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naynay5155 · 3 years

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C!Tommy’s Storyline With C!Dream Is A Very Concerning Depiction Of Abuse

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Okay, I’m sure that this probably isn’t too new information for anyone paying attention to the overall story of the DreamSMP, especially C!Tommy’s storyline, but I figured I’d give my two cents for this anyways.

C!Tommy is an Abuse Victim who has gone through horrific stuff at the hands of C!Dream. This is not an arguable fact. regardless of if C!Dream had reasons for doing what he did, if C!Dream also later gets abused, or if ultimately the abuse portrayal could be considered in some ways flawed or unrealistic, that stuff doesn’t ultimately matter. Because we’ve seen what happened to C!Tommy during Exile, have seen the physical, emotional, and mental abuse he was put through. Just because they won’t call it Abuse doesn’t mean it isn’t Abuse.

Now, C!Tommy being an abuse victim is an interesting idea from a storytelling perspective. It has a lot of potential to lead to genuine character development, or to affect relationships and story beats in interesting ways. And it could be an interesting way to really say something about abuse and coping with it.

And to an extent, an argument could be made that it has, though I’d argue the exact way those are handled in canon, but not the point. The point is, abuse is not just something that you get to gloss over. If you want to include themes of abuse in the story, a story you are making available to the public for millions to see, then there needs to be a clear and obvious message being portrayed with including abuse in the story. Preferably, that abuse is bad, and can have majorly negative effects on anyone, especially children. We don’t always get that lucky, but whatever.

But, from my months of watching the story of the DreamSMP, and trust me I’ve been here a long while, I haven’t seen C!Tommy’s abuse being handled very... well. I could, of course, be wrong in some aspects, and maybe be misremembering stuff since this dumpster fire has been happening for a year now, and feel free to correct me or bring up more points if you know something I don’t. But, I still think that overall, I have a point of view that should be considered.

So basically, C!Tommy is an abuse victim, right? this is easy to see, very obvious in the way he acts and behaves. Or... is it?

Abuse is a complex topic and one that, in real life, presents itself in all sorts of forms. Many abuse victims were raised in unloving homes and ended up becoming more vulnerable to abuse later on in life as a result of that. Others never properly learned how to express emotions or turn people down and got taken advantage of. Others were abused from the start, and develop various ways of coping and dealing with that, even ways that they might not be fully conscious of themselves. Abuse is not a one-way street, it could hardly be considered a street at all given how diverse and differing the people who experience it end up developing into are.

So I’m not saying that, if C!Tommy were a real person, that he isn’t “Being traumatized enough” or that “Why isn’t he more like what I expect him to be like?”. That is not what I’m saying at all.

What I am saying, is that C!Tommy is a fictional character who exists within a narrative, a story. And in a good story, consistency is half the battle. I, as the audience consuming the story, need to be able to look at C!Tommy and pick up on and understand the effects abuse has had on him. And these effects need to be consistent, otherwise, as an audience member, I’m going to get confused and start having questions about why he acts one way here but doesn’t somewhere else.

I also need to be able to clearly see and understand, by being given narrative stepping stones, if something is changing for his character.

As the saying goes, “Show don’t tell”. C!Tommy can’t just say he “Goes to Puffy for Therapy” offhandedly one time, as a means of handwaving away why he doesn’t really consistently act as traumatized as he used to even though it’s literally only been a few weeks, or months at most. To explain how he can jump back between being really sad and depressed about something, to joking about Women and Twitter. It seems weird if he’s able to just so seamlessly, so effortlessly, go back and forth. Almost as if he’s bouncing between OOC and IC, but that’s a whole other discussion.

Sure, C!Tommy is representing real mental health issues, but he is, ultimately a Fictional Character existing in a story. I need to be given signs, proof, foreshadowing, to explain when he has certain reactions and behaviours in order to understand his character. And these need to be consistent, otherwise we get plotholes and general confusion.

I criticize the inconsistency and the offscreen handwaving because it’s generally not very good writing. It’s the same reason I disliked Eret’s basically off-screen-sort-of-redemption-arc. It’s the same reason people dislike it when Villains of previous seasons suddenly come back as fully reformed good guys for seemingly no reason. There is no arc, no development, no progress is shown to us.

Because when you’re telling a story about a character having some major change or developing in some way, or having an important character trait, if I don’t see it on screen, then it didn’t happen. How am I supposed to root for C!Tommy’s progress, or understand what he’s doing to progress, if a never see his coping mechanisms? His therapy appointments?

You can’t just say something, or inconsistently portray something, and expect me to jump through hoops to connect these nearly transparent dots that keep getting thrown around.

Show don’t tell. Show me Tommy getting better, because otherwise you’re just telling me he made character development, and showing me this completely different character as proof. No, last I remembered C!Tommy was having panic attacks and yelling when C!Dream was even mentioned. You can’t tell me that a day later he can interact normally after days of being in the prison and a month of being dead.

Or, if you are gonna have him flip flop back and forth, don’t have it be so sudden and jarring, give an explanation. Is he faking being fine? Does he have memory issues? C!Tommy doesn’t read to me as the type who’s good at suppressing his emotions, he wears his heart on his sleeve. So you’re going to have to explain, clearly, in a way that isn’t ambiguous, what’s happening with C!Tommy here.

You’re not really saying anything about the abuse C!Tommy goes through, if all of that trauma is automatically wiped from the story when the writers get too lazy or too scared to keep it in. At best, you are showing abuse and trauma for the sole purpose of showing it, with no intention of properly dealing with and addressing it in the story. At worst, you are basically just doing torture porn.

Pain, Hurt, Trauma for the sake of it. Not with any goal in mind. Just for the drama of it, or to hurt the audience.

And then your audience is just supposed to take that content in uncritically, and they gain no true understanding of how abuse victims survive and cope after their traumatic treatment.

Exile Arc sure did a good job at making C!Tommy suffer. But as soon as that arc ended, a lot of the stuff that happened in it went completely glossed over and unaddressed for a long while. That might have been fine in the lead-up to Doomsday, since a lot of plot stuff had been going on and stopping to handle C!Tommy’s issues might (Might is heavily doubted cause it certainly isn’t impossible) mess with the pacing a bit. But then after Doomsday, there isn’t really any excuse to put it off. Because nothing was really happening for a good while, and nobody had anything to do plotwise.

And this became even more true with C!Dream being locked in Prison. Nothing was really happening, so what was stopping the story from taking the time to properly discuss and deal with this stuff?

Well, nothing really. So, the Hotel Arc happened. And oh boy, was it a mess.

So, C!Tommy being angry at C!Dream for the abuse and trauma he has suffered at Dream’s hand isn’t an issue. It’s an incredibly common thing for victims to feel angry at their abusers, and to even go so far as to wish for vengeance against them in some way. And that’s a totally valid and fine feeling.

You’re hurting, you’re scared, you’re in pain. I get that. When we’re hurting, we don’t always act rationally or healthily.

But, ultimately, that rage, and hurt, and want for vengeance is not a healthy thing to hold onto. In many circumstances with an abuse victim wanting to inflict pain back on their abuser, we run into various problems.

For one, getting vengeance on your abuser is quite frequently going to give you more emotional pain than it will fulfilment. Especially if you are young, or are letting this want for vengeance take over your entire livelihood. It does you no good ultimately, to attempt to bring pain to the person who hurt you, because not only will you often be unsuccessful, you frequently won’t find emotional healing and stability in that.

(The only exception to this rule being if ignoring them or moving on from them isn’t an option for you right now.)

Actions have consequences, and if you invest more time in that person who hurt you, then you have no time to work on yourself or the relationships around you. You have no time to heal, and this can become self-destructive.

Spending time around an abuser, as a victim, is in all likelihood just going to upset you more. You’re retraumatizing yourself by spending time around them, and as you make attempts to give them their comeuppance, you could possibly end up internalizing the methods they used on you, and just end up perpetuating the cycle of abuse again.

And even if you have no problem with doing that to this particular person, consider how fully internalizing these abusive behaviours could affect your friends or family. Frequently, even when they don’t mean to, abuse victims can internalize the things that they went through and then use those same behaviours against people in their life later on. Being shitty to your support system because of what you went through isn’t a good move, for you or them.

Basically just, an Abuse Victim has more to gain from working on themselves while finding ways to heal and overcome their trauma and abuse, than they do spending their time and energy on the abuser. Its frequently unhealthy, distressing, and self-destructive to indulge in that too much.

(Of course, I don’t speak for everyone, but from what iIve looked into and seen, this is the healthiest method of actually healing from your abuse. That doesn’t mean you just... leave your abuser alone and never address or talk about what they did, you don’t let them get away with it, of course not. It just means you don’t waste your mental well being and time obsessing over someone, especially someone who has hurt you so much.

You deserve better than that. You deserve to heal.)

Now, let’s get back to C!Tommy.

C!Tommy, instead of finding a proper means of coping with his issues (proper therapy, diagnosis for his issues, forming and maintaining healthy support systems, focusing on things he loves, etc) is shown to repeatedly focus back on C!Dream. When he was making Big Innit Hotel, it did seem like he was to an extent finding ways to cope with his shit. He was still kinda shitty and his hotel was not exactly made and run by the most morally great standards, though I suppose I can’t expect too much when he is a very traumatized teen and doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

But, ultimately, this all fell apart when he got locked in Pandora’s Vault with C!Dream. Arguably, it was already falling apart the moment he decided to keep pursuing C!Dream even when he was locked up.

See, the thing is, C!Tommy can never just… have trauma. Having trauma that he can healthily and methodically work through is something that for him as a Character, is basically impossible. His character is an angry one, one built on spite and childishness, and who holds the mantle, unfortunately, of “Spunky Male Protagonist In A YA Novel”. So, his mental health issues can never just be a struggle he has to cope with, especially not when the DreamSMP can never seem to have anything between “A lot is happening right now omg” or “Literally nothing is happening and nobody is playing on the server at all omg”.

Instead, his issues have to be seen as a battle, and they fuel the narrative of the story. Him having been abused by C!Dream cannot just exist as a thing that he as a person has to work through slowly with the help of others around him. It has to be seen as this Epic Triumph Against Evil, another battle of Tommyinnit VS Dream on the DreamSMP, a classic Villain versus Hero fight.

This, of course, isn’t too great. By C!Tommy’s abuse plotline being framed in this manner, it makes it so that C!Tommy is constantly obsessing over his abuser and recklessly throwing himself into dangerous and triggering situations is some attempt at an “Epic Battle With Evil”, rather than this being treated like the self-harm it actually is. And yes, it is self-harm, a form of it.

C!Tommy uses his trauma and issues as fuel for the story, making it so that its impossible for him to truly progress and a character, and the moment he does start growing, he has to get retraumatized again so he goes right back to where he was.

C!Tommy does not become a better person when he’s around C!Dream, nor does he find any form of fulfilment in being around him. He gets shaky and panicky at just the sight of him. He regularly has violent and explosive outbursts at just the mention of him. When C!Dream talks to him, he gets nervous and basically can’t help but listen due to conditioning he still listens to.

When C!Tommy went to go visit C!Dream the first time in Pandora’s Vault, he brought with him stacks of TnT. He did it because he wanted to mimic what C!Dream had done to him in Exile, where he would take all of C!Tommy’s newly gained items and blow them up underground for dramatic effect.

C!Dream did this for control over C!Tommy, to manipulate him, for his suffering.

And C!Tommy wanted to do this to C!Dream, because he was feeling vindictive.

When C!Tommy got into the prison, he mocked C!Dream, hit him repeatedly, and tried to boss him around. He made him write ridiculous books and verbally berated the man. He did this in a feeble attempt to gain some feeling of control over C!Dream. This, evidently, did not work. At best his success was momentary. And this sense of achievement he gained was gained through projecting his abuse trauma onto someone else.

He repeated the cycle.

After he got brought back from the dead and let out of the prison, he was much much worse. C!Tommy was now paranoid, anxious, constantly thinking about C!Dream, and had his mindset solely on getting revenge on him, by killing him.

It got so bad, he ended up doing lacklustre “Exposure Therapy” to help himself not panic when he went into Pandora’s Vault to kill C!Dream. It got so bad he dragged C!Tubbo and C!Ranboo into this, putting them in danger and putting more pressure on another two teenagers’ shoulders.

It got so bad, that Ghostbur died, C!Sam closed off even more, and C!Wilbur came back.

Objectively, C!Tommy leaving C!Dream alone would be the better thing for everyone. And yet he keeps repeating the cycle. Because C!Tommy is not meant to grow, learn and heal. He is made to suffer.

The problem is not so much showing an unhealthy depiction of a mentally ill or traumatized person. Because trauma and mental illness and the effects of abuse are not always pretty, and they shouldn’t always have to be portrayed and pretty or sympathetic to be accurate.

It becomes a problem when you get this depiction of C!Tommy’s coping being presented uncritically to an audience of a lot of underaged and young people.

Nobody in canon, whether they be adults or fellow teens, has ever tried to question C!Tommy’s methods for coping. C!Ranboo and C!Tubbo just limply went along with his plans for Exposure Therapy with no consideration of if this was a good idea. No adults really offer to genuinely step in and help C!Tommy deal with his shit, and the ones that do leave him or get corrupted in some way, often leaving him with more trauma as they do.

C!Puffy’s therapy methods are dubious at best, and the most we ever see of her actually helping C!Tommy is her humouring his toxic behaviours, and C!Tommy making offhanded mentions to vague therapists appointments we never see.

C!Technoblade stopped giving a shit as soon as C!Tommy walked off the screen. C!Wilbur was dead, and now that he isn’t he certainly isn’t helping C!Tommy. C!Phil isn’t C!Tommy’s dad and has no obligation to do anything for him as a result. C!Ranboo has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. C!Tubbo is too busy repressing his own trauma to help C!Tommy with his. C!Sam is being ruled by the prison and C!Quackity. C!Quackity has become an Ancap.

Nobody in this story is a reliable or trusted person to C!Tommy, who could properly tell him his methods are unhealthy and give him better alternatives. And as a result, nobody is able to tell the audience that C!Tommy is wrong

Unreliable Narrators are only effective when the narrative in some way has their unreliableness pointed out or proven to the audience. If you go into a story with the assumption that everybody watching will be able to see past C!Tommy’s POV and not take him at face value, then you are naive. Especially when this fandom is made up of many teens and children.

I only know C!Tommy’s methods are unhealthy because I care way too much and do my research. A vast majority of the world doesn’t have the same understanding and education on these topics, especially not children and teenagers. A good chunk of people, especially neurodivergent and mentally ill people, could very well take the story at face value and automatically assume that what Tommy’s doing is actually a good coping mechanism because they don’t know any better.

There is no clarification or safety net for preventing misinterpretation. And being of the opinion that “Well, they should know better than to trust a bunch of Minecraft Youtubers for this stuff” or “We can’t expect them to be psychologists! You expect too much” is just… not helping.

Because I shouldn’t have to explain why children and teenagers, especially those that are using these people to cope, are not always going to make level-headed and common-sense decisions. They will be influenced by these Content Creators, whether we think it’s “Stupid” or not.

And I can say with certainty that, while yes, this might be a bit much to expect from a bunch of British/American white guys who play Minecraft to handle, may I also point out that nobody fucking made them put this stuff in the story. There are ways to write a story without stepping outside of your realm of true understanding. Nobody begged these MCYTs to go and make torture porn for a 16 year old, nobody asked them to touch on topics they have no fucking clue about.

They put that in themselves. And we have the right to point out the problems and flaws in it, and criticize them for not handling this stuff better.

You don’t start applying for a job you don’t meet the requirements for. You don’t start an expensive project you can’t finish.

You don’t include elements in a story you aren’t willing to fully go through with and address in a proper and sensitive way.

#hope this makes sense #dreamsmp roleplay #dream smp critical #dreamsmp #dream smp #character analysis #c!tommy #c!dream #tw abuse discussion #tw abuse #negativity #dsmp critical #critical dsmp

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meta-enthusiasm · 3 years

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You know what I am really fucking tired of seeing in popular media?

The "evil, hysterical woman in power" trope. The clichè that potrays women who are in a position of power as overzealous, unhinged, power hungry maniacs who are a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Female leaders are shown as less resonable and down to earth as their male counterparts, and are often villainized by either the fandom or the narrative of the story itself. They are doomed to fail because of their womanliness and need to be taken down before they enact their evil plans, preferably by a man, or a woman who performs the 'right' kind of femininity.

This trope relies on the sexist misconception that women are more fragile than men, more emotionally unstable and unpredictable.

"Women aren't cut out to be leaders, they should be nurturing and supportive and tend to their families. Having higher aspirations is against their nature and will eventually break them and drive them crazy."

That type of bullshit that was designed to keep women out of leadership positions and keep oppressing us. To keep us quiet and submissive.

Here are a few examples to further explain this stereotype:

Daenerys Targaryen is one of the most well known characters to fall victim to this trope. She is an abuse and rape victim, seeking to change the current social and political systems of the world because she knows how many people suffer under its injustice. ("Crush the wheel.")

For all her compassion and charity she has shown over the series, the writers decided that it would be reasonable for her to go crazy at the end of the show and, despite promising she wouldn't inflict more damage than necessary, kill thousands of innocent people whose government had already surrendered to her.

And guess who had to kill her in the end? Yup, another man. Her love interest, who was "forced" to betray her.

Next, we have:

Morgana Pendragon, from "Merlin". To remind you, she is an abuse victim who had to endure her father's controlling behavior and bigoted attitude towards people with magic abilities which, suprise suprise, she turned out to have. She had to watch as her father murdered and oppressed people just like herself, and when she challenged that behavior, he would come down hard with punishment. (Going so far as to actually throwing her in the dungeons for a couple days.)

Eventually, she rebelled against the corrupt system and had her genocidal father killed. She led a rebellion against Camelot after Uther's son (Arthur) continued to oppress magicians under his reign, and sought to create a better future for herself and her people.

So far so good, right? Well, no. The problem here is that she is the antagonist of the story. She is portrayed as being in the wrong for not quietly taking the injustice and watching it happen.

Halfway through the show, she becomes obsessed with power and status and desperately chases after the throne of Camelot. She is extremly vindictive, manipulative and cruel to others to archieve her goals. She is a "hysterical woman" who is out of control, emotionally unstable, challenges the patriarchy, and therefore needs to be defeated.

Her death was portrayed as tragic, yet absolutely necessary.

(Of course it had to be a man who killed her.)

Azula is the epitome of this horrid, misogynistic trope. She is a fierce, ambitious leader and highly skilled fire bender, respected and feared among her people. She is highly driven and succeeds at almost everything she sets her mind to.

Ever since she came into this world, she was better at everything than Zuko. She was a better fighter than him, a better bender, better strategist, better child. And that is precisely the reason why she had to lose in the end.

Despite coming from the exact same circumstances as Zuko, the story and the fandom at large see Azula as way less redemable and likable than him. Even though she is an abuse victim whose own mother hated her and is a literal child soldier, she doesn't get any sympathy from the protagonists of the story. The otherwise so understanding and wise Iroh even calls her "crazy", (which is, if you've done some basic research into misogynistic expressions, really fucking problematic.) and tells Zuko that there is no saving her. Why? He doesn't tell, but it's obvious that the writers made him say this because of their own internalized sexist beliefs. She isn't offered a way out of her toxic environment like Zuko was. She didn't get the support from Iroh because he had already given up on her.

To top it off, she has a nervous breakdown near the end and loses her remaining sanity. Because, you know, "She's craaaazy!! And SO unstable!! Typical woman." (Not to mention how this further stigmatizes mental illness and portrays it as something only evil people get.)

She was supposed to become the next fire lord, a position that carries utmost power and influence. Of course, such authority could not be given to a woman. That's why Zuko, a man, gets to be the next fire lord, and we are left assuming Azula will be spending the rest of her days in prison.

The writers assume the audience detests Azula and wants her to suffer. She doesn't deserve a happy ending, or the love and support that Zuko got.

Why? Because she poses a threat to the status quo, the patriarchy. She challenged the belief that men had to be the best and most efficient at everything they do, that women could indeed be better leaders and be happy with having a career and not be nurturing, motherly figures to the men in their lives. And for that transgression, for breaking gender stereotypes, Azula was punished.

(It's also why Katara, someone who performs the "right" kind of femininity by being nurturing, motherly, supportive, healing, doting, and is the care taker of the group, ends up taking Azula, the evil and perverted form of femininity, down. I believe @batboyblog has made a similar post about this.)

This is Carmilla from the popular Netflix show "Castlevania", and if you've payed attention to my previous points, it should be pretty obvious what her character represents and how her story ends.

Note that she is also an abuse and rape survivor who is represented as evil and cruel for being angry at what was done to her.

To top it off, she is also an example of the man hating woman stereotype, whose anger at the misogyny and sexism of the world is portrayed as an "overreaction" and as "too much".

At the end of the story, she had to be taken down by another man (Isaac) so that the status quo could be preserved, and the reign of a crazy bitch like her could be stopped. Horay, the day is saved from yet another unstable, selfish woman who would have brought suffering and pain over her country if allowed to rule. Hysterical women with their demand for equality.

Conclusion:

In all these examples, we can see female abuse victims thriving for power and status, for respect, being represented as something negative and something to avoid. Trying to fundamentally change a system that is rigged against women/female representing people is a fruitless endevour that will eventually fail and drive us crazy, because our minds aren't strong enough to handle this type of responsibility and status.

Holding on to anger and bitterness over what was done to us is the sign of a bad person, and the only morally acceptable path is to forgive/ignore our abusers and let the injustice continue to happen.

Strangely enough though, that same gaslighting, victim blaming mentality gets almost never applied to male characters. Men who seek vengeance are never portrayed as weak or crazy for giving in to the wish of changing a corrupt system/killing bad people. (Batman, the Punisher, Hawkeye, John Wick, Jason Todd, Erin, Scar from FMAB, Iron Man, and so on)

The reason why these stereotypes almost never apply to men but almost always to women is sexism. There is no other explanation for this. These tropes were specifically designed to make society believe that women aren't cut out for leadership positions and are happiest with domestic, easy tasks like watching after our children and taking care of the household.

Women who are angry, women who are dominant are to be feared and distrusted. They are represented as a danger to the general public and need to be taken down before they enact their evil plans.

Feel free to add further examples.

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ceoofanticatradora · 3 years

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We need more anti C//A who are Adora stans (like you seem to be) so that people can understand that C///A is bad for Adora. Heck C//A is bad for Catra too, but the shippers don't seem to realize it. If Catra had been able to let Adora go maybe she could have healed instead of her festering and the abuse may have ended instead of escalated.

Hello Dear, welcome on my Blog and a big thank you for your message! Firstly I wanna apologize that this response is reaching you more than three full days, almost four later. Just real life getting into the way of my online presence (at least I got my A-Levels admission!) but I assure you that replying to you was on my To Do List the entire time. And while I could've typed something quick, I thought you deserved a full length response just as much as the person before you received. That goes for anyone really to ask/write me anything in the future.

Adora is a character that has flaws, her own interests, things she struggles with/is insecure about etc. but she also still works on being better (up to Season 5). This makes her relatable, fleshed out and overall three dimensional. Overall for me that makes Adora very likeable. Which is funny because when I first watched the show I thought of her as too goofy and felt like she as a character was overall just flat. Her character design did not speak to me either, the ponytail with the weird hair poof and these pointy shoulders of her jacket just really were not my taste. Isn't it amazing how perceptions can change?

As you can guess from that description I did not always stan Adora and she's probably still not my favorite character but over the almost two years I've been in this fandom I've grown rather fond of her. Other important characters to me are Kyle (a very relatable comfort character of mine, he learned to stand up for himself and others and I support that, f*ck Season 5 for barely acknowledging his existence), Lonnie (apart from treating Kyle badly (which I really do NOT support or excuse) I really love her, man, some women just do me like that, I mean she really stood up to Catra like that), Entrapta (I'm autistic too! It's great to have some representation, seeing the ableism/treatment she experiences in the show is not so much though), Seahawk (I don't even know why, I have some issues with his behavior towards Mermista at times but overall I love this dork), Scorpia (she reminds me of myself so much and I really wanna give her hugs, I'm so glad she chose to no longer let Catra treat her like that even though I will be forever salty she just immediately forgave her), Peekablue (I can explain this even less than Seahawk, especially since it was not even really him in the end but his existence somehow helped me cope with Season 5, without him I probably would've left this fandom ... and also my favorite color is blue) and Double Trouble (now there's enough people already critcizing how they're not exactly great Non-binary representation but this dramatic lizard will forever be in my heart, that reality check they gave Catra, basically slapping her in the face with facts was satisfying as h*ck, also I like lizards overall).

Now there's plenty of characters I like, dislike (or even hate) or am simply indifferent about but after all this is not a tier list but me talking about Adora, Catra and Catradora. Adora started off as this girl that was so sure what she was doing is right but once she was taught differently she was willing to leave everything she knew (except Catra, because she valued her despite everything) behind. And not only that, she broke out of the abuse cycle that Catra tried so hard to keep upright. And that is exactly what makes Adora such a good role model. She teaches children (or people) that:

Your past doesn't define what/who you are or what/who you can become

-> Adora used to be a Horde soldier and did not know where she came from, but nonetheless she found herself a family and became a hero that saved thousands of people

You can always change your mind and start a new life if you feel disappointed in what you are doing/who you are as a person

-> Basically the exact same point, Adora started a new life as she saw what the Horde really was and changed her mind about who to fight for

You deserve love too, be it platonic or romantic (or se*ual???) (If you're aro and/or ace just ignore the part that does not work for you)

-> While Adora for various reasons thought her only use was to please others and meet their needs and expectations (mostly due to Shadow Weaver and Catra) she learned to accept that she too deserves love and validation (if the love aspect would not have been focused on it being romantic love so she could smooch Catra in the finale this would've been a billion times better because she got love from her friends that showed her her real value)

You can walk away from something/someone, that does not make you egoistic/selfish

-> Adora walked away from the Horde, after Catra stubbornly refused to come with her despite many offers (basically Catra broke the promise, not Adora) from her too and that did not make her a "traitor" or "selfish", h*ck, Adora in the end did this for a bigger purpose too, even if part of it was her not wanting to live with such wrong morals

Your opinions, feelings etc. about a person/something can change and that is perfectly fine and valid, being able to change is part of what makes someone human

-> Adora's views on many things changed throughout the show: The Horde and the Rebellion, the First Ones, Catra, being She-Ra, herself, her priorities and so on ... she actually makes use of her brain, which is why Catra saying "Don't you ge it?" or calling her an idiot and dumb never sat right with me, she's a realistic character for shifting with her thoughts, feelings etc. and sometimes just does not fully think things through

You don't have to let other people treat you like sh*t (just because they have some issues they never worked through does not give them any right to let it out on you)

-> This point is obviously centered mostly around Catra and her abusing Adora almost every chance she gets, which is why Adora standing up for herself and not letting Catra blame her for her own decisions and mistakes is so important, "You made your choice, now live with it" is one of the most powerful lines throughout all the five Seasons

Now I'm sure there is still more to Adora's character than what I just listed and unfortunately almost all the points basically got pushed aside, well, Adora as a character got pushed aside in Season 5. All her growth, the things that made me love her, see her as great role model for so many people robbed of their value for the sake of making everything revolve around Catra. That brings me to her and how you are absolutely right that Catradora is harmful to both characters. Of course Adora is affected most by it in the end but Catra too is obviously suffering under the fandoms obsession and just the overall idea of them being romantically involved.

Just like with Adora the stans make almost everything about Catra over her relationship with Adora. She too can barely exist outside of it and if she wasn't the fan favorite she'd most likely would too be mostly in Fanarts that include Adora and not just her (if you google "Catra Fanart" most content is still Catra and Catra only but here and there Catradora still peaks through). But for whatever reason the fandom still views her more as her own person as the other ones? Catrouble and Scorptra Shippers might actually still get less hate than Glimmadora Shippers (I'm not denying they don't get any, they most certaintly do) which is just plain hypocricy and favorism. Kinda like the: A woman needs to be loyal to her husband and her husband only but if the husband wants to be active with other women that is perfectly fine because "that is just how men are" or how i like to call it ... sexism. Now in this case they are both women so it's not sexism but yo do get my point.

But much more importantly, Catra has an unhealthy obsession with Adora. Signs of that are for example:

Constantly talking about Adora, even when said person is not around (to Shadow Weaver, Scorpia etc.)

Obsessing over having control over Adora like in that one Episode "Are you kidding? I finally got control over Adora, I'm not giving that up!"

Building her entire character and her actions around Adora "We need to take Adora down", "Adora left me", "I'd rather see the whole world end than see you win!", also shown in Season 5 where she states she does save Glimmer only for Adora and not for Glimmer or to do the right thing

Getting aggressive or very emotional over Adora like clawing the wall, having nightmares etc. (destructive behavior towards herself and others)

Having no or barely any characteristics outside of her relationship with Adora like, we don't know her interests or likes and dislikes outside of being evil, obsessed with Adora, being abused by Shadow Weaver ...

Trying to force Adora to meet her needs and expectations regardless of Adora's owns

Sacrificing her oppurtunity to be happy in the Crimson Waste for the sake of her Adora obsession and being better than her at all costs

So yes, you were very right with saying that not putting Catra in a relationship with Adora would've benefited both characters. Catra could've learned to exist on her own, develop interests and a life outside of Adora. Learn to accept herself and eventually come to terms with her childhood abuse. She could've been free and not "the abusive cat girl that ended up with the person she unhealthily obsessed over to the point of no return" she kinda is now. Even if we ignore the whole "dating your long term abuser" part from Adora's side and "being rewarded" for horrible behavior, Catra alone is not giving a good example to people watching. As much as I dislike Catra, disdain her even, an ending where she is dependent on Adora, unable to stand on her own two legs after she led armies in war is not what I would wish for her, even with a decent redemption arc (that she did not get).

#anti catradora #anti c//a #anti catra #spop critical #response #my post #spop salt #ocd #role model #anti catra stans #anti catradora stans #comfort character #adora deserves better #honestly its worse once you know its not just bad for adora #anti+catra #anti+catradora

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wheres-sam · 3 years

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I binge-watched the spn anime because of the brain rot

It’s bad except for the parts that are good, and it’s pretty to look at. Here’s a comprehensive list of pros and cons. Spoilers ahead!

Pros:

- more psychic kid backstories: Max (Nightmare), Lily (Darkness Calling), Jake (Loser)

- more psychic Sam

- more Azazel

- basically if you want more about the psychic/demon kids, watch the anime

- more young Winchesters

- the monsters, the superhuman abilities, the fight scenes, it all looks really cool animated. (But PSA it’s violent. It doesn’t shy away from blood and gore.)

- Sam and Jessica backstory

- more of the brothers being cute and funny together

- Missouri isn’t forgotten

- includes some Japanese legends/mythology

- the impala looks great in every scene. They did Baby good

- the “Supernatural” intro title

- the outro sketches of the boys hanging out with Baby

- Episodes adapted from the original show are different, but I like some of the changes? It’d be boring if it was an exact retelling and the visual medium wasn’t utilized. (I know I said spoilers before, but this is when they get detailed. If you wanna skip over, I’ll tell you where they STOP.)

Nightmare goes more into the abuse Max has suffered. Instead of locking Sam in a closet, Max sends Sam through the floor and covers the hole by breaking his bed in half, and it’s extremely sexy how Sam shoves the 2 halves apart with his mind. Later on Dean puts bandaids on Sam and they talk about demons loudly in front of a fast food intercom.

In My Time of Dying highlights the guilt Sam feels over Dean. In both the og and the anime John verbally blames Sam for not shooting Azazel, but where in the og Sam goes right on arguing, in the anime he reels back for a moment like he was slapped. Dean’s spirit touches Sam’s shoulder, and Sam knows immediately that it’s Dean. He doesn’t even question it. Instead of “Are you here?” it’s “I know you’re with me. I can feel it.” And I love that. Dean figures out right away he’s dealing with a reaper, and the reaper takes on the appearance of Mary to convince Dean to move on to the afterlife. Instead of a Ouija board, Sam uses a laptop to talk to Dean, and the first word Dean types is “Sammy!” Dean is so fond of his little brother and Sam is so baby.

Rising Son is an anime only episode, but it draws inspiration from John’s journal. Dean has a proper breakdown over his dad’s death and the possibility of having to kill Sam. Ms. Lyle, Sam’s favorite teacher who turns out to be possessed, is explored. John takes Dean hunting, and in the journal Dean hesitates to shoot a buck, and little Sam shoots it thinking it was endangering Dean. In the anime, Dean’s cornered by a moose and Sam makes it explode with his mind and it’s so !!! How little Sam’s first words are, “I’m glad you’re okay. It didn’t hurt you?” The boys are covered in blood and guts and Dean’s like 👁👄👁 “Why are you here? Did you do this?” And then Sam starts freaking out a little, the shock sets in. “I don’t know. I don’t know, honest.” And he’s staring at his hands, and I am a big fan of Sam showing superhuman signs as a kid. Like in the journal, Ms. Lyle tries to take Sam. She gives Sam the illusion of a choice to come with her or stay with Dean, and Sam chooses Dean. This ep is pretty much when John figures out Sam has demon blood. He kills another hunter that wants to kill Sam.

Crossroad is based on Crossroad Blues, and I love how the crossroads demon shows up. It’s hard to describe, but it’s so neat, like she’s walking underneath Dean in this mirror world, and then the mirror world takes over the regular world, so you really get this sense of otherworldly seclusion, existing outside of time.

What Is and Should Never Be shows Dean is a firefighter in his ‘Mary never died’ world, and Sam got to play soccer growing up like he wanted. The brothers hold each other after Dean is saved from the Djinn.

AHBL part 1. When Azazel shows Sam that he fed Sam his blood, Sam gags and slaps a hand over his mouth, and I like that reaction more than the live action. The psychic kids get to go more anime with their powers, and that’s a lot of fun. They don’t need weapons. Ava slams Sam into the brick side of a building and cuts him without touching him. Jake snaps Ava’s neck with one hand and then catches Sam in his arms. When Jake attacks Sam, there’s no gun or knife. He’s relying on his super strength, his fists. Sam throws his arms up to protect himself, and (accidentally?) pushes Jake back with his mind, and the collision creates a crater in the ground. Jake puts his fist through Sam’s chest to kill him. It’s brutal and it’s rad as fuck. These kids are terrifyingly powerful.

The Sam and Dean reunion before Sam is killed is not as emotional as the live action imo, but what the anime does intrigues me. Hurts in a different way. Because Sam is stunned after he uses telekinesis again, on Jake, and when he hears Dean behind him Sam freezes. He doesn’t look relieved to see Dean, but wary and weary. It’s Dean taking steps towards him, not the other way around, and it has to be because Sam doesn’t know if Dean saw him push Jake back. Sam doesn’t know how Dean’s going to respond to all this, to him, having powers that come from a demon, the demon, Azazel. Sam hasn’t had a chance to process anything. He’s scared. He’s tired. And the way the anime focuses on Sam’s eyes here. Gah. “Dean. Dean, I’m...” I’m sorry. I’m all right. I’m glad you’re okay. I’m a monster. There’s also this one shot between Sam and Azazel that sends me because of how anime it is.

AHBL part 2. I love how Sam brought back to life is animated, with all the color returning to his face and a light wind rustling his hair and his lips parting to indicate his soul returning to his body. Jake attacks Dean, and, a lot like how Sam activates telekinesis to save Dean from Max in Nightmare, Sam gets a burst of superhuman strength. He rips Jake’s arm off and tackles him to the ground and beats him to death, punches holes into his body, and it’s so savage and bloody and scary, and I love it. The Devil’s Gate opening looks so cool animated. Same goes for Dean shooting Azazel with the Colt.

Not to turn this into a meta post, but I also noticed how the last couple times Sam uses his powers they’re colored green-yellow, the same colors as Mary’s ghost when she reveals herself in the anime’s Home, and I don’t know if that’s intentional, but it’s neat how it draws a connection to Sam’s biological family instead of Azazel’s blood.

The Spirit of Vegas is like Bad Day at Black Rock, but Dean has all the bad luck instead, and it shows off the silly cartoony physics that make animation fun. The boys sleep outside and split a chunk of bread for dinner. Also this lil bit of Dean’s hair tied in a bow.

- (STOP) the brothers are pretty. I am not immune to animated Sam and Dean Winchester.

Cons:

- Jensen doesn’t voice Dean until the last 2 episodes

- The English dialogue is really bad sometimes. I wish I could’ve watched the sub, but I couldn’t figure out how to change the language

- Some character designs are really different from the live action, and maybe that’s petty, but if you’re gonna change the characters diversify them? Don’t just make them unrecognizable white people

- Missouri’s design as a stereotypical witch doctor is racist

- Gordon is replaced by some British guy named Jason?? Why

- There’s an LGBT character who is not accepted by her family and, while that bigotry is always shown to be negative and she dies the hero of the episode, she still dies ://

- In the English dub Lily’s gf is made into her roommate instead. Idk about the sub

- Bobby’s pretty much a totally different character

- Sam and Dean are OOC sometimes

- Dean’s hair usually looks darker than Sam’s and it drives me crazy

- The storytelling is, overall, not nearly as good as the live action

- The non-Japanese lore in some episodes makes no sense. Sometimes it’s just plain ridiculous?? Like there’s a giant robot made of cars and scrap metal controlled by a demon? ? I wish I was making this up

- Meg’s role is severely reduced

- No Harvelles or Roadhouse

- Shadows are overused, but maybe that’s because the og show is so dark?

- I don’t mind the art style. I like the aesthetic, but I wish it was a little more expressive. It doesn’t do Sam’s puppy eyes justice.

- AZAZEL’S SHADOW?? PROPORTIONS?? PEA SIZED HEAD

- Idk why they mashed season 1 and 2 together? The story feels rushed

- there’s not as much chemistry between Sam and Dean, but that’s a given without J2 on screen

- Nobody tells you!! That there’s scenes after the credits!! And some of them are important! Why are important scenes after the credits??

The anime would not be good on its own, without the heart and depth the live action brings, but it works as supplementary material you can cherry pick from. I would watch more if there were more episodes.

It hasn’t turned me off from wanting an spn anime. I’d like to see it continued or redone, with updated animation and better scripts. There’s a lot of potential in exploring more about the psychic kids and Sam’s powers, storylines that were cut short in the og show. Animation is a great medium for showing off the supernatural, getting creative and creepier with the designs, dramatic with the fight scenes, without having to worry about bad CGI. I don’t want a live action reboot, but I think a redone animated series could be a lot of fun! (As long as it’s not an excuse to make any romantic ships take over. SPN is a platonic love story, and I like it that way.)

If you made it to the end here and are interested in watching the spn anime, you can watch it for free on the CW Seed app! You can probably stream it elsewhere, but idk where!

#spn anime #supernatural #supernatural the anime #my detailed pros is pretty much me letting you know what episodes are worth watching #and why #its bad but I kind of like it #I like what they were going for. the potential it has #I like sam and there's lots of sam

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linkspooky · 4 years

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Like some kind of “Man-Child”

Shigaraki is constantly compared to a child by the other characters around him. Whether it’s the staff at UA calling him a manchild, Ujiko saying he’s a twenty year old brat who has accomplished nothing with his life, or Spinner saying he chases his dreams like a child, Shigaraki’s immaturity and underdeveloped psyche is something constantly commented upon others.

There are two questions to ask now. One, why did Shigaraki turn out this way, and two what does it mean for his character and future growth?

1. An Immature Manchild, A Worthless Twenty-Something, The Trash of Society.

Shigaraki is constantly described by others as acting like a child. In most cases it’s used to insult and demean him, and also to point out his lack of any real tangible goal.

However, Shigaraki’s childish tendencies, his egocentrism, his lack of ability to see the consequences for his actions, and his emotional instability are not a reflection of whether he is a good or bad person, it’s a reflection of his upbringing. This is an important point I want to make before we continu, the hero system uses all of the signs that Shigaraki shows up legitimate mental illness to dehumanize him and make him out to be a “dangerous psycho” rather than to show him any real sympathy.

All Might’s analyses him at length and comes to the conclusion not that this is an unstable person who shows clear signs of mental illness, but rather that the signs of mental illness he shows makes him a bad person. All of these traits that Shigaraki shows are used constantly by his enemies, heroes and villains alike to unperson him.

Once again, Shigaraki acting like a child is not a reflection of whether or not he’s a good or bad person. It’s a product of trauma and his upbringing. Heroes seem to be under the impression that a good person would simply not suffer or react negatively to any trauma. Shigaraki doesn’t grow up not because he doesn’t want to grow up and wants to remain an immature manchild forever, it’s because he was raised deliberately.

Developmental psychology is a scientific approach which aims to explain growth, change and consistency though the lifespan. ... Developmental psychologists study a wide range of theoretical areas, such as biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes.

Shigaraki was raised in an environment where he could not healthily develop into an adult.

A child’s behaviour is an outward manifestation of inner stability and security. It is a lens through which the family physician can observe the development of the child throughout his or her life. All types of abuse are damaging to children—physically, emotionally, and psychologically—and can cause long-term difficulties with behaviour and mental health development.

Seeing the world from other people’s points of view. Thinking about the consequences of your actions. Processing your emotions and stress in healthy ways. These are all things children learn in the process of growing into adults. However, it’s a learned behavior not a natural one. The idea that people, children, are either born good or bad and will develop based on some internal qualities of goodness or badness is patently false. Children who receive no adult supervision growing up just turn feral and have no ego at all. The ego, or rather identity is something both heavily influenced by the interactions with the adults that raise them and interactions with members of the same peer group.

Shigaraki, raised in a basement with entirely selective and controlled interactions with others that were always underneath AFO’s direct supervision and his thumb, who probably did not even get that much freedom until the UA attack is just barely one step above a feral child who has no adult supervision at all.

These three behaviors:

Lack of Empathy.

Cannot View the Consequences of his Actions

Cannot handle emotions, setbacks and stress

They’re all explainable by specific manipulations that AFO introduced to him as a child. “Shigaraki feels no guilt for what he does” said by almost every hero who interacts with him, but this is completely incorrect. The truth is Shigaraki is constantly made to feel guilty.

He hates himself, and constantly holds back his quirk because he still feels guilt for what happened to his family due to the accidental activation of his quirk.

He accepts the entirety of the blame for what happened for his family, and therefore views himself as a monster. This is what Shigaraki unconsciously believes and accepts, that he deserves to constantly be punished and tormented without relief for what he did for his family and that he can’t be saved.

These are not the actions of a person who feels no guilt. However, at the same time Shigaraki is seeking some relief from his suffering, he wants to be saved even though he believes he doesn’t deserve it. Therefore, AFO manipulates him into believing he doesn’t have to feel guilty for destroying the people he wants to destroy. This is literally the exact tactic that Chisaki used on Eri.

Tenko is constantly made to feel guilty for what he did to his family, and because of that he’s dependent on what AFO told him would make him feel better. Just like Chisaki convincing Eri that it was her fault that people who tried to save her died made her return to Chisaki.

Shigaraki doesn’t show any emotional maturity because he can’t. Being surrounded by your peers, being in a healthy environment, being taught lessons by the adults around you these are all things you learn growing up. We are shown constant signs that Shigaraki’s childhood was constantly barren. He was raised in a room that was entirely blank.

AFO controlled everything about his life. He didn’t even give him toys or books until he started murdering people, and we see that same room several years later almost completely unchanged from the way it was when he was a kid.

Shigaraki’s entire world was that one room. It’s even remarked that he wasn’t allowed to attend any kind of school.

Shigaraki was raised to have his entire world revolve around AFO’s desires for him. Shigaraki even acknowledges that he doesn’t even really want to accomplish AFO’s dream and knows it won’t satisfy him. It’s something that’s forced down his throat, but also what Shigaraki views as his only path forward. Shigaraki as a person doesn’t exist outside of AFO’s goals for him because he wasn’t raised or nurtured to be a person just a thing that wants destruction.

And, the reason Shigaraki continues to follow down the path set by him by All for One is a rather childish one too. This is once again where Shigaraki’s foiling with Chisaki is illustrative of his character.

This is how Shigaraki reacts when forcibly separated from AFO. Crying and begging like a child ripped away from their parent, completely helpless without him. AFO doesn’t act like a parent at all, but for Shigaraki he’s the closest possible thing. Shigaraki still believes that he owes AFO for saving him all those years back.

Shigaraki and Chisaki are the core of their beings are propelled by this idea that they need to repay their father figures for taking them in. They have this childish desire to make their father figures happy and please them, that’s just as true to their nature as their destructive impulses. So, they act like they were shaped to be. Chisaki acts like the perfect Yakuza member, and Shigaraki as the perfect symbol of destruction. They are both desperately trying to be what their parents want them to be.

Shigaraki can’t handle any setbacks or stress, because he is constantly stressed. He was raised to feel nauseatingly sick of himself all of the time.

Eri can’t act like a normal child because even after removed from Chisaki’s influence, the emotoinal wounds Chisaki left on her don’t magically go away. It’s not about being a good or bad child, it’s about being trapped in a certain unhealthy way of thinking.

Shigaraki’s not entitled and emotionally immature. He’s emotionally stunted, and deliberately raised that way. If you could say he was raised at all. His captor had no interest in him as a person. He exists to be a pet revenge project against All Might, to turn Shimura Nana’s descendant into an unstable little bomb that explodes and takes out All Might with him.

The person who raised him constantly threw him into danger with no regard for his well being. He expected Stain to try to kill Tomura when they met and stopped Kurogiri for interfereing for his safety. He expected All Might to beat the shit out of him and for the UA attack to fail. This goes back all the way to the beginning.

He exposed Shigaraki to dangerous people who would beat him up, insult him, and belittle him. People that deliberately reminded Shigaraki of his abuser.

So he would be constantly made to feel unsafe and unstable. Shigaraki has no emotional stability because he was constantly raised in an unstable environment, it’s not hard to remain sane in that environment, it’s downright impossible.

2. Children can Grow Up

This is a theme we’ve seen repeat itself three times. A child is murdered and has their name taken away by their paternal abusers, and they make it into adulthood (despite symbolically dying as a child) with entirely different names and identities. Takami Keigo grows up into Hawks, Touya grows up into Dabi, Shimura becomes Shigaraki. However, all three of them as adults are malformed and still clinging onto the hurt feelings that they held as a child. Shigaraki and Dabi literally both look like corpses, and Hawks has literally no personality or name outside of being a hero.

It’s not a reflection of who they are as people, it’s a reflection that they were not raised to be people. However, Shigaraki is constantly remarked on as a child capable of growing up.

Spinner, Shigaraki’s friend sees the good side of his childishness. He is someone who late in life, is still learning and developing empathy. We see him change over the course of the story. Shigaraki who claims that he doesn’t care about anything besides destruction, also specifically states that he won’t destroy his companions hopes and dreams.

Shigaraki who is presented as a person who is entirely devoid of empathy, is shown being able to deal with somebody like Twice perfectly. Not only does he listen to Twice’s demands that they rescue Giran.

He also knows how to make Twice listen, and then carefully places his mask back on again to calm him down afterwards. He deals with him like a person and is accomodating of his quirks.

Shigaraki makes it deliberately a point that he’s not okay with someone else playing around with Twice’s feelings.

He also tells Twice to make saving Giran and protecting him a priority when he plans on finishing Rikiya himself.

All of this consideration for the feelings of an individual. Shigaraki’s empathy has grown and developed to the point where he can imagine the feelings of other people outside himself. Now compare this to the way Hawks deals with Twice. Shigaraki finds trampling all over the feelings of Twice as unforgivable, whereas Hawks brags to Twice’s face how easy it was to deceive him. He belittles him and rubs salt in the wound.

Hawks can only accept Twice as a good person. It’s Shigaraki who gives a home to those who have no other home, the outcasts, the bad people that heroes would never save.

Shigaraki who understood how important Twice’s feelings for his friends are, built his entire plan against the MLA around saving Giran, and Twice’s own desires to want to help his friend Giran and pay him back for giving him a place to belong. Hawks literally goes out of his way to single out Twice as the only one he can save and not extend the same helping hand to his friends. Shigaraki recognizes Twice’s feelings for his friends, Hawks goes out of his way to trample on the friends that Twice finds so precious.

Hawks wants to save Twice but doesn’t understand him as a person. Shigaraki has created a place where people like Spinner, Toga, Compress, Twice, Dabi are all accepted and valued as people. Shigaraki’s childishness is both a good and bad thing. It shows that even after all of this trauma, the core of who Shigaraki is has not changed.

He is still the kid who deliberately plays with the kids on the playground who get left out. Who states that he specifically wants to be a hero because there were kids who were left out of being played. And who wanted to be a hero even when he knew his father would severely disapprove of it and kept that dream in his heart.

Shigaraki is still Shimura Tenko. He’s not the child who wanted to be a hero, or the child who wanted to destroy to make the pain go away, he’s both at the same time and that’s where his complexity comes from. Shigaraki like anybody else is capable of good and bad, but what’s especially important about his arc is that we’ve been shown that when removed from underneath the thumb of his abusers, and surroudned by his found family in the league Shigaraki gets better and is able to begin seeing the emotions and feelings of other people outside of him, and becomes a more empathic person. He is a child yes, but also a child capable of growing up.

It’s also important to remember his arc. When Shigaraki is fighting for the league he always succeeds (against the Yakuza, against MLA). He only ever fails, and relapses (such as his current failure in the hero war arc raid) when he believes that he has to follow the dream laid out for him by AFO. It’s almost as if Shigaraki was intended from the start to shake off AFO’s influence of him and eventually grow into his own person. Shigaraki is a child waiting to grow up, he’s still Shimura Tenko, and he should be allowed that chance to grow past his abuse. He might never become a hero but by the end of the story he deserves to be his own person, not AFO’s thing.

#shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #afo #all for one #lov meta #league of villain meta #shigaraki meta #my hero academia meta #my hero acaemia theory #mha meta #my hero academia #league of villains

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inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years

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hey Steph! I wanted to know if you knew of any fics that dealt with the topic of consent, and very explicit consent, and not even necessarily for sex, but just, explicit consent and conversations of boundaries in a relationship. "hay can I kiss you? it's ok if I hold your hand? can I hold your hand when we're outside?" people talking boundaries, that type of thing... you know anything like that?

Hey Nonny!!

You know, I ABSOLUTELY KNOW that I do, but I didn’t have the foresight to pre-tag all of them as I read them, so I can’t give you ALL of the ones I have in my bookmarks, but I can definitely give you the fics I do have tagged with “Consent” or “Negotiation”, so I hope that’s okay!!

If any of my Lovelies have any that they remember or have their own fics, PLEASE add them!!

CONSENT AND RELATIONSHIP NEGOTIATION

Personal Space by probablyquantum (T, 1,814 w., 1 Ch. || Pre-Slash, Cuddles, Nightmares, Awkwardness) – John and Sherlock renegotiate the rules governing personal space. Pre-Slash.

Husband by jinglebell (E, 2,003 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel., PWP, Anal, Multiple Orgasms, Fluff, Toplock) – Sherlock orgasms when John refers to him as ‘husband’.

The Marriage Proposal Negotiation by Goddess_of_the_Night (G, 2,161 w., 1 Ch. || Dev. Rel., Possessive Sherlock, Insecure Sherlock, Fluff, First Kiss, Post Mary) – Sherlock hasn’t ever really done anything the traditional way, so of course it wouldn’t bother him to propose to John even though they’re not even dating. And the fact that John is already on a date with someone else when he decides to do it? Tedious.

Perfect Solo by Itsallfine (E, 2,384 w., 1 Ch., || PWP, Solo Kink, Fantasy, Pining, Dirty Talk, Sex Toys) – Sherlock couldn’t decide how he wanted to have John that night. (The one where Sherlock uses his box of sex toys to take himself apart in every way John might have him.)

Everything by patternofdefiance (E, 4,409 w., 1 Ch. || Snuggles and Cuddles, Bed Sharing, Frottage, Vulnerable Sherlock) – John wakes up with an armful of Sherlock. This – situation – is unusual, yes, and definitely unfamiliar, but in no way does it feel wrong. Rather, it feels the exact opposite. Part 13 of I Blame Tumblr

Uninhibited by 221b_hound (M, 4,293 w., 1 Ch. || Bathing/Washing, Naked Cuddling, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Big Brother Mycroft, Relationship Negotiation, Massage, Sherlock Has a Low Libido, Pet Names) – Sherlock and John have been apart for the first time since Sherlock returned from the dead. Neither of them has had a good day. John’s gets worse when Mycroft comes to Baker Street in Sherlock’s absence to warn John Watson against disappointing his brother by expecting things to change. Mycroft has misjudged things rather badly. But finally he sods off and leaves John and Sherlock to reconnect, to give and receive comfort, and show each other that they are, indeed, perfectly matched. Part 15 of Unkissed

Beg for Mercy (Twice) by Solitary_Endeavor (E, 7,060 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel., Bottomlock, Bearded John, Edging, Rough Sex, Idiots in Love, Canon Compliant) – Sherlock hasn’t left the flat in four days, the itch of impatience beneath his skin too great to allow him to suffer interaction with any human being who isn’t John. This is probably a mercy that goes both ways, as he’s driving even himself mad. Sherlock supposes there is a lesson to be learned here about having himself to blame, but of course he blames Mycroft.

The doctor is in by PlainJane (E, 7,581 w., 1 Ch. || Omegaverse || Sex Therapist, Anal, Hand Jobs, Frottage, Virgin Sherlock) – Sherlock is a young alpha with an aversion to his cycle. John is a gender medicine specialist. Nothing could possibly go wrong… Part 1 of Doctors and detectives

Caves in the Mountains Are Seldom Unoccupied by starrysummernights & TheMadKatter13 (E, 7,925 w., 1 Ch. || Were-Creatures, Werebear John, Pseudo Bestiality, Rimming, Dub Con, Rough Sex, Come Inflation / Eating, Size Kink, PWP, Bratty Sherlock, Rutting) – “This isn’t something to play at, Sherlock,” he snapped. “If it doesn’t work out- what you’re asking of me- we can’t shrug and say ‘oh well, at least we tried’. If we do this… I could seriously hurt you. Do you understand? I could lose control. I could… I could kill you.” (This one is… REALLY REALLY kinky, heavy dub-con warning)

Just Like That by sussexbound (E, 8,442 w., 1 Ch. || First Time/Kiss, Frottage, Virgin Sherlock, French Kissing, Anal, Emotional Lovemaking, Enthusiastic Consent, Tenderness, Crying John, Bathing/Washing, Insecure John, Toplock) – John doesn’t want to talk anymore. He wants. Oh dear god, how he wants. For the first time in what feels like years he WANTS.

Evening Ride by LapisLazuli (E, 8,632 w., 1 Ch. || Public Sex, Alternate First Meeting, Humiliation Kink, Groping, Frottage, Consent Issues, Come Play) – John has a series of unexpected meetings with a stranger on the Tube.

C. sapiens by patternofdefiance (E, 8,813 w., 1 Ch. || Tentacles Porn, Magical Realism, Bottomlock, Anal / Tentacle Sex, Pheremones) – “A few weeks ago I would have thought you were impossible,” Sherlock begins, walking into the kitchen in his blue robe, and John – not quite catching on – wants to scoff and argue, No, actually, you are impossible, but then Sherlock continues: “But now I’d say you are improbable.” John thinks this might be flattering, if he could wrap his head around it, but he can’t – Sherlock is standing near, steaming his sun-baked-clean-sand smell, like the beach after rain, an alive smell, an other smell. It’s intoxicating, and John has been studiously avoiding it, but he can’t shift away now it’s so near. Now Sherlock’s so near. And then Sherlock ruins the probable-loveliness of his words and the definite-beauty of his presence by saying: “And by ‘improbable’ I mean ‘not yet scientifically acknowledged.’” Part 1 of Gifts from the Sea

John Watson’s Moon by patternofdefiance (E, 11,314 w., 1 Ch. || Werewolf John, First Time, BAMF John, First Time, Anal, Fleeting Depictions of Violence) – Sherlock finds out John is a werewolf and wants to see the transformation. It, uh, gets really kinky.

Kintsugi by distantstarlight (E, 14,772 w., 1 Ch. || Post S4, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Regret / Remorse, Loneliness, Separation, Drug Use, Healing, Protective John, Sad Sherlock, Dev. Rel., Complicated Relationships, Love, Angst With Happy Ending, Sherlock is Called Freak, John’s Penance, Voyeurism, Doctor/Caretaker John, Guilty John, Detox, Fingering, Love Confessions, Cuddling, Slight Non-Con Turns Enthusiastic Consent, Virgin Sherlock) – Sherlock Holmes becomes estranged from the man he had once considered his best friend after John lets him down horribly in public. It seems that the world’s only consulting detective will be on his own once again…or will he?

Lacuna by coloredink (E, 15,607 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, Consent Issues, Drama, Amnesia) – God, it must have been terrible, to think that he would never have this again.

The Midas Touch by flawedamythyst (E, 32,231 w., 1 Ch. || Magical Realism, John has a Magical Cock, Dub Con, Healer John) – John Watson has a medical condition that means everyone he sleeps with is instantly healed of all illness and injury. This causes complications when Sherlock breaks his arm, and even more complications when Sherlock falls in love with him. Yes, this is a story where John has a literal magic healing cock. It’s a lot less cracky than you’re probably imagining. Warning: Contains complex issues of sexual consent, although not between Sherlock and John.

In the Dark Hours by hubblegleeflower (E, 51,639 w., 12 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, Unreliable Narrator, Closeted Bi John, Angst, Miscommunications, Slow Burn, First Time, John’s Blog / Epistolary, Selective Mutism) – John, wounded and silent, drifts back to Baker Street for healing…and then goes home again. He visits, gets more upbeat, chattier, smiles, jokes… and still goes home again. Sherlock wants him to move back in - it just makes sense - but John shows no signs of doing so. This is the story of how John and Sherlock learn to say what needs to be said when they’re both so very, very rubbish at talking.

Coventry by standbygo (E, 52,020 w., 26 Ch. || Dollhouse AU || Case Fic, Slow Burn, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, First Kiss / Time, Attempted Rape, BAMF John, Falling in Love) – “Let me get this straight,” John said, wondering when his life had become a science fiction film. “Some guy orders up a personality, a person, to his specifications, and they program this into a real live person, who has consented to do this, and she goes to this person and acts as his wife, or lawyer, or Royal Marine, or Navy Seal or what have you, and she has all the skills, all the knowledge, everything? Then you say the magic words, and she follows you back to The House, and they erase it all until her next appointment?”

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal, Autistic Sherlock) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

A Cure For Boredom by emmagrant01 (E, 81,665 w., 8 Ch. || Dirty Talk, Threesomes, Light Dom/Sub, Sex Club, Experiments, Anal, Mildly Dubious Consent) – They’d never talked about sex in the year they’d known each other. Well, that wasn’t quite correct: Sherlock had never said a word about sex; John had bemoaned his personal dearth of it on many occasions.

Thermocline by J_Baillier (M, 83,557 w., 14 Ch. || Scuba Diving AU || Adventure, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Marine Archaeology, Asexual Sherlock, Horny John, Relationship Drama, Technical/Scuba/Wreck Diving, Slow Burn, Underwater / Medical Peril, Doctor John, Hurt Sherlock, Anxious Sherlock, John POV, Protective John, Body Appreciation) – John “Five Oceans” Watson — technical dive instructor, dive accident analyst and weapon of mass seduction — meets recluse professor of maritime archaeology Holmes. As they head out to a remote archipelago off the coast of Guatemala to study and film its shipwrecks for a documentary, will sparks fly or fizzle out?

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – “For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face.” Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

31_Days_of_Porn_Challenge_2017 Series by distantstarlight (E, 96,540 w. across 31 stories || Prompt Ficlets, Assorted Kinks, PWP) – A collection in response to the 31 Days of Porn Challenge issued by AtlinMerrik! Thanks for doing that because this has been buttload of fun (that joke never gets old). All stories will be brief stand-alone one-shots.

Shatter the Darkness (Let the Light In) by MojoFlower (E, 109,683 w., 23 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Genie/Djinn AU || Magical Realism, Kidnapping, Genie Sherlock, First Kiss / Time, Case Fic, H/C, Angst, Clubs, John Whump, Mild DubCon, Hand / Blow Jobs, Torture) – Fairy tales are for those who remember how to dream; not John Watson, broken and hiding from his bleak future in a beige bedsit. But then he discovers a lamp and finds himself in the dangerous riptide of an enigmatic man whose very existence is unbelievable, murder charges against his sister, and the growing pains of feeling alive once more.

The Gilded Cage by BeautifulFiction (E, 326,887 w., 31 Ch. || Omegaverse || Omega Sherlock / Alpha John, Friends to Lovers, Dub Con, Reproductive Rights) – In a world where Omegas are the property of the elite Alphas, locked away and treasured by those wealthy enough to buy them, John never questioned his flatmate’s secondary gender. Sherlock Holmes was an Alpha through-and through. Wasn’t he? A chance discovery turns the world on its head, and John is left grappling to come to terms with Sherlock’s past as events conspire to threaten their future.

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #consent #relationship negotiation #Anonymous

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ghostmartyr · 4 years

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(1/3)Hi, Immi! I’m sorry it will be a long-read, but I can’t keep it bottled anymore. When you say you feel tired about Historia’s situation I can easily relate because I feel the same, exhausted and irritated. It’s just exhausting to keep looking for some positive signs when it becomes more and more obvious that Isayama just made her irrelevant because she’d turn into an obstacle to his plot as an active character. I believe the main reason for him to not explain her situation is that he wasn't

(2/3)able to come up with logical reasons for Historia to follow Eren’s plan and to have a child so he just forced that into the plot. The same way Survey Corps guys just miraculously met Annie eating the pie. We don’t see Historia, her words and her thoughts because it’d destroy the flimsy screen Isayama have draped over her. ... The other Historia-related thing which bothers me a lot is that quite a lot of people argue – in relation to the pregnancy – that she isn’t exactly a lesbian.

(3/3)Like it’d somehow make everything better! They completely miss the point. Even if we’d replace Historia with a random 101% hetero girl she’d still have a kid with a person she doesn’t love, with a person who abused her during her childhood, and this child would be created ONLY to allow Eren to enact global genocide. Wow, what a great improvement! … I’m really sorry for being such an aggressive pessimist but I’m just tired of being optimistic for 25 months straight to no avail. I guess.

Yo.

Put politely, some of the things this particular plot point inspired people to say is why I do my level best to avoid the fandom outside of close friends. It was... not good.

For a quick note, since everything you said has been on my mind for over two years, and ah yes, how it festers:

Coercive sex has nothing to do with preference.

I’m bolding that because hell, did it need to be said when 107 dropped, and as far as I’m aware, it still needs to be said. Instead of people being upset and hurt, the conversation turned into how much of a right people even had to those feelings, because why ever would lack of consent bother someone unless they had a stake in an interpretation of canon.

But in any case, yeah. The fact that Historia’s sexuality became the debate topic it did after 107 is -- hell. I know why it came about, and I could draw a very neat logic tree, and honestly, some of it did come from legitimate places of grievance.

Watching fandom feed like locusts on the discussion of what type of queer had been trapped in a dubiously consensual sexual relationship was still painful. Watching her entire relationship with Ymir be invalidated every other post, when that had limited relevance, was a twist to the knife.

We have a character whose arc revolves around finding herself and reclaiming her agency. The very next arc she is a participant in cheats her out of that agency. She’s nineteen, and everyone around her might not actively pressure her to breed children, but the situation is outlined so that she knows if she doesn’t, everyone will suffer.

This character has routinely protected children, and knows the suffering of being born unwanted.

It’s a disgusting story, and it doesn’t even get to be her story. It exists to make Eren upset. As if he really needs help with that. And after two years, the only addition we have to her role is that she might have gone along with it to help global genocide happen.

I have been waiting for this story to explain itself for a while. Each month, it doesn’t. Each month, I very carefully do not shout to the rafters exactly what I feel about this, because I’ve chosen to wait and trust that the story is not actually being this stupid. Each month, it seems less and less likely that this is ever getting fixed, and I feel like an idiot for going along with it.

However much I think there’s room for a reveal, each month, we’re a tick closer to the end, and nothing crops up. My argument has always been that for something kept off the stage for so long, it’s going to stay off the stage until it’s ready to blow us away. Great, awesome, but in the meantime, by all appearances, one of our main characters agreed to get knocked up by a guy she doesn’t like with a child she doesn’t want for the sake of a global genocide she doesn’t support.

When our actual main character is murdering literally everyone on the planet over how intolerable he finds that practice.

This does not make sense. This does not work on a thematic level, it doesn’t work on a logical level, it doesn’t work on a character level, and yet I’m here, stuck putting up with it for those exact reasons. This is the exact type of thing that got Sherlock fans so much mockery. “No guys, it’s bad on purpose for the secret extra season!”

I’m tired of being optimistic, too. Being optimistic often feels like letting it go unsaid how fucked every part of this is. Loads of characters die, or don’t show up for months at a time, but having a character’s emotional consistency actively dismantled to serve another character’s arc is something that basically never happens in this series. Unless you’re Ymir or Historia. Nice.

Because of how good the character work has been, I am optimistic. Still.

At the same time, the things I love most about the series have been fucked over worse and more completely than anything else going on in the story, and sometimes, I would like a little room to be pissed.

Where is my fucking wall scene, WIT?

#attack on asks #shingeki no no #I really hope it isn't as bad as it looks #because it looks so fucking bad #not to mention all of this is happening #while the themes discussed in her arc #are still being honored and present #but just y'know #with everyone except her #it makes it feel like a mistake to grow attached to historia as a character #because she's being used like the cardboard cutout she learned to move beyond #stories that make you regret picking them up should be like 'oh no my emotions'#not 'oh no you completely wasted my time by making me think this was going somewhere'#anyway anon #fucking mood

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kidsdailyroutine · 3 years

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4 ways to relieve anxiety in kids

There is nothing worse than watching your child be scared and helpless when he tries to help.

Over the years, many families have asked me how I can reduce a child's anxiety. So I want to share my 4-step plan. You can implement this plan at home and start helping your child right away.

It is my own system based on psychological techniques, but it is also based on my personal experience of working with children and seeing what works and what does not work. I know parents (and their children) want a technology that works right out of the box, but it's not always that simple. I do not want to lie - this system will take some time to get the job done, but you will also see some relief right away.

Have I worried my child?

To be clear, you have NOT scared your child.

Some children are born with a tendency to fear. Are you or anyone else in your family struggling with anxiety? In that case, it just means that your child was born a little more scared than other children her age. This does not really mean that the child's future is doomed, it just means that you have to learn to control and reduce anxiety in a child, especially since you are also struggling with anxiety in adulthood.

In addition to the birthright, there are many other reasons why some children may suffer from anxiety. Some children have previously experienced a traumatic situation such as abuse, serious illness, frightening incident, etc. Have you ever heard of war soldiers with PTSD? Children may experience full-blown PTSD or some of the symptoms of PTSD if they have also been exposed to a traumatic event. Like our brave soldiers, children need help to process and deal with the emotions associated with the traumatic events they have experienced.

Whatever the reason your child is scared, the good news is that there are strategies you can use to teach your child (whether it's a toddler or a teenager) to cope with the fear and not be controlled by the emotions.

Some fear is normal

Everyone is sometimes scared. I have never met a person who is not afraid of an upcoming test. Talking is known to be the biggest trigger for fear in adults. Children and adults may experience mild anxiety due to an environmental trigger, but this fear usually disappears when the event is over.

In the above (and similar) situations, fear often helps us do our best. Think about it. If we were not interested in doing well on a test or a lecture, would we really take the time to study or prepare? Probably not.

So if there is a "good" level of fear, when is it "bad"? Anxiety ceases to be useful when it interferes with the child's ability to enjoy life. If they stop participating in fun activities to worry about an upcoming test, it's bad. If you're too scared to try new things because you're too scared to screw something up, this is a check for life.

Now that you know that there is a fine line between "good" fear and "bad" fear, let's get down to business and learn how to reduce your child's anxiety. You can teach an anxious child what to say so that you can be positive about him while still participating and enjoying life.

Teach your child to judge their fears

Most young children do not like to feel "bad". Some children do not even know what to call the "bad" feeling. All they know is that this is not how they feel and that they will do anything to make them feel better. Many children also feel that they are "good" one minute and "bad" the next.

Therefore, my first step in working with anxious children is to teach them to slow down and assess their anxiety from time to time during the day. I want the kids to realize that they are not going from "good" to "bad" right away; they usually go from good to bad gradually.

I also teach children to assess fear for two other important reasons: 1) different interventions work better in different stages of fear, and 2) it is better for the child to cope with the fear when it is at a lower level, as if it had stopped. school. . of control.

Confusing? Let me explain.

Look at this thermometer. It shows that 0-3 is normal fear, 4-5 is unpleasant fear, 6-8 is unbearable fear and 9-10 is uncontrollable fear. If we can teach children to reduce anxiety when they are in steps 4-5, they will never achieve the most severe anxiety states.

It is important to note that when children (or adults) reach levels 9-10, they experience severe emotional and / or behavioral disorders. So the rational brain shuts down and the child will only reduce her "bad" feeling in any way she can. At this stage, children experience suicidal behavior, self-harming behavior, severe aggression, numbing pain with drugs or alcohol, etc.

We do not want your child or any other child to reach steps 9-10, so it is ideal to learn how to reduce a child's anxiety before you reach this extreme step.

How is it done? Let me explain my 4-step system.

The Four steps to relieve anxiety

This is the exact system I use with all my private clients. It is important to note that I use the same system for other disruptive behaviors such as aggression, self-harm, depression, etc.

Step 1: Make a plan

Look at this anxiety thermometer and try to make a plan to deal with their anxiety. I explain that there is a small amount of fear that is normal, and how the normal amount of fear is sometimes helpful.

Step 2: Brainstorm skills to deal with distractions

Try to deal with your fear if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Ask the child to describe how she is feeling right now. Let them tell you how they experience it in her body and how it feels. We want them to understand how their bodies give them clues that they are no longer well. Children often ignore these physical signs and do not understand that they are beginning to experience the early stages of fear. This is why they find that their anxiety is so easy to fall from 0 to 10.

During this phase, we develop specific management strategies that you can use to restore your anxiety to the normal 0-3 stage. I have discovered that skill management skills work best at this point.

Distraction coping skills are all types of activities that a child can do that 1) take the mind away from fear and 2) make him feel better than before the activity started.

Typical activities that work in this phase are:

Read, write, draw, paint

Listen to relaxing music

Watch funny videos on TV or YouTube

Play video games (yes, it can be good if you do it in moderation)

Play with animals

Go for a walk, skateboard, play sports

All the other fun activities you can think of

Step 3: Encourage social research

If for some reason the child did not do any of the level 2 skills, or if these skills did not work, her anxiety may now have reached levels 6 to 8, where it is better to use social skills. Explain to your child that it is very important to find people to talk to right now. You do NOT have to tell these people that they feel anxious (a common concern for the children I work with), but being around people and talking about EVERYTHING generally relieve anxiety.

Help your child identify at least 3-4 people (family and friends) that she can visit and talk to. Encourage them to just be with these people and practice not thinking about the past or the future, just having fun at the moment. Let your child know that it's okay to laugh and be stupid or stupid with these people, even if they do not feel it, because they are likely to feel better around other people.

Step 4: Identify a security guard

Once the child's anxiety has reached steps 9-10, it can be quite severe. At this point, her rational brain is down, and they can try to do something they later regret. Teach them how to contact a safe person right now, no matter what! Identify a family security officer and a school security officer. Make sure you are comfortable with this person and that you are not angry or disappointed if the child approaches you with an anxiety level of 9 or 10.

This security guard has the task of assessing whether the child's fear is serious enough to take him to the hospital for examination or just to be with the child and help alleviate the fear of it. If the security guard thinks the child needs help to highlight the anxiety, she can try to distract him with the activity. This usually helps.

#how to relieve depression #feeling relieved #relieve anxiety

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aelaer · 4 years

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[1/2] Now this is an actual ask as in asking for help. 👀 I have a problem with Steve and Tony. I spent too much time too early on reading anti/not-friendly post-CW fics about 'Team Cap', and because of that I have been unable to see Tony as a flawed human or Steve as a good person. It's a pattern I've become too familiar with, and even recent stories are often going into that sense. I have been trying for some time now to do something about it, but either the method was bad, or I couldn't

(I tagged a couple people in this post – if you were tagged, the question directed to you is wayyyy at the bottom! Feel free to ignore of course.)

You really hit me with a doozy with this ask. I might offend someone for not thinking the exact same way as them with… everything this topic entails… Steve, Tony, anti-fics. Followers from last year know what happened last time I talked about poor and OOC characterization in fanfic, lmao. Beware The Easily Offended! This Is A Critical Thinking Of Your Hobby Zone! I Am Being Critical Of Specific Types of MCU Fanfic!

Please don’t click the read more button if you can’t handle an opinion that might not match yours. Really. I’m fine with discussing different opinions in a mature manner but if you have issues with people saying they don’t like a specific type of plot, this post is not for you. (The read more button doesn’t appear on the original post for followers using the mobile app, but it works on desktop and in all reblogs. If you don’t see a cut and don’t want to read, just skip it, please).

Yeah. Okay. Moving on. Can’t say folks weren’t warned.

I’ve had this in my drafts for several weeks because of the abuse I got the last time I wrote something critical about certain plot points used in fanfic. I was definitely a bit reluctant to look at this specific topic from an analytical and critical look as I remembered that, but hey, it’s really easy for a coward to use a sockpuppet account and throw abuse. It’s harder to be a minority voice with stark opinions contrasting the popular trend. I’m okay with having a minority opinion amongst the MCU fandom.

(PS - you’re welcome to disagree with my opinions, so long as you’re respectful about it. Remember there are individuals behind the screens!)

Concerning Character Flaws

So the thing about really well-written characters is that they are flawed in some manner. Anyone who thinks Tony or Steve exist without flaws – and I mean real flaws, like arrogance, believing they’re always right, short tempers, and other *real* character flaws that both of these characters have – well, if they don’t think they exist with these flaws, how well do they know the character?

You don’t have to know a character well to be a fan of said character – there’s no rules about that – but if you’re going to write fanfic, and that fanfic entails the character you love against a character you don’t particularly like, I’d say any writer looking to do anything resembling a good job would do their due diligence in figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of both characters before writing the characters themselves. These mental lists of characteristics should be equal for both characters. No, “good abs” is not a character strength if you have no physical aspects in the other character strength column. You don’t have to like a character to still write them well.

Even professionals don’t follow this rule when, say, shows get new writers or comics get different writers, so you might consider me silly expecting those dabbling in fan fiction. But yeah, if an author wants me to take a story seriously as something with quality, I expect the characters to resemble themselves in some manner.

(This level of resemblance varies when you purposefully choose for the protagonist to be evil, be in a completely different time period, etc, but authors who do this *well* still get core personality traits solid, even if morality is out the window or the profession is entirely different. I have a lot of examples from the Sherlock fandom of total AUs that pull this off well – haven’t read nearly enough AUs in the MCU to have a good collection here).

But a resemblance of character, of capturing the three-dimensionality of a character, is what anti-fics simply fail to achieve. The characters they’re anti against usually suffer cases of Flanderization, if they’re not completely out of character altogether in showing traits that were never displayed in the canon, ever. I don’t know why anyone would be interested in such stories, myself, and remain baffled at their popularity. Is there some sort of enjoyment in seeing such a 2D rendition of a character in what is otherwise meant as a serious work and provides absolutely no sense of proper conflict between two characters? Not for me; it immediately takes me out of the story and when it gets too much, I abandon the story. It’s just not enjoyable for me. Turning a canon protagonist into a strawman is just lazy writing and offers nothing to the writer’s favorite, preferred character.

Concerning Steve’s and Tony’s Flaws

Every real human being has some sort of personality flaw that is decidedly unattractive. Some people are really good at showing it very rarely (and are some of the best human beings), but with these two characters we see them at their greatest heights and lowest of lows. Ironically, they actually share a lot of the same flaws, but display them in different manners in canon:

Both men believe they are the best man for the job and will do it without consulting someone who could actually fight against it - or go completely against them. Tony with Ultron is the easy example here. He’s the smartest man in the world and can tackle the issue of protecting it on its own. Steve, same issue, and his job is “helping Bucky”. *He’s* the one who can handle Bucky, the only one who can handle him - big thing in both WS and CW. If both of them had utilized their friends and allies a lot more, a lot of issues could have been avoided.

Both men are sometimes hypocritical. Steve promotes teamwork in all his speeches but again with the Bucky situation. Just… everything Bucky, man. Tony signs the Accords and immediately goes against them with what he gives to Peter, who most assuredly did not sign them (tangent: if he HAD joined the Avengers at the end of Homecoming, I have no idea how that would have gone since Peter would have had to reveal his identity to the UN and then there’s the whole ‘still a minor’ thing, and yeah, Homecoming’s end scene just makes me go nuts). But anyway, their occasional hypocrisy is one of the most realistic aspects of them because most human beings are hypocritical sometimes.

Both men are sometimes arrogant. Tony’s self-explanatory with his genius-playboy-philanthropist-billionaire. One thing he does not suffer from is low self-esteem in regards to his abilities. His arrogance comes from his genius. Steve’s arrogance lies more in his deep-seeded belief that he is on the moral high ground – and one reason I think a lot of people dislike him so much, because moral superiority is very much a faux pas in this day and age for some millennials and many Gen Z folk. He has a very, very solid sense of what is right and what is wrong, and that rubs some folks the wrong way. Tony is more morally fluid – but he is not by any means immoral.

Both of them have a really solid list of strengths as well. As this ask specifically is looking to find the good in Steve, I specifically Googled pro-Steve articles for you to click at your leisure (and one with both). If you need to go back to canon, I highly recommend rewatching The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier, which introduces Steve brilliantly and then lets Steve grow further in the second film.

(Note: I actually prefer Tony to Steve in terms of personal favoritism, but how a very loud segment of Tony fans have treated other characters has led me to be more vocal about the strengths of others, especially Steve and Wanda. So Tony might be in my top 5, but mean-spirited Tony fans have moved me to be a champion of other characters, if only to show other fans that there are indeed Tony fans that do like the other characters and treat them – and their fans – with respect).

Bringing Balance (to the Universe…) Fanfic-Style

This addresses the second part of your ask in regards to the fanfics. And this is where I started running into trouble, too, mostly because, well, just how many Stephen and Steve fics are there? Yeah, exactly. Stephen’s my main guy. So I did some research, outsourcing, and reading.

Here’s two I knew of before cuz Stephen’s in them in some capacity:

Identity Theft by KitKat992 - it stars Peter and both Tony and Steve play integral parts from what I recall. Good story too, very engaging.

A Dysfunctional Senior Year (series) by ApolloLoki97 - this also stars Peter and has a large Team As Family aspect, so it shows the entire Avengers team as just decent people. My favorite part is naturally part 3 because Stephen comes in that one, haha.

And to find other stories, I went into the Anti-Accords tag. It was nice to find fics that didn’t have such a love of hypocritical authoritarianism. Aannyyyyway.

Making Sense of Chaos by SparkedtoLife - mind the tags. Seriously, it’s heavy duty. Yet another Peter fic because he’s way more popular than my favorite character, qq. Lots of Netflix Marvel characters too! Anyway, deals with not only Tony and Steve really well (and has a different dynamic with Tony that isn’t IronDad, so that was a nice change of pace), it also deals with the Accords situation very realistically. And none of those are even main plot points. If you can handle the very serious, sensitive subject that is the main plot point, I highly recommended it. It’s a very masterfully done work.

Atlas by nanasekei - Stony. Treats all characters with respect and both Tony and Steve as three-dimensional, flawed humans with some serious self doubts. Also highly agree with the author that Thaddeus Ross sucks and is basically one of the biggest people to blame for Everything Going To Shit.

Homecoming by an orphaned account - Some Stucky. This is a lovely one-shot of things I basically wanted to happen when the team got together again but didn’t. Sigggghhh. Everyone is definitely in character in this one, traumas and healing and all. And look, another person realizes that trusting Ross is a really horrible idea.

Locks Not Replaced by Riverdaughter - first this writer has a Tolkien-based username so yay. Anyway, the fic starts off by Tony realizing that he almost killed Steve during the fight with his repulsors, and it was only Bucky that stopped him. Do people seriously think he’d survive a shot to the face with that power? This is one reason the ‘Steve tried to kill Tony’ people piss me the fuck off. What do you think those repulsors shoot, fucking rainbows? Honestly, guys. Anyway, mini rant over. This fic is great. Author comes in with a Cap favoritism but treats Tony well, and honestly Tony turning a blind eye to everything and ignoring Ross is what I like to think happened in canon (he clearly dislikes the guy). And also I love the Robin Hood parallels. Love love love. I think this fic is my favorite of the ones listed in this section.

Meeting Your Heroes by Riverdaughter - naturally after reading that fic I went to explore more and found this gem. She’s not incorrect in saying Tony wasn’t a good mentor at the beginning - I think he had his own growth after Peter’s actions in Homecoming especially (though even through Homecoming he was trying, just… not always successfully lmao). Anyway love these two together. It’s great.

Photograph by slytherclaw420 - A scene we deserved in Endgame and didn’t get. Sigh. Definite IronDad feels here. Hopeful Steve, rebuilding of a friendship.

And uh, an honorable mention of sorts:

Balancing the Scales by MoonFire1 - I’m not recommending this fic for good characterization or plot. It really doesn’t have either. The fic was written in retaliation for the nasty Tony fans completely trashing Steve’s character. You should only read this if you want to see the argument from “the other side” and if you want to see an anti-Tony fic like you’ve seen anti-Steve fics. Don’t harass the author though. This is presented as a counterargument to anti-Steve fiction, for those interested to read the other sides arguments. I don’t like the nature of the fic, but I loathe that “not Steve friendly” has 30 fucking pages of works with tens of thousands of kudos, so one anti-Tony fic (with a comparatively small three pages under that tag) really doesn’t compare. Ugh. I hate the anti culture in this fandom so much. Loathe it. It’s such a nasty energy! Why would you indulge in such negativity? But as I’ve mentioned before, I appreciate authors aware enough to tag it so I can avoid it. I wish that part of fandom culture didn’t exist, but well, can’t change it. Just can criticize the fuck out of it on my blog. Maybe encourage people to think less one-sided in the process if I’m lucky.

But there’s probably more good characterization Steve fics to be found, so I am forcefully recruiting two people via tag:

If you’re looking to dabble into Stony fics with good-guy-Steve, if anyone would know of any, I’d imagine it’d be @babywarg.

You don’t know this person, but @cairistiona7 has actually known me the longest of anyone here on tumblr (half my life! HALF! She even knows my real name :P She betaed a LOTR work of mine a decade ago I ended up never fully publishing… thanks again for all your help there…). Anyway, she’s a big Bucky fan, and Bucky friendships is the best thing. So if anyone would know any wholesome Bucky and Steve stories, it’d be her. (Or really I’d take any of your recs, Cair, as I’ll probably enjoy them as well).

I hope this was helpful to you md, and that I didn’t piss off too many of my followers in the process of answering this lol.

#mdcbd #tony stark critical #steve rogers critical #meta #the sokovia accords #character analysis #tony stark #steve rogers #peter parker #since he's in a lot of the fics #fic rec #ask #answered #anti culture

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land-of-classpects-and-analysis · 3 years

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i hope this isn't a bother or a distraction to you right now, but could i get a little taste of an heir of life? i'm pretty sure i've seen you do other heirs and i really wanna see what amazing analysis you might have in store for the future when you do heirs!!

Of course you can have a small preview of, arguably, possibly one of my favorite Classpects! I can also promise you are most definitely not bothering nor distracting me from things, either!

For the sake of time and my wrists, I’ll drop in here what I’ve already said about the overall Heir Class!:

Heirs are those who subconsciously, almost instinctively, drift towards any and all instances of their Aspect. Whether it is always finding themself taking charge and being the leader, having a life of misery, suffering and pain with no real comfort to speak of, or fading into the shadows and remaining ignorant to the truths of a flawed system. The Heir is one who both gravitates towards their Aspect, but it is one that rarely often helps them - at least in the beginning.

It is because of this subconscious gravitation that the Heir is at risk of becoming fully submissive to the whims of their Aspect, losing every other sense of who they are in the process. While some Heirs may not see any problems with this, it is a thought that may startle and even turn Heirs into those who try to fight back against the strings their Aspect has tied to them. They are the only ones who can control their fates, whether it is by fighting back against and taking full control of their Aspect or allowing for it to fully overtake and override who they are, leaving them to be an unfortunate husk of who they once were.

Heirs are those who usually passively Manipulate their Aspect, or Manipulate through it. Their powers come to them naturally, after all, but their main problem is having to learn how to use their powers to benefit the team rather than only themselves. Overall, their personalities are often ones filled with passion and loyalty, especially when it comes to their opinions, values, and beliefs. Changing an Heir’s mind on something they enjoy can be difficult, sometimes even to the point where it feels like you are talking more to a wall than an actual person.

Now, as for the Heir of Life themself, they are simply someone who often tries to give too much of themself at once - they seek to heal and mend and fix what has been broken, wash away the scorched scars that cover those they love and the planet they love on, but they can’t. They are only human, and they can’t fix all that is wrong in the world. The Heir of Life does not care, though, as they will continue to try over, and over, and over again to fix as much as they can, to help as many people as they can at once, always taking on more weight of people’s issues all while trying to juggle their own. Although some of the Heir’s own friends may try and tell them to take a break, take care of themself, make boundaries, practice what they preach, and more, the Heir of Life may smile back at them oh-so-sweetly while promising that they will try, that they will do better about taking care of themself. Everyone knows, though, for they have all had this conversation one too many times, that the Heir of Life will always find a way to once again stretch themself too thin, set themself ablaze to keep others warm, sacrifice their own health so as to give more kindness and prosperity to the people in their lives who would not even think twice of returning the favor. The Heir of Life does not mind, though, because knowing they have made others happy is all they need. Right? Right?

The Heir of Life is someone who may naturally gravitate towards Life, the Aspect of growth, happiness, life itself, positivity, healing, and more. Because of this, they are someone who will often be the first responder to when someone asks for a shoulder to lean on, or a soul to listen to them vent. They are the person - the friend - who will drop everything they are doing and try to help someone find their way through the darkness of negativity they are experiencing. While they may have extensive knowledge of how to fix things, how to make things better, oftentimes the Heir of Life will find that their good-hearted actions will go to the people and places filled with selfishness. People who, admittedly, do not want to be fixed, or healed, or mended, but rather just want someone to coddle and enable their self-destructive behaviors while also leeching off of their loving ways. Yet they have so much love to give, so much empathy, sympathy, and compassion in their heart, that to even say no to giving love and healing to even the most rotten soul is something the Heir of Life can’t even bear to think about, even if it means continuing to hurt themself in the process.

However, while the Heir of Life may be able to ignore their own pain and suffering as they continue to coddle and enable the toxic, leeching behavior of others, as well as healing their own friends of their worries and problems. Except, there is one worry the Heir of Life will never be able to truly heal away from their true friends - and that is the worry that the Heir of Life may fully lose themself in the ways of healing, mending, and sewing things back together. Their friends - their true friends - are the ones who must sit and watch as the Heir continues to scratch themself out too thin until, finally, something snaps and the Heir of Life is sent spiraling into a mental state of pure and utter despair and anger. An Heir of Life at their worst can be a truly vicious and venomous person to be around, as they spare no expense as to who will be met with a snap and a bite from the Heir themself. Someone so sweet and unassuming becoming a force of overall destructive, for the self or otherwise, behavior, and who will take down anyone they deem to be worthy of experiencing the same despair as them is often a trademark trait of the Heir of Life.

It is a vicious and ever-spinning cycle for the Heir of Life; being an unrelenting healer, offering their help to all who will take it, falling prey to those who only seek to use and abuse the Heir, leaving their true friends to become bystander witnesses to the Heir’s suffering and grievances, and finally, the Heir having enough and reclaiming their right for self-care and self-love, all the while hurting many other people, good and bad, along the way. While it may be a cycle, much like of life and death, it is a cycle that can be broken. For as much as the Heir of Life loves to help as many as they can, once they come to realize how much their self-destructive ways harms not only themself, but also the friends who love and care for the Heir, they will discover that this isn’t who they truly want to be - they don’t want to give away all of their help to those who don’t deserve it, especially when they have people who are far more deserving of such tender-love-and-care. As such, the Heir of Life would have to find a way to break away from the strings of their Aspect, while also continuing to be the healer they so deeply desire to be.

For the powers, they are rather interesting when one takes a moment to contemplate them. After all, what does it mean to manipulate Life or even manipulate through it? Well, let’s try - keyword being try - to go over both options very, very briefly, so as to avoid any big spoilers before the time comes for the Heir of Life to fully shine! To start off, let’s go with the far more simple option of manipulating Life - though, as easy as it may sound, the fact that Life can stand for so many different things can put quite an interesting twist on this power. For now, let’s look towards the more literal version of Life, primarily with people’s life force as well as that of plant-life. An Heir of Life could come along and manipulate the life force of anyone they wanted to, whether it is by expanding a mortal’s lifespan by hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of years, or doing the exact opposite - manipulating someone’s life to become far more disheveled and closer to death. Of course, they could also manipulate someone’s Life in the form of aging certain parts of that person, while leaving everything else relatively untouched. If the Heir of Life so wanted, they could turn their enemy’s skeleton and/or insides into dust, leaving them hollow on the inside and, of course, dead. Then there is the manipulation of Life in the form of plants - which could become more akin to that of, perhaps, a type of Cleric or Warlock who has a domain or pact that allows for them to bring about a horrific army of plants. While they can’t exactly create these plants from thin air, so long as there is any sign of plant-life in the immediate area, the Heir of Life could so easily take it and turn it into something as simple as an ocean or mass of thorned tendrils, or give far more sentient life to the plants, making them an entire plant-based animal to do the Heir’s bidding more than anything.

As for the ability to manipulate through Life, this power is one that could take a far darker turn, especially if the Heir of Life using it has simply had enough of feeling like some old, beat-up, and thrown away doll. They would still be a healer, oh most certainly, but there would always be a small price for their helpful services. Heirs may be somewhat awkward individuals, but they still are people who attract others to them, one way or another. Because of this, if the Heir of Life truly wanted to play a little dirty, then they could use their Life powers as a means to twist the arms of those that have wronged them. After all, wouldn’t it be just a shame if people were to find out the star of a show was secretly some criminal, or that the person with a tragic home-life is just simply spoiled and not getting their way? Wouldn’t it just be a shame if all of these deep, deep dark secrets were to get out? The Heir of Life thinks so, and since people just love to come to them and talk about all of their problems, then the Heir believes their enemies would also agree how truly devastating it would be for the harsh truths to come out. If the Heir of Life wants to get something, then they know exactly how to get it.

Hopefully this helps to give you a little taste as to what the Heir of Life has to offer for when Month of the Heir comes rolling around!

#Mage Musings #Kind of An Analysis #Not A Full Analysis #Heir of Life Preview #Sneak Peek

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

Text

How Laugier knows what these victims go through is anyone’s guess. Still, what sets his depiction of a split-personality, revanchist killing machine apart from his forebears is that he almost immediately reveals to the viewer that Lucie is the one still hurting herself. Lucie’s manifested guilt is not entirely the driving mechanism behind the film: what eventually takes precedence is uncovering who the monsters are that created it and why they did it.

The fact that Laugier has a perfectly normal family act as the perpetrators of the film’s gruesome activities serves firstly as a dig at Craven’s Last House. The wily and utterly audacious Frenchman effectively shames the fittingly named American for stopping as short as he did in pointing the finger of blame at a small suburban couple who, having just lost their daughter to a gang of thugs, decide to creatively slaughter her executioners. Laugier upends that film’s self-satisfied, pseudo-ambiguous conclusion by suggesting that perhaps these milquetoast, child-rearing folk had a reason for hurting other people that goes beyond their family tree, a reason that is infinitely more sinister because it serves a curiosity that has no ties to the domestic or even the mundane. These people torture others because they want to vicariously experience their “other”ness, to see what it’s like to have a person cross over to “the other side” and come back to tell them how green the grass is. This is where I really start to go out on a limb, so bear with me.

...Though it may look obvious or intentional, during this process of bloodletting, the skin color of the only martyr left alive gets a little darker after a couple of beatings (there’s no logical explanation for this as the martyr in question is never shown to be hurt with anything except her captors’ fists and boots). The martyrs are beaten without a word from their jailers, as if to show that the act of beating another person cannot possibly be called an “advanced interrogation tactic.” These girls must first be completely alienated and once they’ve been physically and emotionally broken down, they have their “other”ness and all other traces of their identity forcibly ripped away from them. This means literally losing their skin, the flesh ripped away to reveal glistening tendons and muscles. Any possible sign of their race or gender is thus completely removed, turning them into so much unidentifiable flesh. First the martyr becomes an “other,” then they become nothing. There is no possibility of “getting off” here, just a hyper-real representation of the horror of physical suffering. This is the kind of movie that justifies its daunting provocation with scant but revealing dialogue like,“People no longer envisage suffering, young lady.” Martyrs has an intelligence and a dogged determination to do and to say what its predecessors could or would not.

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/martyrs-2008/

In one pivotal scene Anna discovers a victim, chained in a cellar dungeon beneath a family home. She’s a terrifying sight: her eyes covered with a metal visor which has been nailed into her skull and her emaciated body covered in scars and scratches.

Our first instinct is to shy away – to shun this horrific, yelping creature, who has been brutalised into something less-than human, and is all the more frightening for it. And yet, just as we’re poised for a nasty shock or attack, Anna reaches for the woman’s hand, presumably offering her the first kind, truly human contact she has received for years.

In a film filled with savagery and horror, it’s a moment that shocks to the core: a reminder that unexpected tenderness can be as viscerally, skin-shiveringly affecting as torture.

...Like the worst real-world monsters (Josef Mengele is the obvious example), the movie’s torturers, whose true motivation is revealed in the final act, are also convinced that they’re doing the right thing. They see themselves as experimenters, explorers, brave pioneers – and, disturbingly, Martyrs manages to temporarily put its audience into their blood-stained shoes. Even as we wince for the film’s victims, we find ourselves simultaneously desperate to know what their abusers will uncover.

Ultimately, horror movies can frighten us in lots of different ways, combining their inherent darkness with sly humour, adrenalin-fuelled scares, or with painterly splashes of gore. But Martyrs is a rare creation: a 21st-century film that subtly elicits all the sorrow of the preceding century, imbues its scenes of torture with a sense of vivid, heart-breaking pity, and forces us to really feel. Is it painful to watch? Very much so. But worth the suffering? Absolutely.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/what-to-watch/martyrs-2008-pascal-laugier/

Most of the conversation people have about Martyrs concerns its final 30 minutes or so, and for good reason: That’s when the film shifts gears and heads into the torture sequences that have given it such notoriety. (And definitively trumped the most harrowing moments in other French extreme horror movies like High Tension, Frontier(s), and Inside.) What they forget is that the first hour is completely gripping and suspenseful in an entirely different and infinitely more palatable way. Yes, it’s bloody and disturbing in its own right, but it’s also genuinely charged and full of arresting ambiguity, far from the clinical sickness that follows in the third act. Torture isn’t in the foreground yet, but informs the action, as a once-abused child grows up to exact a revenge that may be just or may be the product of a haunted and irretrievably damaged mind.

...In the final act, which is as bloodless and clinical as the first two-thirds were propulsive and emotional, Laugier seeks not just to reveal humankind’s capacity for cruelty and exploitation, but its capacity for suffering as well. The explicitness of Anna’s torture and “martyrdom”—a demonstration of female strength and resilience that’s meant as a (suspect) type of feminism—isn’t quite like that in so-called “torture porn” movie. It’s not mediated by gimmicky machines like those in Saw franchise or carried out in the spirit of psychosis or vengeance, as in Wolf Creekor The Devil’s Rejects. It has more in common with real, institutional forms of torture and human experimentation, and is conducted with an emotional distance that’s infinitely more disturbing and terrible. We simply watch Anna get broken down—systematically, inexplicably:

...And so on, until she’s so completely pliant that she doesn’t wince or fight or feel fear any more. Then it’s on to “Stage Four,” which is so horrific it isn’t worth describing. All of these sessions are handled in brief, methodical chunk, followed by a cut to black. They have the effect of breaking down the audience, too, because we eventually come to the realization that Anna—though strong and resilient in the classic “Final Girl” way—has about as much chance of extricating herself from this situation as detainees not named Harold and Kumar have of escaping Guantanamo Bay. Being robbed of that narrative expectation is incredibly deflating, even soul-crushing, and I think Laugier means it to be. On some level, Martyrs feels like a comment on other films of its kind, because it shuts down any notion that pleasure could be derived from watching it. It feels like the death of extreme horror—or at least takes the subgenre as far as it can conceivably go.

https://film.avclub.com/martyrs-1798223075

@lobotomybarbie

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raendown · 4 years

Link

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 5014 Chapter: 7/9 Rated: T+ Summary: When his brother disappears coming home from town Madara goes looking for him only for both to end up taken prisoner in a castle hidden by magic generations ago. The candelabras talk, the furniture sleeps, and a great white beast hides himself away in the eastern wing. As he uncovers the story behind this place and gets to know the last small group of ‘survivors’ Madara gradually makes a new home here in the least likely of places.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Chapter 7

Gently swirling the contents of the flask in his hands, Madara watched the translucent liquid rotate in small waves for a few moments before lowering it to resume rolling the glass between both palms as he had been for the past several minutes. In general he’d never been the type for nervous fidgeting but Hashirama's suggestion had confused him and awoken a strange nervous energy of sorts.

“This medicine is for Izuna,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” Hashirama agreed, “but I believe it is important that you take some as well.”

“Why would I drink someone else’s medicine?” It seemed a waste, especially after the happy discovery that it did not disappear at the midnight reset.

Hopping closer along the kitchen counter, Hashirama lifted both hands to still his movements, the wicks in his candles thankfully unlit. “It may do you some good as well. My brother assisted me in reading several of the journals we did not look through before and one of them mentioned that those who spend time near a person infected with your brother’s illness may contract it themselves.”

“But I’m not sick! I’m not coughing or anything! Wouldn’t I have shown some kind of symptoms by this point?”

“Ah, there lies the rub. According to one physician’s notes the illness may lie dormant for months or even years without any signs until something awakens the symptoms. I believe it was referred to as latent tuberculosis – and I also believe that you may have been infected.” Hashirama's candles gripped him tightly as one might clutch at someone’s fingers. “Please, my friend, allot yourself a portion of this medicine. It would not do to cure your brother at last only to fall ill yourself instead!”

Madara lowered his gaze to stare at the flask again, turning that information over in his mind. He’d heard of that before. One of the farmers he used to serve at the inn had stopped coming in to the village square when people finally put two and two together to realize that any pregnant woman who came in contact with him tended to lose the child. They called him a ‘carrier’, although what he was carrying Madara had never bothered to figure out. He himself would never have a wife, what with his attraction to men, so he hadn’t cared much to learn about the exact dangers.

After promising Hashirama he would think about it Madara disentangled himself from their odd embrace and hurried away. The flask slipped neatly in to his pocket for later while he strode through the halls towards the front door. His limbs began to shiver the moment he stepped outside but it was easy enough to put up with a bit of shivering when he knew he would be sweating through his coat very shortly.

True to an earlier promise, Tobirama had thrown himself in to the task of training Madara in the use of a gunbai with surprising enthusiasm. Six out of seven days they met, ran through a specific set of warm up stretches to loosen their muscles, then sparred until the massive weapon began to slip from Madara's grasp. Apparently he could only be considered a master of the art when he could endure any amount of abuse without ever allowed the gunbai to leave his grip. Considering how tired he usually was at the end of their daily exercise Madara had quickly built an appreciation for the strength of warriors in Tobirama’s time. They must have taken battle quite seriously.

Struggle as he might, in the end Madara was forced to admit defeat when he could not convince his arms to lift the weapon he had fallen in love with even one more time. The entire bottom half of his body was soaked through from stumbling around in the snow but his shirts were damp only with the sweat from his own body as he jammed the gunbai in to the ground and leaned heavily on it in an attempt to catch his breath.

“Your abilities are growing at an admirable rate,” Tobirama mentioned, already politely cleaning the blade he preferred to use for their training sessions.

“Right,” Madara snorted. “My ability to get clobbered in to the ground.”

His friend granted him a fond smile. “Would it make you feel better to know that I would be much less of an opponent were I blessed with my natural size once more?”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“Truly I am not. I was trained as all my brothers were but I had other pursuits which caught my interest and swordplay was not one of them. What makes me formidable now is the sheer size of this cursed body.” With a wry twist of his mouth Tobirama gestured down the front of him with one massive arm and Madara paused to consider that.

“I guess if you didn’t have arms the size of my calves you wouldn’t pack so much of a punch, yeah. You’d probably still grind me in to the dirt.”

Coming forward to help him stand and leading them both towards the armory, Tobirama hummed. “Would that I could pit you against Hashirama instead. You may not see it but I do: your stamina has already improved by leaps and bounds, your movements are stronger. Already you may have surpassed my abilities.” Oddly enough he even looked proud to say so rather than the clenched jaw of forcing out an unwanted admission as Madara would have expected from anyone else he’d ever known.

He kept his silence as they made their way inside the armory to finish cleaning their weapons and put them away. Proper storage and care of one’s things was something Tobirama was rather vehement about, though Madara happened to feel the same so it wasn’t exactly a lesson hard learned. As much as he usually enjoyed the few moments when it was not considered weird to lavish tender affection on an inanimate object, though, his thoughts drifted to other concerns as he went through the motions today entirely on autopilot. Neither of them spoke until the gunbai and sword were both hung back in their proper places and Tobirama was already turning for the door when Madara's voice called him back.

“Sometimes,” he began slowly, “you have a good day and the way you talk is almost hopeful. But then other days you talk like you expect to live forever stuck in time the way you are.” Unsurprisingly Tobirama’s expression immediately turned somber.

“It is not being outside of time’s flow that bothers me but–”

“Yeah, I know, the body. But the body isn’t yours. You just acknowledged that yourself.”

“Perhaps. But it is the form I deserve.” One of Tobirama’s hands slid down to press against where the fur covering his legs rose up over his hips as well.

Madara turned a little more towards him and very carefully did not fold his arms in an effort to avoid confrontational body language. “No it isn’t. No matter what mistakes you think you’ve made – and we all know you made none – that doesn’t make you a beast or an animal or anything. If anything that probably makes you more human than ever.”

“How, precisely?” Tobirama asked incredulously.

“It’s in the nature of humans to make mistakes.” Madara shrugged. “It’s what we do. We’re imperfect and we try our best but it’s just…it’s human to fail.”

He wasn’t really surprised to see Tobirama look away from him uncomfortably. If he ever did get all of these idiots back in to their human selves the first thing he was going to do was smack Hashirama upside the head for never saying half the things this man so clearly needed to hear. None of these thoughts should have been allowed to take hold of him. If Madara had been around back then he would have been kicking in doors to give Tobirama a piece of his mind, telling him all the things he needed to hear no matter how badly he didn’t want to hear them.

A blind man could tell that his words had already made the other uncomfortable but Madara was merciless. Better late than never.

“I won’t bother dragging the whole argument out of the closet, you already know my opinions on what happened and your lack of blame for it all, but I just…do you really see yourself as not human anymore just for that? Even after all this time?”

“Would any human do to another what I did?” Tobirama asked quietly.

“Yes! Lots of them! Literally any one of us would kill one person to save the lives of a hundred others, especially if that one person was already dying and happy to have their suffering end.” And oh how those poor people had probably been grateful to have their suffering end.

Tobirama looked away. “It was not one person but hundreds,” he insisted. “That is different.”

“No, it really isn’t.”

Madara almost reveled in the frustration he could see behind his friend’s eyes. That was good. Frustration was another human emotion and the harder Tobirama fought to prove his point the more opportunities Madara would have to show him how he was wrong. And he had always loved proving people wrong.

“You were born a human,” he went on mercilessly. “You learned as a human, you grew as a human, and from that ripped up portrait I caught a glance of you looked pretty damn human to me. But if you’re so damn determined to be a monster then answer me one question. How does that make you any different?”

“I…I do not follow…”

“Does the form of a monster determine its insides? Can you tell from looking at a man whether he teaches children or murders them in their beds? No. So just because what you might call a monster has some kind of twisted body or ugly outsides that doesn’t mean the insides are ugly too. You don’t know! Maybe the monster under your bed just really needs a hug or something!”

Barely remembering he was trying to keep his body language open, Madara propped both fists on his hips and nodded in approval of his own points, silently enjoying the flabbergasted way Tobirama was staring at him. It wasn’t often he got to flap the unflappable king of cool. Or so he sometimes referred to Tobirama in his head. Whether it was the era he’d been brought up in or just his natural composure the other had a tendency to remain calm and utterly in control of himself at all times – or until Madara said something that hit one of his weak points.

It felt like a good sign that it took a couple of minutes for Tobirama to compose himself enough to speak again. Clearly if he wasn’t speaking he was thinking because this was a man whose brain simply never shut off but as long as he was giving consideration to the right thoughts Madara decided he didn’t mind the wait.

“You are…unlike any other I have ever met,” was the final conclusion.

“Eh? I guess you haven’t met a lot of decent people in your life.” Madara paused thoughtfully. “Or maybe you just haven’t met enough assholes, Izuna tells me I’m an asshole all the time.”

A look of fondness flashed across Tobirama’s face. “Your insistence upon seeing me as more than I am is both flattering and delusional yet I cannot seem to bring myself to request that you stop. It is more than I feel I deserve and…I appreciate it.”

“Oh yeah well your definition of what you deserve is wildly skewed.”

“Perhaps because I prefer to dwell on more pleasant things. Such as yourself.” Tobirama smiled in an oddly hesitant way but Madara only smiled back without questioning it, snorting a little with amusement.

“It’s been a long time since anyone called me pleasant,” he admitted.

“A travesty. You should be appreciated more often.”

Eyeing his companion a little sideways, Madara hummed. “If you are trying to sweet-talk me in to a change of topic it won’t work. I’m still determined to show you how very humanly stupid you are being. Although I’ve got to admit that a little flattery never hurts anything, you could stand to say a few more nice things to me.”

“My good friend, I could spend the rest of this day listing your better qualities without ever repeating myself.”

“Damn.” Removing one hand from his hip to scratch at the back of his head, Madara laughed. “You must plan to talk really, really slow then. I don’t have all that many good qualities.” It was all he could do not to leap in to the air and pump both fists with joy. Tobirama had called him a good friend. Considering him a good friend meant the other was forming new attachments and doing that meant that he was not so disconnected from his humanity as he thought. Madara couldn’t wait for the appropriate moment to turn around and shove that big step forward in the other’s face.

Underneath the calm mask of Tobirama’s twisted features Madara thought he saw a moment frustration but it was gone in the next instant so he dismissed it. He did have to admit that his responses probably sounded a little flippant and Izuna had always told him how annoying it was when he gave off an impression of not being invested in the conversation. If that was it he did feel a little bad. He was very invested. Other than Izuna’s health there was nothing more important in his life these days than helping Tobirama learn to see himself as human once again and not just because doing so would return to him his own freedom.

No, he wanted Tobirama to remember his own humanity because they were indeed friends now and he wanted his friend to remember, above all else, the feeling of happiness. His own brand of freedom. What could ever be more important than that?

“Well,” he broke the silence, ready to let the subject drop for now. “If you want to say more nice things to me then maybe we should go inside where it’s warm so I can feel my toes again.”

“Ah, my apologies. I sometimes forget about…”

“Feet?”

“Yes,” Tobirama agreed with shame coloring his tone. That simply wouldn’t do.

Madara headed for the door and tossed over his shoulder with a smile, “I think that’s one of the things where you got the better end of this deal. Do you know how much I would love to just never stub my toe again or never worry about cold feet when I go to bed?”

“How is it that you always manage to put a positive spin on everything?” Tobirama asked as they stepped out in to the snow. “You have more talent for it than even Hashirama.”

“Don’t tell him that, he’ll take it as a challenge.”

Another triumph in his favor, Tobirama cracked a smile. “If you wish to avoid his enthusiasm then perhaps you would consent to spending more time in my company. My days are always brightened by your presence. It would please me greatly to know more of you.”

“Not a bad idea,” Madara admitted.

“You approve?”

“Definitely. I mean, we already agreed that we should get to know each other and now we have; now we’re friends. It makes sense for us to spend time together.” Madara sent his companion a conspiratorial grin. “And if it gives me an excuse not to listen to Hashirama compose poetry for his wife then all the better.”

Once again a flash of frustration appeared on Tobirama’s face that he didn’t understand but Madara let this one go unmentioned as well. Questioning Tobirama’s unexplained miniature temper tantrums was probably just as dangerous as asking Hashirama why he was in such a good mood on any given day. Although he was willing to bet that Tobirama would not respond by launching himself in to lengthy poetic speeches that he would then have to tune out, for which Madara was grateful. Just imagining it was terrifying.

Trudging back through the snow was terrible when Madara's legs felt as though they might turn to jelly at any moment but it was made less terrible by Tobirama kindly walking ahead of him and widening the path they had made to come out here earlier. For all the conveniences of having the world reset every day this was one inconvenience he could have done without; it would have been nice to shovel himself a nice path to use but what was the point if it would only disappear? Wasted effort. And Madara wasn’t about to tire himself out for nothing when he already got all the exercise he needed during their sparring sessions.

After detouring towards the stables for Madara to be sure his old mare had enough hay and water they made it inside the castle and paused for him to peel off all the extra layers now soaked through with sweat and snow. Learning how to wield a gunbai involved an unsurprising amount of getting knocked on the ground. Hashirama found them as Madara was contemplating taking his shirt off as well and walking through the halls bare chested until he could go bathe.

Strangely, Hashirama did not have a cheerful greeting for them. Or any greeting at all.

“Have either of you encountered Mito recently?” he asked the moment he saw them. Both shook their heads and Tobirama reminded him that they had been outside for the last couple of hours as they usually were this time of day. “If you see her would you be so kind as to let her know I am looking for her?”

“Of course, brother,” Tobirama replied.

With that Hashirama was gone again, hopping off down the hallways at speeds that threatened to send him tripping over his own metal base. Madara tilted his head to one side.

“That’s weird.”

“I agree. He is not normally quite so abrupt.”

“Oh, yeah, that too. I just meant it’s weird because I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mito outside of the kitchens unless she’s with Hashirama.”

Tobirama looked down at him with brows furrowed in thought. “She was no great lady before she married my brother. I believe the kitchens give her comfort because she was raised there, a simple cook until she caught the crown prince’s eye.”

“Damn. I didn’t know that.”

“She would likely not wish for you to know.” His friend glanced at him sideways with a conspiratorial smile and Madara laughed. Without being told he never would have guessed that Mito had been raised as anything other than a proper lady in the royal courts. She certainly had acclimated well to such a massive promotion if her usual cool demeanor was anything to go by.

The anomaly was an easy one to put out of their minds, the two of them resuming the paths they had intended to take now that their training was done for the day. Tobirama walked with him until they reached the hallways that led towards the royal apartments. As they spent more and more time together Madara was slowly learning more and more things they agreed upon and one of those things was the necessity of bathing after such strenuous activity. Not many things struck him as more disgusting than the idea of going about the rest of his day reeking of sour armpits. He’d gotten enough of that stench from the patrons who frequented the tavern perhaps a little too frequently and he had less than zero desire to be like those animals in any sort of way.

Izuna sat comfortably ensconced in the window seat when Madara entered the room, nose buried in a book and sock-covered feet tucked under his thighs where they were curled with anticipation. He always had loved a good adventure story. For a moment Madara couldn’t help but stop and stare, admiring the flush of color where there had once been tired and waxy skin, the shine coming back to long dark hair. His brother looked healthier now than he had in years and he continued to improve with every day that passed. It was amazing what access to actual medicine would do after years of being sold a shitty half-potent brew to keep him coming back as a repeat customer. If Madara ever saw that witch doctor again the idiot was going to come away from the encounter without all his vital body parts intact. That was a guarantee.

“Bath?” his brother asked distantly without looking up. It was incredibly annoying that he found it easy deciphering the twirling flowery script Madara could not, able to enjoy whatever book he wanted to from the library.

“Please tell me the water’s still hot,” he pleaded.

“Mn. Should be. I haven’t bothered to check.”

Madara grunted and stumped on through to the water closet. Even in the current times it was a rarity to find homes outside of the big towns that were built with indoor plumbing. The fact that this castle had such luxuries available was well worth the fact that to heat the water for his bath still required a small fire under the tub. It was better than hauling water in from the well as he’d had to do all his life. The tub was even make of copper with four clawed feet holding it up above the ground, much more comfortable than the squat wooden barrel Madara was used to crawling in to.

To his absolute delight the small fire he stoked up before going outside had gone out not too long before, leaving his water a delicious burning temperature he was able to enjoy by submerging a towel before his body so he wouldn’t have to sit directly on the heated copper bottom. Sinking down in to the water was bliss upon his tired muscles and Madara was glad no one but Izuna was close enough to hear the shameful drawn out moan that echoed around the room in appreciation. There really was nothing like a good hot soak after a hard day’s work. And considering that his life had been fairly soft compared to others he felt he was only just beginning to appreciate things like this now after signing on to turn his muscles in to jelly six out of seven days a week.

Although he couldn’t say that he minded. In an odd way the soreness of his muscles felt good, felt like tangible proof of the progress he was making both in his own skill and in convincing Tobirama to see himself as human. The more time they spent together the more his friend seemed to be opening up and revealing new facets of his true self. For him to ask that they spend even more time together must be a breakthrough. Madara grinned smugly, sinking down to hide his expression under the surface of the water, and mentally gave himself a nice pat on the back. Obviously he was such a good friend that Tobirama wanted them to get even closer!

His intention was to soak just long enough that he could lift his arms without feeling like he wanted to scream but by the time he pulled himself out the water had gone cold and the shadows in the room were stretching out much longer than they should have been. Apparently time had slipped him by as he relaxed.

No longer half as sore as he had been, Madara was almost tempted to hum pleasantly as he dried himself off and dressed again in the clothes he’d left in the bathroom earlier, checking first to make sure Izuna hadn’t caught any mice to leave in his clothing again. It was wonderful to see his brother regain some energy but he could have done without the resurgence of the pranks they used to pull on each other when they were young. Once he was successfully covering in mice-free clothing Madara wrestling a brush through his hair until he was able to separate three portions to braid together. The gilded mirror hanging over the sink told him that he’d done a decent enough job, nothing fancy but better than the raggedy drowned look he usually sported walking around with wet hair.

On his way back through the bedroom he double checked the position of the sun through their window and wrinkled his nose. He might be a little late for dinner. Mito hated it when he was late. Hopefully she didn’t overcook anything in retaliation as she so often threatened to do to Tobirama when the man got too lost in his head to remember food.

“Coming?” he called, pausing at the door. Izuna’s face lifted from the book he’d been reading with a glassy eyed look which said he also hadn’t realized the time.

“Five more minutes?”

“And get yelled at by the lady of the house? Not a chance. If you’re not coming now then I’ll bring you up a plate later.”

He watched Izuna wrestle with indecision before finally sighing and setting the book aside, unfolding his legs to stand then pausing to stretch. By the time he finally made it over to the door Madara was tapping one foot impatiently.

“On your own time,” he insisted with heavy tones of sarcasm. Izuna stuck out his tongue.

Together they wandered through the hallways towards the lower floors where Mito should be whipping up her latest delicacy, Izuna patiently listening to his big brother recounting an afternoon of training that probably sounded pretty identical to al his other stories about training. When he could get a word in edgewise he immediately derailed the conversation to talk about the rich fantasy world he’d been reading about and that was just as interesting so Madara decided against scolding him for being so rude. It was always a pleasure to see him so invested, so vibrant.

Instead of the usually cheery voice hailing them as soon as they walked in to the room, however, both of the Uchiha brothers were surprised to find the kitchens empty but for little Kagami dangling from an oven handle and struggling valiantly to open the massive door with his tiny wooden weight. Madara leapt across the room to rescue him, setting the toy soldier on the countertop instead with his heart racing in his chest.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Do you know what the ovens could do to you? What if you caught fire!”

“I did not want for you to go hungry, I was only trying to cook dinner!” Kagami scuffed one foot in to the counter while Madara and Izuna traded looks of confusion.

“Mito cooks,” Izuna pointed out.

“Exactly. Which begs the question again, what do you think you’re doing?” Crossing his arms, Madara lifted one eyebrow in his best impression of a disappointed Tobirama. Nothing got this boy talking than the idea that he had somehow disappointed his idol.

Just as predicted, Kagami pouted. Then he defied expectations by perking up and shaking his head with some measure of authority. “Mito-hime is not here. Hashirama-sama went to find her; he sounded very worried that she was not preparing so I thought to cheer everyone up by doing so myself! Then Hashirama-sama would not have to worry and you would not have to go on with empty bellies!”

For a few moments the two of them stared down at the boy in search of any hints that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. It was a futile effort, though. Kagami was almost more honest than Hashirama and he had no reason to lie to them. Eventually Madara scooped him back up and carefully transferred his small body away from the work station, depositing him in Izuna’s outstretched hands with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He really was glad they had taken such a shine to each other.

“You forget that we’ve lived alone for years; I can cook for myself just fine. It might not be quite up to the standards Tobirama is used to eating but I’m sure he’ll manage to choke it down.”

“It is weird that Mito’s not here with dinner waiting though,” Izuna chipped in, already seating himself on a nearby stool.

Madara hummed with his head shoved inside the closest pantry door. “I agree, it’s not like her. Hashirama will find her though. She’s probably just off distracted with a book or something like you were before I dragged you down. Everything’s fine.”

He didn’t need to look to feel the weight of Izuna’s eyes on him, to read the silence for what it was. Kagami happily began to chatter about something inconsequential and they let him. That was, after all, the point of pretending that everything was normal. Neither of them wanted to upset the poor boy until they knew for sure that anything was amiss.

But his brother had hit the nail on the head. It was very strange for Mito not to be here in the kitchen with dinner ready, stranger still that she would pass up on an opportunity to scold them for deviating from the schedule she had set for their meals. Whether because of her modest upbringing or a need to prove herself worthy in her new station Mito was a woman who thrived on order, everything where it was supposed to be and always at the right time. It might have been possible that she really had simply fallen victim to distraction as he suggested and that she might come flying in to the kitchen with tight-lipped apologies to scold him for using the wrong frying pan.

Or – Madara's fingers tightened around the onion he held between his palms – it was possible that his gut was right and something was very wrong. They wouldn’t know until Hashirama found his wife.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #izuna #kagami #hashirama #fanfiction

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ashleyfanfic · 5 years

Text

Y'all done made me get my laptop out so I can type this and not on my phone. That’s how damn tired I am of it.

I am a Dany fan(Stan). But let me be clear in saying that I am also a Jon Snow fan(Stan). You people out here spewing your hate on one or the other are getting on my last fucking nerve because you’re all missing the fucking point of Jon and Dany’s entire arc!

Dany’s Arc since coming to the North She’s having to contend with a people who didn’t sign up to be her people. Their king, the man they named king, named her his queen. Now, not one of them have asked why he did this, but you can tell they’re looking at him and her and made assumptions that it’s just because they’re together. But like Jon had to do when he was at Dragonstone, maybe it would make a little too much sense for them to ask why he’s so devoted to her. So, her arc is first coming to a place she doesn’t necessarily want to be, fighting a war she hadn’t intended on fighting, beside the man she loves. That’s all hard going for her. I think ep 3 will add some more layers onto this. Jon’s Arc since coming to the North Trying to logically reason with illogical people about bending the knee. Even his own sisters have doubts about why he did what he did and don’t actually ask as much as accuse him of being disloyal to his family or forgetting who he was. Then Sam drops the truth on him, not in a way that would have softened the blow for his best friend, the man who had always protected him but drops it in such a way it’s a gut punch and meant to drive a wedge between Jon and Daenerys.

I know people take issue with Dany’s reaction to what Jon said to her, but wouldn’t you? I mean, you just got told that the man you love is a long lost relative and people will say he has a better claim simply because he’s a man? And then these same people turn around and chastise the fact that Jon will tell her he doesn’t want it and that makes him a bad person because he’s stepping away from it because of her? He loves her, you dope. He also doesn’t want to be a king, has never wanted to be a king, and if you don’t understand that, then you don’t fucking understand Jon Snow. He took positions of power because they named him or he was the best person. If he steps aside it’s because he believes in Daenerys.

I don’t give a shit about your “A man steps in front of a woman to take her place even though she’s been working for it her whole life”. Correction, she’s been working for it since she decided she wasn’t just going to be a pet for Drogo and actively started taking on the role of Khaleesi. Jon didn’t know the opportunity was even out there.

But even if he did, what are you implying? That Jon has done nothing? Jon joined the Night’s Watch and became a steward to the Lord Commander and saved his fucking life from a wight. That’s how he got Longclaw. Then he goes beyond the wall with his brothers and gets captured by Wildlings and kills one of his own men in order to ingratiate himself with those people. In doing so, he learns that they aren’t as horrible as he thought. They were people who had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side of the wall and were trying to survive. Some are bloodthirsty cannibals, but your more rational Wildlings, like Ygritte and Tormund, don’t like that group. He still gets back to the Wall and helps his brothers fortify Castle Black and fights against them. It’s because of Jon that they win that battle. He executes Janos Slynt for not following order (and good thing Janos didn’t have any family that would have made him sympathetic to the group). Then we have him go save the Wildlings, fight the Army of the Dead, and watch in horror as all those killed were resurrected as dead. He was killed for this. Those people he saved, the Wildlings, came to fight and protect Jon even in death. He fought to win back Winterfell even knowing that the odds were against them. And he went south to meet with a potential enemy/ally because he saw they needed help. Jon didn’t know he was a prince. No one thought to tell him that before he went to the Wall, but I wouldn’t say he’s done nothing to deserve the crown.

And then there’s Dany, and the ole girl had a shit time of it as well. Her own family member sold her to a warlord for his army. Said family member was abusive and her husband raped her repeatedly. Even to the point where sitting in the saddle was painful. Her husband died, her baby died, all because of decisions she made. Those events made her even less trusting in others than she was previously. But she hatched Dragons in the fire. She made it through the Red Waste, the exact opposite environment that Jon Snow was living in. Her people were slaughtered so the dragons could be taken. She survived that and managed, through her own wits and not informing any of her advisors as to her plan, to acquire the Unsullied army who chose to follow her after she freed them. She takes Yunkai and Meereen and even marries a man she despises and reopens the fighting pits because she’s looking to make the people happy. She didn’t sail to Westeros when she was able. She stayed to try to make the lives of the freed slaves better. She learned the pitfalls of ruling and how hard it was. You know what she did learn? You can’t make everybody happy. She took the Dothraki, not with her dragons, but with her own plans. Everyone proclaims she’s nothing without her dragons, yet she managed to kill all the khals and took the Khalasar with fire and a well-placed lock on the door. She finally settles the issue with the Masters (by showing her ultimate power). She sails to Westeros and because she abandons her plans in favor of Tyrion’s plan, clever men, she loses all of her allies. She’s spitting mad when she learns about Highgarden but turns to someone who isn’t in her counsel and asks what he would do. Because Dany has proven that she will listen. She defeated the Lannister army coming back from Highgarden.

But the same can be said for Jon which is why I don’t think EITHER of them will take it. Love is the death of duty. Jon and Dany love one another. Yes, fam, she loves him. He loves her. They have been beating us over the head with it over two years. They love one another. Yeah, they’re adding in drama, but they kind of have to. People would bitch, moan, and complain if there wasn’t some drama around this revelation. But let’s go back to how he tells hers: They’re alone. He’s been avoiding her and she’s finally had enough and seeks him out. She finds him in the crypts and doesn’t approach him any further until he smiles at her and nods. She wraps her arms around him, he holds her hands as he stares at Lyanna’s statue. She asks who they’re looking at and he only says “Lyanna Stark”. She then starts speaking about her brother Rhaegar and how he was good and decent, loved to sing and gave money to orphans, and he raped her. She couldn’t wrap her mind around that. Jon tells her that he didn’t. They were in love. It’s not meant to hurt her, but I believe he was hoping that by telling her that, it was meant to soften some of what she believed about her brother, a brother she clearly loves even though she never met him. The look on her face is heartbreak and disbelief. She knows this changes everything. Because it’s not what either of them thinks their claim is, it’s what other people will think. They’ll push her aside for the male heir. And speaking of a male heir, Jon is the last of the Targaryens. The only one who can carry on the line. Dany has a habit of thinking of the long term, and she sees what’s going to happen. He’ll have to marry someone else, he’ll have to for their house to survive. And then people will really support his claim for the Iron Throne.

But here’s how I think this plays out. I said above that I don’t think either of them will sit the throne, and I don’t. I think the world is going to change with this battle in ep3 and possibly ep5. I don’t really think there will be a throne to sit. Davos has already offered up the easiest solution: marry them. But Dany will be against this because she doesn’t believe she’ll be able to have children. She’ll make him go away because of this belief. I don’t believe Jon will ever do this willingly. He loves her. The throne means nothing to him, but belonging to a family does, and right now, Dany is his family. Sansa and Arya have already put themselves at odds against him because of how he feels for her. So he’s possibly going to fight Dany on this. I think we’ll get some trickery that will make them both realize how stupid they are for each other. Dany will have Jon’s baby, and I think this goes back to Emilia’s comment about how the end fucked her up. Think of it from her perspective. What has been Dany’s goal for the entire series, almost? To take the Iron Throne. She might have even expected Dany to die. But does anyone expect her to give up the throne to live out a peaceful life with the man she loves and her child(ren)? No. Dany wants to break the wheel that her ancestor Aegon built. What better way than to dissolve the monarchy? So, let’s say the last vision we see of Dany is that of a mother to an actual child, Jon at her side, with their dragons, living somewhere far away from Westeros. That would cause some people to be irate, but others to go, yeah, that’s what’s best for these two people who have done nothing but suffer.

#jonerys #jon x dany #jon x daenerys #jon snow x daenerys targaryen #got spoilers

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mental-health-advice · 4 years

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Ah nevermind I just saw it! Unfortunately got kinda hidden between other posts. As far as I am concerned I don't know how much it at this point really affects my siblings. A few days ago one of my brothers showed abusive behaviour towards our younger sister too that caused me flashbacks since trauma with my mother doing similar things to me was involved. With the current Corona situation I unfortunately can't leave myself and she keeps telling my siblings how it's all their fault and just(1🦚

-parenting. So they think they only get disciplined for misbehaviour when they really actually didn't do anything wrong. My mother threatened before to take me to court for slander if I spoke up about something she told me. I am 18 now but cabt work or afford a lawyer or to move out so I'm basically fucked and wouldn't be able to take in my siblings :( - 🦚 (2)

Uff, I... don't remember sending that. I knew I sent some untagged ones back then which i mentioned but damn. I don't know when i sent it or what triggered me that badly that day.vlike what exact Corona news... for the promise I mentioned I have vague ideas of what I may have meant. Either that I originally promised myself to not try and harm myself until I meet certain people who mean the world to me, or that I promised myself to make the person who I planned to meet happy. Legitimately see (1)

them smikez make them laugh. They also suffer from mental health problems so yeah. I kinda just promised myself silently to make them happy. They loudly promised to make me happy. We are just very good friends for context. Like siblings pretty much. I kind of developed this probably unhealthy dependence on her which I think might play a role in why I completely shit down when I sent that. Uff. I guess I should look into how to not put my life into my friends hands at this rate...(2)

Also am just going to add that I'm also 🌺. That was my first tag I believe. I responded with the same tag after the answer to make it easier. I might just tag with both from now on d96xt idk geht I keep changing tags - sorry about that!(I also think i tagged one as either ☆ or ♡?? Really sorry if I'm causing confusion! Illl try to stay consistent now!) -🦚

I've mentioned in a previous one that I tend to kinda zone out when sending in stuff under huge emotions. I just noticed that this resulted in me thinking I sent in something completely different from what I did. Like before I would just be like "I dont recall what I said, but I'll recognize it when I see it!" But in one of the recent ones of mine you answered I was confused for a moment because I thought I had remembered but it was something totally different. Am I losing my mind here? -🦚🌺

Hi there,

First, I hope it's okay that I'm answering your asks at once! Since I've answered your other asks, I figured it might be easier just to answer them all in one place to help both of us keep track of them easier. Hopefully that's alright with you!

Also, there's no need to apologize for using the different tags on your asks. I'm just glad we got it all sorted out so you can watch out for your asks a little easier!

It's really unfortunate that your brother has exhibited some of the same behaviors as your mom. While it's not surprising because kids tend to model the behaviors they see, it is unfortunate that your sister has to be subjected to the behaviors and they cause you flashbacks. Neither of you deserve this!

It must be frustrating to know that you're currently stuck with your mom because of COVID-19. It makes sense that you can't afford leaving right now anyway, but maybe this is something you can work towards over time. Maybe, once quarantine eases up at least, you can start working on saving up money to eventually get your own place. Perhaps you could also use this time right now to think about what it might look like when you do move out, like if you'll be able to take your siblings with you or not.

As for what your mom said about suing you, this honestly sounds like one of her many abuse tactics to try to control you using fear. Though I'm not a lawyer or law expert by any means, I know she would need proof that you were making things up in order to actually sue you for slander. I don't she has this proof since you're not actually making things up. This is why I truly think that she's just trying to manipulate you by threatening to sue you, but I obviously can't know that for sure.

It's really great that you have the type of relationship with this friend you mentioned! It's amazing when you find someone that you care about so much that it gives you motivation to keep going. You mentioned not wanting to rely on friends so much in this way, but it didn't sound like you or your friends are being harmed by viewing them as a reason to keep going. Everyone needs these reasons and there's nothing wrong with those reasons being other people. You're going through a lot and deserve to have support from your friends, so it's wonderful that you care about them (and vice versa) this much! While it may help to try to find more reasons to keep going, I don't personally see anything wrong with your friends being a rock for you. You can always check out our reasons to stay alive page here if you'd like examples of what helps others keep going.

Finally, I don't think you're losing your mind! Some people tend to dissociate when they get overwhelmed emotionally, so I don't think what you're experiencing is a sign that you're losing your mind. Sometimes people subconsciously check out mentally when they get overwhelmed, which sounds like could be what's happening here when you don't remember what exactly you sent in your asks. I know I mentioned grounding techniques before and you mentioned that they can be challenging when you're around your mom, but I learned something in therapy last week that might help because you can likely do it without your mom noticing. Basically, just pick something in your surroundings and mentally pay attention to the very fine details of the item. For instance, I've been practicing this with my bookshelf in my bedroom and I mentally describe the colors of the shelf, the texture, the details of my books on the shelves, etc. This helps orient you to your surroundings in the present moment, which can be helpful when you're emotionally overwhelmed. It can also probably be done without your mom noticing. Maybe this is something you can give a try when you feel overwhelmed like you did when you sent your asks and didn't remember the content afterward. Again, I don't think this is a sign that you're losing your mind and perhaps this is something that could help when this happens to you.

I hope to hear from you again soon!

-Samantha

#abuse #trauma #family #COVID-19 #coronavirus #🦚🌺#🦚#🌺#advice #advice blog #mental health advice #mhasamantha #Anonymous

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linkspooky · 5 years

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Shigaraki as a Second Protagonist

In literature, the deuteragonist or secondary main character (from Ancient Greek: δευτεραγωνιστής, deuteragōnistḗs, second actor) is the second most important character.

Greek drama began with simply one actor, the protagonist, and a chorus of dancers. The playwright Aeschylus introduced the deuteragonist; Aristotle says in his Poetics:

Thus, it was Aeschylus who first raised the number of the actors from one to two. He also curtailed the chorus and made the dialogue be the leading part.

A deuteragonist often assumes the role of “sidekick” to the protagonist. Conversely, the deuteragonist could also be a particularly visible antagonist, normally whom the actual antagonist hides behind. For instance while Light is the protagonist of Death Note, due to his equal amount of screen-time and parallel story L could be read as the Deuteragonist, despite acting as the antagonist to Light.

While there are characters that could be seen as a deuteragonist to Midoriya, (Bakugo the rival, Todoroki, even Uraraka and Iida who are set up as a trio with him), I would argue in a classical sense due to the parallel development between Deku and Shigaraki they are set up as a pair. They share the same conflict. They are both trying to achieve their dreams in a society that is fundamentally unequal. Shigaraki’s memories here directly parallel Deku’s in the first chapter, his desires as well.

Shigaraki is meant not as the main villain but rather a secondary protagonist who parallels Deku’s journey but from the dark side of society. Shigaraki first appears as a decoy villain, but as it’s revealed he is a victim, there is a much greater villain responsible for the conflict between Shigaraki and Deku that will be found at the end of their parallel journeys.

1. Midoriya Izuku and Shimura Tenko Origins

Shigaraki and Midoriya share the same conflict from their origin. They were both not allowed to become the people they wanted to be, simply because of the people they were born as. Tenko because he was born as Shimura Nana’s grandson, and Midoriya because he was born quirkless. Not only do they have no control of the circumstances of their birth which means they are suffering from unfair circumstances, but also the environment around them only made this worse.

Due to the fact that people are born with different quirks, and some are not born with quirks at all, the current society of MHA is unequal. People with flashy quirks, strong ones, are preferred over people with grotesque and dangerous quirks even though there is no helping someone you are born with. “Quirk Society” is something we are presented as being unfair from the very first chapter, it is the opening line of the series. Therefore it makes sense to make this, the central conflict of the series.

Shigaraki and Deku are both victims of quirk society. They cannot become the people who they want to be, their fully realized self, or even pursue their dreams because of the circumstances they were born into. Rather than trying to assist them, we see society try to force them back into their slots.

The central conflict of the story is a classic man vs society conflict. Here we see it represented in abstract form, Deku tries to be an individual, and he’s punished because his desires exceed society’s expectations for him. He even says that it’s not wrong for him to try even though it would be more difficult without a quirk. We see the response is for everyone to gather around Deku and oppose him. Deku is the individual, and Bakugo and the crowd around him are depicted as the outside group. Deku is the other, who must fight to find his place in the world.

The man versus society conflict is when a protagonist has a strong belief against the majority of the community or surroundings and decides to act on it. Since this type of conflict is between a character and an outside group, it is classified as an external conflict.

In the story, we are being shown now that Tenko is dealing with the exact same conflict that Deku is continuously fighting against. In his first flashback with Hana we see that Tenko found out about his grandmother as a superhero, but his father opposed it.

Tenko and Midoriya both desired to be a hero. They both faced opposition in the form of someone who personally tried to convince them they could never become a hero, likely Tenko’s father because he was abandoned by Nana due to the danger of her profession. Midoriya met opposition in the form of Bakugo who spent most of his life bullying him, in order to prove that Midoriya is someone who could never be a hero and never be better than him.

However, even though they have loving families that comfort them in spite of this antagonism from Father/Bakugo, those families still repeat what society has always told them. That they cannot become heroes. Both Tenko and Midoriya are both comforted but they are not supported. As Tenko cycles through his memories, he remembers his mother, his grandparents, all being kind but none of them telling him the words he wants to hear. That he can be a hero too. Shimura says that Hana is the only one who ever supported him on that in a way.

Once again, this is the conflict. Society stands in the way of their self realization. Not only are Shimura and Deku told their dreams are impossible over and over again, but also they are repeatedly told they are nothing. Not only can they not become what they want to be, but they can’t become anything at all due to their position as the “outsider” in society.

It’s even hinted that Shigaraki may have either been abused by his father, or born with some kind of chronic illness that would prevent him from becoming a hero. We see a flashback of his mother treating something wrong with his eye, and everybody else around Shigaraki trying to cheer him up as well. His father is so far the only one who has never appeared in the flashbacks, and it’s also the hand which grips Shigaraki’s face forcefully.

Either, there was a scar around his eyes left by his father striking him or Shigaraki was chronically ill which caused the wrinkling we see around his eyes and scarring later in life. He needed medicine but he could only keep scratching at it. It’s also noteworthy that Shigaraki shows signs of excoriation later in life, which is a mental compulsion to scratch at his wounds and make them worse when he feels stressed which could have been developed in early life. In the shattered flashback we also see his father’s face up close, as well as an arrow, or pointed object which could have been used to make those scars on his face.

Shigaraki and Deku have the exact same origin point, to the point of even being harassed and bullied constantly in some form from someone trying to convince them not to become a hero. Shigaraki may have even been a sickly child. However, the greatest thing standing in both of their dreams was simply the person they were born as, something they had no control over and something nobody would let them even try to overcome with effort.

The only difference is how their origins ended. Shigaraki’s chapter where we first learn of his origin is called Shigaraki Tomura: Distortion while Deku’s is called Izuku Midoriya: Origin.

They were just both found by people on opposite sides of the conflict. Deku was saved by the right person, and Shimura Tenko was saved by the wrong person. Which again is something that Tenko had absolutely no control over, he was a child.

Therefore if this is a man vs society conflict, Shigaraki makes more sense as a secondary protagonist who grows and changes and deals with a different aspect of society rather than as a villain to Deku. The reason is because if society is wrong for telling people what their roles should be because of circumstances outside of their control regardless of their efforts to change it, then it would be wrong for labeling Shigaraki as a villain who can only ever be a villain just because he happened to be found by All For One, rather than All Might like Deku was.

2. A Conflict for Self Realization

Tenko and Midoriya are fundamentally people who want to be understood. They want their dreams to be validated. They want to become the person they want to be, regardless of who they were born as. The primary conflict in this story is each of them struggling against that, and attempting to define themselves and improve themselves with effort to escape the circumstances they were born into.

While Deku gets more screentime than Shigaraki, and he also ends up participating in events not as related to this central conflict (because this is shonen manga not a tightly paced story with limited scope), all of the major moments with Deku are when he faces people who tell him that it is impossible for him to become a hero. He cannot become the person he wants to be.

Not only do they go so far as to call his dreams impossible, but they also say that Deku himself is nothing. He is ill fitted or lacking, and so they try to push him back into his slot with antagonism rather than try to support him in becoming somebody.

Not only was Deku bullied his entire life, but also nobody really ever did anything to stop it. Bakugo literally uses his quirk on Deku in front of the entire class and they just watch, because Bakugo is society’s voice in this case. Even if they might think bullying is wrong, they all agree Deku is worth less because he does not have a quirk. They believe what society has told them to value. Bakugo’s favorite nickname for Midoriya is “Deku” because the character means “Useless.”

Every major antagonist that Deku faces inside of the system insists that he cannot become a hero, either because he was quirkless at some point, because his quirk is not fully developed, or because there is someone else better suited for the role.

When he is faced with these words, Deku describes them as denying his entire being. They oppose him, not by fighting against him, but rather as a person. They are trying to say he must become who they want him to be. They stand in his way, rather than assisting someone who is clearly putting in effort to better themselves and develop.

At the same time when he talks to Shinso, he realizes that Shinso does not have what Deku has been given. That he had people tell him he could be a hero after all this time, first from All Might then by his friends at his school. That does not change the fact though that every obstacle they continually face, they have to prove the right to be themselves. They have to prove themselves as worthy over and over again which results in low self worth.

It’s a conflict to be recognized for the person they are, rather than the person that other people want them to be. They have to force others to acknowledge them for the effort they’ve put into their own growth. It’s not enough to simply pursue their dreams, they also have to be seen.

Otherwise, those words will continue to deny them, everything they are, everything they want. Shigaraki faces a similiar conflict with every villain he ends up facing against. He is continually told just like Deku, that he is an empty person not capable of becoming anything.

These are two characters who are repeatedly told they are nothing, that they are capable of nothing, that they have accomplished nothing, and that they will become nothing. Yet, we see each of them struggling to become someone, and not only that but to be able to dictate who they want to be.

They share the same fundamental conflict, to be recognized as an individual in a society that is unequal, unfair, and constantly calls upon them to prove themselves rather than lending them any assistance. For Shigaraki the struggle to define himself is especially pronounced, because rather than All Might who encourages Deku not to copy him, All For One only cares about Shigaraki as becoming a second version of him and has influenced him not to be his own person but rather All For One’s substitute.

3. Shigaraki and Deku Both Save Others

Deku’s one goal, his one motivation other than proving himself is “Saving other people.” He sees far more value in the people around him than he ever does in himself.

Shigaraki may be a villain still, but he is not necessarily Deku’s direct antagonist anymore. One, the antagonist shifts every single arc with the overarching conflict behind the scenes being the conflict that All for One and All Might left behind by the scenes. However, Deku may have chose to become a hero, but Shigaraki does not necessarily choose to become Deku’s direct antagonist.

Shigaraki may spend the rest of the manga as a villain, but a villain is not an antagonist. An antagonist is just a character that directly opposes the main character, they can even be a hero (in the case of Light and L). My point is, Shigaraki has his own separate storyline from Deku, and he’s not even interacted with him that much, only one conversation, and the raid on UA.

Shigaraki has stepped away from the role of the antagonist, and yet he still mirrors Deku’s actions. The both of them are central characters that save the people around them, by telling them it is alright for them to be themselves. They give the others around them a place to belong. This is what Deku tells to Todoroki in the school festival, that he is his own person and that his quirk belongs to him.

Deku opposes people who tell others what he was told in life, that he was destined to never become a hero because he was quirkless. He wants to be what All Might was for him, someone who can tell others that they can be who they want. He desires to be someone who tells others the words they desire to hear.

He does this for Todoroki, he wants to do this for Shinso because he recognizes his past self, he even does this for Eri when he tries to shake her free by Chisaki’s words by calling her quirk beautiful. Every time Deku has a meaningful interaction for saving one of his friends, he helps them by telling them they can become the hero they want to be. As that is his central conflict at heart as well.

Shigaraki is the same, as a character his priorities have shifted from someone who was just lashing out in an empty fashion, to supporting the other people around him. Shigaraki’s first three attempts at being a villain end in failure. His attack at UA Fails, he cannot defeat Stain and even loses a publicity contest to him, and then the camp raid and kidnapping end with Shigaraki losing All For One.

After that we see the first time that Shigaraki is succesful when he decides to fight against Chisaki. The reason he fights again Chisaki, is because of Magne. Magne’s desire was to be free to be whoever they wanted to be and live the way they wanted to live, and she found that within the league of villains. Not only does Chisaki kill her, but he also denies her true gender, the person she is. He denies the identity of the lady he killed, even after her death.

Shigaraki not only reaffirms Magne’s identity, but even goes so far as to plot this revenge and destroy Chisaki for Magne’s sake, and for the sake of everyone around him. Because, Chisaki was standing in the way of the people they wanted to become, as long as he opposed them he needed to be destroyed.

Shigaraki saves an entirely different kind of person than Deku does. He saves those with nowhere to belong, the bad, the dangerous, the non-virtuous, the ones who would never be saved by the heroes. He gives them a place to belong, and values them.

Not just as disposable subordinates that worship him the same way that All For One did, but rather as friends and equals. They are all together, because they are all whack jobs who do not belong anywhere else. Shigaraki says over and over again, not “me” but rather “we” will become the next ones, even when he defeats Chisaki.

Twice, who was let down by society over and over again until he had nobody left but himself and even betrayed himself in the end, is able to find himself again because of the friends he made in the league of villains.

Pecko the Gecko, I mean Spinner is someone who became a Neet because the bullying from his quirk was so bad and he thought himself a worthless person capable of nothing, but Spinner began to accept himself when he realized that even someone as worthless as him could still support Shigaraki.

Himiko is told over and over again by the media lady that her story is tragic, and that she should just become some suffering princess, and martyr for quirk kind because she was always destined to be an outcast born with a quirk like hers, and finding the league made Himiko happy because she found a group of people she could be normal around.

Even when other members of the league, or Giran himself insist that nobody is going to try to come to save him, we see no hesitation in Shigaraki whatsoever to make a plan into this life or death situation and obvious trap to save Giran.

Due to meeting Shigaraki, all of these people are on the way to being able to accept themselves. They are making efforts to improve, and we see all of their quirks improve as well, as “quirks are directly linked with personality.” They start to grow because they’ve been told the words that All Might told Deku, that it was okay to be them.

When fighting against the UA Kids, or trying to inherit All For One’s role, Shigaraki always fails. However, when he fights against other villains, and when he fights for connections with the League around him he succeeds. As this is the person that Shigaraki is meant to be. Someone who “Holds his family close.” It was the person he was meant to become if not for All For One’s interruption.

Shigaraki and Deku are co-protagonists who both develop around the same central conflict, not only that but they tell other people that it’s okay to be themselves while also struggling to realize their full selves.

The only difference is the sphere of society they interact with. They are both fighting a fundamentally unfair society, but Deku is on the light side, and Shigaraki is on the dark. Deku saves heroes and virtuous people. While Shigaraki is a person who can save villains on the absolute bottom who fall through the cracks.

Shigaraki is the hand which can catch those who have fallen so far even All Might could not save them. He’s also the hand that destroys the unfair society that let them fall in the first place. So once again, are those hands of his really only capable of destruction?

#mha meta #meta #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #shigaraki meta #deku #midoriya izuku #shigaraki and midoriya #my villain academia #midoriya meta #deku meta #league of villains #league of villains meta

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