me @ the brainless ff//xv fans who dont put in two seconds of any critical thinking or media literacy skills then act like their take on train scene gladio is coherent or correct (or any take on gladio honestly)

I Am Grieving an Unwanted Breakup

Those of us inclined towards relationships often have the bad habit of hanging on even when we shouldn’t, when things are bad and we know we should leave. This is even more exacerbated with people like myself, who  come from abusive homes, and have a skewed sense of self-worth.

I held on far longer than I should’ve. I knew two years prior to our break up that things weren’t right and that they weren’t going to be right. We were never on the same page and had different ideas about what our relationship should be. He wanted my unquestioning trust in his leadership and I have learned due to a very tumultuous upbringing that no one deserves my unquestioning faith. Trust is a foreign concept to me.

Needless to say, we were stressing each other out. The stress triggered my arthritis to come out of remission, and my health began to seriously decline, which caused my mental health to decline as well. However, none of that stopped me from being immensely and irrevocably in love with him. I convinced myself that I was the problem, that we could come to solid ground with just a bit more dedication, just a bit more hard work. That maybe if we lived alone we could rededicate ourselves to one another (our roommate was an opportunistic piece of work to say the least).

Truthfully, the thought of leaving him stopped my breath. I was his ride-or-die. I valued his happiness and the throes of being in love more than my own well-being. I stayed when he allowed his friends to be verbally abusive and disrespectful to me. One day while we were in our car, I told him I was in so much pain that I wanted to drive myself into a lake. He angrily tossed me the keys and left the car. I ended up driving myself to the E.R.

And yet, I foolishly stayed with him. I stayed after he showed me time and time again that he did not value me. I stayed after he gaslit me over and over, often blaming my mental illness for our arguments, and never owning up to or changing his toxic behavior. I stayed and stayed, convinced that if I kept pushing and improving we could somehow “get back to the good times.” Meanwhile my physical and mental health continued deteriorating. My body knew what my heart could not admit: that two people can’t work towards a goal when two people aren’t working towards a goal.

Ultimately it was my illnesses that drove him away. A person who suffers daily from depression and anxiety, and a physically debilitating illness like Rheumatoid Arthritis is admittedly lot to handle. He was caring for me physically a lot and was immensely unhappy about it. I was listless and unhappy all the time as well as anxious and irritable due to feeling like a burden. My desire to even participate in hobbies I liked had vanished. When I began to indulge in self-destructive thoughts and behavior, he left me.

It was devastating, in a word. My mind sunk to low places til I was convinced I’d never again ascend. That dust and darkness were the only things present in the universe. The only time I can remember anyone experiencing anything close to this in the 1976 movie Sparkle when Stix returns after leaving Sparkle and she tells him, “When you first left, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to live without you. Yeah, I used to sit in this room and wondered if I would ever get through another second. Can you imagine a person so unhappy? To not know if they'd live through another second?” Indeed, with every breath I felt like my insides were roiling with the pain of it. Completely consumed by heartbreak, everyday I prayed for him to come to his senses. Every night I dreamed of him coming back to me. To know that I sacrificed my health and mental well-being to stay with him and that I would have sacrificed so much more, and that he could not, would not endure for me tore my heart open over and over. It's truly awful to realize that someone doesn't love you as much as you love them.

Today, it’s about four months in to our break up and things are better. We were making each other so unhappy and we’re both in much better places now that we’re apart. We function so much better as friends than we ever did as lovers. To be honest,  I think I never would have left him; so consumed was I in my love for him and so low was my own self-worth. I never would have realized how he didn’t know how to truly love and so could never properly love me. With every day as my love for myself grows, I find myself overcome with the realization of how much better I deserve.

And though I can’t lie and say I’m not still heartbroken, I find myself excited about the aspect of someday experiencing real love. I look forward to meeting the person not only willing to look past my illnesses and still love the real me, but who will also celebrate my uniqueness and unconventionality. But even more so, I’m excited to discover the talents and gifts that inevitably come forth when true self-love is applied. I may be broken right now, but I am still so beautiful. And there is yet more beauty to come.

~*~Behold the heavily referenced pic~*~

Ok, I think I’ve figured out Yuuri’s (and Eros) backstory for the AU : D

For those who are unfamiliar with Chobits canon – first off, major spoilers! Secondly, there’s a lot a talk below about anxiety and ‘fixing’ it (not in a ‘anxiety is a thing you need to fix’ way but in a ‘Yuuri percieves himself as a walking, talking mess and wants to ‘fix’ himself’ way, so if that’s too uncomfortable for you then I’d recommend skipping all of the below text because that is a huge focus/part of Yuuri’s backstory in this AU.)

Read at your discretion~

In the original Chobits story, we eventually find out that there were originally two Persocom sisters – Elda (i.e Chii) and Freya – and how through some tragic, love-struck circumstances Freya “dies” from a broken heart. Elda saves Freya’s memory into herself so that her sister may live on in her, but that eventually culminates in Elda herself losing her memories. She begs her surviving mother to leave her out in the open so that she may start life anew, free from pain from the past. This is what leads us to Hideki finding her outside one fateful night.

How does this translate into this AU? Well, I was thinking what if Yuuri’s original conception wasn’t just born out of a desire to create sapiant/human-like AI, but to create AI that’s so human-like, it legitimately behaves like a flawed, imperfect person? What if Hiroko and Toshiya, with the help of Minako, wanted to create a ‘human’ through means other than organic/biological. Persocoms are created to be flawless and perfectly accomodating to the lives of the people who own them, but that’s not what they want, so what if they successfully create a Persocom child they name Yuuri? 

Of course, it doesn’t physically ‘grow’ like a regular child, but for all intents and purposes he is their child, and they love him intensely. Yuuri’s shy but strong, insular and incredibly focused. And he loves figure skating and practicing whenever he gets the chance at the local rink whenever he’s able. (And he may or may not far too many posters of his favourite skater ever all over his room, and begged for a poodle when his hero got one, etc.)

Everything is great in the beginning, except Yuuri becomes hyper aware of how different he is from other Persocoms, who have dead smiles and emotionless eyes and are always pleasing their owners no matter what. This ends up causing a lot of anxiety in Yuuri. Hiroko and Toshiya didn’t intend for this to occur (because what they subconciously wanted were endearing, ‘harmless’ flaws, not debilitating ones that would cause real problems for him). Yuuri becomes too focused on the internal struggle to be a ‘good’ Persocom and to be nothing like a Persocom at all, and it begins to intefere with his ability to function properly. He doesn’t open up about this to his parents or sister because he doesn’t want to burden them with his feelings, which he convinces himself aren’t ‘real’ anyway because he’s not exactly ‘real’ either. But he knows it is a problem he needs to have corrected if he’s going to continue functioning.

In his struggle, Yuuri eventually reaches out to Minako and convinces her that they need to ‘fix’ him by altering or completely deleting the parts of him that prevent him from being the perfect son for his family. At first Minako refuses, knowing that’s not at all what Hiroko and Toshiya wanted, but she begins to see how much Yuuri is suffering and how he can’t go on for much longer the way he is, so she gives in and agrees to help with his programming. She reaches out to other Persocom programmers online, a secret group that she trusts, and though they don’t know all the details they do know it’s a delicate situation and that she wants to ‘preserve’ as much of the original personality as possible. So they give her advice and talk her through the plan.

Except what Minako doesn’t know is that Hiroko and Toshiya secretly implemented a secret program inside Yuuri that prevents his programming from being tampered with, precisely because they were scared someone out there might discover the kind of Persocom Yuuri is and trying to mess with him to figure him out. They didn’t even tell Minako because they didn’t want her to accidentally let it slip to any other programmers out there (because drunk Minako miiiiiiight be a bit of a talker). So when Minako begins the procedure, the program is triggered and Yuuri’s personality/AI is shut down in an effort to protect itself.

In her panic, Minako reaches out to the group of programmers with help, because how is she going to be able to explain to her dearest friends what’s happened if she can’t get Yuuri to return first? One of them offers to help, but in their attempt to do some damage control from a completely different country, something completely different intercepts them and worms its way into Yuuri’s AI. And what’s left behind in Yuuri’s body is something else entirely, and it calls itself ‘Eros.’ And, on top of that, it refuses to leave until it knows its function has been properly carried out – whatever that function is. (It’s a weird mix of ‘Protect Yuuri at all costs’ and ‘Take over Yuuri at all costs,’ because of the programming and virus – essentially, even the virus itself has become something new and unimagined).

Minako regrettably has no choice but to inform Hiroko and Toshiya what’s occurred, and though they make every effort to revive Yuuri and erase Eros, they are unsuccessful. Glimpses of Yuuri peak through, apologizing profusely for what he’s done to his family, but Eros refuses to leave – it’s the worst virus they’ve ever come across, and it works too well with the Yuuri’s secret programming. This sadly leaves them with only one option: a complete restart. Yuuri’s AI should be backed up, but it’s a gamble and they’re not sure if it’ll work. In his last lucid moments, Yuuri begs his family to cast him aside if it fails – he can’t bear the thought of burdening them any longer, not after all he’s done to them. They staunchly refuse, but Yuuri is gone again. With bated breaths they completely restart him. Except this time there’s nothing, no Yuuri or Eros, only a shell that doesn’t respond. They do everything they can to ‘wake’ him, but there’s no response.

They don’t ‘cast him aside,’ as Yuuri wanted, because he is their child and they love him far too much to ever even consider such a thing, so they keep the shell in his room and grieve. They try every now and then to wake him, whenever a new idea comes to them, but still there’s nothing.

It’s not until Minako, while aimlessly browsing local news online, sees a certain figure skating legend is visiting the area that she gets a last ditch idea. It’s completely ridiculous and she’s not even sure it’ll work, but it’s all she’s got. So she gets to work uncovering where exactly said legend is staying, and the most likely street he’d be walking down on a given night…

Anyway, that’s my idea/s so far! I wanted it to be close to Chobits canon but also its own thing, and I thought it’d be interesting if Eros was a whole other, mysterious entity inhabiting Yuuri’s body and whatnot. If you have any thoughts, feel free to send them my way! I’d love to hear your opinions. : 3