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oopsallfictives · 1 year

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I feel like sysmedicalism gets boiled down to just being anti-endo, and that's not really even the core of their beliefs. That's definitely a big part of it, but it's more of a side effect of their core beliefs. Those beliefs are:

Plurality only exists in the context of DID and similar disorders

Those disorders only ever happen as the result of trauma

Both the above points have been scientifically proven

Psychiatrists who study/treat DID, as well as the ISSTD, are more trustworthy than anyone claiming their personal experiences fall outside of what they believe "real DID" looks like

The only one of those that even might be true is the second, but I have no idea if it is or not, and it would be irresponsible to make the claim that it is without proof (correlation isn't proof, that's literally the first lesson in statistics). But what I want to focus on is the last point, because I think it explains everything else

People with DID/OSDD/etc have pretty much always been fighting an uphill battle against the general public's disbelief. This worsened significantly in the 90s. DID (then called MPD) got swept up into the Satanic Panic, and when aspects of that were disproven, everything else that got lumped in with it was assumed to be equally false. On top of that, there was a high-profile lawsuit against Bennett Braun (psychiatrist and founding member of the ISSTD) that alleged some pretty horrific abuse against a woman who claimed she was misdiagnosed and never had MPD/DID in the first place

This split the discourse. Some people condemned Braun and his associates for their treatment of their patients, and claimed that MPD/DID was made up. This is why the name was changed to DID, btw. The chair of the DSM-IV task force didn't believe it was real. On the other side of things, there were people who believed it was real, and therefore assumed everything being said about Braun and others was made up. There were some people, like those who were abused as "treatment" for MPD/DID, who believed that both plurality and the abuse were real, but they were largely ignored or silenced

Nowadays the issue is mostly simplified into "is DID real or not?". However, the idea that criticizing the ISSTD/psychiatrists who treat DID is the same as siding with the people who don't believe in it lingers. For many people newly diagnosed or discovering the online community and their place in it for the first time, these clinicians seem to be the only ones who believe their experiences are real. On top of that, there's a societal belief that being a doctor gives someone the authority to speak on medical issues in a way that being a patient doesn't. This goes doubly for anything mental health related. So these systems latch onto the ISSTD/psychiatrists and uncritically buy into everything they say (or what a game of twitter discourse telephone claims they say), even if it doesn't make sense, or if the proof just isn't there

So when they lash out at endogenic systems, or systems who claim to be people instead of parts, or any system that doesn't fit their idea of "real DID', it's because they see us as threats to their legitimacy. They think we can only be taken seriously if we go along with what the ISSTD claims. But this community has decades worth of very real reasons not to trust the psychiatrists making those claims

If you're a system whose beliefs align with the bullet points above, and you're starting to doubt the ISSTD (or even just some individual psychiatrists) because of the McLean video, take some time to look a little deeper. Look up what Bennett Braun got sued for malpractice for at least 11 times over (but be prepared, it will be triggering, it's some fucked up shit). Look up other prominent psychiatrists in this area, see how many of them have had accusations of abuse leveled against them. Try this video on Onno van der Hart, the primary contributer to the ToSD as it applies to DID (TW psychiatric abuse). And if you're starting to realize that perhaps they can't be trusted to be correct about everything, maybe it's time to consider what else they've said that's wrong

-Oliver (he/him)

P.S. If you're a dick on this post you'll be blocked on sight

#the quicksilvers say #syscourse tw #plurality #no seriously we wont debate you on this just leave us alone #but if you have genuine good faith questions thats fine

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wingaround · 1 year

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I don’t often see it get talked about much these days (maybe I’m wrong, IDK, it’s just that other fans I’ve talked to don’t know/don’t recall), but the Grimm storyline from Legends of the Dark Knight had a pretty memorable portrayal of Bruce, Dick, and guilt.

If you’re not familiar with this, Grimm was a five-issue arc in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (#149–153) which took place during the maiden year of Dick’s term as Robin. It was written by J.M. DeMatteis with art by Trevor Von Eden and José Luis García-López.

Basically, Dick follows a pickpocket named Wendi into the subterranean “children’s paradise” of Mother Grimm, a deceptively jovial villain who lures wayward children there. The plot and writing honestly gets a bit convoluted towards the end, but commits and resolves satisfactorily. All you really need for context here out is Mother Grimm.

(All images henceforth are described in ALT text.)

I’m specifically talking about issue #151, or Part 3 of the arc. At this point, Dick had become entranced by the temptation of Mother Grimm’s world like the other children had, and when Batman came to take him back, Dick refused to go along. It was then that Mother Grimm gave Batman some vivid hallucinations (where he’s reverted to the form of a child) that stirred up some morbid, subconscious thoughts.

Already we get hit on the nose with the question, “Why’d you bring a little boy into the Batman’s warped world?” Because it’s this very notion that makes up the foundation of why Bruce found a connection with Dick in the first place during their early years together.

The following panels then posit a pretty disturbing frame of reasoning. And also keep in mind that Dick is the one recounting and narrating what Bruce told him of the ordeal, which Bruce had chosen to disclose years later. It illustrates a subconscious fear that Bruce has: that he had only taken Dick in and raised him into vigilantism for the sole purpose of compensating for what he (in his mind) had failed to do: die with his parents.

I cut off the lower panels, but it’s necessary for you to know (if you’ve never read this) that it’s Batman who saves young Bruce from the fall, and wakes him.

So he breaks free of the hallucination, but some pages later Bruce is exposed once again to the mind-altering chemicals of Mother Grimm, and this time he’s seeing himself as a child alongside Dick and a vision of the scenes of their respective parents’ deaths, had they both died alongside them.

He has a bit of a reckoning in this moment, saying to both Dick and his child self that he’s trying in his own way to help them, to prevent the fate of death from coming to them as it did their parents, that they do not also have to die.

But HOLD IT! There are some serious layers to this onion. After all, as Dick is the one narrating, he admits that Bruce didn’t really tell Dick what exactly he saw in this particular moment, but could reasonably guess (and he’s most likely correct, which is a testament to the fact of how deeply Dick knows Bruce). But that means this is also a reflection of Dick’s psyche, which develops in relation to Bruce’s because of the similarities of their traumas.

This simultaneously accomplishes the following:

Dick coming to terms with his own survivor’s guilt by using Bruce as a mirror.

Dick comes to a better understanding of why Bruce let him become a part of Batman’s world.

It means a lot more when you consider how Dick is recalling this whole story as an adult. How within that time, experiences like this one would have marinated.

Bruce found purpose and control in his grief, at a much greater capacity and intensity than what the average person might, thus creating the persona of the Batman as a way of avoiding and eliminating that feeling of helplessness. He extended that to Dick, who he essentially latched onto as a companion who knew what that helplessness was like.

Any psychological analysis of Batman (and Dick Grayson) would need an entire separate post, so this is where I’ll end it. When I first read Grimm a long time ago, I was especially stricken by the implication of Bruce believing that he was using Dick as both punishment for himself and compensation for living on while his parents were dead. It was nice for both Dick and Bruce to have that affirmation where their relationship was ultimately one born from compassion.

(Of course, as the years have passed, their relationship has taken on new strains, but it’s all the more tragic when remembering where they began.)

#dick grayson #batman #bruce wayne #robin #dc #dc comics #it’s an angle that’s been explored in other stuff #but i felt that this story was able to get the necessary messages across #without spending too much time on it #bruce’s and dick’s relationship in all of its complexities breaks my heart #and when you see how much they’ve changed since the beginning of their partnership #that’s when you understand the vicious cycle #on dick’s part it’s both salvation and condemnation #they are a part of each other and always will be #for better or for worse

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illnessfaker · 2 years

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this youtuber i watch made a video on DID tiktok, with the amount of people that are faking it and whatnot, but it's clear a lot of their information is google searched or otherwise giving people the wrong idea about how systems work

I was thinking about it because I feel like people assume that younger people with OSDD/DID must be faking, and videos and tiktoks are sort of why. It is frustrating because it really shows the lack of nuance in poking around people's medical information.

it's a complicated issue because on one hand you can be aware of having dissociated parts of self w/ agency separate from your own at a young age even if you don't recognize it as such then and believing abuse survivors should take precedence but it's also clear to me that some young people assigning these labels to themselves regard it (along w/ psychosis, evidently) as little more than advanced fictionkin(tm). ofc this can also be rooted in other trauma-related psychological stuff and a lot of these kids are indeed in bad and traumatizing situations. i don't think attacking or singling out these kids will help their situation, that's for sure.

but also, frankly, i've divorced myself from online osddid communities as of late and i've avoided thinking about it as much as i can and i'm not 100% sure i have dissociated parts of self w/ their agency at this point (i might because my symptoms haven't exactly Gone Away i've just very firmly shoved them from my awareness and distanced myself from my own thoughts that i don't really give most of the more jarring ones The Chance to Happen anymore, unless i get triggered enough, but it's something i don't trust myself to be able to determine) and i'm approaching my mid-20s. unfortunately stuck living in an abusive situation again but maybe i can get some helpful input from this therapist with a wealth of experience i'm supposed to see this week because trying to handle this on my own has just resulted in me having mental breakdowns multiple times a week! w/e the truth of the matter is (as truthful as psychiatric diagnostic labels can be) i'll probably still have a kinship with the osddid community over cptsd and bpd because the experiences and resources shared there speak to me more than the others do.

bit of an overshare there but i wasn't fully sure how to answer this ask. it's complicated because i believe in self-determination but considering how my own mental response has been to grappling w/ the possibility of having alters ("destabilizing" and "gut-churning" and "oh god oh no") it rly does concern me that loads of traumatized children seem to be latching onto these labels because whether they apply or not it can be an experience that dredges up a bunch of awful, painful feelings that can land them in a hospital. idk what we can do for them though. it's something that requires material change to resolve because at the end of the day the root of it is a host of environmental circumstances. idk lol i don't think my thoughts are quite working at the moment.

#asks #Anonymous #case in point my brain gets fuzzy when i think about this topic lol.

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diestwice · 1 year

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what's the one thing your muse constantly does and wishes they could stop doing?

in-depth headcanon questions !

the short answer: apologizing.

the longer answer:

jodie grew up constantly feeling like they had to apologize for something. whether that was aiden's misbehavior ( when aiden was believed to be nothing more but a figment of an errant child's imagination ), not performing well on schoolwork due to the packed schedule of experiments imposed on them by nathan and cole's usual failures to get around them, or their inability to just be normal -- something they've wanted since they were that nine-year-old child, confused as to why their parents didn't want them anymore, why they were never allowed to play with the other neighborhood kids.

combined with the social isolation of being raised in a government facility during most of their formative years and punished for failed attempts to socialize ( despite the fact these interactions were almost always destined to go poorly due to aiden's overprotectiveness of jodie, which they had little control over ), jodie often felt like their very existence was something inherently wrong, something they needed to apologize for. for a while after first coming to live with nathan and cole, they believed that they were an unwelcome and unwanted burden on their parents and others around them, something they have yet to completely heal from. as a result, they sought validation from their peers and from cole and nathan, which carried over to their superiors at the cia. being told that having to leave behind their only home immediately was a "great opportunity" for them, by the same man they'd come to see as a father figure, deeply hurt jodie. they felt even more like a burden than before. they felt like they were being handed off like a toy to be abandoned again, and could not understand why.

jodie's desire for validation and acceptance carried over to their training at camp peary, and throughout their time as an agent. even though jodie despised ryan, they wanted to perform well out of a desire for their life to have some sort of meaning, to be appreciated for something. ryan fully and knowingly took advantage of this when he tricked them into taking the solo assignment that turned them into a fugitive. he claimed to have always seen them as "special" in a way that did not relate to aiden, expecting them to latch onto this in a way that would make jodie easier to manipulate. it didn't make jodie any more willing to be friendly to ryan, but it worked where it was necessary for missions.

this is also why jodie struggles with suicidal thoughts ( and at least one possible attempt ) after going on the run. they are disgusted with the cia and no longer want anything to do with them. knowing that the agency manipulated them without hesitation, they are afraid that if they are captured, they would just be forced to become a weapon again; a hunch that is proved correct when jodie is offered "one last job" in exchange for freedom, a deal their superiors never intended to follow through on. during this time, jodie feels as though they don't mean anything to anyone except as a lab rat to be used and manipulated. they cannot bear to live that kind of life. thankfully, the people they meet along their journey help shake them of this mindset, but it's a consequence of years of trauma.

#headcanon.#me: writes a whole essay #oops #anyway have some sad jodie feels.#suicidal thoughts tw #suicide tw #ask to tag

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ectonurites · 2 years

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are you telling me that only the boys get the Lazarus side effects??

Jason: yeah, dying and coming back after a dip in the league's evil mountain dew turns you evil for a while, but I'm getting over it

Cass: being too cool for school is inherent protection from the evil murder phase

Well, no.

Lets... go over a few things.

More or less, everyone dumped in a Lazarus Pit gets side effects! But they do not last nearly as long as you're probably thinking they do based on what you just said here about Jason... for like anyone as shown in main comics canon.

Like I just can not stress enough that the vast majority of what most people think about pit madness- especially in relation to Jason- is fanon (also I thiiiiink Arrowverse shows could have had an impact here? because as I recall pit madness worked differently there. But that is its own separate universe). The canon of it is 'yes there is initial rage and instability that comes from using the pit, how long it lasts can vary' but pit madness lasting longer than like a day or so and being something that continually effects a person longterm after a single dip? That's just not really a thing in the comics. It's fanon, or derivative of stories outside of canon. (Now there are examples where repeated use may have longer lasting/different effects, and then there's unique situations like with Nora Fries where due to experimentation done to her body beforehand- and the fact she’d been dead a long time- she reacted to the pit differently, but I'm talking about normal circumstances single use)

I've done some more in-depth discussion about Jason's resurrection in this post that I think is relevant here. Also worth noting is that the Lazarus Pit is not even what brought Jason back from the dead. The Lazarus Pit healed Jason's mind, but was not the actual thing that brought him back! That was Superboy-Prime punching reality. The pit not actually resurrecting him is even true in New 52 canon (though New 52 canon never really elaborates on why he woke up in his grave that I recall, but his secret origins story [Secret Origins (2014) #5] confirms that he did come out of his grave first on his own and then Talia put him in the pit)! Like, the Lazarus Pit being what resurrected him is only really the case in the Under the Red Hood movie.

Versus like Cass? Cass died and was actually brought back purely by the pit. She wasn't dead for long, but she was still dead when she went in! And she did have madness for a hot sec upon coming out of the pit- but it's the sort of thing that for her wore off during the length of one conversation with Shiva:

(Batgirl (2000) #73)

(Also Batgirl (2000) #73, just a few pages of Shiva talking later)

That's... more along the lines of how pit madness is shown to actually work in most instances of canon I've ever seen/heard about. Like I do think Cass probably got over it quicker than some others, but it's just not the sort of thing someone really deals with super longterm! I recall one instance during Batman and Robin (it’s directly linked in the post I linked above) in which Damian basically says Pit Madness is the type of thing that’d wear off in less than the length of time it takes to fly from England to Gotham.

Jason's preboot comics content like... in no way implies that the pit really has anything to do with his behavior post-resurrection- his behavior is rooted in anger over the situation with Bruce & like... trauma over the fact that he did die. In the New 52 Secret Origins issue there is a line about Talia: "She recoils. Part of her is afraid of me. Good. I'm a little afraid too." In Jason’s narration as he comes out of the pit that could be interpreted as related to immediate pit madness, but that's still not something shown to be longterm.

Fandom just latches onto the pit madness concept with Jason specifically, and I definitely in large part blame the UTRH movie for it- because of the emphasis put on the pit within the movie & that line where Jason alludes to the possibility of the pit turning him 'rabid' while taunting Bruce (a line that does not exist in the comic, and even within the context of the movie still feels more like Jason just trying to mess with Bruce rather than a genuine possibility).

Like, I don't entirely hate pit madness as a concept to explore in fandom in general- because the idea of effects that come from something like that that're more longterm is definitely interesting! But I do personally hate how a lot of fans use pit madness as an excuse for Jason's canon actions/a way to absolve him of the blame for things he very much so chose to do (typically with the purpose of reintegrating him into the family). And like... if all the characters who've had Lazarus Pit dumps (Cass obviously as already mentioned here, but also some more examples are Kate, Dinah, Diana, Shiva, Riddler, and fucking hell even the Joker has gone in one before and his pit madness made him temporarily sane) got the same sort of treatment/exploration with the concept then I prob wouldn't care as much, but the fact that it's just Jason definitely does bug me.

Soooo yeah. It’s not that just the boys get Lazarus side effects, it’s that many fans apply the concept to Jason while not being aware/understanding what they’re doing is for the most part not based in canon, and also not being aware of the other characters it’d need to apply to if it were.

#sam explains

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recurring-polynya · 2 years

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Favourite thing about Byahisa?

I feel like people have gotten the mistaken idea that I am a Byahisa shipper, which I really am not, at least not in the way I am a Renruki shipper. I am interested in their story, which is a tragedy, but I do not, say, think about them kissing in my spare time. I don’t have favorite tropes or anything like that. I guess the thing I like best about them is simply that it happened.

I have said this before, but Hisana is not, in my opinion, a character. She is a plot point. We see her only through Byakuya's memory. We don't know what she was like. We don't get any of the circumstances that lead up to her abandoning her baby sister. Nevertheless, she is the catalyst for Rukia's adoption, for Rukia and Renji's separation, for Byakuya and Rukia's long estrangement, and, I like to think, that their attempts to rememer her played a role in their eventual connection.

I think a lot about this excellent post re: Rukia meeting Kaien by @troius about how Kubo is able to tell incredibly poignant stories with just a snapshot, but I think this one hits it even more: The assistant captain had a wife. Pardon my French, but fuck that hits hard. The assistant captain had a wife.

The panels of Byakuya telling Rukia about Hisana hit similarly to me. It's not a full story. Byakuya has just been stabbed through the heart, and he is apologizing to Rukia, trying to explain himself as he sweats and bleeds all over the ground in a very non-Byakuya fashion. The first thing he says is that she died. There's something I want to tell you. One spring morning, 50 years ago, before the first plum tree blossomed...I lost my wife.

He goes on to tell the facts of the story as they relate to Rukia-- Hisana abandoned her, Hisana never stopped looking for her, Hisana died full of regrets. It's so curious and mysterious to me out of a fairly small flashback, half a page is taken up with Hisana apologizing to Byakuya for not being a better wife, but I don’t get the sense that Byakuya is bitter or mad about it. It's never entirely clear in these flashbacks how much the nostalgic character (in this case, Byakuya) is actually saying out loud, and how much they are just remembering. This is the only part of the flashback that is not actually relevant to Rukia, and I think that this is a part that Byakuya is remembering to him--with pain--that along with everything else, he could never impress upon Hisana how much she meant to him.

We get only a handful of reflections of Hisana-- Byakuya contemplating her portrait during two end themes, Rukia being asked to perform a dance Hisana once performed with the implication that this is a matter of great personal importance to both Byakuya and Rukia, a scene in Fade to Black where Byakuya walks with his wife and supports her as she collapses. These are so brief, but they all impart the same idea, Byakuya had a wife, whom he loved. She died. In the spring. Before the plum blossom bloomed.

Byakuya, as a character, is very stoic and rarely shows emotion, so these glimpses are so poignant and powerful. The other thing that we do know about him is that he was a hothead in his youth, (and then some things happened) and now he's Like That. The (and then some things happened) is so intriguing and mysterious and sad. I was only planning on including the top three panels of the page above, but that last panel-- the hugely empty room, the sun pouring in, Byakuya’s posture. I lost my wife.

I did not have a lot of sympathy for Byakuya as a character when I started writing fanfic, but I had to deal with him, so I dug for something I could latch onto, something I liked about him, and that something was that he had a wife and he loved her. She was common. Marrying her cost him a great deal of political capital and possibly also his relationship with his grandfather. She was chronically ill. She was crushed by the trauma of her early afterlife. Byakuya loved her.

The other thing I like about Hisana, writing-wise, is that she connects Rukia and Byakuya, but she is wholly absent. She is a void in the space between them, a thing they can explore together, but only if both are willing. I am also fascinated with the way Hisana's gravity effects not just them, but Renji. If Hisana had never abandoned Rukia-- an act that she regretted for the rest of her afterlife-- Renji never would have met Rukia, the defining event of his own existence. On the other hand, if it were not for Hisana, they wouldn't have been separated, either, the other defining event of Renji's existence. We don’t really get to see it, but as Renji settles into his role as Byakuya’s second, he must, at times, act as a weird conduit between his boss and his best friend. In some extremely weird ways, Renji, a loud, 6′2″ meathead with too much eyeliner and too few social graces, has taken on Hisana’s role in connecting two people who are absolutely terrible at connecting to anyone.

Bleach is a story about ghosts, or perhaps many stories about many ghosts. Byahisa is a love story that is also a ghost story, and that is one of my very favorite things in the world.

#byahisa #byakuya kuchiki #hisana kuchiki #i have another ask in the pile about byahisa fanfic so hold on for part ii #i said i don't care about tropes of whatever but i DO have a byahisa theme song #which is 'cold is the night' by the oh hellos #it's really a byakuya song #it is HELLA depressing don't say i didn't warn you #SOMETIME I LIKE SAD THINGS #byahisa is just a place i can go to roll around in sad feels when i need to #there's also a very specific thing about plum blossoms being the harbinger of spring in japanese poetic symbolism #they come before the cherry blossoms. when it's still cold #like spring is coming but not quite yet #and given byakuya's spring associations this is particularly meaningful #sorry i couldn't figure out how to work that in earlier but i think about it a lot

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byunmyeon · 3 years

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Philophobia

↳ pairing: lee suho x reader

↳ synopsis: in a world where a red string connects soulmates, everyone knows who they belong with. except you, who hasn’t been able to see your string since you were a kid.

↳ warnings: language (like one word), a copious amount of angst and heartbreak

— note: there’s a serious lack of suho fics out there so I decided to write my own. lmk if you guys want me to write a second part!

There was something inexplicably eerie about being the new girl in a school that was twice the size of your old one. Not because it was an unfamiliar setting, nor was it because you were painfully shy and terrible at making friends. It wasn’t even your disparaging insecurities that had you feeling so shook. No, it was something you couldn’t put your finger on, something you couldn’t begin to name. A discomfort you could feel all the way down to your bones.

Your inordinate unease swelled into full blown panic with every step you took toward your new classroom. Somewhere in your unorganized mind, you could hear your mom’s reassuring voice. Everything will be okay. You didn’t know if her words held any truth, but you really, really, really hoped she was right. You were being stupid, honestly. There was nothing to fear, but you couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling from your stature. Despite all the undesirable emotions you felt, your breathing was normal and your heartbeat was steady.

It took you a minute to gather yourself. You could do this.

After a very ineffectual pep talk, you finally got your feet to move. Your eyes were cast down as you entered the classroom. The rowdy classroom went silent once your presence became known. You swallowed the nerves and chanced a glance at your new classmates. The reactions were a mixture of curiosity and disinterest.

When your teacher introduced you to the class, you decided to really look at your new classmates. Among the sea of unfamiliar faces, one stuck out. An unnaturally attractive face belonging to an unfamiliar boy. His stare was strange. It was full of an intensity you couldn’t comprehend. You kept staring, in spite of yourself. Fuck. Was it possible for someone to be so attractive?

The clapping of your classmates pulled you back into reality. You were quick to look elsewhere, unable to understand the sudden lurch of your heart.

Suho couldn’t take his eyes off the new girl, more specifically, the string neatly wrapped around her index finger. He watched her carefully. The shy smile she wore was annoyingly adorable, and it made a foreign warmth spread across his chest and along his entire body. The new girl didn’t spare him another glance as she took her seat next to Jugyeong.

Lim Jugyeong.

He wasn’t her soulmate and she wasn’t his, but she was the girl who had unknowingly stolen his heart. That wasn’t about to change because some stranger who he was supposedly meant to be with came into his life with no warning.

Suho looked back to the front of the classroom without looking at the new girl again.

The first time it happened, you wrote it off as fatigue. After all, you had just started middle school and trying to keep up with your new workload as well as your budding social life was exhausting. That day, the color of your string had faded a bit, but it was still visible. By the time you were on your way home it disappeared for a mere second before regaining its color. Days later, it was completely gone.

When your mom first found out you could no longer see your string, she became extremely distraught. It had affected her more than it did you, honestly. She wasted no time in taking you to see countless specialists and psychologists. Anything to keep you from becoming a freak that didn’t know who they were meant to be with. She unknowingly made you feel exactly like that.

Apparently, you were a rare case because every person you went to for help wanted to conduct a study on you and your condition. Fortunately for you, your mom didn’t want you becoming a lab rat and decided to stop seeking out help from strangers. Left with no other option, you went to one person who she believed could help you. An old friend of hers.

He wasn’t a specialist, just a regular doctor who came to the conclusion that a deep, scarring trauma had caused you to no longer see your string. You could remember the heartbreak on your mom’s face because you both knew what that trauma was.

Your mom did her best to help you. Spending more time together and countless hours of therapy did nothing for your condition. Nothing worked. You became convinced that trying to see your string again was futile.

And you were right.

As time went on, you grew used to the unease that had latched itself onto you on that first day. The feeling in your bones settled in like an unwelcome guest who refused to leave. No matter what you did, you couldn’t shake the feeling. Eventually, you gave up trying.

However, something shifted when you crossed paths with Lee Suho.

You two had been put in the same group for a science lab. His attention had been solely on Lim Jugyeong, but there were times when your eyes would meet. Those milliseconds were just that, but to you they felt like an eternity. He rarely addressed you, but when he did, you could feel the pressure weighing on your bones fade bit by bit. That familiar feeling soon shifted into a more comfortable presence that you yearned to feel forever.

It was subtle, but at some point, Suho’s emotionless face changed. The change would last for no more than a second, but it always did when he looked at you. That change had your entire stature seeping with warmth. You vaguely recognized the feeling as something akin to infatuation.

It scared you.

Of course, the possibility that he might be your soulmate crossed your mind, but you quickly dismissed that thought.

Too many times had you gotten in trouble for insisting someone was your soulmate when they really weren’t. Any special bond or feelings that grew between you and someone else couldn’t always be interpreted as the ones between soulmates. You learned that the hard way.

Besides, your soulmate would make it clear to name themselves as such even if you couldn’t see the string.

At least, you hoped they would.

Philophobia.

Before you went into high school, your mom insisted you see one last psychologist with the promise that the one she found was different. Reluctantly, you went to see this woman who diagnosed you with this absurd illness. You felt like it was made up, but your mother was adamant that you did have it.

You knew she only thought that because you had told her you no longer had any interest in finding your soulmate. Her panic was unrivaled after hearing those words come out of your mouth. You wrote off her panic because your disinterest in soulmates was only natural. How could it not when—at the time—it was all your friends could talk about? Talk about being the odd man out.

Okay, and maybe you also weren’t keen on meeting new people because of the fear that they could easily ignore the string you couldn’t see. There was also the fear that if you ever did meet someone you wanted to spend your life with, they could end up not being your soulmate and vice versa.

But those feelings would all fade with time, you were sure.

Hanging out near the back of the school where no one ever went became a regular thing for you. It was the one spot where you didn’t have to worry about your soulmate or anything related to that—a safe place. Until it wasn’t.

“You can’t just ignore the bond you have with her.”

The angry voice was one you vaguely recognized. You peeked around the corner, eyes widening when you saw Han Seojun and Lee Suho in the middle of what appeared to be an argument.

“Why are you bringing that up?” Suho’s eyes narrowed. “Do you still like Jugyeong?”

Seojun’s gaze hardened. “It’s not about that.”

It was wrong to listen on what was clearly meant to be a private conversation, but your feet wouldn’t move. You could see Suho’s anger and irritation from your hiding place, and for some reason seeing him that way made a blistering discomfort latch itself onto your chest.

“You’re being unfair to Jugyeong and Y/N.”

The mention of your name had your insides twisting into an uncomfortable knot. You didn’t understand why or how you had anything to do with the discussion, but you had a feeling the reason wasn’t anything good.

“Just because she’s my soulmate doesn’t mean I owe her anything.”

There was a sharp pain in your chest, one that grew into a searing pain as the seconds ticked by. You might’ve cried out in pain had it not been for the shock that consumed you. In a sudden instant, your vision became blurred with tears as you staggered back. His words were the worst form of torture, like a piece of barbed wire that wrapped itself around your heart.

Your fate was a cruel one, forever bound to someone who refused to acknowledge the bond between you two. Lee Suho was your soulmate, but he didn’t want to be.

It was a cruel reality to have your worst nightmare come to life.

“Is it true?”

Suho raised an eyebrow at you. His gaze didn’t soften like it once did. Now it just remained impassive, almost annoyed. The cold look he was giving you was making you regret even coming to him in the first place.

“Are you really my soulmate?”

“Why are you acting like you don’t know?” Suho’s unaffected stare unsettled you. “You’ve known since the first time we saw each other.”

But you hadn’t known. This entire time you had been driving yourself crazy thinking you were only imagining the connection between you two like you had done countless times after you first lost the sight of your string. Despite wanting to tell him that, you settled for a question.

“What about Jugyeong? Don’t you think she—?”

“Are you going to tell her?” He interrupted you.

You could literally hear your heart crack. Of course that’s all he cared about. He didn’t care whether or not you were hurt and upset, hell, he probably thought you had no interest in your soulmate. But he was wrong, so very wrong.

“Why?” He demanded. “You don’t want me as your soulmate either. You’ve been ignoring the bond, too.”

I can’t see my string! You nearly yelled. The words were clawing at your throat, eager to be released. But you found yourself unable to tell him the truth.

“My soul chose yours,” you said, close to tears. “And a soul just doesn’t forget that.”

For a moment, one that was so quick you thought you imagined it, Suho looked remorseful. Stupidly, it made you hope that he would accept you and the bond that bounded you together.

“Don’t tell her.” His voice didn’t sound like a plea, but you knew what he was asking you to do was clearly important to him. “I can’t loose her.”

And so, you agreed. Even if it meant that your own heart would be left in tatters.

#lee suho x reader #true beauty fanfic #lee suho imagine #lee suho fanfic #true beauty imagine #cha eunwoo #cha eunwoo imagine #cha eunwoo x reader #true beauty tvn

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neon-junkie · 3 years

Text

It's OK to like villains, and liking them doesn't mean you support/'stan' them. Here's why:

I've seen the debate of 'liking a villain means you must support them,' and well, that's total nonsense. It's something that has appeared with newer, younger fandoms, usually circulating through minor fans and on social media such as TikTok. Liking a villain has never ever meant you support them, and I'm not sure where exactly this rubbish has come from, but I'm going to break it down and explain why enjoying a villain does not mean you support them.

Let's start off with the word 'stan', considering I see this word used the most. The original meaning of 'stan' was: 'a person who is an obsessive or stalker fan.'

The term comes from Eminem's song, Stan, where Stan is obsessed with Eminem, so much to the point that he kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend when Eminem doesn't reply to his letter fast enough.

The term stan soon changed to also mean: 'stanning someone can also mean supporting them, not just being an obsessive fan.' For example 'I stan X character' means ‘I support X character.’

Well, there are some characters you should definitely not stan/support, and villains are usually top of this list. Although, there are some villains out there with anti-hero and chaotic good intentions, Megamind for example, but the vast majority of villains should not be 'stanned.'

This is the thing - Very few people out there actually stan villains.

And here's another thing - You can like a villain without 'stanning' them

Like I mentioned before, stan culture is still relatively new, and it's impacted fandom culture both negatively and positively. Personally, I've only really seen the negative side of the impact, as I've always been a fan of villains. In the younger fandom days, people were free to enjoy characters they want, no matter who and what they are. You could say '

I like this villain,' and people would usually reply 'okay! I'm personally not a fan, but you're free to enjoy whatever fictional character you want.'

That was it, plain and simple. I guess everybody understood that the likelihood of you actually agreeing with that villains actions was little to none, but now that the phrase 'stan' is rising, it's replacing being a simple 'fan' of things, and is changing peoples viewpoints of what others enjoy in fiction.

Villain fans have always been around, and they always will, and like I said, little to none of them actually agree with what the villain is doing. Most of us enjoy the complexity, emotional depth, and layers to villains. A lot of us simply find these characters more attachable than the main ones, or we just find them hot... yeah, a lot of villains are hot - don't blame us for finding them attractive, blame the creator for making them attractive!

Some people also project their trauma and negative selves onto villains, and use their interest in these fictional characters as a method to cope. Most villains do have a tragic backstory, elements of which some of us can relate to, and it's okay to relate to a villain. We naturally show empathy, and it's hard to not latch onto a character who may have been through the same things we have, or been in similar situations that we've been in. They may have also reacted in ways that we wish we did, such as fighting back when in a harmful situation, or putting their foot down for once. So, it's hard not to project ourselves and our trauma onto them.

There's been many studies on why some people enjoy villains over the rest, here's a few perfect explanations behind the admiration:

"Aggressiveness, expressiveness, athleticism, excitability, and intelligence are another set of factors that seem to stand across romantic relationships as desirable or something we yearn for (Felmlee, 1995). These traits found in almost every villain. They have to be charismatic, aggressive, smart, and lively or else why would their followers choose to follow them? Loki from the Marvel universe reflects this as a humorous, upbeat, coy, charismatic villain which has lead to a massive social media following." - Socialcognition2019

"“When you are no longer uncomfortable with the comparison, there seems to be something alluring and enticing about having similarities with a villain,” explains Rucker. “For example, people who see themselves as tricky and chaotic may feel especially drawn to the character of The Joker in the Batman movies, while a person who shares Lord Voldemort’s intellect and ambition may feel more drawn to that character in the Harry Potter series,” said Krause." - zmescience

“A lot of us want to feel that freedom, feel that comfort being the bad guy. How many times at work have you had to be the bad guy, and absolutely hated doing it? Don’t you wish you could fire people or treat people horribly having to do your job without remorse? Don’t you wish that you could see, as much as others try to tell you, that what you’re doing is for the best? For me, that will be impossible because I’m too nice and too much of a pushover, but there’s a part of us that empathizes with the villain because in some sectors of life and of our relationships, we are the villain. Try being the tough parent when your spouse is too nice — your kid will see you as the bad guy. Try being the tough, no-nonsense boss when the other boss treats everyone like his or her friend and doesn’t hold people accountable. In one way or another, life will inevitably thrust us into those situations. We are both hero and villain, but we’re much more comfortable as the former than the latter. We’re much more praised for being kind than when we have to be tough, and that’s why, to me, villains are so compelling." - Medium

I wish I could copy and paste this entire article, but I'd recommend just reading it instead: Find yourself rooting for the bad guy? You're not alone - Digitalspy

Tumblr user Techousespeaks also did this fantastic explaintion: Is It Really Okay To Like Villains So Much?

Enjoying villains has always been a thing, and it always will be a thing.

There is NOTHING wrong with enjoying them, and in some cases, there is nothing wrong with 'stanning' them.

You are allowed to like fiction, especially dark fiction, or the darker sides of fiction.

And if anybody comes along and tells you that you're not allowed to like the bad guy then simply block them. Villain fans will always exist in every single fandom, and there's many of us per fandom. If the villain really wasn't meant to be liked, then the creators would announce that.

Enjoy whatever makes you happy.

An old fandom saying that still applies is 'come to the dark side, we have cookies!!‘ (and we really do) :)

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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About Bakugo, I actually think his original characterization is partly why his arc doesn't work for me: it seems like his contempt for others and desire to hurt them is innate, because he was already insulting and humiliating Deku for fun when they were in kindergarden, and at this age I'm not sure it makes sense to blame the adults around him for this behavior. This is also why I don't buy the "childhood friends" narrative, even before the infamous river scene Bakugo was toxic to Deku.

Hard agree, anon. I'm willing to give some wiggle room to the "Bakugo had a messy childhood and that's why he's like this" argument just because I'm not caught up (and thus might be missing some flashbacks/revelations), no one's life is ever perfect, and there's a subjective line between what we read as innocuous tropes vs. realistic traumas (example: is his mom hitting him something we take seriously, or just classic anime "comedy"?), but honestly I'm... not persuaded by that stance. Largely due to what you've said about this contempt being around since the very beginning. Bakugo's cruelty is the introduction to the entire series, the very first thing we see:

First, they're young here. Maybe not kindergarten young, but as we see in the above narration, it's at age four that Bakugo acquired his "I'm the best" thinking (more on that in a second). They're kids. This is not something that developed slowly over the years until Bakugo crossed some kind of line, he's been like this since the very start. Since a kid is capable of forming thoughts, opinions, and making decisions: like attacking another. In what way does this establish them as friends? Izuku literally shaking as he tries to protect another kid Bakugo is has hurt? Bakugo calling him worthless? Gleefully attacking and punching Izuku in the face? They were never friends! Izuku followed Bakugo around because he was paid some kind of attention by him and Bakugo poisoned the well — no one else in class will befriend Izuku. We see this both by the two willing to help beat him up here and, later, when Izuku says he wants to got to U.A. the entire class laughs at both the idea and Bakugo blowing up his desk in response. The bullying is the only kind of "friendship" Izuku has, so he embraces it with a smile and a nickname. Meanwhile, Bakugo allows Izuku to tag along because he makes him feel good in comparison. All Bakugo needs for an ego boost is to look at Izuku. He's the useless, quirkless nobody whose name can be read as "Deku." What's not to like? Izuku makes Bakugo feel good because Bakugo will always come out on top — always win — when pit against him. Did they have a few good moments gushing over All Might? Yeah, but anyone who has been bullied knows that it's not a clear cut "They were consistently awful every second of every day." Sometimes, those moments of pretend or conditional friendship make everything worse.

(As a side note, I keep hearing the more intense fans of Bakugo saying that those who criticize him identify with Izuku "too much" and it's like... yes? He's the protagonist. You're supposed to identify with him. To say nothing of the question of why you'd include such an explicit bullying subplot — arguably at the heart of the narrative in regards to characterization — if you didn't want readers who had experienced bullying to relate to this story. So it's all about victims like Izuku, you're allowed to care, just don't care in a way that holds Bakugo responsible?)

"But Izuku cares about Bakugo. He tried to help him out of the river." Yeah, because Izuku cares about everyone. Overlooking his warped idea of what friendship is due to having no one but Bakugo, Izuku is the kind of person who is going to extend his hand to anyone who needs it, just like All Might would. His extreme compassion and lack of other friends is not good proof that he cares for Bakugo in any true, healthy fashion, let alone that Bakugo cares for him.

As for when this all started, yeah, it was when they were even younger than in the scene above. Toddlers when Bakugo realized he had a strong quirk and Izuku was told he had none. Bakugo's reaction to these events — deciding he's better than everyone else and that justifies harming those "lesser" than him — is instantaneous. That desire was there all along. He just needed an excuse to act on it. After the conversations about the adults' influence on him, I went back to the anime scenes of Bakugo showing his quirk to his class and it's... pretty normal? I mean yes, there's praise, but in what world wouldn't there be praise? A bunch of other kids are going to ooh and ahh over mini explosions and the two teachers, unless they're entirely heartless, are going to tell this kid that he'll indeed make a wonderful hero someday. Those are standard responses for very young kids who aren't going to understand something like, "That is a powerful quirk and you could be a great hero... just don't let that potential go to your head!" There's nothing in those scenes that imply an excess of praise, at least so much that it would totally warp a kid's perspective of others to the extent Bakugo has going on. If I recall correctly, Bakugo's parents are quite disappointed in his behavior, but that never had an impact on him. And as I mentioned previously, we have incredibly talented characters like Momo (getting into U.A. on recommendation), people like Ida who come from families with other heroes they want to impress, Todoroki dealing with a crazy legacy to live up to, tied up in his abuse... yet none of them turned out like Bakugo. All of that didn't kill their compassion, but adults telling Bakugo he has a strong quirk made him into this person? Bakugo wanted to be that person, right from the start.

Honestly, I think a lot of fans latched onto Bakugo — which is awesome! — but didn't want to admit how horrible he actually is. So they took moments largely out of context and repeated them enough until they became fandom staples. Bakugo and Izuku were close childhood friends who just had a falling out they need to come back from. Bakugo was only like this because the adults in his life drove him to that behavior. Izuku loves Bakugo because he can see how good he is, deep down inside, and definitely not because he's been stuck with him since they were toddlers, unable to escape him even at U.A. It's a very sanitized look at their relationship, embraced because fans want them to be friends or lovers. Which is fine! God knows I'm into a ton of "problematic" ships, I just like acknowledging that they're problematic, not trying to sweeten the situation because fandoms have made others feel guilty for liking anything that's not squeaky clean and pure. Bakugo tormented Izuku for their entire childhood. He encouraged him to commit suicide. He tried to keep him from achieving his dream, both by undermining his confidence and outright threatening him (remember burning his shoulder?). He then reworked that obsession when they both got into U.A., trying to prove Izuku's uselessness, failing, and continually struggling with the thought that he's actually a great hero. And it's like... why do I care? This guy is a horrible person, he's been a horrible person since he was a kid, and his greatest challenge for more than half the story is acknowledging that other people aren't worthless trash. His improvement still hasn't gotten him to the standard of an average person, let alone a hero. If Bakugo were a villain, great, or if the story was going to really highlight the corruption of the hero career as a whole (we take anyone with powerful quirks, no matter how awful they are), great, but as a main character hero whose behavior is supposedly just a cover for a fantastic guy, please overlook everything he does and assume he's worthy of your respect anyway? Ehhh. Why do I care about him as a good guy when there are characters like Ida and Uraraka I could stan? To be clear, I'm not saying other fans can't enjoy whatever characters they enjoy, just that from a storytelling perspective I think it's a failure to introduce Bakugo as such an extreme, make him one of the heroes, give him such a selfish struggle, and then expect a lot of the audience to care. Bakugo either needed to be more balanced from the start — regular flaws instead of such an intense adoration for cruelty from the age of four — or the story needed to unpack his behavior in a way it never bothered to.

#BNHA #My Hero Academia #anti bakugo #mymetas

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legends-live-in-memories · 3 years

Text

Do You Believe in Magic?

AYO second day in a row can you believe it? I come with more content.

Fics Masterlist

Wallynette Oneshot 3.1K words (no warnings apply) Summary: “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

without further ado:

“That’s ridiculous!” He was pacing back and forth, arms waving in the air to compliment his theatrics. “Magic shouldn’t be able to do that, it defies all logic!”

“That’s the point! Magic exists outside of logical reasoning!” The shorter girl was equally as furious, standing in place and growing redder by the minute.

“Nothing exists outside of logical reasoning! Everything can easily be explained with science.” The redhead had paused his pacing to stare down the noirette before him. He was uncaring of his volume, ignorant to how his voice echoed in the large cave. “Your Lucky Charm is nothing more than transdimensional materialisation. An already pre-existing object is broken down into subatomic particles and rearranged at your location.”

“Are you really trying to tell me how my own Lucky Charm works?” She had sounded absolutely livid at the assumption. And Dick had to agree with her. Wally was in no position to tell her how her own powers worked. Before he could interject the screaming match between his two best friends, she was going off again. “And are you really trying to tell me that somewhere in the world existed a red and black-spotted doughnut just waiting to be used? That when Antibug was around a ladybug patterned flamethrower was just lying somewhere?”

“Oh please, there are plenty of flamethrowers all over the world and they probably only appeared ladybug themed due to shifts in light refraction.” He had stopped waving his arms around and crossed them in front of his chest. He was standing in her space now, leering over her trying to be imposing. “Simple fact is magic. Isn’t. Real.”

“You can run faster than the speed of sound! If you really think it was your precious science that saved you after willingly striking yourself with lightning in hopes of tapping into a cross-dimensional ‘speed-force,’ then you’re dumber than I thought.” She had gotten even closer now, pressing a finger into his chest and pushing him back.

“Are they still at this?” Kaldur had walked up beside Dick with two soda cans, silently offering him one. His voice sounded tired, visibly annoyed at the constant bickering.

“An hour and counting,” he sighs. The sounds of their bickering slowly faded into background noise. “For today at least. But they’ve been butting heads ever since she’s joined the team. Kinda exhausting.”

Marinette, a.k.a Ladybug, had joined the team after Wonder Woman deemed Paris officially safe from any more magical mayhem. While the rest of Paris’s heroes chose to retire and preserve the rest of their teen years, Marinette did not have that option. Magical Guardian and all. The JLE welcomed her with open arms and Wonder Woman decided to introduce her to the Team. She got along great with M'gann, the two could almost always be found baking or exchanging recipes in the cave’s kitchen and they, plus Artemis, went on frequent shopping trips. Conner saw her as a little sister, which was unexpected but it probably had to do with the fact she was a whole foot shorter and he had natural instincts to protect those who looked meek. She was anything but meek but first impressions were a damning thing sometimes. Marinette was Kaldur’s biggest supporter, always ready to back him up when it came to tough Team related decisions, something born from her own experience as a leader. The two understood each other the best. She also related to Dick on the importance of secret identities and while the Team still only knows him as Robin, she was the only one who never pestered him on it, respecting the lengths he would go to for the sake of anonymity.

Wally was the only one the newest member clashed with. Magic skeptic, meet magic connoisseur. Unstoppable force, meet immovable object. They almost never agreed on anything. Every time the two were left alone for more than two minutes it evolved into a screaming match. Wally was insistent on pushing all of Marinette’s buttons and she was always eager to defend herself and magic as a whole. Her rather short fuse didn’t make matters any better. It hadn’t affected missions, arguments reserved for the safety of the cave, but it was only a matter of time before that became an actual issue. He voiced as much to Kaldur who agreed with only a contemplative nod.

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

It’s moments like these where Kaldur hated when Robin was right. At least he was on another mission with Batman so he didn’t have to bear witness to this fiasco.

The Team was currently in Louisiana investigating the disappearance of Dr. Kent Nelson, better known as Dr. Fate, the Sorcerer Supreme. And Wally was being argumentative with Marinette while simultaneously trying to impress M'gann. It had put Artemis on edge and she kept taking jabs at him whenever an opportunity arose. And even when one didn’t.

They had just barely escaped the pit above lava, standing above the cool platform.

“Don’t worry, Megalicious,” Wally had moved to support M'gann, throwing an arm above her shoulders, drawing her into his side. “I’ve got you.”

“Enough!” Artemis had cut in between the two of them, pushing Wally away from the Martian, her frustration palpable even from where Kaldur was standing. “Your little ‘Impress Megan at all costs’ game nearly got us all barbecued.”

“When did this become my fault?”

“When you lied to that whatever it was and called yourself a true believer.”

“Wally, you don’t believe?” M'gann sounded hurt at that. Wally looked across the room, before coming to a silent conclusion.

“Fine, fine! I lied about believing in magic. But magic is the real lie, a major load.”

“I can’t believe you’re still on that.” Marinette, who had remained silent before, finally entered the conversation, ready to defend her craft. “We just fell over five hundred feet below ground into an almost fiery death and you still don’t believe it? Was the magically appearing Tower not enough? Or the fact that our feet are not being scorched right now?”

Wanting to put an end to this conversation, Kaldur said his piece.

“Wally, I have studied for a year at the Conservatory of Sorcery in Atlantis.” He had crouched down, rubbing the surface of the floor. “The mystic arts created the skin icons that power my water bearers.”

“Dude, have you ever heard of bioelectricity? Hey in primitive cultures fire was once considered magical too. Today it’s all just a bunch of tricks.”

“What I do is not a trick. Do you really think destroying the Eiffel Tower, and putting it back in place is just some trick? Or how about when an old akuma was able to control the weather and created a volcano in the middle of Paris? Were those all tricks too? Were the casualties just results of things that don’t exist?” Marinette was becoming increasingly agitated as her rant went on. M'gann moved to comfort her, embracing her slightly.

“Don’t put words in my mouth! I never said the lives lost weren’t real! It was tragic, yeah, but that was due to real scientific explanations.”

“Science can’t bring people back from the dead.” Her voice was more subdued and sombre and her shoulders were curling into her body. The atmosphere was increasingly getting more depressing so Kaldur grabbed onto the latch, hoping that making progress into the mission would revive the Team’s energy.

He ignored Wally’s protests about heat backdrafts and came face first to a rush of frigid air.

“Do you ever get tired of being wrong?” Artemis was rather smug as she threw a smirk over her shoulder. Kaldur just wished the rest of the mission wouldn’t be like this.

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

Artemis was going to tear her hair out. Or probably Wally’s. Yeah, she was going to tear Wally’s hair out. It had been a week since the Dr. Fate mission and he still hasn't apologized to Marinette. His refusal to believe in magic was not only screwing up the team dynamics but it was forcing Marinette’s hand, pushing her to dig up trauma, to try and prove to him that magic is real. Artemis didn’t understand why it was so important to her that Wally believed in magic but it was and that was enough for Artemis to stand by her friend.

The two haven’t even spoken to each other since the mission and it was painfully obvious that Marinette was avoiding him. Valid, but still aggravating when it put everyone on the team on edge. Artemis wasn’t one to play peacemaker, leaving that to Kaldur and Marinette, but since this ongoing conflict involved the Parasian, and Kaldur had his hands full with a mission in Atlantis, someone had to step up and that person was her. Wonderful.

She had tracked Wally in the medical facility, tinkering with some of the equipment and taking inventory of their supplies, a job Red Tornado routinely asks him to do. She skipped any greeting and just started plucking items out of his hands. Ignoring his protests, she kept going until his hands were empty then grabbed his wrist, pulling him into the training room and shoving him into the center ring.

“Shut up and stay,” was all she said, crossing her arms and freezing him with a glare. She wasn’t in the mood for any of his gimmicks tonight. The sound of the zetatubes announcing the Ladybug designation alerted her to Marinette’s return from Paris. Time for the next part of her plan.

“Don’t move,” she said as she turned to retrieve the other person for her plan. A firm ‘I mean it’ was tossed over her shoulder as she left.

Collecting Marinette was easier said than done. Artemis was headstrong on a good day, she will admit, but now as a woman on a mission she was down right intimidating and she knew it. Marinette took one look at her expression and bolted for the zetatube she just stepped out of. Artemis was having none of that and was able to grab the much shorter girl before she could get any further. While Artemis was mentally applauding herself she was also begrudgingly impressed with how difficult it was to hold the girl. Dragging her to the training deck was becoming more trouble than it was probably worth.

Artemis could pinpoint the exact moment Marinette’s eyes landed on the speedster because her efforts doubled and she almost escaped Artemis’s grasp. She dropped her gracelessly on the floor and moved to block the exit before either could do anything.

“Neither of you are leaving until you work out your issues,” she was huffing from exhaustion, both mental and physical. “Whether that means punching the shit out of each other or talking it out like normal people: I don’t care. But no one leaves this room until you two stop screwing with the team dynamics.”

She left no room for arguments and turned to stand outside the exit, giving them some semblance of privacy. If they didn’t work out their issues here, Artemis’s plan B involved Connor tossing them into the far end of the coastline. Hopefully, Wally and Marinette were reasonable enough it wouldn’t have to come to that.

Oh, who was she kidding?

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

Wally stared at Artemis’s retreating figure and then at a very interesting spot on the cave wall. He felt like an asshole all week and, after his experience with the helmet of Fate, he knew he would have to be the one to mend the ever growing gap between him and Marinette. Still, he couldn’t face her yet. Every time he looked at her, or saw her hastily leave any room he was in, his mind flashed to those haunting words she had said.

Science can’t bring people back from the dead.

He knew that. He knew there were harsh limitations on what science can and can’t do. Magic shouldn’t have been any different. And he thought he understood what she had to deal with during her time in Paris but he was wrong. He was so painfully wrong that it took his body being overtaken by a mystic ‘Lord of Order’ for him to really comprehend that. He just… He just couldn’t wrap his head around someone so young being entrusted with so much power. Magic was inexplicable. It defied reason and was unpredictable so he never understood how someone as self-assured as Marinette could put her faith in something that unreliable. So he lashed out at her. Then he did it again. And again so much so that he can’t remember ever having a civil conversation with her.

He messed up and he knew it but the shame he felt in the past week was too much for him to handle and he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

“Look,” his head snapped to the sound of her voice. She wasn’t looking at him, holding herself for comfort. “I’m sorry for ignoring you, I didn’t realise it was affecting the rest of the team.”

No. no no nonono.

She shouldn’t be apologizing. She had nothing to apologize for and Wally is the ass in this situation not her so why is she apologizing? He needs to fix this. Fast.

“You don’t need to apologize,” such a terrible start, Wallace. Congratulations. “I was the one who pushed your buttons and called magic a big trick.”

She had lifted her head slightly but her gaze still wasn’t focused on him, rather she was looking beyond him just above his shoulder. He took a step closer and when she hadn’t made a break for the exit, he took that as a good sign.

“Listen, Marinette,” her eyes dart to and away from him in an instant. He didn’t let that stop him though. “All those times, times when I called magic fake or belittled its legitimacy, I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was just trying to wrap my head around its absurdity.”

“It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do,” she finally locked her gaze on him and the pain swimming in her eyes was going to burn him alive. “You still hurt me. You took everything I did, everything I’ve learned and lost and loved and called it a hoax, you called it unreal, and you doubted everything I’ve ever accomplished. I have memories I may never recover from because of magic, scars that will never heal from something you didn’t want to believe in.”

There were unshed tears in her eyes and Wally wanted to brush them away. He didn’t, but fighting the urge was herculean of him. He didn’t get the chance to respond, though, but he wouldn’t dare interrupt her.

“Did you ever realise how those arguments affected me? I used to look up to you, Kid Flash, before joining the team.” He never knew that. Why didn’t he know that? “You were always so cheerful and the media framed you as someone who believed in the impossible. That was something I needed back in Paris. Because there was nothing more impossible to me than ever getting a chance to defeat Hawkmoth.”

She was openly crying now, her cheeks blotchy and eyes red. Wally didn’t know what to say so he took a chance and opened his arms to her. A silent invitation, a quiet apology. Whatever this little spitfire needed from him. He would willingly give it.

She took the offer and crashed her face into his chest, hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. He wrapped his arms snuggly around her, almost crushing her to his chest.

“I needed someone who believed in the impossible to believe in me.” Her sobs were heartbreaking. Wally could only caress her on the back in a futile attempt to comfort her. “That someone was you but then you had no problem looking me in the eye and saying you don’t believe in magic. How could you?”

“I am so sorry, Marinette.” He could never apologize enough. He was willing to dedicate his life making it up to her. He was silently praying to gods he also didn’t believe in that she would let him try. Before she could say anything, and he felt the hitch in her shoulders as she was taking steadying breaths to do so, he continued.

“I never knew what I—Kid Flash— meant to you. I only argued against magic so much because I didn’t want to believe that something that unpredictable was the only thing keeping someone like you safe. I heard all the stories; Wonder Woman loved to gush and brag about her mother’s successor, but I could never believe that someone could do such incredible things by magic alone. It was mind boggling.”

Wally felt more than heard the faint gasp at his confession. He pulled her off his chest, holding her a short distance by her shoulders, so that he could look into her eyes.

“I’m really sorry; I don’t think I can ever tell you how sorry I am.” She needed to know how genuine he was. He may clown around a lot but he was absolutely serious in this moment. He hoped she could see the sincerity in his eyes.

“I—,” she cut herself off, and Wally could see her growing frustrated with her own loss of words. She opened her mouth to speak again but she was interrupted.

“OH just kiss already!” Artemis’s rough voice echoed in the room and Wally’s gaze flashed to where her back was facing them by the entrance. She looked uncomfortable standing there but clearly she had an agenda she was seeing through. He didn’t pay her any more attention as he focused back on the increasingly red girl still within his grasps. The hurt that was previously in her eyes was quickly replaced with embarrassment and she couldn’t look Wally in the eyes.

He felt a sudden rush of confidence at her demeanor and hoped he wasn’t about to make the second biggest mistake of his life. He bent his head slightly, casting a smirk at the small girl.

“Well, if that’s what the people want,” he pulled her closer to him then, her mousy ‘eep’ sounding adorable in response. He cupped her chin between two fingers, tilting her head up. “May I?”

She didn’t speak but her answering nod and slow closing of her eyes encouraged him to close the distance between them.

Wally’s been struck by lightning before but it doesn’t compare to the feeling of her lips on his. Her lips tasted like slowly drying tears and her favourite vanilla lip balm. The kiss wasn’t perfect, her lips were slightly chapped, as were his, and their noses bumped into each other, but it was the best kiss of his life.

They broke away from the kiss but neither moved far from each other. They stayed like that for who knows how long. Staring intently at each other, committing the other’s face to memory. And as Wally stared at her tear streaked face and into her slightly red and puffy eyes, he came to a single conclusion.

He definitely believed in magic.

#maribat #mgi trope tussle #enemies to lovers #speed run #wallynette #I am doing such interesting rare pairs for some reason #mlb x dc #ml x dc #tumblr do me a solid #tumblr please stop hiding my posts #no beta this is tussle #mgi event #tumblr wtf pls #AAAAH i completely forgot to mention this was based off a specific piece of canon #yj series season 1 ep 7 btw

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ladyyatexel · 3 years

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I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

#yugioh #yu gi oh #ygo #there you go i can't imagine any other way you would decide was necessary to tag this #perhaps now that i have thrown this up i can #something #i don't know how i was going to finish that sentence #shut up lady

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gentrychild · 4 years

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Suspected Traitor Izuku Ideas

Note: Sorry this ended up being super long! I just really love the idea and wanted to put in some ideas of what I think could happen. It was all too long to fit into a couple asks, and I figured you would prefer a submission than 7+ asks in a row. These are also just some fun ideas I was thinking of for the au I thought you might enjoy lol

- - - -

Izuku gets interrogated and at first goes along with the questions. He doesn’t realize why he is there at first, until they ask more and more questions showing they suspect him for something. After the second or third question about his relation to the LOV he pieces it together. They think he’s a villain.

And instead of having a confused smile or nervous laugh, his eyes widen and he whispers “you think I’m the traitor.” It wasn’t hard for him to figure it out, after all he spent so much time analyzing and trying to deduct things quickly from situations where he barely was given any information, and they practically threw the answer in his face. He was probably one of the few students who was fully aware that there was a traitor from looking at the previous attacks.

He starts to shut down after realizing this, and when people start yelling or slamming things out of anger (because no one was actually going to get physical, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the room was off limits) he unconsciously reverts back to his old habits from when he was quirkless.

This can include, but is not limited to:

- A smaller frame to protect vitals and give less room to be hit

- A quite and passive voice to try appeasing their anger

- Distracting himself from the emotional pain by focusing on the physical stuff. Mentally keeping track over where everyone is, what they are doing, and how much of a threat they are to him

- Looking for any and all possible exits, even the ones that would result in him being hurt on his way out, just in case things get worse (and he fears that they may hurt him worse than before. In a world full of quirks, it’s easy for someone worked up to forget how easily they can kill someone, and Izuku probably has experienced more than once a situation that became life or death because a middle schooler was too worked up to process how much damage they were about to do)

- Eyes downcast due to fearing that eye contact would seem like he’s defying them or trying to irritate them in purpose (thanks Bakugou for that one)

- Holding back sudden movements or flinching, when going to the point of possibly hurting himself on purpose to prevent him from acting out.

- Holding his breath every time someone moves, but forcing his body to relax/tense up in case they attack him. When your body tenses up, it can absorb him impact, but can also cause other things like knives or needles to hurt more when they cut/go through the skin. So when there is someone who has a weapon visible (probably a means of intimidation) he quickly figures out which way will hurt less and forces himself to go through with that because of the constant thought of ‘just in case’

- Forcing himself not to cry or break down. That’s what some bullies want, but sometimes it also makes them even more upset. It gives them fuel, and always ends bad for the victim.

The teachers and others accusing him of being the traitor takes these signs as him lying or trying to hide the truth, those who don’t think it’s because he’s lying see the 'experience with interrogations’ aka trauma reactions and think he was trained by the villains to act this way. No one thinks about the fact that some of the reactions are clearly not helpful with interrogations and that the villains would train him to do the opposite (ex: stay calm and keep eye contact. You don’t have anything to hide and looking away makes it seem like you do).

The only two people who know his past refuse to acknowledge or bring it up.

All might doesn’t because he can’t risk the consequences of OFA getting out, but also because he only has a vague idea because of when he was shoeless himself.

Bakugou refuses to acknowledge the signs and the relapsing to his habits from middle school.

No one else realizes the cause, and as a result they accidentally reopen the trauma that Izuku hadn’t healed from. No, he had taken it and stuffed it into a box to avoid acknowledging that he was hurt. So he never talked to anyone about it, and as a result it just festered in his mind. His intrusive thoughts from all the victim-blaming he went through never went away (because let’s be honest, gaslighting and victim-blaming are things he probably went through as a result of the bullying. He couldn’t help being quirkless, but the bullies will latch onto anything and everything they can. And because they wanted to prevent themselves from having anything marked, if they made him think it was his fault then they felt it lowered the chances of them being reported)

During the pause of interrogation when they are having Tsukachi enter and he’s about to come in, he almost send himself into a dissociative/depressive episode because of his thoughts. He forces it back when the doors click open, thinking 'no, it’s just like before. No matter how much it hurts, wait until you’re safe. You’re not safe here, they will use it against you, so you have to wait until you’re alone and safe to finally break down.’

As a result, none of the adults fully realize how broken he is after the trap/interrogation is over. But its only a glimpse that they see, and nothing more. Because Izuku’s learned that weakness = vulnerable = targeted and hurt.

And now that he knows almost all his friends- no, his classmates were involved he knows he can’t break down anywhere near them. He can’t go over and let them know how broken he is or he thinks they’ll turn against him even more.

Someone brings up the 'logical’ aespect of the interrogation and their suspicions before he leaves and Izuku’s thoughts use that and forces it against him. 'It was only logical. Everyone was convinced you were going to hurt them, that you were evil. Of course they had to do it.’ He repeats it like a mantra in his head. 'It’s only logical, they did what they had to, and it’s almost over. You’re almost done, it was just the logical thing to do.’

And why is it this that he repeats this, instead of being angry or upset?

The victim-blaming.

His own intrusive thoughts were fuelled by the victim-blaming, and because it was what hurt the most, it was also what he was most accustomed to.

But when he finally gets back to the dorms, to the 'safety’ of his room, he knows he can’t break down. Not yet. After all, if they went through all that trouble because they thought he was the traitor, who’s to say they didn’t do more? His resurfaced paranoia/anxiety from the trauma makes him search his room for hidden cameras and microphones, desperate for at least one safe-space.

He finds nothing, thank god, but then he keeps pushing back his breakdown in search of exits, ways to avoid the most dangerous people or most likely to turn on him, ways to get by unseen and to avoid any situations that would be like Middle school. He stays up making notes and maps of the school and how to best protect himself because 'You’re already used to this. Shouldn’t have expected anything different. Stupid, idiotic, Deku. You put off finding the saferoutes because you thought it would be better to try playing nice. Look where that got you, now you have to stay up and make up the months of ignoring the inevitable.’

He doesn’t sleep that night, and when it becomes time for class he still hadn’t given himself time to break down. So he returns, but doesn’t pretend to be friends with any of his classmates anymore. He uses the ways he maps, brings out old tactics, just with the hope of making it through the day without being hurt or breaking down.

Lunch comes, but he doesn’t eat. He goes to the roof, finds an elevated area with no cameras and where people are unlikely to see him and sits down. It takes a moment, just a mere second of sitting there alone before he breaks.

He cries and let’s his regret and anger wash over him. All the feelings he had been pushing back finally breaking free and coming loose. He doesn’t eat, he never got the time, and right as he is starting to realize how badly hurt he really is, the bell rings signalling he needed to get to class. So he forces himself up, pushed all his emotions away, and tries to clean himself up in the bathroom.

He ends up in a dissociative state the rest of the way back to class, and when the others ask why he’s acting different or 'weird’, he doesn’t respond. He barely registers anything the rest of the day and when teachers try calling on him, hoping for some kind of reaction, they get nothing. He doesn’t process that he’s being talked to and just sits there dissociating in a desperate attempt of forcing himself not to break down again.

When classes end, the others try talking to him but eventually give up. He slowly realizes after everyone left that he was alone and he picks up his stuff and walks to the dorms on autopilot. He gets to his room and shut the door, and finally let’s himself finish the breakdown from on the roof. This time, though, he finally lets himself cry over everything. The entire past of abuse and neglect from his peers and adult figures in his life (minus his mom), the suicide-baiting, the victim-blaming, the bullying, accusations and mistrust, all of it. And he finally fully, truly breaks.

- - - -

#Ah yes more people who loves to hurt Izuku #Welcome #suspected traitor Izuku AU #submission

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inkykeiji · 3 years

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Hi Clari!!! I hope you're doing well and had an amazing weekend! I'm sorry if you've already answered something like this before! 😊

I was having big thoughts about the twins, but then I couldn't remember if you'd mentioned the other Todoroki siblings existing in this AU!?!

You may have done and I just missed it, but if the other siblings already do, and if not, did exist in the AU, what would the twins relationship be like with them?

I can imagine Touya being the more approachable of the two, I feel he'd click quite well with Fuyumi perhaps? They both give me those sort of caregiver vibes 😅

Natsuo and Dabi I can imagine being close, not quite as close as in the Touya - Nii series, but I can still imagine Natsuo looking up to both his big brothers because they're so cool! (Dabi is just that smidge cooler to him though 😌)

Would Shoto still be Enji's perfect poster boy, or would Touya have taken that spot?

Would the twins be open to sharing the reader with Natsuo like Touya-Nii did in the Snowman and Me series? Or is it strictly something kept between the twins?

Do the Todoroki family know about the reader and the twins relationship? Do they approve?

There are just too many thoughts for my one track mind 😩😌

It'd be really interesting to know your take! --- The anon who dreamt about living with Dabi on a ranch 🐥

hello sweetpea!!!! oh you’re so lovely <33 thank you bb i hope you had a wonderful weekend as well!!! <3

BUT ANONNNN I AM SHOUTING HAHAHAHA oh my gosh okay first of all you and i have got to be on the same wavelength today bb hehehe because i haven’t mentioned their relationship with the other todoroki siblings much on my blog but i do have (and have had) their relationships with each mapped out in my notebook for months now and i was literally looking it over when you sent this in!! <33

AH SO MANY GOOD QUESTIONS LET’S GET INTO IT WEEEEEEE <3

so first i’m going to link you to this post (which kinda just delves into their relationship with each other but touches upon other relationships in the family) and this post (which discusses dabi’s reaction to yelling and touches upon his trauma related to enji; pls heed the tws!!) but to reiterate and all that:

twin!touya pretty much gets along with all of his siblings in some way. he’s the perfect model of an older brother. as i mentioned in the first post linked above, touya is just really good at playing the part. twin!dabi, on the other hand, barely gets along with anyone other than his twin. he’s extremely difficult to be around about 97% of the time.

natsuo definitely does think both of his older brothers are super super cool, and he follows them around like a puppy when they’ll let him, but he’s actually closer to twin!touya than he is to twin!dabi, simply because twin!dabi won’t let him get too close; dabi’s extreme trust issues get in the way. still, natsuo was the only one there for dabi when touya had been taken from him, and that forged quite a lasting and deep bond, even if it terrifies dabi to this day, even if dabi tries his very hardest to shove natsuo away because of it, even if it’s still extremely complex; a jumbled, tangled mess in his heart. but natsuo understands, and he’s nothing if not resilient, so he kinda just bounces back from it each and every time. but twin!touya has a special soft spot for natsuo, because natsuo was there to take care of his baby twin brother when he wasn’t, and to touya, that means the whole world to him <3 touya hopes that one day his twin will let his guard down enough to let natsuo into his heart, too.

fuyumi is incredibly suspicious of twin!touya. she’s smart as a whip, just like he is, and she can read him like a book and knows when he’s up to something; and he’s always up to something. all she wants is for her family to get along, for god’s sake, and she knows touya’s a threat to that, because he knows how ridiculously manipulative he is, and how he’s planning something against their father—fuyumi is the only of the todoroki siblings that actually has sympathy for their father. thus, even though touya has told her time and again not to worry about it, that everyone will be happy in the end, she knows ‘the end’ does not include their father in any way, shape, or form. still, with that being said, they get along quite well, and they’re constantly throwing teasing quips each other’s way <3 when it comes to twin!dabi, fuyumi’s heart positively breaks for him. he shoves her away, too, because he doesn’t know how to deal with her overwhelming love, but that does not deter her in the slightest. she was there, she witnessed what happened to him, she helped natsuo take care of him in every way she could; in fact, fuyumi took care of that entire family after her mother left. but she has such a soft spot for twin!dabi in her heart, a special type of unconditional love and sympathy for him, and she’ll always be there for him, no matter how many callous insults he spits her way. she views him akin to a terrified animal, and she understands why he lashes out, and sometimes—very rarely, but sometimes—he will let her take him into her arms and hold him, hug him, shush him. she was pretty much the mother he never had for those years when he was without his twin, even though she’s a little younger than he is. so there’s a very interesting, very complex bond there as well.

shouto loves both of his eldest brothers so much. twin!touya loves him back, thinks he’s an absolutely brilliant kid and such a kind, beautiful soul, but he can’t help but feel some resentment towards him; residual feelings that have been transferred from his twin to him. still, he tries to bury them, because he knows none of this is actually shouto’s fault, and that their father is the true villain here, the true one to blame. as i mentioned in the first post linked above, twin!dabi hates shouto with a fierce passion, because he feels betrayed for his twin, betrayed by the way their father so quickly found an (inferior, in his opinion) replacement for touya—to mold into the perfect puppet—and he himself feels a little slighted, too, angry and offended that their father didn’t even try to mold him in replacement of his twin and just went straight to the next ‘perfect’ child, because twin!dabi was too much work, he’s sure. shouto is terrified of dabi, but he looks up to touya with absolute stars in his eyes <3

rei feels incredibly guilty. she likes to pretend that she doesn’t know why she took only twin!touya when she really should’ve taken them both, and will regret for the rest of her life seperating the two of them for a few years. it was incredibly selfish of her, to snatch touya up only because she knew it would hurt her husband the most, and to leave twin!dabi and the rest of her children there with such a brute for a father. dabi hates her for it, and she doesn’t blame him. she hopes one day he can find it in his heart to forgive her for such a horrible mistake, but she knows it’s a slim possibility. she is very, very close to twin!touya though.

i have already touched upon their relationship with enji in the posts linked above, but basically twin!touya IS still enji’s favourite, and enji only latched onto shouto after rei took touya away (during the divorce). touya is still first in line for the family business, and shouto acts as more or less of a back-up, in case touya fails. he’s also easier to control, which is quite appealing to enji, too.

and then, as you can tell, the twins themselves have a very, very unhealthy codependency on each other; they can barely function without one another now <3

ANYWAY LOVELY, THOSE ARE THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE SIBLINGS + THEIR PARENTS!!! to answer your last few questions:

would the twins be open to sharing the reader with natsuo like touya-nii did in the snowman and me series? or is it strictly something kept between the twins?

no, they absolutely would not share her with natsuo, this is something very special and sacred and kept strictly between them <3

do the todoroki family know about the reader and the twins relationship? do they approve?

EHEHEHEHE this is something i’m really really looking forward to exploring in the future of the series!!! because the angst potential is totally insane hehe <3 the answer is, it’s extremely complicated. enji doesn’t approve at all. like, at ALL. he hates to think what the press would think, if this ever got out, and he knows dabi would be more than willing to leak it; anything to hurt his father, right? natsuo thinks it’s SO awesome and super hot, fuyumi thinks it’s quite cute how they share everything, but worries for the poor sweet reader since she knows how her brothers can be, and shouto can’t even think about it without blushing and getting super embarrassed; he isn’t really sure what he thinks yet, but he feels like it’s more their business than his own. rei is on the fence; she wants her boys to be happy, but is this really the best and healthiest way to do it? does she even have a say in it at all? is it really her place or her right to step up and say something? she isn’t sure.

i hope this answers all of your questions bb!!!! thank you so much for asking aaaah i LOVE talking about stuff like this and i am super super excited to explore it deeper within the series!!!! AH EHEHE I REMEMBER U AND UR DREAM <3333 aw such a cute lil chick emoji 🥺🥺 i hope you’re doing wonderful my friend and i wish you many more touya dreams in the future <3

#SUCH GOOOOOOD QUESTIONS!!!! THANK U SO MUCH #SORRY MY POST IS SOOOOOO LONG HAHAHAHA i have pages upon pages of this in my journal so i tried to condense it and not give too much away <3 #i just wanted to capture the essence of each relationship and let u know <3 #if u have anymore questions pls let me know!!!!#have an amazing week sweetpea!!! <33 #i am sending u lots n lots of love and health!! as always pls stay safe!!#inky.bb #FARMER TOUYA DREAMER #LMAO <333 #clari gets mail #inky.twins #todoroki twins dabi and touya

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lassieposting · 3 years

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Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying.

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas. There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

#skulduggery pleasant #sp meta #derek landy hate blog #Anon #fire message #anti valitsa #anti val #anti phase two tbh #phase two fans will not enjoy this post

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johannas-motivational-insults · 4 years

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“Friendship” in the Horde

Season 4 raised some interesting questions about how people who grew up in the Horde define friendship. Kyle claimed that his squadmates were his friends, despite how we've seen them bully him, and Scorpia admitted she didn’t even know how to be a good friend. We also saw further developments in Catra and Lonnie’s dynamic that have some interesting implications about their bond, both past and present. However, while these themes became more explicit this season, they are hardly new. The Horde worldbuilding is really quite brilliant, as the writers have been laying the foundation for these revelations by showcasing certain patterns since season one.

This got a little lengthy on me, but there was a lot to consider. The lack of healthy emotional expression and relationship modelling is one obvious problem in the Horde, but the hostile environment has also led to some very specific power dynamics and social structures. These structures, while potentially helpful in hostile environments, are maladaptive in terms of fostering healthy relationships. Ultimately, every character who grew up in the Horde is emotionally crippled. (I’m not even going into Adora, an excellent example, because her repression and communication problems are well-documented and I wanted to focus on characters still in this environment.)

Scorpia

Let’s start with Scorpia. Her revelation that she doesn’t understand what friendship is was a big moment for her, but for those of us who have been watching closely, it’s no big surprise. Scorpia was so desperate for a meaningful connection that she latched onto the first person who showed any signs of considering her a friend, ignoring all the red flags indicating that the relationship was not healthy. Actually, she didn’t ignore them so much as not recognize them, because she didn’t even know what a healthy relationship looks like. To her, the fact that Catra invited her to her room and chose her to accompany her on a mission was enough for her to dub them the Superpal Duo.

Of course, we all know how that went for her. She continued to support Catra unconditionally despite the latter’s tendency to use Scorpia as her emotional punching bag. They did settle into a somewhat more reciprocal and caring relationship after Scorpia saved Catra against her orders during 2x05, proving that Catra was more important to her than the mission (even if that wasn’t what Catra thought she wanted). It’s sad when you think about it, because that was probably the first time Catra ever experienced her wellbeing being prioritized above all else.

Unfortunately, the revelation that Shadow Weaver had gone running back to Adora after betraying her triggered a trauma response and made her clam up again, lashing out at Scorpia and shutting her out even though she had done nothing to betray her trust. It took Catra blatantly attacking and insulting Scorpia when she failed to bring back Entrapta’s recordings (and some well timed reality checks from Emily) for Scorpia to realize that Catra was being a bad friend and she couldn’t win her over by being a good friend.

And actually, Scorpia’s confession in 4x10 that she “thought” she was being a good friend to Catra implies that she had since realized that she wasn’t actually being a good friend to Catra either. She knows the scorpions were a loyal people and she ascribes to that ideal, and she has so much love to give and always tries so hard to be positive, but not setting boundaries with people or demanding a measure of basic respect does nothing for them or you. Also, you can’t ignore the fact that Scorpia forced her affections on Catra, inserting herself into Catra’s life in a way that made her uncomfortable, and continued to ignore Catra’s attempts at setting boundaries with her (which is also very disrespectful). While Catra was certainly the aggressor, she was not the only one who failed in this partnership.

Let’s go back for a moment to Scorpia’s earliest indication that Catra might want to be her friend, when she confides in her and enlists her help coming up with and then executing a plan. Being chosen as Catra’s wingman seems to be important here, and perhaps she was wilfully ignoring how she was the only person who could make Catra’s plan work, but being confided in and trusted was huge to her. And since Horde soldiers are so used to being used, they don’t see it as a red flag. Catra actually flat out said Scorpia was the only person she could trust. How could a lonely gay not interpret that as a sign of being special to someone?

The squad

The importance of trust also becomes evident when considering the interactions among the main squad. Loyalty seems to be paramount in the Horde, not just the scorpion kingdom. Adora defecting to the Rebellion and leaving her squad behind was seen as a huge betrayal, and not just by Catra. Did anyone else want to cry when Lonnie struck back at Adora with “we were your friends” in 1x09? Lonnie was deeply hurt by Adora’s abandonment, feeding into her disillusionment with the Horde. Similarly, when Double Trouble revealed they had double-crossed Catra, her devastated reaction was not that her plans were ruined, but that they had betrayed her. That no doubt was also related to her previous betrayals, but also serves to highlight the importance of loyalty in their subculture.

While all the Horde characters were interesting to watch this season when it came to the themes of friendship, the arc was most pronounced in Lonnie. As I’ve mentioned previously, Scorpia had a short arc over one episode where her rosy worldview was destroyed, causing her to leave (much like Adora), while Lonnie was already a cynic who was aware of the Horde’s imperfections and had to go through more extreme hardships to detach from this unhappy but familiar environment (much like Catra, we hope).

Though she and the boys didn’t leave the Horde until the finale, her disillusionment was already evident in her first episode this season. After Catra berated them for something that wasn’t their fault and demanded they risk their lives to fix it (big Hordak energy), she had her first big revelation: “Catra doesn’t care about us, Adora left us. Everything they taught us in the Horde about loyalty is meaningless. It’s everyone for themselves.” In the next episode, she was frustrated by Scorpia’s naïve enthusiasm and trust in Catra, but it took a big blow up between her and Catra for her to finally decide she was done with her, done with the Horde in general.

Kyle represents a sort of middle ground between Lonnie and Scorpia in terms of outlook. He was not treated well in the Horde, but still believed in the ideals of loyalty and squad unity. He wanted to believe Catra had sent them out on a mission into the Whispering Woods because she trusted them and wanted it to be a team-building exercise. His take on it was: “She may be mean, but we’ve always had each other’s backs. Ever since we were kids.” He saw the squad as his family, including Catra (and previously Adora). It took Catra baring her claws and threatening to attack Lonnie outside of a battle sim for him to lose faith in her.

Bullying, the pecking order, and squad unity

As is clear by this point, the Horde defections this season were driven by Catra mistreating the others, but we can’t lose sight of how mistreatment is a fact of daily life in the Horde. And as I mentioned above with Lonnie, it’s those who were most aware of and desensitized to the mistreatment who had the hardest time naming it and leaving the toxic environment. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, call it the sunk cost fallacy, but either way once you’ve submitted to a system that dehumanizes you, it’s hard to admit that that system is wrong and leave it for a better life. Scorpia and Adora grew up somewhat privileged in the Horde in that they were destined for greatness, so they were never abused overtly and they had a level of protection from power-hungry cadets looking to claw their way to the top of the heap. They were already at the top and couldn’t be taken down, so they didn’t have to bully or be bullied.

The importance of pecking order is much more evident when considering people like Kyle, Catra, and Lonnie. Within their squad, Kyle is obviously the omega of the gang (get your heads out of the gutter, that is not what I mean), the one who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong and is constantly getting picked on. Lonnie shits on him, Catra shits on him, and even Rogelio gives him shit and goes along with the blame game. Despite all this, Kyle considers them his friends, his family.

This starts to make sense when you consider it in terms of intra vs. extra squad relations. Maybe the squad didn’t show Kyle any respect or treat him with kindness, but they did protect him in battle sims (sometimes lol) and rescue him from the spore storm. You also kind of get the impression that although they bullied him and asserted their dominance on the regs, they would protect him if other people tried to hurt him. You might say he’s the pet of the gang – he has no power within the structure and it may not be pleasant, but the structure still offers advantages. Having allies was still good for him even if he was at the bottom of the pecking order within the alliance.

Through a sociology lens, you might say the squad (and the Horde in general, given it’s a military society) follows the stereotypical male model of friend groups with clear pecking orders that everyone buys into (with exceptions for blatant power struggles), as opposed to the stereotypical female model that appears less hostile and more cooperative outwardly but involves a lot of underhanded infighting. (Obviously those are broad generalizations and it can be argued how much of it is nature vs. nurture, but they are observable patterns that boys and girls are socialized into in many human societies.) This ties in interestingly to @jaelav3‘s observations about masculinity equating to strength and femininity equating to power in the Horde (a meta she really needs to write, because it’s brilliant). The hostility of the Horde forces soldiers into these rigid pecking orders in order to find protection in a dangerous place. When everyone knows and accepts their role, it is easier for the squad to function in a unified manner and protect each other, even if it’s at the cost of their mental and emotional health.

Now, when not everybody buys into the pecking order or it’s ambiguous, and/or if there’s a sudden power vacuum, that’s when things get interesting…

Catra and Lonnie, the perfect case study

Catra also suffered a lot of bullying and abuse in the Horde, but in a very different way than Kyle. She was in a unique and kind of contradictory position where she was somewhat protected by her close friendship with Adora, but she was also Shadow Weaver’s favourite chew toy and everyone knew it, which made her a target as well. If Shadow Weaver abused her, she wasn’t going to care if the other cadets abused her as well. Catra’s defensive body language and general distrustfulness and hostility gives the impression that she was bullied behind Adora’s back and Shadow Weaver turned a blind eye, perhaps even encouraged it.

This was all illustrated in 1x03, when Catra and Lonnie butted heads and Catra was forced to back down when two other cadets backed up Lonnie, then Lonnie told her to watch it because Adora wasn’t around to protect her anymore. That one line alone told so much of their story. This was also one of the few times we saw cadets using people from other squads to affect their own squad’s dynamics, as – like I said – that seems to be kept mostly in-house. It may have had something to do with Lonnie’s overall standing among the cadets or how Kyle and Rogelio rank lower in their little hierarchy and seem uninterested in getting involved with the power politics, but I digress.

The argument itself was meaningless, really - the whole thing was a pissing contest, an attempt to assert dominance within their squad’s sudden power vacuum. Lonnie fancied herself the new leader of the squad, and she ended up getting her wish in a backwards way when Catra was promoted out of the squad and given official power over her. Catra, of course, took every opportunity to rub this in Lonnie’s face, perpetuating the cycle of abuse she’d fallen victim to.

The reason they had a power struggle in the first place wasn’t just because Adora left, it was because their pecking order was previously unclear. Catra wasn’t very cooperative and tended to go rogue, so she didn’t slot nicely into the power structure. She was also perceived as lazy, as she had adopted an air of nonchalance once she realized she’d never get the recognition or praise so easily heaped on Adora. (Why try when failing hurts so much?) That being said, she was Adora’s best friend and basically her sidekick, so in a way that made her second-in-command of the squad.

On the other hand, Lonnie was devoted to the squad and was always around to provide tangible support, so she was also kind of Adora’s second-in-command. Combined with her harder work ethic, this also gave her a very legitimate claim to the throne. She was obviously pissed when her teammate she saw as a lazy asshat got promoted, but to her credit she lived up to her own personal ethics, buying in and not pushing back against Catra’s authority until late in season 4.

Despite the power struggle, however, Catra and Lonnie do seem to have a bond. Even if they don’t like each other, they have a certain level of trust in each other. When the princesses invaded the Fright Zone in 3x04 and shit started to go sideways, the first person Catra was looking for to try to get support and/or answers was Lonnie. Then in 4x10 when she was starting to lose her mind amid a lack of sleep and Scorpia’s defection, she pulled Lonnie aside and demanded to know what was going on among the soldiers, what they thought of her.

This was an incredibly interesting scene with some deep implications. Because while it was on one hand an expression of trust in Lonnie, it was also an acknowledgement that Lonnie was one of her bullies and held clout among the people who have demeaned and abused her in the past. It also showed that Catra still has social anxiety and her sense of social power (as opposed to power in terms of rank) is very fragile, which is extremely characteristic of a bullying victim. Also, the fact that Catra said, “Just leave. Like everybody else.” implied that Lonnie leaving would hurt her emotionally, which is rather illuminating.

As for Lonnie, her loyalty meant she bought into the system and expected to Catra to do her job running the place, taking care of the Horde. And Catra certainly succeeded early on, taking territory and increasing productivity. In return, Lonnie was a loyal and obedient soldier, even if she never hesitated to give Catra a bit of attitude. But she became frustrated in season 4 when Catra went on her sunk cost fallacy spiral and ended up making things worse for everyone else as well as herself. This failure was a huge betrayal to Lonnie, and it’s important to note that she wouldn’t feel betrayed or disappointed if she had expected nothing of Catra in the first place. It’s one thing to be kind of a dick about your superior rank, another entirely to endanger your squad/friends (or anyone you are responsible for, really) and run them into the ground as a remedy for your own anxiety.

The breaking point of course was the scene in the locker room in 4x12, when a lonely Catra tried to be “friends” with the squad again and was briefly successful in mending fences a little until she snapped at Kyle and then at Lonnie, calling them pathetic. This prompted Lonnie to shove her, which in turn made Catra bare her claws and rush Lonnie. There was really no coming back from that, even though Kyle intervened before anyone got hurt.

As an aside, Kyle stepping up in this scene was amazing - this season in general was everything I wanted for him. And it’s important that it was him who intervened, because he was really the only one who could ask Catra, “We used to be your friends, why are you treating us like this?” It makes perfect sense for Catra to push back at Lonnie given their history, but Kyle doesn’t have a history of bullying Catra (quite the opposite). And wow, it had an impact on Catra. You could just see the confusion and regret on her face before she brings back the façade of anger and kicks them out.

When the squad left the Horde, Lonnie said that they were done protecting Catra. This assertion is interesting, given their checkered past – since when was anyone protecting Catra? Lonnie bullied her, and none of them protected Catra from Shadow Weaver, not even Adora (though bless her heart, she tried). But this does make some sense when you consider how much of the idea of friendship is based on loyalty, and how important that adherence to the structure is for protection. In Lonnie’s mind, even if Catra was now their commander, they were still a unit in a way. And she saw standing by and obeying Catra to be a form of protection, helping her stay respected and carry out her plans. Lonnie is a good support person, and by removing her support, she was in a way removing her protection as well.

(After the series is over I might just go all out and do a huge-ass meta about Catra and Lonnie through the seasons. I am absolutely fascinated by this relationship, if you can’t tell.)

Allyship

Overall, you can’t help but get the impression that the Horde’s version of friendship is more akin to allyship. It’s protection, unity, loyalty. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t get emotionally attached, it’s more that how you feel about someone is less important than what that relationship can do for you. That’s why Scorpia doesn’t even understand what friendship is. That’s why Catra tolerates “friends” who annoy her, because they’re useful to her (not that she doesn’t get attached in time, but that’s not why she tolerates them in the first place).

Catra’s one of the few people in the Horde who has experienced real friendship, as her bond with Adora was much more emotional than practical (even if it was both). And that explains why she eventually lashed out at Scorpia and said they were not friends when clearly they were by the Horde’s definition. Her and Adora really had taken the friends thing to a different level, and she was missing that dearly.

It will be interesting to watch the interactions between the Horde characters when they are thrown back together in new circumstances, out of the Horde’s rigid power structure. Honestly, the redefining of these alliances and friendships is one of the things I am most looking forward to in the final season.

#spop #she-ra #she ra #meta #the horde #catralonnie #scorptra #catradora #horde squad #catra #scorpia #lonnie #kyle #rogelio #adora #bullying #abuse #sociology

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