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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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I kinda wonder, what could bakugou do (hori write bakugou to do) to make him less popular with the "anti" crowd. Like He was a horrid child no doubt and people who try to put blame on Deku or lessen the terrible shit bakugou did aren't great. But as we don't rly see it, we have to assume bakugous behaviour wasn't stopped, we only ever saw his mum "punishing" him when he was being rude after getting kiddnapped. Nothing will excuse what bakugou did, but he has stopped? He's overall a harsh person but he's not harrassing and bullying people anymore, specifically not deku, he's trying to attone for what he did to deku and has now apologised for it. His behaviour was never viewed as justified or good in the series, he's a scary figure in middle school, we're not meant to like his behaviour, so the series itself hasn't justified his actions.

As someone who relate to both bakugou and deku more than I'd like to admit (never told someone to jump tho, that's fucked lol) so I can 100% understand not liking or even hating bakugou but as someone who's not 15 anymore, looking back I also made a lot of really shitty decisions and like bakugou have tried to make up for it, and like deku I was 'friends' with people who hurt me.

Is there anything he can do for the "antis" to just dislike him rather that be "anti"?

(I'm very sorry if you've talked about this somewhere, you can just tell me to look for it if you have, I'll continue to look for your posts on the subject)

Hey there, anon! I think I’ve spoken about this only tangentially and/or in my main Bakugo meta, which is too big for anyone sane to read. So yeah, let’s chat here!

For me personally—and that’s all I can ever do: speak personally. I think it’s important to keep in mind that there is no single solution to please the “anti” crowd. Each fan will be looking for something slightly different in Bakugo’s character, much of which might contradict what a “stan” is currently enjoying. Given how charged a character he is, I'm not sure it's possible to get the entire fandom to like him—what I’m looking for hinges on having a different reading of the story than you seem to. Meaning, I think the series does justify his behavior. Not in any overt, super obvious way like having all the characters go, “Wow, Bakugo! I sure do love how you threaten people all the time. That’s super cool and heroic!” Things are rarely that straightforward. Rather, it’s in a more subtle, but consistent manner that paints a rather conclusive picture across hundreds of chapters.

Simply put, Bakugo is continually rewarded for his actions. Or, if not outright rewarded, his actions are ignored in a way that implies silent acceptance. Characters may not always like what he does... but they're willing to let it slide because Bakugo's heroism was always treated as a given, not something he had to earn and prove.

With the ever necessary disclaimer that I’m not fully caught up yet, here’s a list of some of the things that stood out to me in the first half of the series:

Bakugo’s bullying made him the most popular kid in school.

Bakugo’s bullying was ignored by/outright supported by the teachers.

Bakugo’s bullying did not hinder him from getting into U.A., one of the most prestigious hero schools around.

Despite acting horribly throughout his time at U.A. too, this behavior was continually ignored by the teachers and other authority figures around him.

Bakugo’s struggle to realize that other people aren’t “trash” doesn’t hurt his achievements in any way. He still gets top scores, still wins the tournament, etc.

Bakugo’s behavior gets him special attention from All Might, the greatest hero and Bakugo’s personal idol.

His behavior doesn’t make others dislike him in any manner that’s taken seriously. Everybody is still willing to not just put up with Bakugo, but—in time—start treating his behavior as a quirk (no pun intended lol) that they’re secretly fond of, rather than something he should legitimately be striving to change. Kirishima is the most overt example of this.

This is compounded by his behavior constantly being framed as humorous. Much like with Mineta’s perverted actions, characters might superficially go, “No, that’s bad!” but the story never demands any significant development because then we’d lose the “joke” of Bakugo screaming in rage at the slightest inconvenience, threatening to murder someone over nothing, constantly belittling everyone around him in a “funny” manner, etc. When fans talk about development of a manga character as archetypal and extreme as Bakugo, most don’t really want to see significant change to his base personality. Because then that would result in someone who doesn’t look like the “real” Bakugo: someone nicer, more even-tempered, more mature, etc. But for those of us who were never drawn to that personality in the first place, the continued acceptance of his rude, egotistical, and violent behavior is discomforting. The easiest comparison I can draw is between this and Bakugo’s mother slapping him. That slap is meant to be another “joke”—we see it constantly in shonen anime, something "humorous" you shouldn’t take too seriously because haha, it's just an overprotective mother—but many fans do take it seriously, using it as the basis for a whole “Bakugo was abused and this explains his behavior” reading. Well, I take the “joke” of Bakugo’s threats and insults seriously, especially in a story that starts with something like telling Izuku to jump off the roof. In the same way that many fans want others to treat Bakugo’s mother as a serious topic that has had a negative influence on his development, I want the series to take Bakugo’s everyday actions seriously as a negative influence on… well, everyone around him. But it doesn’t. His base personality is grudgingly adored.

The above two points are seen most overtly in Izuku, who never wavers in his respect for Bakugo despite how Bakugo treats him. Not just prior to U.A., but during their training too. Izuku, as the protagonist, is the emotional heart of this tale, so when he talks about how inspiring Bakugo is, it encourages the reader to see his behavior as inspiring too. Rather than, as said, something that needs to change. Izuku's continued friendship with Bakugo, his adoration of him, and his acceptance of the way he's treated has severely warped how the entire story sees Bakugo's actions. After all, if #pure Izuku can see the good in Bakugo, why can't everyone else? He must not be that bad after all.

I could get into detailed analyses of all the above—like how Bakugo was the one comforted after attacking Izuku outside the dorms at night and how the messed up relationship he has with Izuku is upheld as something to nurture; how the remedial courses he had to take were made to be rather silly, thereby undermining their supposed importance to his development; how Bakugo’s kidnapping had nothing to do with his flaws, but much of the fandom uses it as a way to dismiss any appropriate consequences because, “Hasn’t he suffered enough?” etc.—but in the interest of keeping this within a readable length, I’ll leave it at that. The point is that Bakugo has always been privileged when it comes to his behavior, resulting in others either outright praising it, ignoring it, or demanding that he change a miniscule bit, which always keeps him far below the standards of both his peers and the expectations of a hero. Everyone in 1-A must learn to be even better than the good people they already are... Bakugo needs to learn that other people aren't dirt at the bottom of his shoes. It's never been a particularly impressive development when pit against the rest of the class. All of which can make something like an apology feel pretty hollow. Yes, he’s apologized and I say with all seriousness that that’s great! But how does that apology stack up against 300+ chapters of content? As Bakugo’s words highlight, he's been a really awful person up "until now": he was consumed by Izuku being “miles ahead of [him],” he “looked down on [him]” because he didn’t have a quirk, he “didn’t want to recognize that,” he “hated that,” “grew distant,” “tried to beat you down,” “opposed you and tried to show my superiority over you,” and ends it all with, “it probably doesn’t mean anything telling you all this” before finally getting to the “I’m sorry.” This is basically a laundry list of how horrible a person Bakugo has been for the entire series, with an acknowledgement that this apology is coming really, really late. This is the moment where I could START to like Bakugo, depending on how he acts form here on out, but that pivotal moment arrived after six years of content and in the final arc of the story. It’s too late. Bakugo needed this kind of self-reflection and positive action 250+ chapters ago so he could (hopefully) grow into a better person across the story, not at the story's end. What we got instead is 322 chapters of him being a really horrible person, but the story going out of its way to excuse or even praise that behavior the majority of the time.

As a quick comparison to end on, I think what Bakugo needed was what Soo Jin got in True Beauty. You don’t need to have seen the drama to follow along. The tl;dr is that she has a lot of the core qualities of Bakugo: an all-consuming drive to win that was created due to abusive parents with high expectations, resulting in her bullying a peer to a pretty horrific extent. The difference between them is how the story frames their actions. When Soo Jin becomes the bully she loses everything. Rather than succeeding academically, her grades plummet, making it clear that this anxiety and self-doubt (things the fandom keeps insisting Bakugo is struggling with, but that rarely ever show up in the text) is actually impacting her day-to-day life. Her best friend drops her because she’s not going to support her choices. The boy she likes rejects her. She’s eventually forced to start over somewhere new - which importantly separates her from the girl she was bullying - and get some distance from her parents, resulting in the growth needed to become a healthier, happier, good person again. So when Soo Jin apologizes to the girl she hurt, it feels earned. The story continually recognized how horrific her actions were and put her into a place where she either had to change, or continue losing at everything else that was important to her. Bakugo? Bakugo doesn’t lose. Oh, he claims he does because he’s comparing himself to Izuku constantly, but that’s just him thinking in extremes. He still wins academically. Still wins many battles. Still wins at having friends. Still wins by maintaining the prestige of being a U.A. student. Still wins by getting All Might’s attention. Still wins by receiving Izuku’s respect and an agreement to maintain this rivalry that Bakugo is so obsessed with. Bakugo comes out well 99% of the time, he just thinks he's "lost" because he can't stand not being the absolute best.

For me, the story needed to have Bakugo face consequences for his behavior, not receive rewards and/or have others ignore it, and that revelation/apology needed to come way, way sooner. For me the issue is not a specific action that Horikoshi can have Bakugo do in the next chapter and them bam, I like him now. The problem is Bakugo’s entire concept, how he’s received by the entire cast, and his run across this entire series. "Entire" is the key word there. Which is why the “But he’s apologized. What more do you antis want?” reactions don’t sit well. What we wanted is a better written redemption arc across those 300+ chapters, not a single scene that’s meant to have us forget all the other problems inherent in the story. At this point it’s a far more complicated situation than, “Bakugo just needs to do X, Y, and Z and then we’re golden.” At the end of the day, Horikoshi failed to make me like him as a person and I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to change Bakugo enough to make him likable to me. Bakugo was never the sort of character I’d be inclined towards without a serious, nuanced redemption arc, but sadly, a core, crucial part of that redemption arc took six years to arrive. At this point there’s no way to change the problems in Bakugo’s writing for that huge chunk of the series and not enough time left in the series, it seems, to do the work we should have seen across the entire run. Honestly, idk if the Bakugo we'll get going forward is someone I can just dislike as opposed to being really uncomfortable with, but my money is on there being too little story left and too much investment in upholding Bakugo's base personality for that to happen. I could absolutely be proven wrong! But I think the problems are structural and needed to be better dealt with from page one, not hastily patched over in the final hour.

#BNHA #My Hero Academia #anti bakugo

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xaziroot · 7 years

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A star, in a sea of darkness.

This is going to be a long one so strap in for the ride. It's going to get real too. I was prompted to write this by my psychologist and complied, I've learnt copious amounts in these past few years and this could help anyone in a similar situation. Gender and mental health talks. This is like a letter to myself and some documentation on things I've had happen.

Some background on me:

I'm Alex, 18, and my main condition is 17β-Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency. A condition which impairs sexual development inside and outside the womb. I'm biologically male with XY chromosomes and basically a dick. I'm not trans though before I could have been classed it when not in line with my biological sex. Intersex is what I am. A decision to raise me as female was made and this is the fallout of it all and what I've done after. This is my mental decline and struggling with myself as a human being.

Fights, football and falling out of trees:

I've been going to Great Ormond Street Hospital since the age of 2 and been in psychology since 9. I'm now 18. We're entering the latter part of a decade now, I've had people tell me I'm special but at the same time "a normal kid". But which kid? What was normal? Where did these guidelines come from?

From a young age I knew something was different about me compared to the girls I was lumped into. You oft assume children don't know what they're talking about when it comes to themselves, but I’ve found this to be evidently the wrong mindset. I looked completely different to girls and had a totally different mindset - I was hairier than them, naturally more aggressive and headstrong, liked to do all the stereotypically male stuff; football, fights, falling out of trees the list goes on.

Kids are shit, let's get that out of the way. I remember being taunted with the words gorilla and baboon by family friend’s sons, they pointed at my arms and made remarks like “that's ugly” and “only boys have that”. It did also slightly terrify them so I chased them round with my arms and legs in plain view. I laughed but it really did hurt. This was one of the first times I felt inordinately uncomfortable with my body and myself as a person. I was 5. I continued with laughing at my own pain and not dealing with it for years.

Feelings of not belonging from a young age were ever present and I honestly toiled with my image. I vividly recall in my first psychology session, I was asked what I thought I was. Without hesitation, I stated a boy trapped in a girl’s body. The premise of being a boy completely petrified me however. I was always a tomboy esc child, short hair, loud, wouldn’t mind getting into fights, its goes on. I was certainly a handful and a half.

Condition/Puberty :

My condition means I make zero sex hormone which regulates moods, bone density and one of the most important factors; puberty. A gonadectomy was performed when I was 3 to remove what were my cancerous testes at the time. The fear was if I was to leave these in, when something doesn’t work correctly, it oft turns cancerous. I still think this is horseshit and they should have left them in. (Gonads are what turn into ovaries or testes in every human being when forming inside your mother)

No gonads mean minimal to no sex hormone. I was continually told I needed to take tablets, injections or patches to go through puberty. This onus to medication created this image of I was a freak in my mind. I wasn’t normal and wasn’t a real person. I was but a broken husk of a person. My body nor my mind felt right. To counter this, puberty was induced by a motley of oestrogen based tablets and patches. I absolutely resented these.

Growing up in a conservative east Asian household, I succumbed to the will of my parents and what they wished with no regards or free thoughts of my own wellness. They willed for me to be a girl and that’s what I did. Muted, I got on with life for a few years still feeling horrifically uncomfortable with myself. I scrolled through the internet and browsed through pages upon pages on my condition, further feeling alienated with myself, until I stumbled upon a site which showed, gender wasn’t all black and white.

I scuttled to call my psychologist and let her know the good news. “I IDENTIFY AS A DEMI-GUY!!” She quickly congratulated me and I spoke to her on the spectrum of gender and how it was rather than black and white; a rainbow. Always more masculine and more of an androgynously presented female. Woefully this wasn’t to last. This was around the time I lost a rock in my life; my older brother. I had a younger brother to whom I had always acted like an older brother too, rather than a sister. I also felt I had to step up as the elder male in the family, yet my family considered me nothing of the sort.

They continually told me, stop this mess, you’re a girl get over it. I forcibly resented them and pushed and yelled and fought my way around saying no the fuck I’m not. They tried to make me do typical girl things, wear girl clothes and the like. I had none of it. My sisters, constantly told me, this was but a phase, when I grow up I’ll grow out of this. I’ll be a girl one day. I told them I would rather die. I felt like I would rather die. I had no place in this world.

Boys don’t cry and girls don’t force out their emotions. But, in a family where you’re considered neither, what do you do? How do you cope? I had my mother nor father to speak to, as they said this was all a phase and I was to grow out of it soon. I remember the week before my 15th birthday, I was in the car going to the supermarket with my mum and I yelled, I don’t want to be a girl, I’m not a girl and I want to be a boy. Why am I not normal? Why was I born this way? I don’t want to be alive anymore.

She broke crying saying no one would love me if I did, I wouldn’t be a normal boy and nothing I would do could really work. Well I wasn’t a normal girl so what do I do? I was pushed to the side lines I noticed and my parents focused more of their attention to my younger brother. When I struggled with depression they just pawned it off saying it’s your fault. When my younger brother was diagnosed they rushed to be with him, doing everything for him and stating how I wasn’t a great influence. By 16 I had been diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety along with borderline personality disorder. This was the real start of my downfall mentally.

College and later:

At college, I still struggled with who I wished to be presented as. I said I wanted to change my name and asked everyone to refer to me as Alex. A typically androgynous name, and could be used to refer to both a female and male. I made who I call my best friends now and got into art. I was extremely aggressive towards myself and others. Destructive behaviour was normal, I broke my hands, ripped my knuckles open, tore my skin open with glass shards, razor blades and anything sharp I could get my hands on. The scars of these still run deep on my skin. I had no idea how to cope with myself and others mentally.

My first best friends, absolute nerds like myself. One drew, the others played D&D and got me into it. We wasted hours on end, playing our characters. My character, a weretiger dwarf with god like strength. I had never had so much fun or felt like I was part of something. For some reason, I ended up hating this when it was pointed out, I immediately felt sick and distraught and panicked at hearing it.

By this point I had been off hormone for a few years which was really starting to take its toll on me. I had violent mood swings swinging from angry to happy to sadness within the frame of a few minutes. I hated everything and everyone, feeling as if the world was against me and nothing good was forecast for me.

It was around this time I decided I needed an outlet to pool all my energy into. My psychologist suggested the gym but ultimately, I went for art and drawing. I started seriously drawing in January of 2016. It was the end of my first year in college, summer was here and I decided to really knuckle down on art and get serious. I scrolled through my Instagram and the limited artists I followed. I found a drawing by an artist which left me dumbfounded. It was the coolest thing I had seen ever. I started to speak to this artist who we’ll name Manny for the time. Manny was the kindest, most accepting human being I’d ever met to that point and still, to this day, I hold as the biggest influence in my life.

Manny had been through a lot themselves, neither of our lives, exactly peachy. But they were obviously doing better than myself, something I couldn’t see. Years of mental neglect and struggle flooded out of the gates and I put more pressure on Manny than thought. I had no idea how to cope, I pawned everything bad onto others whom I spoke to, blamed myself for everything and was a glowing disorder of negativity and hatred. Come to the end of the year and Manny had ended up becoming my first S/O. This time, though plagued with issues, was easily the happiest and simplest time of my life. Friends, someone who loved me, a job and a roof over my head, I was on track to be in the worst place mentally ever.

Manny was unrelenting in saying how much I meant to them. This was the first time I had ever felt wanted and needed in my life. The feeling of belonging and genuine appreciation for my existence was something I had never had before. This lasted for a few months until they called it off. I understood but didn’t at the same time. But I accepted it and let it happen. I was sick for a week after this. Lovesickness is a thing and so is heartbreak. Coupled with my brutal mood swings, I grappled and competed with myself and further chipped away at the little self-worth I had. Oddly this affected me for months to come.

Now looking back, neither of us was in a place to be together but I’m glad I did it. I had no idea the sheer joy someone can bring you, the feeling of wanting to be better for them and everything about them. You love their little mannerisms, their little jokes absolutely everything. Nothing feels wrong and you feel nothing can bring you down. Though I had no clue how to cope at the time, this gave me my first taste of what affection is like. You learn what you can cope with and what you can’t.

It was around this time, I was coming to final talks on who I wanted to be.

I had enough. Years of feeling neglected, and feeling chipped away at had taken their toll. It’s odd, you think the small things don’t hurt as much but they really hurt the most. Being called she dozens of times a day, I pawned off but this ultimately hurt me the most. I still struggled with seeing my worth as a human being, still feeling broken. You would be surprised at how much having minimal sexual hormone really does affect you. I couldn’t see the worth in living often and blocked myself in my room and wanted to wither away. I tried overdosing, bleed outs and trying to starve myself into a coma. I once didn’t eat for 2 weeks.

Family constantly still said, get out of your phase now, it’s not real you’ll not be a real boy. But I started Testosterone in December of 2016 against everyone’s wishes. Within a few months, my voice had broken, I was far more muscular, acne to shit and loads more which arrives with the wheel of puberty. I felt a feeling of belonging in my body which I didn’t previously. I still didn’t feel right for months to come until now, November of 2017.

I did a 180 and really started to work on myself. I started going to gym, losing weight, growing my hair out and spoke to my psychologist more on how I could accept myself. It’s tough, when you feel everything is on a fundamental level, wrong. One thing I was told to do was go to a mirror, look at myself and tell myself I love you. The first time I did this, I looked at myself, became so enraged and punched the mirror. I went to work at a networking company 9 - 5 and separated from my college friends, 15 miles away in a different town. I slowly moved away from my friends and Manny themselves said they didn’t want to speak to me anymore. Spending time in hospital with skin issues was more a blessing than a curse.

You’d think losing my best friends, would rip me apart but I felt nothing. I spoke to my psychologist and asked her, was I broken? Why did I struggle to feel anything? Even today, I still toil with my emotions. I don’t have the fix for this now man, but work at it. Gain your friends respect back. Not their approval. You value them as people and not the need to be wanted.

But I’ve come to accept myself more. Now, this may be extremely trivial but I like my face. I think I’m cute. I look fucking beautiful with long hair. Me this time last year, was 180 the other direction, hating myself so much I was tearing my skin apart and wanting to be dead. But I’m happy I’ve lived through it. Bro you’re bomb af and I’m so proud of you. You’re not 100% right now but holy fuck you’re cute.

I’ve learnt a lot in the past few years, but if I went back in time to speak to myself, I would say:

Don’t underestimate yourself.

I’ve had experiences and emotions many people don’t feel during any time in their life. This was something I was told for 4 straight years, month after month. My psychologist continually spoke about how monumental the things I’ve had to deal with are, continually putting others before myself and never caring about how I felt.

Don’t neglect yourself, mentally nor physically.

You might not see it now, but fuck you’re amazing man. You’ve soldiered through shit keeping everything else on top of your shoulders. Your body might not be perfect, but you can work on it. Don’t keep taking it out on yourself. It’s ok. You need to yell, scream, should, punch, kick? Go for it. Cope, don’t feel bad for being by yourself a lot and just wondering round.

Don’t pressure your friends.

A difficult one I will admit since you have no idea how to cope yourself. But in time, you learn. Things you shouldn’t do, things you can do. Friends are friends man! Not psychologists. Love them, appreciate them, don’t be afraid to tell them you love them. They’re there for you and oft family. Don’t offload to them constantly and scare them off. If you struggle, they struggle.

Love yourself.

You’re more than good enough to be alive. Your legs may hurt, your insides might not work perfectly and there’s no more of you but you’re breathing, competent and can love. It’s okay dude! I love you now. I’m what’s basically your older brother, with all experiences. Your dark chocolate eyes, soft flowing brunette hair and pale skin is all good! Your spider hands are cool af and you sound like a 36-year-old man. I’m proud of you kid. So are friends. People who stuck up for you in secondary school are proud you’re becoming the person you’ve wanted to be.

Life is a rollercoaster.

It’s never always going to be sunshine and daisies. It’s a ride with a set number of seats. People come and go but if you think people are worth keeping, you strive to improve yourself. Earn their respect and make sure they’re people whose respect means something to you. Take heed of friend’s words, they have experiences you don’t and may know about something better.

Real family isn’t perfect no matter what you’ve come to believe.

At times, they care when they need something and could toss you aside when they don’t. But don’t worry. Don’t take what Dad or Mum say to heart. They care, in the crudest sense possible. Your sisters, are still a grey area. They’ll still refuse to call you by your name but take it in your stride and like water off a duck’s back. Don’t panic it will pan out in time. They’re just scared for you but show them, you’ve got it down. Don’t rush to gain their approval it’s honestly not worth jack.

You won’t improve your character overnight.

As heart breaking as it is and how you want to see progress there and then, chip away at it. Do little bits and do what you can and change does happen. You’re not perfect and people may suggest things, you’ll not get it right first time, second nor the third. But keep at it. You might go completely the wrong way but attempt it.

You cannot help everyone.

Often its better to remain quiet man.

We all cope in different ways.

Pain is relative. Do not compare yourself to others. You might be able to be hit by a car but a gash is worse for the other person. Nothing is a competition. You may be hit constantly with bad news but take it as it comes and deal with it. Don’t go comparing your pain to others, it’s bad news.

Illness isn’t the end of the world.

Don’t panic or come to believe it’s the end of it all. Won’t lie, you have potential osteoporosis on the way and your nerve damage gets worse but take it as it comes. You’re still ok. You find methods to cope with it.

Finally man, you're growing up and smashing norms within our culture. You've even been called a pretty boy twice. Life moves in mysterious big guy.

Anyone wants to speak to me about anything, transitioning, changes, coping anything, send me a message. I’m not perfect but I'll really try and help you.

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lykegenia · 7 years

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Zutara Week Day 3: Steamy

Another year, another Zutara Week, another set of oneshots for my ZKWeek story A Life, Together, which you can find in its entirety here.

@zutaraweek

ZKWeek Day 3: Steamy Words: 2345 Summary: Katara has her first ‘oh no, he’s hot’ moment Read it on AO3

“Ta-da!”

Sokka stood in front of the rest of their group, his hands held out in an expansive gesture of presentation, with a grin on his face so wide it crinkled his eyes and showed every one of his teeth. Behind him stood a circular construction in mismatched stone – likely scrounged from the Western Air Temple’s crumbling masonry – which had a conical roof made of bamboo struts, overlaid with the tarp that used to form the roof of their shelter when they were still camping in the wilderness. Holes in the masonry were plugged with bunches of grass, and the whole thing looked like it would struggle to withstand even the smallest puff of air.

At least it explained his strange behaviour that morning.

“Well?” he demanded. “What do you think?”

“Uh…” Zuko glanced at the others, rubbing the back of his neck. “What is it?”

“It’s a shack,” Toph said. “Even I can see that.”

Sokka gave a disgusted squawk and threw his hands in the air. “It is not a shack!” he protested. “It’s a steam house. It’s a Water Tribe tradition!”

“I’ve heard of these!” Aang chimed in excitedly. “You sit in them and sweat out all the toxins in your body.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Twinkle toes, but we’re all already pretty sweaty. This humidity is going to kill me.”

“It’s meant to be very good for reaching the spirit world,” Aang replied with a shrug.

“Oh no,” Sokka groaned. “We aren’t doing that again. I was weirded out enough the first time, or don’t you remember what happened to me in Hei Bai Forest? No.” He held up a hand and began to count off on his fingers. “First, we are going to sit in there. Second, we’re going to relax and forget for an afternoon that we’re going to have to beat the Fire Lord. Third, we’re going to emerge refreshed and ready to get back to work.” He turned to Katara, the only one of the circle who had yet to speak. “Does that sound like a good plan?”

“Well, you are our go-to plan guy,” she replied, smiling. Despite the improvised construction, the roundhouse really did look like one of the steam huts they had had back in the village, before the soldiers went to war and the struggle for survival meant they had to do away with such luxuries.

“Do you have the camel moss?” she asked. The sweet-smelling lichen was added to the water to add fragrance to the steam, often along with other, more relaxing herbs.

Sokka beamed. “Bato gave me some before the invasion,” he said, and offered her a blue-patterned pouch filled to the brim with feathery, greyish moss. “It’s the real deal.”

“It is!” she cried, inhaling the sweet scent of the bag’s contents. “But… how are you planning to power this?”

“How do you think? We have one master waterbender –” he pointed to her – “One jerkbender –” to Zuko – “And one avatar who can do both. All we need to do is get the coals going and it’ll stay hot for hours.”

Katara glanced at Zuko and found him watching her warily. They had been in a cool stalemate ever since his return from the Sun Warriors with Aang, which had proved once and for all that whatever his reasons, the Fire Prince was no longer out to capture Aang. That made him an ally, and as the others became more accepting of his presence among them, her open hostility became harder to justify. Aang was especially good at throwing her pleading looks that made her feel guilty for being suspicious.

But how else could she act? Down in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se, she had let her guard down, and she was all too well aware how that had turned out. She couldn’t afford to trust him again, if only for Aang’s sake, but being so wired all the time was beginning to exhaust her.

And it was especially hard since Zuko was nothing like she expected him to be, day to day. She wanted him to be a stuck-up prince who left mess and expected others to clear up after him, but if anything, he was more considerate than the others.

“Don’t think I don’t see through this little act,” she had spat when he offered to clean the dishes after breakfast the previous week. “Why on earth would you want to?”

He had shrugged. “It’s not fair that you do everything.”

“Says the prince who’s never done a day of hard work in his life.”

For a beat, he had said nothing, clearly working out the best way to answer – he had taken to not addressing her hostility directly, having learned from Aang that sometimes it was better to circle and let your opponent do the work. That was frustrating, too.

“Believe what you want,” he had told her eventually. “But I lived in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se for months, and there weren’t any servants there.” And he had walked away.

The words had bothered her all day. She realised that between leaving him in the snow at the North Pole and finding him again in a tea shop in the Earth Kingdom, she had no idea what had happened to him. Thinking it might not all have been sunshine and daisies for him rankled, but then so did the fact that his offer to help had seemed genuine, and she had only snarled at him on reflex. Nobody else ever even noticed that she did most of the chores, let alone offered to help.

The next day, she had asked him, quietly, if he could sew. When he had answered, quietly, that he wasn’t very good but could mend basic tears, she knew he understood her sort-of apology, and walked away with a curious kind of twisting in the pit of her stomach. They hadn’t spoken since.

Now, Katara found herself shepherded into the steam house with everyone else. Inside it was snug, the light dimmed by the thick canvas of the roof, and it was very warm. A bucket of water stood on the floor next to a fire pit, the camel moss already steeping, waiting only for someone to ladle it out over the cluster of glowing coals. Sokka already sprawled across one of the benches, his arms and lanky legs spread out in a decent imitation of a starfish.

“Budge up,” she huffed, nudging one of his legs with her foot. “This is great.”

Her brother cracked open an eye to look at her. “You work hard, Katara. You deserve a break every now and then.”

She frowned, unsure how to respond to such an unprecedented acknowledgement of how she took care of them, but before she could dwell on it too much, Toph barged through the entrance, closely followed by Aang, and Katara had to sit down or risk stepping in the fire. Even with just four of them, the circular hut was rather squashed, and she felt an elbow dig uncomfortably into her side as she tried to get comfortable. And then Zuko arrived. Without his shirt.

It shouldn’t have bothered her so much – Aang and Sokka were topless, too, after all, though they were family so that didn’t really count. And neither of them looked like Zuko. In the muted light, the glow of the coals highlighted the fine tone of his physique, and the low ceiling only emphasised how tall he was. How had she never noticed that before? Suddenly self-conscious of how much skin she was exposing, sat there only in bindings and shorts, she tucked her legs up under the bench and brought her arms to rest in her lap, not quite hugging around her stomach. A chill ran up the back of her neck where the skin was exposed to the air.

“You okay, Sweetness?”

She glanced at Toph. “Fine.”

“Yeah, sure.” The younger girl grinned like a cat-monkey with cream, which did nothing to ease the new tension in Katara’s muscles.

And of course the only free space in the steam house was exactly opposite her. Zuko sat down, apparently unconscious of her irritation, and leaned back against the stone wall of the hut. His unruly hair skimmed the roof. Frowning, Katara supposed she should be grateful he was so far away, because otherwise he would have no doubt been next to her. She wouldn’t have been able to see him unless she looked – and she did not want to look, she had no interest in looking – but he would have been pressed against her side in the tight space, all that lean muscle and warmth and the dry muskiness of his scent.

“So how about some steam?” she asked, to distract herself from the shudder that tickled across her shoulders. She wanted to blame it on revulsion, but her heart wasn’t quite in it.

“Allow me, milady,” Aang said with his goofiest smile before she could raise her hand to bend the water. She grinned back at him, and seconds later the hut was filled with a cloud of thick, fragrant steam.

Katara allowed herself to drift, and the others did, too. In the silence, she sank into the soothing aroma of the camel moss, letting it take her back to a time when she was very young and the elders would gather round the long-fire in the big house to tell stories about the spirits. She amused herself by bending the steam into the shapes of fish and great whales, and the lithe, sinuous form of the dragon who was meant to bring thunderstorms in summer. Feeling the corner of her mouth quirk up, she flicked her fingers and the dragon breathed a tiny puff of steam where it circled above her head.

The smile faded when she caught a pair of golden eyes watching her from across the coals. Zuko glanced away, but the look made something itch beneath her skin, so she closed her eyes and leaned her head back, determined to block him from her mind completely.

When she opened her eyes again some while later, everyone else had already left. Most of the steam had escaped through the cracks in the walls, and all that was left was a dry, clean heat that raised prickles of sweat along her skin. Rubbing her tiredness out of her eyes, Katara stood and shuffled to the entrance, a slight headache throbbing behind her eyes brought on by dehydration. The fountain in the nearby courtyard ran with cool water, a perfect substitute for the ice pool traditionally used to clear away the sticky heat of the steam house.

As she walked through the surprisingly cool air of the temple halls, Katara wondered where the others had gone, why nobody had woken her when they left. The sun was low on the horizon, which meant it was almost dinner, and she had done none of the preparations she had meant to do. The worries that just a few minutes before had seemed trivial crowded round her, twining back into her limbs like the vines around the Air Temple itself, and with a sigh she bent the sweat off her body without waiting for the pool and hurried the familiar route back to the hall they used as their main shared space.

What she found left her open-mouthed.

The living space, usually scattered about with spare bedrolls, scrolls, and plans, was neatly tidied with a stack of firewood piled in one corner and their food supplies in another. She could smell dinner cooking, and noticed Sokka frowning over the stewpot. Occasionally, he muttered to himself and gave the fire below a prod with a long, forked stick, while Toph bent the dust out of the cracks in the floor so that the mosaic there gleamed.

“What is all this?” she asked.

The pair froze as if caught doing something they should be guilty for.

“Katara!” It was Aang, sliding to a stop behind her, out of breath.

“Aw man, Twinkle Toes,” Toph complained. “You were meant to keep her busy.”

“I had to feed Appa,” protested Aang, before turning to Katara. “It was meant to be a surprise,” he explained, blushing. “You do so much for all of us, and, well… we thought you deserved a break.”

Katara felt the same suspicion as earlier sneak over her. “Aang, this wasn’t… Zuko’s idea, was it?” she asked. The Fire Prince was nowhere to be seen.

“No!” Aang cried, hurt. “It was mine. Though I was training with him when I had the idea,” he added.

At that moment, Zuko himself emerged from deeper within the temple, carrying a small bag with him. He handed it over to Sokka, who sniffed dubiously before pulling out several small jars of what looked like spices. Katara watched as Zuko gave instructions about which to add to the food already bubbling on the fire, the slight stain of colour on his cheeks the only indicator that he knew she was there. Could he have masterminded this?

Aang was still talking.

“… so we decided to give you a day off, and Sokka said we should make your favourite, so it’s a good thing Zuko said he brought Fire Nation ingredients with him when he came after us. What do you think of it?”

She glanced down into Aang’s grinning face, the grey eyes eager for her approval, and found her thoughts still whirling. She still didn’t trust Zuko, she couldn’t bring herself to forget what he did in Ba Sing Se. There had been too many times when she thought the best of the world and the consequences of her good nature snaked back to bite her in the arm. But still… If her suspicions were correct, then he had done all of this for her, just to be nice, without any desire for his efforts to be recognised.

Her chest constricted.

“Well?” Aang prompted. “Isn’t it amazing?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It is.”

#zutara #Zutara Week #Zutara Week 2017 #ZKWeek #ZKWeek 2017 #Steamy

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fencesandfrogs · 3 years

Text

really hate how i can just lose an entire tumblr post because i accidentally resized a window.

anyway there’s no fun preamble this time i was rambling about abuse and love and i don’t want to reworkshop the lead in joke.

[2k words, 8 minute read. text wall. mostly avoids outright description of abuse, but i still wouldn’t recommend it as reading if you’re iffy about that kind of thing.]

okay to quickly summarize what i said before i lost everything: i’m talking about how abuse shaped my views of love in a way that’s really fundamental and i don’t often realize.

i dated this guy for like three years, if we were older we’d probably have been married ergo i feel weird calling him my boyfriend.

we both had similar abusive households. bad dads, moms who inadvertently exacerbated it, younger siblings we felt the need to shelter from what we experienced. he wasn’t ready to acknowledge his household as such, i didn’t push it.

i have this really unhealthy protective streak over feelings/how people who love me need to confide in me always or they don’t care that i love them, something i am working on and is no longer that dramatic, but in the context of this, it used to be.

when my brother was born i struggled w how i felt about him. he was my father’s golden child (not my mothers, i’m not sure how he’ll feel about her considering i have it as a fact i am her Actual Truthful Literal Favorite Child, but i don’t think she shows it? but i don’t know for sure) something which made me push him away

also, my mom and i lived on our own for two years when i was 2ish in like a really tight financial situation.

so my brother just has positive memories of my dad and even when i’m twelve and haven’t started being done with my father’s bs, i do feel like there’s this massive wall of why i am like i am that he just doesn’t get.

anyway so then my parents get divorced properly and i’m like “well shit, can’t believe i was stupid enough to trust in the stability of their relationship. guess i’m never going to believe in stable romance. time to never get married or have children because like fuck i’m bringing them into this world.”

interestingly, i did not go “men are untrustworthy,” as i would have honestly expected (because i’m basically going “well my mom and my grandmother both picked bad men who were bad in the same way guess my family doesn’t know how to pick husbands”), possibly because of complex reasons that may leak out as i continue to write, for a while, i honestly viewed my mom as worse than my dad. that’s, definitely not true and has to do with how they both interacted with me and how it played off one another, so.

anyway i thought about that but then i also had read the first part of seven habits of highly productive people or whatever its called and was like “hm yes love is a verb isn’t it guess that means love is a choice but also if i love someone then i better do it with my full body because i’m not going to cause the inevitable instability of any and all future relationships”

which, you may be able to see where this is going basically. i’m already hyper protective. there are some gaps in my childhood memory but i felt the need to protect my mom from my dad so do with that what you will. i usually interpret the charitable child-doesn’t-understand-romantic-affection. if for some reason you feel the need to bring this up with me, i will probably block you because i just can’t but it is relevant to this post.

and so my baby brother who i love dearly but also feel is getting all the love and acceptance i didn’t but also doesn’t understand why i’m the way i am (because he’s, you know, six) gets older and i’m like. “hm. seems like now that i’ve made myself a nontarget, he’s taking the brunt of it. can’t have that nope he doesn’t know how to protect himself he takes it personally. that’s weak, but that’s fine that’s because everyone else babies him but not me. i shall both protect him from harm and encourage him to be strong.”

fun fact: we once had a sword fight with sticks. he was six or seven. i was twelve or thirteen. he got whacked and his nose started bleeding. i refused to acknowledge i was doing anything wrong, because he should have accepted the risks.

(in my defence, my mom told me something similar a lot, and i didn’t really grasp that him being six meant he had much less reasoning power. as far as i was concerned, i had sprung from the womb fully intact like athena and just had to be taught how to do things, which meant my logical processing had never improved, it was just always that good.)

but at the same time, i was desperate to win back his trust and affection.

by ruffling his hair because it irritated the shit out of him. but that was done because maybe if he could learn to deal with that, he could learn to put up a wall when anyone yelled at him. and in the meantime, i would happily antagonize my father, because if he yelled at me at the dinner table, he’d apologize to my brother for upsetting him.

now. i don’t think ruffling your younger sibling’s hair is really anything to make a fuss over, and my dad is definitely not the “i do this to make you better” type, so i’m not sure exactly what to say about all this, except that it happened.

and so this idea of self-sacrifice in love, both in drawing other harm to myself and in being “loved less” to prevent future harm, became very essential to my whole idea of love.

so. i have three relationships, in relatively quick succession. the first is a quasi-romance that last for an indefinite amount of time but definitively ends when i decide i need to break up with the second.

the second is 3 months long, and basically can be summarized as: “this person is kind and never yells at me and is attractive. we get along and he makes me laugh and smile and is generally a good boyfriend. he makes me feel special and he respects my interests and he legitimately wants me to be happy. i feel safe with him, and i feel like i trust him.

unfortunately i’m not personally attracted to him, and i have 0 romantic interest in him.”

also, we wanted very different things in the future. we were like 14, but see: “my love for someone must be timeless for it to matter”

so i broke up with him because while i felt some kind of love towards him, it wasn’t what he wanted. which you know is a generally good thing, but it still feeds back into my idea of love.

love is sacrifice and pain. i love him, so i slash our relationship to prevent him from being hurt in the future. it doesn’t matter how i feel.

so then i date someone for three years and i display exactly the same behaviour and while i legitimately think we had a good relationship, i’ve been reflecting on the worse parts & he definitely, i believe inadvertently, took advantage of my self-sacrificing tendencies.

or, to put it more verbosely but correctly, he shared my longevity in relationships/love but not my total committal to 100% of yourself immediately, nor my self-sacrificing streak*.

*we’ll circle back to this

he actually was way more cautious in trusting me. which is actual the true reason he broke up with me, regardless of what he says. but that’s neither here nor there.

so he’s dating this person who is definitely traumatized (case in point: he once put his hand on my shoulder, which startled me because i didn’t know he was there, and i whirled around, primed to uppercut him, before i realized “oh hey i both know this person also i know everyone in this building there are like 10k people in town and 500 people in my school i do not need to hurt anyone”), but he can’t quite acknowledge that because that means he’s also abused, which isn’t true.

so i both can’t understand what he’s going through (which the implication because it’s worse), but also, he understands what i’ve been through. because he’s been through it.

(to which i say: lmao he saw the aftermath. the best parts, short of when i was three. he saw the direct incidents i could point to. i don’t think i ever mentioned a Lot of shit.

also other stuff thoroughly traumatized me. i still carry granola bars with me because if someone says they haven’t eaten a meal i feel compelled to make sure they eat.)

ergo, acknowledging that i need him to make concessions to feel safe and secure in our relationship means that our shared experiences, of which is are worse, are traumatizing, and we can’t have that, now can we?

so i can’t be overly self-sacrificing, unwilling to blame, and yet also turning minor disputes into major issues in a way that demands he meet me in the middle. nominally, yes, he promises to take blame fairly, but he can’t really follow through on that, because that means i am not behaving like him, which we can’t have.

(this was also an issue re. mental health and adhd. pretty much the same thought loop.)

there’s a lot of stuff i think, but namely that time he told me i couldn’t possibly understand how hard it is to make a decision that might cause tension in your family when i, age 14, fucking did that?

like, yeah, i made this decision that i knew would cut ties with my father and i knew might sever my chance at having a positive relationship with my brother, the singular person i love most in the entire world, watched that play out, waited with bated breath until my brother came back to me, still whole, when i was fourteen.

also, i then watched my mother do it again, once when i was sixteen and once just a few months ago.

i think i do in fact understand how that might feel.

anyway i’m losing my point and i’m hungry but basically. even now i have a hard time saying “this is not a fully healthy way to love,” not in a “i don’t accept that i was hurt as a child” way, but in a “but how else do you love?” way

i’m sure you can see that i drag concessions around almost every statement i make regarding my behaviour and the behaviour of those i love. the idea of actually posting this seems bad.

i think finding someone equally self sacrificial, confrontational, and ride or die from basically the get go would be absolutely fine.

(realism check: probably not, but let me have this.)

so. yeah. that’s cool.

*oh wait i just realized so. current theory about break up. is it was an act of self sacrifice just like mine. i’m not really being super fair to him, because i’m a lil angry, there was a lot of stuff going on i didn’t talk about because this is about me, dammit

but anyway he did definitely have plenty of acts of sacrifice, and this break up was very similar to the one i had before. i think he was on some level aware, beyond the cursury reasons given (both from him and me, earlier in this post), that he was harming me. not intentionally, not even always directly, and rarely in a way i blamed him for, but that he was, by the way he was, exploiting something buried very deep inside of me.

so he said, “this is not what i want, it doesn’t matter what matthew wants, this is what’s best for him and that’s what i truly want.”

which, you know, has me being like “ah yes r relationship. how good it was. what a fitting end. he did the good thing.”

should i be thinking that? that’s a discussion for another time.

#emotional abuse #relationships #trauma #child abuse #abuse #q #mine #txt #9th #February #2021 #February 9th 2021 #personal #essay #long post

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