, but in other ways, it’s acknowledging that they are their own people, not just an extension of him.

Hitsugaya follows it up with this:

There’s more here than meets the eye, though-- Byakuya and Renji have maintained a pretty strict superior-subordinate relationship, because that’s the easiest way for them to make sense of the world, but the fact is, they do care about each other and are important to one another.

I know there would be a certain narrative satisfaction in seeing Renji make captain at the end-- he’s one of the hardest working people in Bleach, and it frankly seems weird to see Iba get the haori when he doesn’t. But Renji has never wanted to be a captain. Renji becoming captain would, in some ways, be a failure. He spends years pre-canon chasing rank and prestige because that’s what he thinks will make him worthy, and it didn’t. Instead, he found worth in being himself, in loving his friends and being there for them, in learning things from Byakuya and teaching him things in return. Renji doesn’t need to be Byakuya’s lieutenant anymore, he just does it because he likes it. It makes him happy. What better character development is there than that?

#renji abarai #byakuya kuchiki #tybwa #god i love to get up on a saturday and write essays about renji's character development #tldr: renji checks off all the gotei career milestones *except* making captain and then proceeds to lean in to his true calling: malewife #we stan legends only

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irenedubrovna · 3 years

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A post regarding Euphoria for the benefit of myself and basically no one else

So, it really bothers me when people say Euphoria is groundbreaking, progressive media. Here’s a dissection of why I don’t think it is, because this is what I feel like doing at work:

The character of Rue is objectively great. She by far receives the least overt sexualization, and is treated neutrally in terms of active sexuality. She’s treated like a normal teenage girl with mental issues and an addiction to drugs. She falls in love with a girl who she pines for and places on a pedestal. The reason I think she is written this way is because she is a Sam Levinson proxy. She written with gender ambiguity and with little regard to the experiences she’d go through as a black gay female, probably because Sam Levinson has no insight to that aspect of life. Her performance is heightened of course by Zendaya, who breathes unique life to the Sam Levinson’s artistic extension, and without her performance this show would not get even half the acclaim it gets. Attribute that to Zendaya of course, because the director has done little to deserve this acclaim.

The rest of the females, sans Lexi, are pornified to a disgusting extent, not only due to the fact that they are supposed to be underage, but also because their existence as people is treated as being absolutely secondary to their sexual appeal. They are foremost presented in terms of their relation to sex. Cassie, Maddy, Jules, and Kat cannot be removed from their sexuality without disrupting the plot or their journeys in relation to the plot. Why are the females so intrinsically linked to uber fetishized versions of female sexuality, or uber fetishized versions of blossoming female sexual identity?

Maddy is presented not only scantily clad 90 percent of the time, but also dressed in a precariously unattainable sexual fashion. At any given time she is styled to look straight out of, simultaneously, a high fashion editorial, and a “barely legal” porno. She is airheaded and profane, and promiscuous, her mannerisms dictated by the adult films she’s “studied” in order to project an image of perfect hyper sexual femininity. She’s complacent in becoming a prototypical housewife because it will earn her a comfortable place as a trophy wife. She has no aspirations beyond that. So, let’s unpack all of that. Maddy’s role in the show is mostly passive. The most active thing she does in the plot is revenge fuck a man in the pool of a party. Nearly everything else she does in the show that is plot relevant is of someone else’s volition. Even less of what she in the show is related to anything other than a man. She is abused and then pressured into framing another man for said abuse. She has no agency as a character. The only notable difference to this rule is when she takes drugs at a carnival, knocks a pot of chili over, and calls her ex’s mom a cunt. Removed from her active sexual life and carefully cultivated aesthetic, she’s a trite stereotype of an unambitious girlfriend who gets treated poorly. I see people call Maddy iconic, but if she wasn’t gorgeous and well dressed, I doubt anyone would even think twice about her, let alone create fancams and Instagram pages dedicated to her. She exists as a plot device, and as pretty set dressing to build up the shows aesthetic. Her emotions are not well explored, her motivations are sexist, and she is often there to be demeaned, objectified, or to say a bad word. The most damning part of her involvement in this show is her episode where it is stated that she, as a fourteen year old girl, lost her virginity to an adult man, and it is stated she was in control of the situation. This is a dangerous thing to say about a character, to any audience, but especially a young one. To imply that a precocious young girl was in control during her first sexual encounter with a much much older man implies things that frankly border on rape apologist ideology. This show states this unflinchingly and with no further elaboration. If there’s one thing that tells you that Euphoria is a bad show, let it be that. Also, if there’s one thing that tells you about Sam Levinson as a person, and the way he views girls and women, let it fucking be that.

Jules is a young trans girl. She also likes to have sex with men as a means to “conquer femininity”. Scratch that, she likes to have degrading sex with older men in order to “conquer femininity”. This mindset is shown to be toxic, of course, but I think the problem with this idea in general is that there’s no deeper exploration for what this mindset means. It implies that she believes women are the sum of their intrigue and degradations. This mindset I can only assume would be a cultivation of dysphoria and internalized misogyny, which this series is absolutely not prepared to address in a tactful manner. Jules is a teenager with mental illness, trauma, and is undergoing an identity crisis. There’s something powerful in her character, something worth saying, however we only get trimmings of those meaningful things, and are ultimately left with a hurtful depiction of a trans girl because all of her musings on womanhood and identity are incomplete, and they fail to reach beyond the surface of their thesis statement. She wears colorful clothing, is overtly feminine and artistic in her presentation. Everything about her screams insecurity over her own womanhood. That is the crux of her character. Now, I think we should ask ourselves, is trans person who is insecure about their identity peak representation? Is this what trans people deserve? Is it “groundbreaking “? If this show was run by someone else, I might be inclined to say that there’s nothing insidious about this, but this is the guy that made Assassination Nation, so I think we know what he thinks of young women, the way they should be portrayed (that is, for the capitulation of a man) and realize his inclusion of a trans woman in his cast is no more meaningful than the inclusion of any other woman. Women to him are made to be categorized and should, at the end of the day, be easily palatable for the capitulation of a man. The device of having Jules being interested in older men and rough sex for identity reasons is transparent. Trans women are exploited and objectified with a similar fervor to cis women, the caveat being that they are “a forbidden fruit” of sorts to straight men. Jules is sissified, her presentation fetishistic. Her role in the plot is more involved. Her relationship with Rue is sweet, though toxic on both sides. She is ultimately betrayed, blackmailed, and snowballs into something of a manic episode, all well portrayed by Hunter Schafer, but I don’t think her inclusion in the show absolves it of any of its many sins.

Let’s talk about Cassie. Cassie is the Eurocentric beauty standard exemplified. She is the blonde haired blue eyed girl next store, and her boobs are of course always on display. She is notably promiscuous, something I say right off the bat because that’s how she’s introduced, as a so called slut through the words of the devil (Nate Jacobs). She is a girl with daddy issues, which we are all familiar with at this point. Her sexual boundaries begin and end at the whim of her partner. The terms of her consent are much like the terms of consent of many young girls brainwashed by society and the rising tide of degradation porn: everything is alright as long as you provide them comfort and affirmation afterward. You can touch them roughly without asking, you can use them as a tool to affirm your masculinity. This is the way men prefer their women now: just broken enough to say yes to anything they want. It’s become a joke at this point. Men like girls with issues, but only the ones that will feed their own desires. Cassie Howard is meek. Her inclusion in the plot I suppose ties to themes of drug addiction and how it divides and destroys the people you love. It doesn’t show what it does to her beyond shaping her sexual encounters, which is no surprise. Overall I’d say Cassie is in this roster of females as the most traditional categorically, in relation to how men view women and further how they sexualize them. She has a relationship with someone who doesn’t really love her. That mostly what she does here. Gets used. Doesn’t drive the plot or conflict much. More pretty set dressing. More aesthetics. How this show consists of so many women but is driven so much by men is unsurprising, and, again, very enlightening in the grand scheme of things.

Lastly we touch on Kat. I’d like to begin with the fact that self actualization through sexual exploration, in a show run by a man, is just a cloak for a woman to gratify the audience with her sexuality. Regardless of whether or not she is plus sized, this is overt objectification. She is on this show to be sexy. Beyond that, the fact that a minor using sex work as a form of liberation is disgusting. Whether or not she is portrayed as “owning” her sexuality is negligible, and speaks to the same mindset discussed with Maddy. Minors cannot fucking consent to sex, sexual acts, or anything within the confines of such. It’s crazy that this occurs with two different characters in such a similar way. It has echoes of “Well, she looked older..” and “Well, she wanted it..” or “She’s advanced for her age”. Never, not once in the events of the series is there meaningful introspection on what doing this kind of thing does to a minor. Moreover, these acts are explicit, and made clearly for sexual gratification. None of these things are absolved by the fact that she’s plus sized. If anything, her body type is fetishized in this context. It’s also another case of a “good girl to bad girl” transformation, which are archaic and, of course, sexist. With the rise of adult websites targeting minors for explicit content, this is even more reprehensible. Once again, in terms of representation, is this really what speaks to you as progressive? Groundbreaking? A girl gains control of her own narrative by having sex with lots of men. She gains control by being sexy. She gains control by dehumanizing and objectifying herself. No she doesn’t. Media controlled by men will tell this story to you thousands of times, don’t listen because she’s bigger than a size four.

ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE UNDERAGE. ALL OF THEM HAVE EXPLICIT SEX SCENES, EVEN THE SEXUAL ASSAULT IS MADE CINEMATICALLY PORNIFIED. THESE SHOTS ARE MADE TO BE OBJECTIVELY SEXY. THIS IS NOT A CASE OF SOMEONE CREATING SOMETHING FOR THE SAKE OF REALISM. IT IS ABOUT MAKING SCENES THAT SPEAK TO A MALE AUDIENCE. THAT CATER TO THE MALE GAZE. ARGUE WITH THE WALL.

I won’t go further into the plot, other characters, or the structure or the episodes for sake of brevity, but I felt compelled to air my thoughts on this to the void. I can only hope I was critical enough that Sam Levinson will one day see this and cry because another bad feminist thinks something that he made sucks

#euphoria #I don’t even think anyone will read this but #it’s just not good #sorry #anti euphoria #anti Sam Levinson

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guardianspirits13 · 3 years

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I wanna talk about Natsuo Todoroki for a second here.

tw// mentions of abuse, self harm, and suicide

Natsuo visibly has the most emotional trauma out of anyone else in his family (Touya not included), and I really wanna talk about why that is.

For starters, we haven't seen him really smile since he was introduced in chapter 187. He's introduced as having a friendly, easygoing persona and it's easy to imagine this is how most people outside of his family know him. However, every time we see him appear since then, another layer of his trauma is revealed and expanded upon, and it cuts DEEP.

I think the main reason that Natsuo still seems so vulnerable compared to the rest of his family is different than what you'd assume. Fuyumi and Shouto both spend a lot of time around Endeavor, and have been in close proximity to his (relatively recent) decision to atone. They have seen his growth firsthand and come to terms with it. Rei has obviously taken a very different path to healing- not entirely voluntarily- but she has been working with doctors and therapists for years to change and recover and reconnect with herself and her children. Natsuo is off at college, and takes every opportunity he can to avoid Endeavor. He (understandably) wants nothing to do with him, and shows stagnant resistance to his attempts to atone.

The reason why Natsuo can't move on from the past is because his trauma didn't come from Endeavor. It came from Touya.

Now initially we were led to believe that it was simply Touya's untimely death that still bothers Natsuo, and it makes sense seeing how Endeavor drove him to the edge. Losing his best friend and brother as a young kid without parents to support him or any therapist to speak of can absolutely been the source of persistent emotional damage, but the more and more we learn about Touya's situation, the more evident it becomes that Natsuo's trauma is much much deeper than even grief.

Touya, as we know, was driven by an ambition instilled in him by his father and experienced extreme rejection sensitivity when those ambitions were no longer realistic. Touya's relationship with his parents could be described as insecure attachment, a psychological term primarily regarding how kids react and respond to their parents and other close relationships. As he was raised, Touya learned to equate his potential to be a hero with his personal worth and similarly confounded attention with love. The difference being, of course, that love is unconditional, but even attention was being continually directed away from him as a punishment for continuing to train and burn himself so he could once again become worthy in his fathers' eyes.

This is where Natsuo comes in. At first it was assumed that all of the Todoroki children were born out of Endeavor's strong-willed desire to have a child that could surpass All Might, but we learned that this isn't exactly the case. I'd argue that it was narratively poetic on Horikoshi's part once this was expanded upon. Fuyumi was born to support and encourage her brother, and that is the exact role she plays 23 years later, keeping her family together.

Natsuo's case is even more intersting.

It was bad enough if Natsuo was only born for the potential of his quirk, but it's even more sinister that the sole intent behind his birth was to discourage Touya from his ambitions. I'd say it was to replace him, but it was more to promote the idea that Touya was expendable than to raise aonther kid with the same ideals but the potential to actually achieve it, although that was definitely a secondary motivation.

The parallelism in this is how much Natsuo's life revolves around Touya. He was born because of Touya, he looked up to and took care of Touya as a kid, and the absence of Touya in the present continues to drive him and his decisions in life (but more on that later).

I continue to pray that we will eventually get more solid backstory on Natsuo and Touya's relationship as kids and where it cut off, wether on a bad note or not, but there are a few things we know for certain. One, Touya was mentally ill. Yes, he was rejected by his parents but he seems to have been particularly vulnerable to this compared to any of his siblings since he was the first of them and thus relied only on his parents for validation in his early years. He shows early signs of a variety of different mental disorders, particularly BPD, which I have previously written a whole analysis for on its own. Touya is shown self-harming both by the very nature of his quirk and even by very directly ripping his hair out. He was incredibly self-destructive.

This is why it is so much more concerning to me that Natsuo, who was AT LEAST four years younger than him, was his primary source of comfort. Natsuo was too young to have known anything more than 'my big brother is sad that daddy won't train him anymore' and he obviously wasn't equipped in any way to handle Touya's severe mental illness. Touya most definitely needed professional treaatment as his forms of coping were abnormal even for the neglect and rejection that he experienced. Natsuo comforted Touya through breakdown after breakdown, and more than that Touya relied on him and came to him voluntarily for support. Natsuo was the best option he had, and he took full advantage of that. The main source of Natsuo's trauma was Touya's reliance on him.

Not to say at all that this was in any way Touya's fault- he was mentally ill and desperately in need of some form of comfort to keep him sane; it was almost a survival method at this point since neither of his parents really acknowleged him at all anymore. Touya's instability hurt Natsuo more than parental neglect ever did, but it was the neglect that enabled it and striped Touya of the supportive atmosphere he would have needed at this point not only to prevent but to heal from the mental damage he had already suffered.

Natsuo dealt with this for years and you can see how much it hurt him to see Touya in so much pain, not only from Endeavor's rejection but from his own self harm as well. For Natuso to know that his brotherly love would never be the same as having loving parents; would neve be enough- but at least it was something so he continued to love and care about his brother for little in return- is indicative of the kind of character he is.

(Edit: After the events of chapter 302 we know that Natsuo's relationship with Touya wasn't perfect. I will elaborate more on this in a different post, but I just wanted to clarify that although we were shown a very high-tension scene between them, it is implied that this was a regular occurrence that Natsuo was usually more receptive too but tired out of, in addition to Touya's spiraling mental health. It fit with the natrative to show the tension Touya was feeling with his family from all directions, but Natsu and Touya clearly had a stronger relationship up to and before this point, evidenced by their sharing a room and playing together regularly.)

He is incredibly selfless, and it's interesting to note how many of his positive qualities as an adult stem from negative experiences as a kid. He never really felt love from his parents, so he relied on Touya (and likely also Fuyumi) for that as well. If he grew up learning he had to give love in order to recieve it back, it absolutely influenced who he became in the future, a solid example of this being the responsibility he feels to reach out and have a relationship with Shouto and further regrets that he wasn't able to help his abuse in the past either. Another aspect of his character that intruigues me is how gentle he is. Personality-wise he seems about as opposite as he could be from the awkward, stoic, emotionally-stunted person that is Endeavor.

There are a couple of reasons for this, beyond what I've already discussed.

One, he had little to no contact with elements of toxic masculinity growing up, especially not from Endeavor.

Two, most of the influence he did have growing up was from Fuyumi, who is established to have endlessly cared for him since he was a literal baby.

Three, he grew up in a household where almost everyone around him was in much more literal, immediate pain than he was so he developed a very strong sense of empathy that might also have been tied to early survivor's guilt.

Now I have one important distinction to make, and that's the temptation to label him as a 'softboy' or something of the like after seeing him caring for his family and more pointedly, watching him break down in tears during chapter 252. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with men being soft or vulnerable (on the contrary it's actually so so important and relevant that Hori is writing characters like this in a mainstream shounen manga but that's an essay for another time), it is unfair to label him as such based on a moment when his trauma is being exposed.

Because his truama stems from such a young age, there is a blurry line between just being born with more emotional intelligence and the situation he was in fostering those traits. You know, the classic nature/nurture thing. My point being, it's important to tread carefully when discussing the nature of his personality to avoid invalidating his trauma; I have no doubt that he is very strong for having survived these things, and the moments we see of him onscreen are definitely among his most vulnerable.

Another thing that people less familiar with Natsuo's character might assume is that he is hot-headed and argumentative. I thought that at first too- after all, he doesn't seem to shy away from yelling at Endeavor when given the opportunity. However, this doesn't seem to be the case at all.

The first real scene we see him in with Endeavor, the man walks into the room and Natsuo decides he can't handle it and goes to leave. However, Endeavor happens to be blocking the doorway. Endeavor physically stops him and provokes him to his face, asking him to say whatever is on him mind. While Natsuo is notably not confrontational, Endeavor is. I think it's fair to say that he felt at least uneasy at this gesture. Natsuo is very honest with his feelings, and it's obvious that he's pissed at the audacity of Endeavor to be so oblivious to his own son. This is presumably one of the first real interactions they've ever really had, and at this point Natsuo has been dealing with trauma (caused by Endeavor!) on his own for years, and Endeavor seems completely oblivious to his pain and dismmisive to the rest of the family's as well.

Again during the internship arc Natsuo tries to get along with Endeavor and this time he actually gives it a fleeting chance. Tensions are high, however, and the conversation very quickly becomes uncomfortable, at which point he leaves. It is continually implied that Natsuo is uncomfortable being around Endeavor because his very presence brings up painful thoughts and memories of a time when sharing the same space as him was a warning to run and hide. This is later directly confirmed by Natsuo as he says that every time he looks at Endeavor's face he remembers Touya and the pain he was in.

I feel like an important side note is that we have never seen Natsuo outside the context of his family, which is understandable, as the role he plays in the story directly relates to them. However, if you take a look at Shouto, even though his experiences have shaped him to become who he is, he definitely acts differently when Endeavor's not in the vicinity.

Back to Touya's death, it would be very rare that someone would mourn a death for an entire decade without finding closure unless there are other factors preventing it, and uncomfortably this seems to be the same thing for both Natsuo and Endeavor: guilt.

This is getting incredibly long already, but it's important to note that Natsuo probably felt an incredible responsibility to take care of Touya and protect him because of his empathetic nature. His love was never going to be the same as having loving parents. His encouragement was never going to be the same as having support from Endeavor. Even further than then neglect and abandonement, it was not being able to save Touya that really made Natsuo feel worthless.

He seems to try and remedy this inability to save Touya and diminish his guilt by doing everything he can to be better. He reaches out to Shouto to be a better brother, he consistently pushes his limits to entertain Fuyumi's notion of a happy family, and he's working hard towards a degree rhat will allow him to help people like Touya (and Rei) because he failed to do so in the past.

His bio mildly implies that he didn't have much of a direction he was heading in after high school, but Fuyumi's encouragement led him to seek out his current college career. This goes back to Natsuo's 'purpose' in a sense revolving arount Touya, from his birth to his relationship with him to his death, after which he lost his direction. They were always rather inseperable, so naturally their seperation hit Natsuo hard. He lost his direction in life so when Fuyumi encouraged him to rediscover it, he thought of helping people, because that's ultimately what he was born to do.

Thank you so, so much for reading this if you made it to the end! I clearly have a lot of thoughts on this. Let me know what you think about it as well, and hopefully we'll get more info on this soon in the manga :)

#bnha 203 #bnha spoilers #long post #natsuo todoroki #todoroki natsuo #bnha meta #mymeta #todoroki touya

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hellsbellschime · 3 years

Note

I always love your takes on Dany because I think you explain her really well and was wondering what you think of this take by a Dany stan. It's got some uh... interesting ideas. Sorry too because it's quite long

The main difference in between Daenerys' political arc, and that of other "heroes" and their Houses is that Dany's is not currently a political arc relegated to fighting for Targaryen grievances and wins. Meanwhile, all other main House representatives in the narrative (Starks, Martells, Lannisters, Greyjoys, Tullys, Tyrells, Baratheons) are generally fighting precisely for nothing else but their own (and their Houses') grievances and wins.

That's where the double standards come in-

+ Daenerys is harshly and minutely judged for the quality of her every act, upon every single person in her narrative, bc her arc involves her aim to hold responsibility over the wellness of all these people.

+ Everyone else who are part of the Great Houses however are merely judged as per how they perform towards the wellness of their own Houses, because that's all they aim to perform for.

One girl dies in an act Dany is not directly involved in, particularly in intention, and the discussions are endless as per the repercussions and outrage of the occurrence. Because Daenerys took it upon herself to defend all these people, and this seems like a failure, particularlyin her POV: one girl with no other importance in the story and a few lines, among maybe millions. One girl. Hazea.

Robb Stark and his men, on the other hand, will kill, maim and rape thousands, or even tens of unnamed thousands, and there is no outrage; rarely discussed repercussions. Because Robb's political arc is not about protecting nameless people. Not about caring for the fate of one-liner non-noble characters. His arc is about the grievances of House Stark. About Ned. Readers judge him upon how close he gets to getting revenge on Tywin and Jofrrey, about how well/or bad he leads wars, not about what kind of leader he is to people, what kind of 'monster' he is to enemy commonfolk. The relevance of his eventual loss is not about the fate of his people, or enemy people, either. It's about his personal tragedy. It's about the tragedy of the remaining Starks.

There is outrage for Daenerys even killing her (leader) enemies. For everyone else, it's an undisputed aim.

Daenerys is even already judged for the possibility of a future where she will anything that concerns her actually being Daenerys of House Targaryen in Westeros. The possibility that any Westerosi people might die, while hundreds of thousands may have been dying so far at the hands of other Great Houses (directly and indirectly), and it's mostly irrelevant for them. But for Daenerys that judgement is everything. She is looked through the lense of "if she's a Queen she's meant to protect them, not kill them" tho she has not yet been granted that status, while those who have had the status of Kings, Queens and Lords of Westeros in the meantime have been responsible for the deaths of their own people all of this time.

No noble Northener really cares for a Jeyne Poole, least of all for a Hazea.

Daenerys alone is (harshly) judged as a leader of people, because that's her current actual arc. She is not Daenerys of House Targaryen currently, in a real sense, not really. Her family and House don't really matter where she is now, and to what she is doing.

Almost every other noble character (and I only say almost to partly exclude those not taking particular part in politics) is given the leniency of the tragic MC in a tragic family drama biopic. ALL THEY ARE IS X PERSON OF HOUSE Y. And in most cases nothing else matter. - end post

Well, obviously no hate to this person whoever they are and I don't necessarily think it's a bad take just because I disagree with it. I particularly DO agree on things like Jeyne Poole, and I think that is GRRM very intentionally trying to point out some huge hypocrisies with everyone in the story, even the "good guys", because it is incredibly unfair that no one will come to save Jeyne Poole while a fuckton of people will come to save "Arya Stark" just because they cared about Ned.

But where I don't agree is on that aspect in particular. Because it's not about winning or airing grievances for these great houses, a lot of their actions are largely driven by the fact that they simply care deeply about the other people who are involved in the war now or who have been hurt or killed in the past wars, and that is largely what is motivating many of them to do what they do. And in even more intense cases, they're going to war because they are in extremely immediate danger.

This is true for both villains and heroes, I mean Robb and Cat go to war against the Lannisters because there is an immediately mortal threat to their entire family, and even though Cersei and the rest of the Lannisters are clearly villains, their actions are also driven by an immediate mortal danger that their family is facing. And it's safe to say, a huge portion of what happened in the WOT5K would never have even occurred if a lot of these people weren't put in a position of "HOLY SHIT me or someone I love is about to die RIGHT NOW if I don't do something so I better fucking do something".

I feel like the story makes it clear that the wars that they are fighting are very pointless and brutal anyway. I mean FFS, GRRM does not accidentally traumatize the shit out of Arya by putting her in a commoner's position in a war that is supposedly being fought in her name. So I actually agree with the writer in the sense that there is a double standard when it comes to Dany vs. everyone else, but I feel like the double standard is valid because all of these characters for better or worse have a dog in this fight. Whatever they've done is incredibly personal and therefore pretty irrational for them.

And the fact that the men are rallying to save Arya Stark when they wouldn't rally to save a thousand Jeyne Pooles is very telling and demonstrates that they are extremely hypocritical, but it's also telling because they're not fighting for the "heir to House Stark". They repeatedly talk about how they're fighting for Ned's girl. It has very little to do with her nobility and power and a great deal to do with how these people feel about Ned not as a Stark, but just as a person that they knew and cared for who was horribly wronged.

So while I agree and recognize that a ton of the main characters have done the wrong things, often for the wrong reasons, it's personal, it's emotional, and it's irrational. And in a lot of cases it is driven by something as simple and pure as "I am about to die if I don't do something so I'm doing the first thing I fucking think of to get out of it". Even for the houses who initially got involved as a power play, it has become very much about the people that they care about and their own feelings rather than strategy and house advancement.

That doesn't magically make it moral, but it does make it hugely distinct from what Daenerys is doing. Because Daenerys doesn't have a dog in this fight at all. She has absolutely no personal ties to Westeros or anyone in it, and she is not in any danger from anyone in Westeros. Literally the only Westerosi person who has ever even really tried to kill her is a man she doesn't know and is already dead, and the only Targaryen she ever knew who even had a connection to Westeros was someone she hated who abused her horrifically and who is also already dead.

Ergo, Dany is a villain because she literally has no personal or political justification for the massive war that she's going to bring to Westeros. She is going to leave the place she's in that is a complete mess and desperately needs help even more than it did after her intervention, and she's going to invade a place that she doesn't care about beyond some imaginary concept she has about it in her head, has no connection to, has no need for her, and poses no threat to her.

She's not fighting for anything besides herself and her own sense of entitlement over Westeros. She's more harshly judged for her actions because they are completely driven by her own whims and desires and nothing more. She has the opportunity to think things through and plan and get advice and actually figure out the best way to do things, whereas every character in Westeros is reacting to something very immediate that they don't have a lot of time to consider and that is deeply emotional for them. But still, she doesn't even do that.

She's judged for all of the mistakes she makes because they're unnecessary and foreseeable mistakes. And, if she actually just waited and tried to figure out what to do instead of basically throwing herself into situations where she's suddenly overthrowing governments and ruling hundreds of thousands of people without a plan or any governing experience, then a lot of the bad things that have happened as a result of her campaign wouldn't have happened.

And obviously, I think this is a very intentional move on GRRM's part. I think he establishes that war is pointless and often outrageously hypocritical with the WOT5K, but there's a reason he gave Dany no one she loves and no one who needs her help and no one who poses a threat to her in Westeros. She's going to bring war to an already war-ravaged continent simply because she feels like it should belong to her.

That is drastically different than Robb going to war because his father has been falsely charged with treason or Cersei murdering Robert because he will try to murder her children if he finds out they're not his. And while all of the wars in ASOIAF are terrible and purposeless in the end, GRRM is going very far out of his way to demonstrate that Dany has literally zero justification or even explanation for why she acts the way she does beyond her belief in her own super-special entitlement.

#asoiaf #anti daenerys targaryen #anti daenerys targaryen meta #asoiaf meta

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yandere-sins · 3 years

Text

Routine

I had the absolute pleasure to write for @bellanovas who wished for a continuation for the events after Different ♥ Thank you so much for your support over Ko-fi and then continously as a commission, you’re awesome!

Characters: Yandere!Atsumu Miya x Fem!Reader x Yandere!Osamu Miya (For clarification: While they reader in the previous one-shots used they/them pronouns, we used she/her here) Warnings: Yandere, Kidnapping, Emotional Meltdown, Forced Affection, Attempted Feeding

Even you knew the charm of routine.

Even though you were kidnapped and held in this apartment against your will by not one but two crazy men, you understood how a routine helped you to look forward to certain things and not so much to others. Still, it was nice knowing Osamu woke up first, letting you and his brother pull the blanket over your heads a few minutes more until Atsumu had to get up for his morning run and you for your breakfast. You always looked forward to them leaving for the day, despite it meaning they were going to lock you in your room, but at least you had some alone time to either keep napping, read a book, or play a game. It was also the only time you were able to shower or bath without always having the nagging feeling of someone waiting at the door for you, trying to get in even though they knew you locked it.

Routine meant knowing that your peace would be disturbed with either of the two coming home. There wasn’t a pattern to who returned first and when, the two of them communicating it throughout the day without having a way of letting you know - and not always wanting you to know either. If it was Osamu, you knew you’d at least get dinner soon. If it was Atsumu who walked through the door, a big idiotic grin on his face when he saw you, you sighed, wishing he’d still be at practice. At least, if Atsumu let go of you, he let you roam the full apartment and often brought you new things to get busy with.

However, that was only your day. The meaning of ‘routine’ meant something different entirely for the twins.

Cornering you against the wall, you averted your face to escape the smell of a deodorant shower mixed with sweat. It couldn’t be helped; Atsumu was what he wanted to be - an athlete. Nonetheless, he liked to disregard your personal space in favor of getting closer and closer, even if he only just returned home after a long day, immediately causing a ruckus.

You see, for the twins, you were the height of their days. No matter how much they enjoyed their daily activities, once they were done, you were the only thing on their mind. No amount of desire and yearning could come close to the drive they felt rushing back from their work to their home to continue their routine of loving you. A feature of this routine was that things you did once had to be shown again. Had to be experienced again, especially if they were cute.

Thus, your current suffering involved a grown man cornering you, trying to squeeze out the sweet, sweet ‘Welcome Home’ you muttered to him while your mind was foggy from the pleasure you had experienced on that day. It had become a part he’d have liked to implement in his routine, especially with how stubborn you turned out to be when it came to repeating it. You weren’t raising your hands or struggled as much as you did at first when they kidnapped you, but this was a matter of principle. Once you gave in to Atsumu, you’d always have to do it, and once they had this little bit, they’d demand more enthusiasm and more work. You’ve been with them long enough. You knew how these things would end.

It had been foolish, you couldn’t lie. Even though you had only tried to soothe the flared tempers of your captors with these words and were driven by serotonin and other feelings of happiness, you could only blame yourself for doing what you did. Never before had you shown even the smallest enthusiasm over their return, and having, especially Atsumu, latch on to that now, was just an immediate consequence. Any piece of affection you gave him was swallowed wholly and manifested in his head as a new routine for him. Had it been anything else - a kiss, a hug, an apology - you’d be in the same predicament, but it just had to be this silly greeting.

Perhaps you should have tried humoring him just to please him and get him off you, but the thought alone made you want to throw up. Once you’d allow this to fester in his routine, Osamu, too, would demand the same treatment. Before you knew it, the words alone wouldn’t be enough to satisfy their growing hunger for your attention. Suddenly you’d have to be affectionate with them when they arrived at your door, and they’d start to crave for more than you had to offer. There would be no avoiding or forgetting about something they made their routine, and soon enough, it would need to become part of your schedule too.

“I’m home,” he cooed, leaning forward to kiss your forehead. He was prompting you, fishing for what he wanted. Atsumu had a gift to ignore failure, simply trying it again even if his endeavors hadn’t been successful yet. ‘No’ wasn’t in his dictionary, and his understanding of you entirely revolved around loving you and gaining attention and praise from you. Fighting him was the worst. Though Osamu scared you more on a general day-to-day-basis, Atsumu was undeniably trickier than his brother. At least Osamu knew how to take a hint, while Atsumu ignored any and all that didn’t suit him.

“Home,” he continued, lips fluttering against your temple. “Home~” Another kiss to your chin. Arms started to crawl around your body, feeling like caterpillars wandering over your skin. Knowing what was about to happen, you tensed up, feeling your flight instincts setting in. But where to? Atsumu was already all around you.

Reluctantly you complied with Atsumu’s demands, his pulls and pushes leading you to the nearby couch. You knew if you wouldn’t move by your own efforts, he’d drag you with him, and not very gently so. At least that much you had already gone through, experienced, and submitted to. You preferred moving over bruising from his grips and pulls. It still wasn’t easy to give in to the fall when Atsumu plummeted onto the cushions, making you lose your steady feet on the ground in favor of seating you on his lap. Still, even that was manageable, though you wished you could have chosen any other position than straddling him.

The two of you settled like this, his deodorant still filling your nose with its pungent smell, but the hand placing upon the back of your head pushed you forward into his chest relentlessly. It was dizzying but not the worst thing you ever smelled, even though you’d have preferred his deodorant not to be as strong and musky.

Satisfied, Atsumu embraced you tightly for a few seconds, taking a deep breath of you in return, until you started to stir from the uncomfortable hug. At least for now, you figured he had given up on demanding your sweet voice to welcome him home, if only so because he wanted to cuddle. It may seem like a compromise to him, but you knew it was him forcing you to decide which was the greater bad of the two options he was giving you. Nothing was stopping Atsumu from burying his hands beneath your shirt, his skin noticeably colder than you after he just came home, enough to make you flinch lightly and dig your hands into his arms.

You tried to get up and free yourself. Still, Atsumu merely chuckled, his response a joking yet demanding, “No! Warm me!” as he reached up all the way over your back, well-maintained, soft hands digging into your sides roughly. Taking a sharp breath, you had a hard time toggling the pain and uncomfortableness that rose in you, wondering what he was up to while Atsumu remained calm and indifferent about your struggles. A few more shifts were all you did, feeling his fingertips squeeze you harder every time you moved, forcing you to give up if you wanted him to release you from the pain.

Immediately, his hands became soft again as he felt you slump in his hug submissively, Atsumu too taking a deep breath before rubbing his cheek against yours affectionately. The areas he had just clenched down on burned up quickly, but you felt the relief set in as the pain slowly subsided. Littering the side of your face with kisses, he finally pulled out a hand from your shirt again, directing your head against his chest once more. You could feel his body relax as he followed your example to slump into the couch, one hand caressing the back of your head with slow, tender strokes while the other one held you in place around your waist precautiously, so you wouldn’t jump up. He held you like a precious, loved child, though he was nothing even remotely close to a parent.

There was no escape from someone so eager to pretend this was a healthy relationship. That you were an actual couple hugging and embracing each other, even if you were more of a limp doll in his arms, barely able to bring up the enthusiasm to hold him in return. All you did was fixate your eyes on the entrance to your room while your ear rested against Atsumu’s chest, hearing an excited beating through his shirt.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

“I did really well today! Everyone was praising me for my setting,” Atsumu began to recount.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

“And Bokkun, he--” Interrupting himself with a laugh, Atsumu shook his head, heart beginning to race a little faster. “He tried to look extra cool, but he totally jumped into the net today and got stuck!”

Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

“What about you?” he shifted his attention, and you knew he looked down at the top of your head from above, his thumb coming forth to brush over your eyebrows. “I played Mario Kart today,” you whispered, unwilling to create an awkward silence and cause him to urge you on with more painful touches.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

“Let’s play together after dinner!” Atsumu enthusiastically exclaimed, and you knew it wasn’t an invitation, but a firm statement of how you were going to spend your evening. It also didn’t surprise you that despite talking about Volleyball before, his heart only began to race now that you had spoken up. Atsumu could be that easy to read if he allowed it.

You thought of the possibility of a nap as he kept spluttering excitedly about how he was going to win against you and how much better he was at games than his brother. Atsumu called it ‘the perk of being the older twin’ that he was winning so much, despite you remembering that he lost almost all the games lately, suspecting it was because he tried to gain your approval by letting you win.

But your stream of thoughts were harshly interrupted by a sudden hand grabbing you by the arm, pulling you off Atsumu’s lap and out of his embrace. Atsumu’s merrily blabbering came to a halt, and you caught a glimpse of his face wrinkling while you fought with getting to your feet alone. “Go shower, you stink, ‘Tsumu,” you heard Osamu’s familiar voice raise behind you, another help coming to support your struggles.

“It’s not like [Name] cared,” Atsumu hissed, rising after you, their two bodies giving you a feeling of menace as they kept you between each other. “We just enjoyed cuddling, what’s wrong with you?!”

“It’s dinnertime, and you’re still not showered and changed, that’s what’s wrong, Dumbass.”

Atsumu did a short, upset flinch, a huff falling off his lips before he trotted off, pouting. Nothing angered him more than admitting his faults, and Osamu pointing them out didn’t help his swollen ego. Finally, after what seemed to be a quick pat-down, Osamu’s hands disappeared too, and he muttered a short “‘am home,” when you finally turned around, though other than Atsumu he wasn’t as persistent on you returning the greeting as you avoided your eyes and ignored it. Still, he waited for a hesitant, unsure moment, and you supposed the stakes were high when even Osamu considered delaying his routine just to hear your response.

But nodding slowly, his patience took over, and he turned to leave, having you trot after him with a relieved, inwardly sigh. Passing by the twin’s bathroom, you heard Atsumu’s phone play music as he started up a shower behind the door, but with Osamu being unbothered by it, you couldn’t care much about it either. Instead, you felt your stomach grumbling, your last meal having taken place well over five hours ago.

Absentmindedly as you thought back to the bread and egg you had in the morning, you stepped behind the kitchen isle, only to gain a very sharp, alert glare from Osamu, catching you by surprise. Understanding quickly, you were back on the other side, sliding onto one of the three stools on the other side of the kitchen counter, waiting patiently, for this was Osamu’s routine and not yours.

Where you got your food depended on what either of the twins was feeling like. For Atsumu, it could be a quick plate of pasta on the table in your room or convenience store-bought items on the couch while watching TV. But for Osamu, when it came to be his turn - and luckily that was more often than Atsumu’s - he had you sitting pretty and proper at his side as he finished dinner, mostly served in the kitchen for convenience.

Cooking was a skill he had in his blood. No wonder he raised ‘Onigiri Miya’ to be a famous hotspot in no time. But besides lavish onigiri, he also was decent with everything else he tried out and wasn’t stingy on bringing home fresh ingredients to feed you and his brother. Even Atsumu’s unique needs for his sports career were met by Osamu’s food, and though he did it with a straight face, you knew he enjoyed cooking very much.

Being dependent was despicable, that much you knew, but even so, his food could make the world a little better. Even if you wished it wasn’t, well, from someone so toxic and sinister. Someone, whose greatest pleasure was watching you eat the food he prepared for you. Someone who was that kind of crazy.

It was criminal that the plate before you smelled so damn good.

Going without food for a long time, or even just a few more hours than usual that day, it was heaven to smell the curry whose steam rose to your nose sweetly. Without doing anything lately to upset Osamu, he even picked out the vegetables and ingredients you liked. A trick he liked to use on you whenever you ‘misbehaved’ was feeding you with only the things you despised. So right now, it was pure bliss, even though you knew it was nothing short of being the reward part of his carrot and stick methods.

You started to scoop a spoonful of it up, not waiting for any signal - you didn’t have to do that, luckily - before putting it in your mouth, letting the hearty taste lay down on your taste buds and the comfortable warmth spread in your body. Usually, you cursed Osamu in your mind, but this day all you could think of was how wonderful the nourishing this meal was for you. Enthusiastically, you kept stuffing your mouth full with it, hoping you’d never get full and your plate never empty.

At least for a while, it truly seemed that way, as you ate and ate some more. However, soon enough, your tummy started to feel stuffed, every spoon getting harder and harder to swallow. You weren’t sure why you were feeling this way when you snapped back from your food trance, hesitating to take the next spoon, only to catch an entirely different spoon putting rice and curry on your plate. Confused, you looked up and at Osamu, who had a very pure and tender smile playing on his lips as he kept taking small portions from his plate, to leave them on yours.

“Uhm…” you mumbled, blinking a few times in confusion, and he, too, seemed to snap out of his thoughts, meeting your gaze wordlessly. “I’m full, so…” you tried to explain, putting your spoon aside. “Why? Don’t you like it?” It was almost laughable with how much his voice dipped low in disappointment as he said that, Osamu’s eyeing your plate gloomily, shoulder’s slacking. “N-No, it was delicious,” you muttered, a pang of nervosity driving through you. The last thing you wanted was to get on his bad side now.

“Well, then,” he chirped up again, continuing his curry transfer. “You had no dinner yesterday, after… you know…”

Oh, you knew. And frankly, remembering it now made you feel even worse about the kitchen counter you had sullied the day before with your actions than you usually felt sitting here and contemplating your life choices as Osamu cooked. “Breakfast wasn’t much, so I wanted to make sure you eat enough today.”

“I’m fine, really,” you assured him, but Osamu biting his lip with a doubtful shine in his eyes almost made it seem like he couldn’t believe it even after you ate your portion and most of his. “One more,” he prompted, holding up the hill of rice-curry-mix on his spoon to you, and you felt your stomach turn both from thinking about consuming any more and from letting him feed you. Backing away ever so slightly, you bit back on the urge to decline his offer verbally, instead taking your own spoon to eat from your own plate with your own cutlery.

Osamu merely watched, a shade falling over his eyes. Still, unprompted, he proceeded to leave the fill on his spoon on your plate again, proceeding to push you to eat more. You didn’t like to acknowledge this side of him, always wanting to believe he was more mature and tempered than his brother, but Osamu, too, could take too much pride in his doings and get pouty when he didn’t get the recognition for his work. It was a bad trait they shared, and though you tried to ignore his watchful eyes whenever you ate his cooking, you knew he was watching you with boundless joy because it was his cooking you were eating. Sometimes, like that day, you even ate with pleasure.

It made you aware that he reveled in this feeling of being your provider, the hand feeding you, and you wondered if he always thought this way about himself, or only now that you had allowed him closer than ever to you, caressing the remnants of doubts into security. Perhaps, he felt more confirmed in his beliefs after you led him on, believed more in a connection than he did before.

Scooping only the smallest amount of curry onto your tool, you proceeded to have some more tastes, hoping it would satisfy Osamu if he saw you eat at least a bit more. You dared to think not even he really knew what he wanted from you, and his actions were only placeholders for his true intentions. The intentions of watching you do things that were pleasing to him.

Even though the hand enveloping yours suddenly came as a shock, it was almost a saving grace if not for the person behind it. Cooling drops of water fell onto the side of your face, and your shoulder as Atsumu leaned over your side, pulling the spoon to his mouth with a loud, “Aah!”

Before anyone could react, he had already taken a mouthful, wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb while his other hand held up the towel around his hips. “It’s good!” he announced, letting out a fond sigh while licking his lips. “Where’s my plate?”

“Where are your clothes?” Osamu retorted sharply.

“In my room, why?”

Staring each other down while Atsumu used your hand casually to keep feeding himself curry, you were both baffled by the exchange as well as him not getting his own spoon or not use your hand to navigate food to his maw. Mannerly, you turned a blind eye towards the towel or the lack of clothes thereof, but an uncomfortable friction began to spread in the air nonetheless.

“Get some clothes and stop spreading water all over the floor, and we can talk about you getting dinner.”

“You’re too sticky with yer damn rules,” Atsumu complained, finally letting go of your hand and turning to leave for his room. “What if someone slips? What if she,” Osamu worried, pointing to you though you weren’t comfortable with being used in this conversation, “falls and hits her head? You want that?”

“‘Course not,” Atsumu quietly admitted, sounding offended, a little worried even, but mostly pouting. “At least get me a plate too,” were his last words before he toddled off, and Osamu sighed, rolling his eyes at his brother before getting up. He wasn’t fooling you, you knew you weren’t a child anymore, and you wouldn’t slip on a few drops of water on the floor - at least, not seriously. It would have made sense for him to think so little of you, simply to undermine your being, but you couldn’t believe it yourself. Watching as Osamu filled another plate with steaming, delicious curry, you pushed your plate away from you, making it very clear you were done.

However, before you could go, Atsumu returned, taking the seat at your other side for himself and using your spoon to get an up front fill on the food, Osamu returning shortly after, scolding him for eating your food. “Don’t steal from other people’s plates, ‘Tsumu.”

“She’s done,” he confirmed what you had wanted to tell Osamu all this time. “You’re just jealous because I get to eat from her plate.”

“‘Am not.”

“Tell that someone who believes you.”

Their bickering continued, a laughable display of their sibling relationship. As if they could not go a moment without a tease or a snappy comment. As if this was normal, and to some degree, it seemed like it. By the corners of their mouth ever so often twitching upwards, as they joked on each other’s expenses, or the plates being put into the sink to be washed off later, it was all so normal. Just an ordinary evening, on a typical day, with not so sane individuals around you, but overall it appeared so awfully normal.

Supposedly, that’s what routine did to you. It made a situation that was nothing short of abstruse seem alright and normal, even though the tears welling up as your heart clenched with the realization, weren’t at all a sign of normality. Rather, it was desperation, pity, and fear of what was going on. What was becoming of you when even you started to adapt to this routine of your new days, a routine brought to you by the twins rather than from your endeavors and your life going forward. What would happen? Where would your life lead to?

You couldn’t care about the gazes you earned, two conflicted bastards watching the tears leave lines as they rolled down your face, cold and calculating. Still, neither of them reached out to comfort you yet. They wanted to see where the situation was going, what was happening. If you’d lash out again at them, throw a tantrum, or just fold into yourself. Fulfilling your needs wasn’t always easy with the relationship you three had, and they glanced at each other, hoping their twin would know more about what to do than they did individually.

But neither of their routines included tending to a meltdown, and yours didn’t either. They could pretend to be normal as much as they wanted. Still, the paradise they tried to uphold daily was rotting and decaying under the surface even if everything seemed to be fine. Laughs, fun, and forceful measurements couldn’t bring them what they really wanted, but it broke you into pieces more and more every day. Their routine and their acting slowly made you wilt and lose yourself, and neither you nor they knew how to deal with that. How to deal with your own routine of slowly succumbing to their forcing.

They didn’t know.

They didn’t know, so Osamu emerged from the kitchen to help you up, drag you back to the couch in your room, and sit you down between the two brothers as they put on the TV, latched a big blanket over you three. Their hands rested on your body, but you weren’t even uncomfortable with their touches at that moment, one palm rubbing over your lower back and one on top of your thighs comfortingly. A thumb drawing circles over your knee, while Atsumu pulled you to rest against his chest again, experience the warmth and comfort of another person wanting to help you through whatever you were experiencing. It was something they couldn’t understand, but didn’t intend to happen, at least, that much you took from Osamu’s worried frown as he wiped away the tears escaping your eyes.

You simply hoped that these meltdowns wouldn’t become a part of your or their routine ever.

Especially not when they took turns in gazing at you lovingly, adjusting their bodies so you’d be comfortable, and leaving tender kisses on the top of your head, learning that despite it all, they were the closest you’d ever have in terms of comfort ever again.

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