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mania-sama · 3 months

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A Look into Mental Health: Jujutsu Kaisen Analysis

"Being a child is not a sin." (Nanami Kento, Jujutsu Kaisen)

With the release of Chapter 251, I've seen many horrible takes from dudebros saying that Megumi has "sold" the team. This makes me unreasonably angry because of course it does, so obviously my next plan of action is to take all of my hour-long rants about the mental health of JJK characters and put it here, where said dudebros will never see my (correct) analysis in their entire life. Oh well.

One thing Gege is really, really good at is creating believable, undeniably human, and complex characters. Every character has a different set of motivations, beliefs, ideals, and especially mental states. The constant theme of Jujutsu Kiasen has been "Strength vs Weakness". While the clearest interpretation can be seen through the physical attributes of the characters (Gojo being the strongest sorcerer of his time due to his abilities, and Miwa being one of the weakest, again, due to her abilities), it is also directly applied to the mental strength of characters. No two characters are able to withstand the same trauma and come out the exact same, just as no two real people can process the same trauma. Not only is it a result of nature, as people are genetically different and therefore process information differently, but a product of nurture - in other words, character motivation and environment.

This is where we come to the current state of the manga, Chapter 251. The fated Yuuji vs Megumi debate. I keep seeing people wildly misunderstanding these two, and why it's so important that Megumi isn't standing up to fight, why he isn't able to handle his trauma, when Yuuji can.

Gege writes phenomenal characters. And I want to express just how well done they are, making Jujutsu Kaisen actually kind of deserve its popularity, because some people only care about power scaling. I'm going to touch on Megumi last, because understanding all of the other characters' makes his visible struggle that much more impactful.

1. Geto Suguru

I want to start this mental health analysis with Geto. He is the best representation of depression I've ever seen in Shonen. It doesn't take a hundred chapters to showcase a character's downfall. It doesn't take a hundred significant events to cause a character to break down. Gege shows the best, realistic mental breakdown using only a handful of chapters, and still makes it slow and painful.

Depression can start because of a big event, but it doesn't take more for it to worsen. Untreated, depression runs a vicious course that eats a person through slowly but effectively. It isn't one screaming session, hands clutched over the head and cursing God and the world. It's everything piled onto each other. It's coming to the end of that pile and realizing that nothing will ever change.

This is Geto Suguru's story. He has a big event: the fight with Toji and the failure to save Riko. But his mental health journey was fated to decline, even without the fight and failure. The root issue of his depression came from his ability: Cursed Spirit Manipulation. As long as he kept devouring the embodiment of every vile, human emotion, the more he would lose himself to that vileness. He wasn't changing anything; he couldn't help but continue to swim in negativity because that's all he could do.

Gege wasn't making a commentary on Geto's ability. He was talking about people, as they are, and how staying in a bad situation will not always make you stronger. It can, and most likely will, make you worse. A direct comparison to the sixteen-year-old Geto would be a sixteen-year-old at school, surrounded by people who bully and pick on them with harsh words. The kid will eventually consume all of that bullying, all of that negativity, into their being, because there is simply nowhere else to go. School is mandatory; they can't just leave. They eventually feel isolated, with all that vileness piled on. Even if they have friends, those people could never understand what it's like to put up with humiliation and cruelty day after day.

It's not rational to push away a support system, but who said human beings are always rational? People make mistakes. They don't make the right decisions. Geto didn't. He saw someone offer him a chance at change, a possible light at the top of his pile and twisted it to match his overwhelming negativity. He left and swore to destroy the world that made him the way he is, just as that bullied child may turn away from school and society in whatever form that may take.

I want to touch on the physical aspects of Geto's depression, too. I noted this in a previous analysis I did on him (his character is just that amazing, what can I say?), but Gege knew that the mind can't be affected alone. Geto was drawn with deep eyebags, a nod to an inability to sleep or needing to sleep all the time. Depression makes you tired all the time. Everything becomes difficult. He sits with his back hunched, resting his weight on his knees, like sitting upright is too hard. When someone speaks to him, he blinks and takes a second too long to look over or respond, like speaking takes too much energy. To me, it even looked like he was becoming thinner. It's extremely difficult to maintain a schedule of exercise and mealtimes when your mind is fighting an active war against itself.

Again, a beautiful representation of depression. Geto means a lot to me in this aspect.

2. Gojo Satoru

In comparison to Geto, Gojo's horrible mental health is a lot subtler. Depression isn't the correct term, but you don't have to be depressed to be sad. Sadness is his stagnant state; he has moments of bliss, goals to work towards, a reason to keep going, to continue living, to continue chasing the sun over the horizon, but he does return to the same place he is always at when the lights turn off and he's painfully reminded of this one fact: he is isolated.

All of Gojo's problems start and end with isolation. From the moment he was born, everyone knew he was different. He knew he was different. Through glimpses of his childhood and honestly reading between the lines, it's obvious he never played with kids his age. People don't just develop a superiority complex with their only drive to be better than literally everyone else for no other reason than to get better. It comes from somewhere, and in Gojo's case, it's from his young childhood. It seriously messed him up; even now, he can't shake the lesson that "Strength is the only way to success and happiness".

This is what made Geto so important. Geto was somebody who could share the burden of being the strongest. Geto was someone his age who understood him in a way Shoko could not, though they both were able to see Gojo beyond his capabilities as a Jujutsu sorcerer. Gojo then had somebody to base his moral principles on. Because he couldn't connect with anybody else, he had no basis other than strength. Geto taught him why it was important for the strong to protect the weak.

Then everything went wrong. Gojo became isolated again in his strength and lost the only person who could plausibly stand with him. "Are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru, or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest?" Gojo was young, then, and fresh-faced into his newfound godhood. He didn't kill Geto in that moment because he wanted to deny the claim that he is nothing without his strength, that he isn't as shallow as he was raised to be.

But he knew better. He grew older, he killed his best friend, and he realized that he was nothing without his strength. He never got over Geto. In order to cope with the guilt of being unable to save him when he left, he adopted a whole kid, thinking that if he wasn't strong enough to save Geto, maybe he could save Megumi. But there it is all over again - he never broke from the cycle of strength defining his worth. Saving Megumi would define his strength, right? It would prove Geto wrong, right? He raised Megumi under the same logic (that the only way to save his sister is to be strong), only ridding the boy of the crushing isolation.

In this way, Gojo isn't mentally weak. He didn't abandon society and everyone who loved him, instead choosing to hone the trauma of his isolated childhood into a weapon and teach the next generation to be better than himself. He isn't depressed, but he isn't happy. You can't be happy if you're alone all of the time. He hoped Megumi could be someone to stand by him, but in the end, he failed to save Megumi. His strength couldn't save him, just as it couldn't save Geto.

He isn't mentally strong. He isn't weak, either. He is horribly, painfully average. He's not weak enough to be saved, but not strong enough to save others. His childhood plagues him, but not to the point where it prevents him from living. He killed Geto but was unable to bury the body. Gojo is everything he never wanted to be.

As it turns out, strength can't buy you happiness. Gojo may have understood that, but he couldn't abandon it, even to the bitter end. Just as a human struggles to shed their conditioning. Not everyone can break the cycle, but we are always trying our best to work with what we've been dealt.

3. Okkotsu Yuuta

I'm putting Yuuta in between Gojo & Geto and Itadori & Megumi because he is, in a way, a bridge between the two. Geto and Gojo have lived their lives; their stories are complete and ended in tragedy. Itadori and Megumi's are not. They are still actively struggling and fighting their physical and mental battles; their stories have yet to be completed.

Yuuta's story isn't technically completed (ignoring everything that happened in the recent chapter with him for the sake of MY mental health), he is still a success story. He is the average protagonist who started from the bottom and ended up at the top. Only he, as Gege has done time and time again, has a slightly stronger focus on mental health than most other Shonen. He is success where Gojo & Geto failed, and the success that Itadori & Megumi are narratively striving for.

At the beginning, Yuuta was depressed and suicidal. He was bullied at school and involuntarily hurting others. Instead of becoming resentful of the world, he pushed all of the vileness inward. His guilt caused him to try to take his life, presumably multiple times, but Rika stopped him before he could succeed. His life was effectively out of his hands; he felt powerless with all of the bodies stacking around him, and he couldn't atone for "his" actions.

His mental health, as it was, was in shambles. Gojo then offered him a way forward. Yuuta's mental health did not improve overnight. It was when he made friends at Jujutsu High, and developed a support system, that he was able to relieve his anxiety and realize that life is not so bad after all. That all of this pain and suffering and loss - it will pass.

The most important thing to acknowledge when it comes to Yuuta is the sheer fact that he was not alone, nor did he allow himself to be alone. Unlike Gojo, who still had Shoko and Nanami after Geto left but refused to connect with them, Yuuta allowed himself to get close to those around him. They didn't know the suffering he'd undergone for so many years. They didn't know what it was like to be him, but that was okay. He knew that they had empathy, that even though they could never experience his life, they could still be there for him now when he falls.

When given the opportunity to surrender, Yuuta stands in the face of one Geto Suguru and swears to protect his friends and fight with Rika. He's so far removed from the boy who tried to kill himself at the beginning of the manga, and that's because he let himself be changed. He did not succumb. He had friends, he knew. People that would miss him if he left, and people whom he would regret leaving.

This stays consistent with his character. He doesn't let himself become isolated in his strength or his experiences. He's much stronger than everyone else in the room, he's a special grade and he knows that, but he still treats everyone like they are equals. Like they are his friends, like they are people who could share this burden of existence with him. This is something that Gojo couldn't accomplish, which lends to the fact that Gojo had a very off-hand teaching method when it came to mentoring Yuuta. Instead of influencing him under this idea of strength conquers all, he let Yuuta develop far away from the ideals of the Japanese Jujutsu Society.

And, in the end, the fact of him being physically strong - a special-grade sorcerer from the get-go - never helped him in his mental health. In fact, it made him miserable until he learned to get a handle on Rika. His winning or losing that fight with Geto wasn't the point of his character, it was reckoning with the fact that he is okay now. That he can embrace the ugly part of him with dignity instead of guilt.

4. Itadori Yuuji

Itadori's entire character is that he has an unbreakable spirit. As the only one who can bear the soul of Sukuna, he started off like Yuuta, only on the opposite end of the mental health spectrum. When we first see him, he's happy, spending his afternoons with the Occult Club and watching movies.

... What happened?

Like Geto, everything piled on very slowly. So slow that I'm not even sure he felt the true effects of everything he experienced up until the fall of Shibuya. It starts with the death of grandfather, whose parting words "Just save as many people as you can" haunt him even now during the final fight with Sukuna. He was never given time to properly grieve his grandfather, just as he never had time to grieve the brother curses, Junpei, Nanami, Nobara, Gojo, Higurama. At the end of it all, when the fighting is over, I have to wonder what will become of the boy that realizes he's lost most of the people he loved.

The one time he did try to process it, when he realized that he couldn't control Sukuna, was when he broke down in Shibuya. Sukuna leveled an entire city. For the boy who never wanted to kill another human being for fear of devaluing life, the weight of his weakness killing thousands was crushing. Then Nanami died. Nobara died (still hanging onto that unknown status but I digress). Both are right in front of him, and powerless to prevent Mahito from disintegrating their bodies. So, obviously, Itadori broke down. The boy with the unshakeable spirit, the only person who could contain the King of Curses, has his psyche completely shattered.

He laid on the ground, and he wouldn't have gotten back up if there wasn't somebody to help him, to be there with him. Todo pulled him back together, stitched back up the broken into somebody who has allies and people to fight for. Itadori has the success that Yuuta had, only Itadori did not come out of it with better mental health.

After the breakdown, his unshakeable spirit was nothing more than the will to keep fighting. He cares little for himself, and he tries to distance himself from people to prevent them from dying from his cursed hands. He is jumping, quickly, down the same rabbit hole that Geto fell down. One big event, and they realize just how tall the pile already is, and that it will never stop growing. Unlike Geto, however, he continues to get overbearing support from those around him. Against his will. He can't push them away, for they refuse to leave his side. Yuuta, Choso, Megumi, even Higurama. They won't let him fall. This makes him better off than someone alone, in a sense. He can withstand his trauma when others may not.

Even so, even so, there is only so much support, the lack of self-isolation, can do when the traumas keep actively repeating. When he says that he will gladly die to defeat Sukuna, it is not said with the same tone that another Shonen protagonist would say it. Take Naruto for example. If he were to go into a battle to protect, say, Sasuke, he would scream, "I'll die to protect him." We understand that his willpower is stronger than his self-preservation, but we don't get the idea that he actively wants to die. He'll die if he has to. Now, Itadori says the same thing, but about saving Megumi. He says, "I'll gladly die." There is something different. His willpower is leaps and bounds stronger than his self-preservation, but that's not only it. There is an undercurrent of severe suicidal ideation prevalent in Itadori's tone. It's not that he will die to win, it's that a part of him wants for this to be his final fight. For it all to be over. To save Megumi, then atone for the sin of being too weak to save Shibuya, or being unable to stop the Culling Games, or letting Megumi get hurt when all he wanted was to keep him safe.

I'd call it more along the lines of passive suicidal ideation. He doesn't plan to kill himself, but what would it mean for him to go into dangerous situations without protection? What would it mean for him to succumb to his wounds after he wakes Megumi's soul and kills Sukuna? To not even try to seek medical attention? He's guilty. He believes everything that happened in Shibuya and after is his fault. When faced with the executioner's sword, he was ready to die for his sins, if not for the goal of ending the Games. There is a fine line between willing to die for those you love versus wanting to die for those you love.

Right now, Itadori is fighting to save one person, like his grandfather said. He is not fighting to survive. And that's what people fail to understand about Itadori when they compare him to the other members of the cast. These power-scaling dudebros don't understand that their favorite OP main character has fallen apart at the seams, that his unshakeable spirit to save people doesn't include himself.

5. Fushiguro Megumi

Here we finally come to the question: Why can Itadori take it when Megumi can't? There is a very similar quote that you probably think of whenever you hear this question asked. It's from The Outsiders: "Dally is tougher than I am. Why can I take it when Dally can't?" The answer to this question that Ponyboy gives is the same we can attribute to Megumi. "And then I knew. Johnny was the only thing Dally loved. And now Johnny was gone."

The entire reason Megumi became a Jujutsu sorcerer was to protect his sister. When he was five years old and probably too young to understand most of the words Gojo said, he accepted the offer of training to become a sorcerer in exchange for Tsumiki's happiness. Every day, he fought to protect her. He only had one goal in entering the Culling Games: to prevent Tsumiki from having to participate.

It's easy to attribute Megumi's constant attempts at summoning Mahoraga to a lack of will to live - suicidal ideation, the same that Itadori now experiences. On one hand, I do understand that he has a fundamental lack of care for his own life, but on the other, I don't think that he intends to throw it all away every single time. He just didn't know any better. Ignorance can lead to death as easily as intentionally seeking it out. That's why he changes his habit after Gojo gives him a lesson in risking death versus dying to win; Megumi still has someone to live for, after all.

Megumi's mental health was already rocky from the start. Not that it was in shambles like Yuuta, but he wasn't fully stable. Like a lot of teenagers, he's moody, somewhat reclusive, and only really likes one or two people maximum. Teenagers aren't known for their sunshine mental health anyway.

Megumi was given time to grieve Itadori after he first died. This trauma of losing him in front of his eyes stuck with him, but he was allowed a grace period of two months to grieve with Nobara. He experienced Shibuya, too, but he still had that one important person to protect. His mental health was alright at this point, all things considered. As long as his sister was alive, he would be fine.

Sukuna knew this. So Sukuna killed Tsumiki using only the Ten Shadows Teqchnique. The one person Megumi spent his whole life dedicated to, was killed by his own cursed technique, his own failure to suppress Sukuna.

In the void of his soul, Megumi was alone. Truly, utterly alone. The only person nearby was Sukuna, the murderer of his sister, the murderer of thousands upon thousands of people. He drowned in the ceremonial bath of crushed curses to hold his soul down in the depths of despair, literally drenched in all of the vileness the world has to offer. Sukuna killed Gojo using Mahoraga's adaption ability, and before that, Megumi was forced to take several of Gojo's mind-altering domain expansions.

Already, he had given up. He gave up when his sister died, but the rest ground a pointed spur into his neck. When Itadori shakes his soul, Megumi is repeating, "That's enough." He was at the end of his rope a long time ago. What more is there to keep living for? He doesn't want to live with the blood of his sister, the blood of the man who practically raised him, and the blood of countless others drenching his hands.

Sukuna killed all of these people, not Megumi. But then, Sukuna killed of those people in Shibuya, not Itadori. Why can Itadori take it? Why can he keep fighting when Megumi lays broken on the ground? Itadori wasn't alone. And Megumi has never been known for his unshakeable spirit. That is the one thing that Itadori can hold over everybody else, the one trait that everyone admires. He was born to shoulder the burden of the world. Megumi wasn't. Megumi wants to die. He is not passively suicidal, for he has no goals left to complete, a plan to die within the body no longer inhabited alone. He is suicidal. He would drive a stake through his heart if it meant relieving his pain. He doesn't want to do it anymore. He's had enough.

And Itadori was in this position once, too? Perhaps not as directly, but he was there. Here is the moment that the protagonist gives the motivating speech to will someone to keep fighting, that life is worth living. I realized today that this is not something Itadori has done yet. He hasn't had a grand speech that's not been about his own willpower. He's never encouraged someone else to keep living in the way that you would expect from the main character. This is his moment, I suppose. He needs to be the person for Megumi that Todo was for him. He has to show Megumi that he isn't alone.

He needs to save Megumi when, all those years ago, Gojo couldn't save Geto.

I don't think some of this fanbase understands how horrible Gege has to be at writing if he just. Let Megumi get up to fight in Chapter 251. All this time, he has shown how Megumi has been defeated. He showed him crumbled on the ground, unmoving. It shouldn't be a surprise that all of the measures Sukuna took to ensnare Megumi's soul worked. Megumi is suicidal after the people he loves have all died because of his technique. God forbid a sixteen-year-old is unable to cope with his trauma alone.

Honorable Mentions:

There are a lot more characters in this story that represent/show mental illness that I didn't go into depth on but are worth mentioning. It was easier to only talk about the major characters since we spend so much time with them and I can fully flesh out everything that should/can be said about them. Anyway, here are a few more that are notably well-written in their mental struggles:

Yoshino Junpei. His story arc follows very similarly to Geto, except he is the bullied student I was making a reference to. Depressed, alone with a mother whose habits he can't stand, he turned to someone he thought could provide him a better life. Interestingly, he is a good representation of the type of children that tend to be groomed. That's surely what happened to him. Mahito used him, then discarded him for his own gains.

Ieiri Shoko. Her main struggle can be seen through her smoking habits. She's been through a lot, lost so many people, and has to keep healing sorcerers only for them to die. Eventually, she was able to come to terms with this. She kicked her smoking habit at the same time she kicked the vicious mental cycle of caring too much about the patient on her table. It's no wonder she picked up a cigarette, for the first time in a while, when Geto led the phantom parade.

Zenin Maki. She works as a very good contrast to Megumi. They both lost their sisters, the people they loved the most, but she turned all of her grief to killing the Zenin clan and gaining Heavenly Restriction. But this, this is because she could do so. There is simply nothing Megumi can do as a soul trapped in his own body. Her grief made her stronger, while for most, it made them weaker.

Inumaki Toge. He isn't seen a lot, but his story is ultimately quite compelling. A boy who hurt many when he was young. He turned his guilt into kindness, a will to protect. He tends a garden to raise plants healthily, for God's sake. He's one of the examples that shows Yuuta that your past actions don't define you, but instead, what you choose to do going forward.

I am not proofreading any of this before I post it. Sorry if it is borderline unreadable with spelling / grammatical errors.

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simplenefelibata · 1 month

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the way some people characterize john winchester as a villain irks me sm.

i mean i hate that man with my LIFE. every time he drove the impala i screamed at the tv that he needed to crash it and DIE.

however, that doesn't mean i can't recognize he's a nuanced character, and therefore his relationship with dean and sam has depth and many layers.

i usually read in some fics that john is cruel to sam or dean just for the sake of being cruel. or he's plainly homophobic just for the sake of being homophobic. and while there are people out there that operate in that simplistic way, john winchester is not one of them. one of his most persistent trait is doing what he thinks is best for the family, and his sons, and the Greater Good, even if he's being just an egotistical selfish ass. he actually believes with all his chest there isn't a thing in the world he loves more than his sons — and there's nothing simple about having an abusive father that says he loves you.

there's logic (fucked up, yes, but logic after all) behind his train of thought. he's not Evil because he despises you, he's Evil because he doesn't know how to be better. or doesn't care about it. or doesn't even realize he's being malicious. i'm not saying he's not a villain. he could (i mean he's my biggest enemy) but he's not a man that enjoys being bad, nor he doesn't have a SINGLE redeemable or good quality.

there's a dynamic in this. a dance, almost. all the members of the dysfunctional family participate in it. things are great! and they're as good as they can be! and — oh. oh but it doesn't matter. you'll be better and — hey! it works. he sees you he recognizes what you've done because you're Good he tells you that and — ah. you fucked up. he loses it. it hurts. he can tell it hurts. he apologizes. things are better again. you love him. you hate him. you wish to never see him again. you miss him. you just want him to be proud of you. you want him out of your life...

and so and so and so.

well, what i wanted to say was that reducing the complexity of john to him being just a Villain for the plot, or convenience, or just cause you hate him, while it's very valid, doesn't make much sense...

#i can't believe i just ranted about john fucking winchester #fuck that guy #seriously #dean winchester #supernatural #spn #john winchester #john winchester a+ parenting #sam winchester #destiel

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90percentstudios · 2 months

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In your opinion, who is by far the worst written character you've made? Explain. (3-5 sentences)(That's a school joke btw but I do actually wanna know who you think your worst character is.)

oh my god, this is shaping up to be a bit more than 3-5 sentences but i just watched a contrapoints video and i'll never be concise again.

if a screwdriver is a good screwdriver because it manages to fit the screw, a character is a good character because they serve their purpose in the plot. a purpose like protagonist, antagonist, foil, silly buff tiger that is incredibly shallow but that's kind of the point so how can i argue that she's a failure of a character when she's literally my favorite and i would die for her? ... anyway i forget what point i was making but here are my worst written characters because they (arguably) failed to fit the screw.

cop-out answer: my first draft of cody from 2017/2018 was sooo one-dimensional. he felt like a homestuck dirk knock-off made more bearable because he wasn't condescendingly smart or serious. i couldn't develop his character because he was just so damn happy all the time. new cody is my favorite character, and therefore objectively the best written character in existence. he's got more realistic problems, genuine relationships, and is a great conduit for me to vent the problems i have with authority figures that i didn't even know i had.

real answer: the pa1 characters are pretty shallow. in their defense and the defense of those who love them, their simplicity ups the comic appeal. like brownie wants to delete herself via chocolate. is it realistic? no, but if it were i guess it'd lose silly points. the ridiculous pa universe's suspension of disbelief relies on everyone being a stupid nonsensical dog. so imo they fulfilled the purpose i had for them, which was creating a joke fantasy in which you had no choice but to make friends or die, my two favorite things at the time.

but i have a new favorite thing now, and that's making high complexity, open-ended statements about society or whatever. a better written pa1 would mean including exposition about patches' horrible home life/antisocial diagnosis, or a scene where olive and co attempt to call 9-11 like any sane dog would do, or more stuff about the contentious history between cats and dogs to explain coco's murder of the entire school.

speaking of, i think my worst written character is pa1.5 coco. she fulfilled the role of causing the apawcalypse in pa1, helped stop the apawcalypse in pa2, but somewhere in between there should've been a scene where everyone shakes and sobs over the realization that murder = bad, even if you are a funny gay halloween cat.

#cool kid cody #purrfect apawcalypse #90% denny

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seth-shitposts · 4 months

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DEFECTORS, DEFECTORS, DEFECTORS-

For you? Always friend 🫂💙💙💙 😘😘😘🥰

(Stars, I badly need to organize our docs for Defectors. I'm scrapping together to see what im pretty certain I haven't shared or gone into detail of yet.)

----

The main story of defectors will be split into two or three main parts, I think. (All of it will be in the same fic, though. The chapters will just be grouped into the parts.) Probs 3.

[I have a feeling I'm going to ramble a lot in this one so I'm going to go ahead and place a cut here😅]

The Bridgers//part i

There's going to be the first 5 years, from the night of the Bridger Raid, when Ezra is 7 in 12bby through to 7bby. This is the time span in which Kallus is taking care of Ezra, slowly losing his loyalty over the span of 4 or 5 years.

Year I

Kallus is loyal during the first year, and is conflicted about the exceptions he makes for the bridgers. For Ezra. It does and doesn't go against what he was trained for. To him, the situation is much more complex than the empire would view it and he wasn't prepared for that. His training hadn't included young children and he himself being young at this point doesnt know what intitive to take. So he's figuring things out. And he reasons it with himself, convinces himself that while he's crossing into a grey area in the eyes of the empire, that the goal of this is to establish order, therefore he is still carrying out his duty.

This first year is him trying his best to learn how to take care of a child and gain that child's trust. (Because if Ezra can't trust him, Kallus won't be able to take care of his needs. Lack of trust will mean lack of desire to communicate needs.)

Through the year, Kallus also works on some of the cases Mira and Ephraim give him while they do as promised and integrate into the rehabilitation program. He quickly realizes that they aren't the type of people he had thought they'd be, but more similar to the person who had taken him in when he was young. He isn't sure if he's taking back some of his judgment from objective observations he makes about them or because of how much they're hitting one of his soft spots and he's becoming bias.

So he turns his focus to the work they give him. Which is releasing civilians who were arrested due to a misunderstanding or without any real proper cause. Ones whose cases would have sat in some officer's desk for months, or even years, before being gone through properly. All while the civilians in question would have still been in detainment. Busy work, but Kallus is helping them and it's motivating Mira and Ephraim so he doesn't mind doing a few extra hours of work every other day.

•Before the Bridger Raid, he had done quick work of climbing ranks within the ISB branch. Having finished top of his class already put him farther ahead. By night of the Bridger Raid, he is either ranked 101 or 100. So not to double digits yet, and him being there on the cusp is the end of being able to quickly climb ranks because of how further more ruthless the shark competition is.

•Kallus enlisted to the academy when he was 14 in 21bby. He lied about his age to get in because the bare minimum requirements is that you had to be at least 18. The recruiter knew he was full of shit about his age but still allowed him to join because Kallus was eager [desprate].

[The idea of Kallus enlisting at such a young age is inspired from a conversation we had awhile back with @heart-of-a-rebel16 💙🫂]

•Jovan had been a major help to him in the academy, and because of his help in finding footing, Kallus was able to qualify for the new ISB training program that became available a year later. Kallus graduated sometime around 18 or 17bby, still top of his class. It would be very soon after that that he was on Onderon, when he was around 18.]

•Kallus’s parents had died when he was very young. He barely even remembers them. For a few years he was treated as a feral alley cat; a sewer rat. When he was around eight or nine, a miralukan chef from a restaurant a few levels up slowly worked on trying to gain Kallus’s trust. And they eventually did. They took Kallus in as their own and looked after him. Kallus had slowly built trust with them, and even looked up to them. However both Kallus and the chef became sick when an virus swept through the lower levels- Kallus had just turned 14 and barely survived. Most who were sick didn't, the person who took him in among them. So when recruiters swept their way through the lower levels, Kallus seized his chance immediately, was willing to do anything to ensure his basic needs would be met and that he could dedicate himself toward a worthy cause.

Year II

The second year Kallus has grown more confident in his ability to take care of Ezra and unknowingly more attached. There isn't anything anyone can't adore about this sweet kid. By this point, Ezra has started coming out of his shell and Kallus has visibly become much more relaxed and gentle.

During the second year, Kallus works on trying to build good relationships with Tseebo and Morad. They have vital roles in Kallus’s ability to make the deal with the empire/the warden feasibly work. And for that to be done smoothly, it would be best if he also has their trust. It's hard for him to try and be friendly or personal; the loss of the squadron he had been a part of still unpatched.

He's opened up more to Mira and Ephraim, has seen how similar Ezra truly is to them. He decides to start negotiating with the Warden on shortening the sentence. He does manage to get it cut down, but he isn't satisfied so it's something that he goes back and forth with him on.

He's also realized a pattern between the behavior of imperial officers and wrongfully arrested civilians and has been working on correcting that behavior. Try and fix the problem at where he thinks the source is.

He learns more about lothal and some of it's traditions. Mira loves to talk about it and some of the ways she would suggest the empire change in order to best change and support lothal. Kallus takes notes of that and in his down time does research on that.

Kallus learns that Ephraim had also lost his parents at a young age, but the town he lived in endlessly supported him. And that's the type of community he wants to help build and maintain for Ezra to have and be a part of when he's older, for Ezra and for the future of Lothal. Kallus includes that in his notes and has a moment of curiosity- if the lower levels of coruscant had the resources to take care of themselves, would they have had the same compassion that lothalites had for each other?

Mira and Ephraim add in cases in which citizens were arrested simply because of not having resources. Of those who aren't able to take care of themselves. Or those who have people they needed to take care of. Kallus begins on helping them as well.

Year III

Kallus has taken initiative of helping establish systems of support on lothal by giving ideas and leeway to Governor Azadi and Minister Tua. They're both thrilled, and with Kallus helping back them to the other branches of the empire by advocating that if these changes are made, rebel activity will be lowered. They've been implementing these systems in short bursts, but without approval of the empire, the programs will die off or be reported since it isnt official imperial regulation.

He keeps getting ineffectual and half-arsed responses on the situation concerning the bridger's hearings. Mira and Ephraim have been exceptionally patient. Far more than he is. He was able to lessen their time, but by the time they're to be released, Ezra will nearly be an adult himself. It's not soon enough. Not for how compliant the two have been to everything asked of them.

Kallus has also been getting draw back from his superiors, been met with resistance for the changes he'd been trying to implement. That he can do as much extra altruistic work in his time, but not to bleed that over and confuse it with enforcing the regulations and mandates. They don't want to allow Kallus to reason with them on it. And many of the officers have been more and more distasteful and unaware. He hates that he's starting to feel seeds of resentment, so he carefully keeps attempting to get his reasoning across that this produces the best results. There's so much back and forth and near the end of the year, he sees how Ryder is also getting pressed into a similar corner. He starts to wonder if the empire is simply making mistakes that they're choosing to stick to or if they might actually not have what's best in mind.

Year IV

Kallus still has some hope at the beginning of the year, but as the year goes on its harder and harder to believe it. Near the beginning of the year, Ryder was accused of treason. His replacement seemed to have been aware of it before either of them were. Kallus met her months before and she's worked around on operations with him. He doesn't trust her and starts to lose trust in Tua when she seems to attempt to get into Pryce’s good graces. Kallus is much more careful about what he says around either of them, especially the months following azadi's arrest.

His impatience and anger toward his fellow officers has increased as they continue to ignore his corrections, saying that it's not protocol or not their job to take into account.

Kallus wishes to speak to Mira and Ephraim about it, but he worries that he could put them in harm's way since none of them can speak freely. He's been fighting harder to get Mira and Ephraim released as soon as possible. But he's run out of strings to pull. Over the past few years, he'd accepted several promotions in hopes that having a higher standing will give him more influence over their case. But now, instead of being met with weak responses or excuses, he's being downright denied.

At one point he was offered that if he stops fighting the front of keeping Ezra from being enlisted into the academy, that Mira and Ephraim could be released on probation. Kallus shoots that down immediately. He is not even going to entertain that notion. Ezra is too young. And he isn't even going to bring it up to the kid, because Ezra will feel that it's his responsibility to give his parents the chance for their freedom. Kallus will have to be dead for that to happen. He isn't going to allow it.

He's not out of options yet. So he's going to keep trying.

Things on lothal have been getting worse. He can't keep up with the cases of citizens being arrested and detained. The empire is choking lothal and its people. This isn't what he thought the empire stood for. When did this happen. [It's been like this and slowly getting worse, he realizes.]

Year V

By this point the only thing keeping Kallus in the empire is the fight for the Bridger’s freedom and the fact that if he simply walks away, he's putting not just Mira and Ephraim indanger, but also Ezra and Tseebo and Marida and Morad. Anyone he's grown close to. The empire would not just detain him, but go after them as well. He isn't sure what he's going to do, but he can figure that out once he's freed Mira and Ephraim. Near the end of the year he realizes that he'll just have to free them himself. He'll talk things out with the Sumars once he return from a mandatory operation across the galaxy. Once he returns, they'll make a plan of action.

-But Lasan happens. And in the same point as does Mira & Ephraim being rerouted to a prison off lothal. He tries to act quickly, if he doesn't persue Mira and Ephraim now they'll be lost but he can't bring Ezra with him deeper into the Empire.

Tseebo disappears, and Ezra refuses to be found, Morad tries to reassure him that he and Marida will find him. Kallus tries to work as quickly as possible to find Mira & Ephraim and bring them home. Stars, let him find them within a couple months.

^^^^^ [this is an organization of thoughts I've been trying to figure out and finalize for months now. ]

The Search for Mira&Ephraim//part ii

The next section will pick up right after that and through to s2e11, the era of Kallus searching for Mira & Ephraim, becoming more and more desperate as time goes on.

He helps any rebel cells when he has the chance and smuggles imperial captives away. He works with Morad and Marida when he has the chances.

Over the course of this arc, he grows closer to Marida. She's still very reluctant. Morad has helped Kallus from completely neglecting himself. He tells Kallus how they have been able to find ways to make sure Ezra is getting food and proper clothing, but any time they even see him, Ezra disappears. Steadily avoiding them.

Kallus makes himself blend back into the empire. Figures out how to produce results by framing imperial supports who actively commit crimes themselves. This aids him in gaining ranks, the higher his rank, the more classified information he's given access to.

Though, he's moved up to ISB-051 and still can't find the Mira & Ephraim.

I'm thinking of having Kallus fake Tua's death. Passes her more information to give to the rebels in addition to what she has.

Fulcrum//part iii

This would be everything from after Mira&Ephraim's deaths up to the liberation of lothal.

---

Epilogue

And then the epilogue was originally just going to be maybe a couple additional lengthy chapters of afterwards.

But I thank @mystical-salamander for going back and forth with me so much in the comments of this post because Defectors will be getting an entire spinoff as an epilogue.

So there will be

-The Concept Dump of Defectors AU

-The Fic Itself

-The Epilogue Spinoff

-and then collection one-shots that aren't part of the main story or that explore possibilities that didn't make it to the 'canon' of the au.

#star wars rebels #swr #alexsandr kallus #ezra bridger #defectors au #wip ask game

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earthling-wolf · 11 months

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Ti Platonism

Search for Universal Axioms

While it might be said that all types seek truth of a sort, to the Ti user the quest for truth has a very specific meaning. He is not satisfied with the acquisition of information and indeed he generally avoids information, but is instead drawn to eternally narrow his search down to what he believes is the core of a thing - beyond the senses and beyond the confines of space or time. He'll aim to get rid of as much as is unnecessary, until only the essence remains. To him, truth means landing upon some elusive and singular convergent principle or nexus which gives formulation, symmetry and justification to everything else in the conscious universe. The Ti user, it may be said, is on a quest for a philosopher's stone. He will dig for it in all manner of philosophy and theories of the mind and this can cause them to become obsessive in their pursuits, and abandon all sense of context in their research. They may forget that they are not making tangible progress towards any scientific or objective aim, but instead are diving headlong into a conceptual challenge. Indeed it is an epistemological challenge with the bait of the One Truth at the end of it which they chase. And whether this truth is ever known by the Ti user is irrelevant to the visceral belief in its existence. Even if he has come to doubt all truth and has entered an existential dead end in his pursuit, so that he only knows that he knows almost nothing, he was lead into this territory by an inarticulated but deep rooted suspicion that something is there just waiting to be crystallized into knowledge.

Reductionism

For the Ti user the world is often seen as a place of incongruences and complexities; of paradoxes and mysteries. Everything is operating from unchecked assumptions on top of assumptions with no explanation given for why any such thing is to be believed. The world seems utterly chaotic and nonsensical, and this causes a great deal of stress especially as it relates to the pursuit of axiomatic truth. In order to alleviate this, Ti often executes a reductionist methodology wherein all unjustified things are negated, in an effort to eliminate all untruths and see what is left. Ti in its purest sense will not wish to adapt any form of knowledge or information if it does not understand its underlying formation. It will feel that if the starting premise within them is not correct, then the entire foundation is faulty and all else that can be built from it will be askew. It therefore obsesses over the accuracy of the first few blocks and cornerstones of its epistemology, forcing Ti often times into an infinite regression loop of doubt. If told "go to school" then may think "what is school" and from there proceed to ask "what is a degree?" and "what makes knowledge gained at a school desk more valid than what is self-taught?" This can be terribly frustrating to family members as it may appear that the Ti user is rationalizing his way out of responsibility, when in reality he is contending with the existential questions of meaning, value and purpose - which often must be addressed for them first before a single finger can be lifted towards a task. This can be problematic as Ti will tend to reduce social norms/ideas/things down to parts, without putting them back together. These thoughts will occupy the Ti user's mind continually and may cause things to lose their value as the process of reduction strips away all meaning. At its most extreme this can lead to to existential dilemmas and nihilism even when nothing in life would suggest a reason to be unhappy. As Ti is a subtractive process by nature, it acts as a diagnostic process that identifies misalignment in any system of premises. Hence it tends to be far better at identifying what things are not, than what things are. It is often up to the other functions to counterbalance Ti's influence and provide positive affirmation for reasons, motivations and purposes.

Castle Construction

However, if enough of a theoretical foundation has been set in the mind of the Ti user, then what emerges is a crystalline structure at the core of their being. Like the growth of an ice crystal from water, a theoretical castle begins to form. Each block of this castle is a premise or argument that helps structure the incoming information of reality in such a way as to create an interpretive scaffold. For Ti, this scaffold serves as a sort of Rubik's cube or kaleidoscope that allows the complexities of life to be viewed and understood from a convergent point. Should there ever be a mismatch between the reality outside of them and the kaleidoscope's prediction, the Ti user hurries to try to reformulate and refine their instrument (to fix the Rubik's cube), but an instrument they must use. The Ti user does not interface with reality directly, but does so through this instrument which acts as their proxy and go-between and allows them to make sense of things without needing necessarily to engage in the difficult task of materialism or empiricism. This leads inescapably to the formation of a personal theory, often beginning with phenomenology of the mind/consciousness. One such example of a crystalline theoretical structure is René Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" which, through his efforts and thoughts, was the cornerstone he came to develop and which helped him make sense of all other premises that cascade from this first axiom. But each Ti user may place a different conclusion as their starting premise. For some, the fundamental principle may be consciousness, for others it may be bodily experience, and for others it may be God or love.

Ontology & Linguistics

The Ti function is inherently philosophical in nature, producing in the Ti user a gravitation towards what we might call ontology. It becomes important to the Ti user to define what things are in and of themselves. In this sense, Ti seeks to describe reality absolutely and almost as though they were to vanish themselves from existence. It must be able to be true without them in the picture, otherwise it is not true. By this metric Ti seeks for a sort of timeless abstract definition for everything. The Ti user usually seeks to encapsulate the essence of a thing through semantic precision; meticulously working out where the boundaries lie between two adjacent thought groupings. There is little more satisfying to them than when data suddenly clicks into perfect arrangement, revealing a fundamental truth. The Ti user lives for these rare and magic moments of clarity and by engaging in this differentiation process, they gain a firm mental grasp on the world; dissipating the fog of the unknown. The further the Ti user is from clarity of definition in his own thoughts, the more internal dissonance will be felt. This can also make the Ti user a bit of a grammar nazi and their semantic proclivities can lead them to spend hours discussing starting terms without ever making headway related to the real-world problem in question. The Ti user may be highly stimulated by such a discourse even though the original point of the discussion has been left far in the past. More than a few Ti users thus take to linguistics for their proximity to philosophy and their capacity to organize the very structure of our knowledge paradigms.

Perfectionism

Additionally, there is a perfectionist quality to the Ti user wherein their personal desire for purity of logos is at once a desire for purity of the self. Indeed, the Ti user's success in building this logic framework is tied to their sense of identity, as they may view themselves primarily as a truth-seeker and truth-speakers. There will be an ethical quality to their pursuit which manifests in a valuing of neutrality, honesty, authenticity and clarity. Lack of neutrality, honesty or lack of clarity will be sensed as a transgression; one which they avoid in their own behavior and which they may also depreciate in others. As a compass function, Ti will strive for a type of nobility of character which it can sustain only if it feels it is being honest with itself and avoiding as many impurities as possible in its own thinking. This high personal standard can cause the Ti user to become entirely mute as their ignorance forces them to retract any opinion or utterance that they cannot firmly stand behind. The strong Ti user may be a very silent presence at school or in the workforce, speaking only occasionally and after minutes or hours of reflection on what he wishes to say. If their logical devotion is towards an art project or creative endeavor, the same bottleneck may appear, causing them to hesitate in publishing any works until everything feels entirely perfect. They may feel their works are never quite precise enough and will spend countless hours in the refinement process - aiming always for their writings, paintings or manifestations to capture their thoughts and intentions with no compromise. This can lead to negative feelings and self-blame forming for mistakes made or inaccurate information given.

Stubborn Alignment to Framework

While the Ti user may not know many things, he will stand firm by what he does know. The Ti user can be stubborn and difficult to negotiate with if they have fixated on certain ideas they feel are true, and so long as their idea remains in their head, their heels remain sunk in that interpretation. This can lead them to become impractical in many real-world situations when the consequences of their carefully crafted definitions collide with certain necessary actions and obligations. They’ll often refuse to participate in something that seems necessary to some, but misaligned to them. And while no amount of pressure, external circumstance or logistical necessities can bend their opinion, a properly aimed rebuttal can radically shift their entire stance in moments. The Ti user's logical apparatus operates like a lock combination. When the right inputs (deductions) are received, suddenly the gates of their thoughts reconfigure and allow for a completely new mental trajectory to be possible and new actions to emerge from them. But without this reconfiguration, they may remain deadlocked in certain conclusions or philosophies even when those conclusions are negative and harmful to them. The strong Ti user must reason his way out of a certain conceptual hole and cannot simply ignore it or choose a more convenient path which doesn't fit into the structure and rules of their self-made castle.

-Behaviors Under Stress

Emotional Shutoff

When the stress and gravity of life cause a fall out of emotional health, the strong Ti user's already faint emotional energies become even more deeply coveted. Unable to operate meaningfully in the environment, they will flee fully from the world and into a protective barrier of their own making. They will shut off emotionally and may become suspicious and avoidant of intrusions to their private space. This can lead to a very isolated experience where they feel they can only rely on themselves to figure out the answers to emotional problems which it often treats as intellectual problems. Driven equally by feelings of self-sufficiency and fear of emotional openness, they will aim to shoulder their pain entirely alone.

They will meet the problem with callousness of feeling. What is not felt cannot hurt, and here their natural capacity for dispassion is repurposed and used to strip power away from the heart. They may sever their connection to others with surprising ease, and forget the magnitude of their inner affect. What is non-ideal is rejected as they continue their pursuit for the ideal both in themselves and others. Yet the content remains present but buried in the unconscious, and they may harbor unresolved feelings for years at a time – often freezing their heart in the process. Merciless as they may be, they will intellectualize their decisions, satisfying their need to act from just premises and retain a proper sense of self.

Wailings and charged emotional reactions may be perceived as irrational and therefore inappropriate and to be avoided. However, as stress accumulates further, their logic will become gradually more distorted as they aim to rationalize what is essentially an emotional objection underneath. Unable to clearly and cathartically convey their heart’s voice, having stripped it of its power, their inner pains will emerge through distorted logical arguments and skewed claims. Their tendency to intellectualize matters of the heart will lead them to push the narrative into a form that aligns with their repressed feelings. As their stress furthers, they may disconnect themselves from others entirely and fall into schizoid tendencies.

Hyper-Focus on Imperfections

In another scenario, if the Ti user's heart remains open, they meet the problem with honesty of feeling. In their pursuit for authenticity of self, they allow the full gravity of their situation to hit them and they familiarize themselves with their darkest disappointments, losses and despair. Because they are perfectionists by nature, they will turn their attention to themselves to understand what is wrong. They may come to feel responsible for all that is not going well in their life and will be prone to episodes of melancholy and deep ruminations about their shortcomings. Worse yet, if a conclusion emerges (“I’m horrible”, “I’m responsible”) that cannot be rationally refuted, be it true or not, they will need to continue believing it in order not to betray their compass, even if believing such a thing causes continual pain. Moving past certain damages can be challenging unless their paradigm changes to reinterpret their past in a way that puts them in a more merciful place. They will have trouble accepting positive emotions just for the sake of it, without cause to feel positive. They will feel dubious of any trajectory of healing that isn’t somehow also justified in a certain sense. In this way, they do themselves no service; holding onto their negative beliefs so adamantly can be the cause of their own demise.

#Cognitive Typology #Cognitive Functions #Introverted Thinking #Ti #INTP #ISTP #Behaviorism #Platonism #Search for Universal Axioms #Reductionism #Castle Construction #Ontology #Linguistics #Perfectionism #Stubborn Alignment to Framework #Emotional Shutoff #Hyper-Focus on Imperfections #Void

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x5960 · 5 months

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New World Origins

Chapter 6

2 weeks later

FuturIndustries has now produced 87 drones, 45 of which are male and 42 female. Kenner is very pleased with his team's work and is about to present his new achievement to the public. Of course, he will claim that the drones were artificially produced and will therefore not say a word about the fact that the basic building material is human. He's not worried about supplies either, as the world's homeless rate is unmanageable as there are too many to even count. Kenner plans to sell the drones as the perfect product for any everyday task. It won't matter whether the services are of a sexual nature or whether the drones are used for simple or complex tasks. With the proceeds, he plans to buy new locations for his conditioning centers. His business experts predict that the product will hit like a bomb and that he will be able to increase his wealth many times over as a result. After all, like all entrepreneurs, Kennen is absolutely greedy for money and can never get enough of it.

The director sits in his office, completely satisfied, the only figure keeping him company is a female Z-drone. The Z-Drones have the task of satisfaction and they were developed to fulfill the owner's every sexual desire. Kenner takes advantage of this several times a day and regularly lets the drone spoil him to the hilt.

As he is almost exploding with lust again, it is time for him to deal with the drone. Kenner calls it to him and the drone immediately knows what is expected of it. It gets down on all fours and presents its backside to its boss so that he can penetrate it from behind. The director opens his pants, lowers them and gets into position. With a hard thrust, he rams his stiff member into the drone's pussy from behind. The nanite production was interrupted so that Kenner could not be infected while he pleasures himself with her. Again and again, the director rams his member into the drone and digs his fingers into its latex body so that he doesn't lose his grip. Just before he reaches climax and pumps his load into his victim, an alarm sounds. Totally shocked and confused, he pulls his member out of the drone's pussy, wipes it off and pulls his pants back up. He rushes to his computer and starts looking for the cause of the alarm. The next moment, the door to his office opens and Professor Welsh enters.

#rubber drone #drone transformation #dronification

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itsfeckinwimdy · 2 years

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*HONK*

c!Karlnapity x Reader (Romantic) (Soulmate au)

Reader Pronouns: They/Them

Summary: The quartet are soulmates and need help finding their way back to each other. What's better to help them than the Soulmate Goose Of Enforcement?

Warnings: Duck hybrid Quackity, Blaze hybrid (blazeborn) Sapnap, DSMP family canon, Y/n is Phil's kid and Wilbur sibling, angst, mentions of fighting, mention of war, mentions of exile, mention of previous death, ambiguous/open ending, and finally unconscious people who don't want tea.

Word Count: 5.3K (5379 words)

DSMP Masterlist

Published: 22/10/2022

(started writing: 29/05/2021, yes it has taken me over a year to finish this)

Everyone had a soulmate. Sometimes it was easier to find them and be with them. Other times it was more complex and took a bit of time for everything to fall in place.

At least, that's what Karl told himself. But if he was being truthful, it was partly his fault.

The brunette kept hiding secrets from the people he loved. He claimed it was to protect them and that he would tell them if they needed to know, but honestly, he was scared. He was scared his partners, well now ex-partners, would judge him, and that if he told someone about his memory problems it would only worsen. That he would have to face reality, that he would have to stop time travelling, that he would have to stop trying to find a way to fix everything, that he would have to stop before he lost all his memory. Before he lost his partners. His soulmates.

But a part of him knew it was too late.

The night before the Pogtopita-Manberg war, the four had holed themselves up inside George's castle, knowing that two of them would be fighting against the other two in the morning. It was something the four of them were trying not to think about, knowing there was a chance that any of them could be getting injured or losing a canon life.

The entirety of the quartet was tired. Quackity's wings were killing him from being buried under his shirt all day, Sapnap was itching to set something on fire, Karl was fidgety with nerves as he didn't want to fight tomorrow, in fact, none of them really did, and Y/n was cold from their bath they had taken to strip all of the soot and grime from their skin, due to Pogtopia not having the best living conditions.

Y/n's brother, Wilbur, and themself were the cause of all this mess. The two of them teamed up once he arrived on the server to cause chaos but ultimately made a power grab and created L'Manberg from a simple drug van and the shared thoughts and beliefs of others.

But then they lost it.

That caused the new leader to exile Y/n, Wilbur, and the teenager, Tommy, who looked up to Y/n and Wilbur as older sibling figures, knowing the three would fight for their country back, even if they no longer had any jurisdiction over it.

This led to them fleeing, Wilbur losing a canon life along the way as he dived in front of Y/n after Punz attempted to shoot his younger sibling. That night Punz feared for his life after Sapnap threatened to kill him if he ever tried to hurt his partner again.

After setting up base in an abandoned ravine, their dad's old friend Technoblade joined them, promising to help destroy the government.

Whilst planning for this upcoming war and having Tubbo as a spy, for which he, unfortunately, got executed, Y/n would try to spend as much time with their partners, that being difficult to do so as two of them lived in L'Manberg and Quackity was forced to work ridiculous hours for the drunken president.

Therefore, the castle became a safe haven for the four.

This led to Y/n spending most nights closer to the impending day of the war there. They were glad they could sleep in a proper bed with the people they loved, and that they got to have a break from the bickering between Wilbur and Tommy.

Noticing Karl fighting the urge to get up and start pacing again, Y/n shuffled closer to Sapnap, letting the blazeborn's naturally high body temperature warm them up, and they wrapped their arms around Karl's midsection, pulling him into their torso.

Reaching forwards, they managed to get Quackity to join to cuddle pile, Sapnap wrapping his arms around the three of them, or at least trying to.

That night, the four made a promise to always stick by each other's side and to never let each other go. To always talk and resolve problems and that they would be truthful to each other. After all, they were now fiancées.

As they made this promise, the sound of an achievement rang through their communicators.

'The Soulmate Bond' it simply read.

That night they knew it was meant to be.

But then again, that wasn't the right saying on this server. What was it again?

Oh yeah,

It was never meant to be.

Sapnap was worried. And he had every right to be.

First, it was Y/n. After the death of their brother, they had started to pull away from the other three, becoming seemingly distant and only really there at night to sleep, disappearing for hours on end.

Quackity had followed them one day only to find them sitting overlooking a cliff. Apparently, it was where Y/n first took Wilbur on the server, where the two saw their first sunset together. Y/n would sit there as the hours would pass, watching the point on the compass spin, it no longer pointing to their bother. They began to snap back into their old self after Quackity sat with them, becoming who they used to be but more willing to fight.

Then Tommy got exiled. Sapnap and Karl believed they already knew, therefore not bringing it up, and Quackity simply didn't tell them. That sparked one of the biggest arguments they had ever had.

Y/n stayed with Phil that night.

Everything seemed fine for a while, with Y/n coming back home and then the quartet creating Cedar Rapids. And then Ghostbur came back, making it easier for Y/n to move on. Everyone was happy.

But then came the butcher army. Y/n refused to let their dad be pushed around and stepped in, earning themselves house arrest, by orders of Quackity.

That night they left. Sapnap remembers the conversation he had with them before they went. It was seemingly normal, Y/n saying they were staying with Phil for a few days. Except they didn't.

It was two weeks later they returned, hearing that Technoblade had killed Quackity. They helped the stubborn duck with his recovery. The blazeborn remembers the amount of shouting and the arguments that happened that week.

Looking back, he should've stepped in more. But he couldn't have known what was going through Y/n's mind at the time.

See Y/n was planning to blow up L'Manberg again. To finish their brother's job. They had realised how corrupt it had become, now wanting to get rid of the power the people who ran it had.

Sapnap should've seen it coming.

After doomsday, there was the final argument. Tensions were still high, and Quackity still couldn't see why Y/n chose to blow it up. Why Y/n would choose the side of Technoblade. The side of Dream. They explained why though. How L'Manberg was originally a power grab. How it was their idea to blow it up in the first place and that they were just finishing what that had started.

Sapnap should've stopped the fight. He should've stopped it before the words tumbled out of Quackity's mouth, before Y/n and Quackity exploded on each other, before Y/n walked away for what he thought was good.

Everyone's heart broke a bit that night.

Second, it was Karl. He started to disappear for a few days at a time, and when he returned? It was like his brain was scattered, and then he'd started to forget stuff.

At the time Sap had chalked it down to Karl's already bad memory, to his forgetful nature that his fiancée had. It began as small things. Karl forgot what day it was, where he left his book, what time he was meant to be at a certain place, and whether or not he had a meeting with the rest of Manberg's cabinet that day. But then It got worse.

Looking back, Sapnap realised that there were some days when Karl wouldn't say his or their partner's names until someone else said them. He had just thought Karl was messing around at the time, him just being cute and just wanting to call them by pet names but looking back at it, he should've realised sooner.

He should've realised when Karl came up with the idea of creating a new place to live, Kinoko Kingdom, because he said Cedar Rapids held no significate importance to him. Before he said it held no real value and that it was just where he lived because Sapnap lived there. Not because Sapnap, Quackity, and Y/n lived there, but because Sapnap lived there.

He should've realised before Karl completely shut him out. Before Karl would hole himself up in his library which he was forbidden from going in. Before Karl would forget him completely and call him by a stranger's name.

He should've helped Karl sooner. His heart cracked again.

Third, it was Quackity.

See the duck hybrid was stubborn, there was no denying that. Sapnap learnt this early on. If Quackity had his mind set on doing something, then there was a small chance, a very minuscule chance at that, of getting him to change his mind, the chance decreasing if Quackity was the one with the power to do what he wanted to do.

One morning, Sapnap had woken up alone. Karl had gone off again, who knows where, Y/n had just left maybe four days ago, and now Quackity had disappeared.

It stayed like that for a month. Quackity and Y/n were nowhere to be found. Karl occasionally disappeared and returned with his memory shot. Sapnap, probably wouldn't have minded so much if Quackity had told him where he was going, but after another month of no contact?

His heart broke again.

And the worse thing was? Karl had no idea what Quackity or Y/n meant to all of them.

And Finally, it was himself.

He could feel himself slipping away. With Karl coming and going, and no word from either Y/n or Quackity, Sapnap was stuck.

It wasn't like he had anyone to go to. His brother was locked away in a heavily armed prison, rightfully so; his Aunt Puffy was busy trying to deal with the fact one of her sons was locked up and also trying to solve this problem with the egg; his dad had been possessed by said egg, and was currently trying to take over the server; and his best friend was in some sort of deep sleep, only occasionally waking up.

He didn't know how much longer he could be there for Karl. As much as it broke him to ever think about leaving the Jacobs boy, he didn't know if it was worth it anymore, not without his partners. His first love and his third.

He didn't know how he could continue like this.

About a month after the fight, Y/n wanted to go back. Even if everything wouldn't go back to normal, they still wanted to see them, to check that they were doing okay. Because if their partners, well ex-partners were okay, then they'd be okay.

Or at least that's what they kept telling themselves.

The day they went to leave, Y/n climbed down the ladder leading to their room, only to be met with their dad, Philza, in the main room. As they made their way towards the front door and began to pull their cloak on, he stopped them.

"What are you doing?" he asked, nursing the warm mug between his hands.

Y/n sighed, not wanting to have this conversation with their dad but knowing he wouldn't let him go without telling him first, "I'm heading to Cedar Rapids, why? Is something wrong?"

Phil's face fell slightly, "There's a blizzard. You won't be able to make it Y/n."

Y/n's face dropped, and their heart sank in their chest, "How long will it last?"

They hoped it wouldn't be more than a few days at most, however, they were wrong. They ended up spending the next month trapped in the Arctic, unable to get to where they needed to. Unable to apologise for the shit they said.

The day they were finally able to get to Cedar Rapids, it was empty. The land was barren, but the buildings still standing. Their shared house was empty of the majority of everyone's belongings, only a few of theirs and Quackitys left behind.

Where was everyone?

As they stumbled out of the house, tears trying not to fall from their eyes they hit a solid object. Their hands came up to steady themselves, something grabbing onto their biceps. Looking up they saw the face of one of their fiancées.

Pulling back from their grip, Y/n wiped away their tears, wrapping the arms around their torso curling in on themselves. Their fiancée's wings drooped in response and his arms dropped to his sides. The two noticed the obvious distance between them, both physically and emotionally.

Choosing to break the silence between them, Y/n spoke up, "Hey."

Quackity stood still, having an internal malfunction. He was trying not to say anything he didn't want to say, not wanting to screw up again. His wings tightened up behind him, the slits in his shirt allowing his wings to come through, as he stood defensively. His instincts were screaming at him to comfort Y/n.

"Hey."

Looking up at the duck hybrid, Y/n locked eyes with his, and anyone could practically see the awkwardness between the two.

"So, uh," Y/n began, eyes still locked with his, "How are you?"

Quackity's wings fluttered slightly, "I'm alright I guess?"

His response came out as a sort of question, confusing Y/n slightly but they choose not to question it.

"How're the others?"

Quackity paused and Y/n could see them visible tense and him trying to form an answer but not knowing what to say.

"Quackity?" Y/n began, taking a step closer to him, "What happened?"

Hopping through the nether portal, Y/n grabbed a bunch of snow and hurled it at the goose that was following them, it letting out an exasperated honk and flapping its wings in annoyance. They stood up letting out curse words at the animal, beginning their trek back to their shared home. The white feathered animal biting against Y/n’s cloak and pants, attempting to pull the human back towards the nether portal.

The door slammed shut as Y/n walked through it, shrugging off the snow that had landed on their cloak. It felt like their ears were ringing, their mind spinning even though they could see clearly.

"What do you mean you left?"

"I did exactly what they did. What you did-"

Phil looked concerned at them, wondering what had happened, as his kid nonchalantly discarded their cloak and bag.

"What do you mean by that, Q? Where's Sapnap and Karl anyway, shouldn't they be around?"

"Well I wouldn't know, I came back one day to get them only to find they had disappeared along with all their stuff and most of ours."

"What do you mean disappeared?"

Phil's confusion began to grow as he heard the patter of webbed feet on his floor.

"Like gone. I don't even know where they are."

"Y/n," Phil began, walking closer and seeing the white goose standing next to his child, the goose attempting to pull on his kid's pant leg, it hissing at them when they shooed it off, "What's that?"

"This?" Y/n looked down at the goose, letting out a hiss in response to it honking at them, "It's a goose. And it won't leave me alone." They began frustration seeping through their voice, "Apparently it won't die, no matter how many times you push it into lava. So now I'm guessing it's some sort of immortal being that's come to spite me for my wrongdoings."

Y/n turned and climbed the ladder to the upper part of the house, the goose nestling down by the stairs, ruffling its feathers before it seemingly began to settle down.

"It's a soulmate goose."

Philza's head snapped around to face the voice, him calming once he realised that it was only Kristin. She made her way towards him, resting her hand gently on his shoulder, Phil leaning into the touch he could barely feel.

"The soulmate goose of enforcement only appears when there is an obstacle a soulmate pairing needs help to overcome," She continued walking over to pet the goose before it vanished, "It seems as if our little crow needs some help after all."

Upstairs, Y/n stared out of their window, watching the snow gently fall as they played with the three rings that were attached to a necklace around their neck. Each one with an engraving that referred to each counterpart in their past relationship.

"What do we do?" Y/n asked sitting down next to Quackity on the ground. The duck hybrid had finally stopped pacing and was now frustratedly pulling strands of grass from the ground before throwing them down, "How are we meant to find them?"

"I don't know," He began, "I don't know. I just- I keep thinking if we hadn't... You know... Then everything would be okay."

The two looked down at the ground, not noticing the goose begin to materialise in the distance. The silence between them was awkward. Neither of them knew how to continue and say what they wanted to.

"I came to apologise," Y/n spoke up, beginning to rip grass up from the ground. "I tried to come a month ago, but then there was a storm. But-"

"It would've still been too late," Quackity cut them off. Y/n looked up at him only to see him staring at the ground, refusing to look at them. "I left because I thought you weren't coming back, and then I had this idea-"

"What do you mean you thought I wasn't coming back? Quackity, I made a promise and so did you and the others! That we'd never walk away. Ever."

"Well, I'm sorry for thinking that then! It's just after the shit we both said I thought you were leaving this time for good! That you'd finally given up on us!"

"Can we not argue for once?"

"Oh, says you."

He stood up, taking a few steps backwards, before groaning in disdain.

"What now?"

"That fucking Goose is back!" Quackity sighed out, "I swear, it won't leave me alone."

"Okay, and what does that have to do with finding Karl and Sapnap?"

"I don't know okay! It's just this fucking thing won't leave me alone and keeps trying to drag me through nether portals." Quackity sighed, clearly frustrated.

"I'm sorry," he grumbled out, "I'm not good with emotions sometimes."

"I know," Y/n replied before standing up and taking Quackity's hands in theirs, rubbing their thumbs on the back of his palms when he didn't object or try to pull away. "You'd think the blaze hybrid would be the most hot-headed out of the four of us. Turns out, he's the least."

Quackity let out a small smile at their words before enveloping them in his arms, his wings fluttering and encasing the two of them.

“We still need to work stuff out,” Y/n said, voice slightly muffled, from where their head was buried in Quackity’s shirt.

“I know sweetheart, I know.”

Sapnap was outside.

And he was touching grass.

This wasn’t unusual for the blaze hybrid, him liking to sit in the flower fields surrounding his house.

When Karl choose the leave Cedar Rapids, Sapnap couldn't help but follow him, not wanting to lose the last of his partners, even though it felt as if he had already gone. Like Karl had slipped through his fingers and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He thinks that may be the reason why he subconsciously chose this place to live. The flower fields reminded him of the unproblematic childhood he had and the first home he knew.

The loud honk, which came from his left, startled him enough that he dropped the flower crown he was absentmindedly weaving, fire igniting around his horns. The amber flames swirled before dying down.

The goose waddled over to him, attempting to bite onto his sleeve and drag him. Sapnap attempted to swat him away only for the goose to hiss at him.

After a least a minute of this happening, Sapnap sighed at the animal before grabbing it over its wings and lifting it into his lap, the goose immediately settling down but now gnawing on his hand.

“Why do you have a Soulmate Goose?”

Sapnap didn't tear his eyes away from the creature that was nestled in his lap, it was still keen on trying to bite his fingers off.

“Nice to see you too Drista,” he said back, “What do you want?”

“To know why you have a soulmate goose? Duh?”

Spanap gave her a deadpan look, “Well I don’t know. Shouldn’t you know, aren’t you like a god or something?”

The teenager glared at him from where she was floating in the sky, “Just because you’re best friends with my brother doesn’t mean I like you.”

Sapnap rolled his eyes in response, returning to pet the animal in his lap, the softness of the feathers reminding him of the nights when Quackity would let them help preen his wings. The duck usually ends up curled up on his lap, his head on Sapnap’s chest listening to his heartbeat letting out soft chirps of appreciation. Sapnap's heart clenched at the memory.

The teenager let herself land on the ground, sitting down amongst the flowers as she stared to mess with the grass.

“My brother told me about them.”

“Who, Dream?”

“No, XD,” she glared back at him when he interrupted her, “He used to say that sometimes the humans would need help to be with their soulmate and that he and some of the other gods created this being that would help them, the people giving it its name.”

“The soulmate goose? Really?”

“That’s not its full name, idiot. It’s the Soulmate Goose of Enforcement,” Drista deadpanned. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought you would end up meeting it, you know. You get along so well with Karl, Quackity, and Y/n, therefore you wouldn’t- Oh.”

Sap looked down away from the teenager, returning to give the now quiet goose more pets.

“Yeah,” Sapnap whispered in response.

Feeling really awkward about the situation, the teenage god thought it would be best that she left, “I’m going to go and find Tommy, bye Snapchat!”

And with that, she teleported away leaving the blaze hybrid alone in the field.

Sapnap began to think about his choices again. About everything that had happened, about everything he didn’t say, about everything he could’ve, no should’ve done.

He knew he should’ve stepped in and stopped Y/n and Quackity from arguing. He knew he should’ve helped Karl more before he began to forget everything. He knew he should’ve helped himself, to stop himself from walking away from his home.

Yes, Kinoko Kingdom may be where he lived, it may be his, or partly his, but it wasn’t his home. Cedar Rapids was more his home, if anything, the Dream SMP was more of his home than this place.

His fiancées are his home, not here. Not anywhere else.

Not this place he ran to when he was scared. When he was terrified of losing the last person who meant something to him.

A few tears escaped his eyes, but he quickly wiped them away as the Goose in his lap let out another honk.

Unbeknownst to him, a figure started to approach him, coming to a stop a few feet in front of him, gentle cawing being heard a lot more.

“She was right you know,” The woman said, Sap looking up at the person standing in front of him, not recognising the figure. He tensed up, ready to fight the unknown person, but only if it came to it, "I didn't expect you four to have him."

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" he asked only for the woman to gently smile in response.

"I'm Kristin, Goddess of Death-"

"You're Y/n's mom," Sapnap interrupted.

"I am, amongst other things," Kristin sat down in front of the young adult, "It's nice to finally meet you Sapnap. Y/n talks about you quite a bit."

One of the few crows flying around came and hopped down on the ground between the two, dropping Kristin a shiny rock, letting the goddess pet them before flying off and joining the rest of its brethren.

"Sapnap," Kristin began, letting the blaze focus his attention back on her, "The best thing I could do is give you advice. Don't spend time dwelling on what needs to be done. Go, find Y/n and Quackity, and talk. If you keep bottling up your feelings, it's going to get you nowhere, and this guy here is just going to get more mad at the four of you for being idiots."

"They left," Sapnap replied, voice cracking slightly, "They left us-"

He tried to continue talking but sobs left his mouth as tears started to fall. His shoulders shook with each shuddering breath he took, his horns lighting with a dull blue fire once again.

Kristin shuffled forward, wrapping her arms around him, letting his head fall onto her shoulder as she ran a hand through his hair, comforting her almost son-in-law.

And as Sapnap let the tears fall from him and his emotions run, he knew he couldn't continue like this. He knew something had to change.

The rain was bad that night.

It didn't rain much in Las Nevadas, it being in a warmer part of the smp, but when it rained, it poured like hell.

It was mainly when thunderstorms would happen in the main part of the greater smp that the weather would really be affected. It was like a cycle. Heavy rain that would cause the river to rise where L'Manberg once stood meant that light showers would last an hour at most and thunderstorms would cause heavy rainfall that would soak anyone to the bone.

Quackity knew it was a bad storm because even Slime was holed up inside.

He had managed to zone out the sound of rain hitting the window, the continuous drone allowing him to block it out as inherent background noise. The occasional flashes of light caused his wings to twitch in anticipation.

There was something wrong.

Quackity didn't know what exactly. It was more of an inherent feeling creeping up behind him, causing the occasional shiver to run down his spine. He just couldn't put his finger on it.

Slime was sat by the window, looking out across Las Nevadas. He personally likes the rain, just when it gets too heavy it affects his viscosity too much and throws him off. 'There's always the fountain', he thought, his fingers tracing the raindrops across the window.

Slime was following the raindrops as they fell, his finger reaching up to trace them before he remembered what his friend Quackity had told him the last time he did that.

Slime knew that he was a goopy guy but sometimes he would forget. He knew that he was bones or that he had to be but sometimes his brain didn't connect and say that to his goop. It was something he was working on because he had to seem like a human and that he had bones, even when it was a no-bones day.

Anyway, ignoring Slime's partial existential crisis, the goopy guy in a shirt and pants, and basically an identical outfit to his friend Quackity, he continued to stare out of the window before ultimately attempting to return to his previous task.

Quackity was not paying attention. The paperwork in front of him had been read at least twelve times but he still couldn't take the information in. Something was disrupting him and he couldn't work out what. It was an itch in the back of his mind, an annoying one at that.

He let out a sigh as he dropped the pen onto the table, leaning back against his chair and pushing himself away from his desk. He let out a puff of air, blowing the strands of hair out from in front of his eyes. Quackity really needed another haircut.

He stared up at the ceiling, his mind starting to wander.

How long was it going to take purpled to find Karl and Sapnap, surely not another week right? He couldn't keep living like this. In denial and regret, it was drowning him.

Even if the two decided they never wanted him again, then at least he would apologise to them. It was the least they deserved.

The shadowy figure in the distance continued to draw closer, forcing Quackity, who had unfortunately noticed its presence earlier but chose to ignore it, to rise up out of his seat and head towards the window. It was a person he was staring at, carrying a bundle of something in its arms, but for the life of him he couldn't work out who.

The rain was cascading down now, affecting his vision and the lights of his city did little to unmask them. His heart clenched at the sight of it; that same nagging feeling saying something was wrong hit him tenfold.

He turned to face Slime, having made up his mind he would go see if the masked figure was okay only for the doors behind him to be flung open.

It was Y/n soaked to the bone.

"Q," they began, terror etched onto their face. It made Quackity's feathers ruffle and stand on edge, wanting to wrap them in his arms and protect them from whatever they were afraid of.

"Q, it's Karl."

The fire flickered casting light across the room. It was the only source of warmth alongside the abundance of blankets piled across the four of them.

The bundle held in Quackity's arms was no stranger to him, the mop of brown hair that usually covered his forehead pushed to the side allowing the damp cloth to rest there and lower the Jacobs boy's raging fever.

The duck's instincts kicked in and the other two stepped aside to allow him to swaddle and care for Karl. They knew he was in safe hands and that Quackity was better at dealing with sick people.

Y/n had propped themselves against the wall, a blanket thrown over their shoulders and wrapped around them. The cloak they had donned earlier was in a pile alongside some of the other wet clothes of both Sap and Karl.

They looked down at the duo huddled on the floor, Quackity's wings furling around the star-eyed boy in a protective cocoon. Chirps left his mouth as he changed the water on the rag before smoothing it over the brunette's unconscious forehead.

There was no guarantee that he would wake up. Y/n could only pray that the gods of prime would help him. They couldn't lose him.

"What happens now?"

Both their own and Sapnaps heads snapped up to look at Quackity, he having the courage to break the scared silence that had overcome them all.

Y/n looked to Sapnap, the blazeborn looking worse for wear. It looked like he hadn't gotten an ounce of sleep in the past years, like he was soon to be death-walking. Just like Karl.

His shirt was clad against his chest, the white material somewhat see-through but now drying allowing them to see the runes that lined his body. He was hunched forward, his own blanket lying over his shoulders as his hands were clasped together in his lap.

Figuring that he wasn't going to speak up, Y/n pushed themselves off the wall and moved to sit between Sapnap's chair, and where the two were huddled together on the floor. They grabbed the blazeborn's hand in their own and placed their other upon Q's shoulder causing him to sway towards them slightly at the affection.

"We talk." They spoke out, the three awake sharing glances at each other.

A distant honk sounded as the goose settled itself into Slime's lap, the goopy guy petting the animal before it began to fade into dust, blowing away into the sky.

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spopsalt · 26 days

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Ayo it's me, the Anon with the long posts and short memory of what to write next.

This time I have a question for you: How long do you think that the stans are unironically going to say that the whole conflict of the Horde conquering the universe as well as Hordak starting the war on Etheria pre-Despondos release was both indirectly 𝘢𝘯𝘥 directly Adora's fault for existing (aka taking chipped Catra's opinion of her during the lash out to heart).

Still confused of why they'd make that logic? I'm glad you asked 'cause here are the steps for the stans' potential bashing:

The First Ones didn't stop the Horde and simply went "welp, we lost, might as well die" even though we don't know what caused them to mostly disappear when Etheria came back to the universe from Despondos.

2. Light Hope was continuously going for Adora when Hordak was pulled so 𝘢𝘭𝘭 of Etheria's plight, and more specifically Catra's pain, is because Adora was born to be Adam's twin and therefore having the prerequisites to transform into She-Ra. How dare she (Adora, that is).

3. Similar to point 2, how dare she live a life of peace and privilege in the Etherian Horde while the universe outside of Despondos is being depopulated by Horde Prime due to him being a despot that had no-one try to kill him via light magic until Etheria was able to be properly placed back into the universe it originally belonged to before being transported to Despondos so that she would have the means of seeing him face to face at all.

The tl;dr? Adora existing in Etheria and not first destroying its Horde (and specifically Shadow Weaver) and then the galactic version after pulling the planet from one dimension to another even before she was old enough walk and therefore understand the situation she was in is enough reason for SPOP stans to take chipped Catra's words e.g. "this wouldn't happen if you didn't exist" to heart and take umbrage at her (Adora) for not doing enough in their eyes to be worthy of being called a predestined heroine of the series' universe.

Hopefully my ramblings made sense and not seen as the words of a fool losing their marbles.

Welcome back! Don't worry, it made sense and I agree. Even when Catra was normal she still took advantage of Adora's guilt complex, in the words of corrupted Catra (Yes I'm counting it as normal Catra since there's no confirmation that her being corrupted changed her personality at her) "Let's be honest, all of this is your fault" "If you hadn't gotten captured, your sword wouldn't have opened the portal" "Admit it, Adora! The world would still be standing, if you had never come through that portal in the first place" "You broke the world and it is all. your. fault." if that isn't enough proof for you, even regular Catra said "It won't be over until I see the look on your friend's faces when they find out that you failed! Because you were too weak to save them." "You're good enough at hurting your friends without my help." Catra just love manipulating Adora, and she even brags about it to Lonnie "She's (Adora's) slow, and easily manipulated"

#spop salt #anti spop #spop critical #anti catra #spop crit #anti c//a #anti catradora #antic//a #spop criticism #spop discourse

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aemiron-main · 2 years

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i was looking at paintings for a totally non ST related reason and had a realization- El seems to parallel Ophelia

And I saw this very very interesting quote about Ophelia from this article, saying something about how

“She needs to be a blank page on which the male characters can write to leave a record of the behaviour they are capable of.”

Now, I want to be EXTREMELY clear when I say that I know that El is a wonderful, complex character who is not a blank slate by any means- however, in the show, she does seem to serve as a sort of ‘blank slate,’ in terms of how men like brenner and hopper and mike see her/perceive her/treat her. Brenner treats her the most literally as a blank slate, manipulating her and projecting his own ideals and beliefs into her and literally experimenting on her. Hopper, while absolutely a much better father figure, still seems to do a similar form of projection- he lost his daughter, and now he’s trying to raise El, but he’s struggling due to his fear of losing her (a fear that exists largely due to losing Sarah), which causes multiple arguments between them, with him seemingly being overprotective. While he’s not projecting Sarah onto El persay, he is projecting that same fear of losing a daughter onto her.

Now, when it comes to Mike, he seems to project his feelings for Will onto El. She works as a “blank slate,” in terms of romantic relationships for Mike because she hasn’t been raised in a normal upbringing, she’s been raised in the lab instead, and as a result, has virtually zero understanding of romantic relationships when her and Mike first get together in s1. Mike is able to project his romantic feelings for Will and his attempts to conform to heteronormativity onto her.

As well, this excerpt from the article mentioned above reminds me of El, especially with how all three of the main male figures in her life (Brenner, Hopper, and Mike) are paralleled to eachother. And even more than that, the part where the article mentions Ophelia being “daughter, sister, lover,” etc, makes me think of how El is often reduced from being and individual, from being El, into a pigeonholed role instead- Hopper sees her more as a daughter rather than an individual initially, Brenner sees her as an experiment/a daughter in his weird way, and Mike sees her as a superhero and as his girlfriend. None of them seem to just see her as El initially- Hopper definitely does eventually, I think he comes to see her as more of an individual at the end of ST2 when he sees her makeover and they have their conversation in the truck, Brenner still never gets to that point, and still sees El as a weapon, an experiment, as a daughter, unable to see her as an individual. Mike doesn’t seem to see El fully as an individual/who she is either- he sees her as a superhero, as a girlfriend, and those two perceptions of her (and therefore mike and eel’S romantic relationship) are getting in the way of Mike’s ability to know El on an individual basis, outside of those roles that he has assigned her. (This also ties into how El and mike don’t even really have any hobbies in common and both show disinterest in the other’s interests/hobbies- their romantic relationship is actively getting in the way of their platonic friendship/being able to see eachother as individuals)

As well, the dynamic between mike and el reminds me of hamlet and Ophelia to an extent in the sense that hamlet acts as if he is in love with Ophelia but doesn’t treat her as if he’s in love, instead treating her poorly- just like how mike claims to be in love with el but he never shows it. As well, Hamlet tells Ophelia that he never loved her, which seems to align with Mike’s feelings imo (I personally don’t think that he ever romantically loved El)

Anyway! I could be totally off base because I’ve never actually read hamlet, but just some thoughts! I’ve also seen people claiming that there’s subtext suggesting that Hamlet was gay, so that could align with Mike! And we also get shakespeare references in the Bingham house!

#stranger things #byler #st analysis #st4 #El hopper #eleven #Jane hopper #Mike wheeler analysis #mike wheeler #mike wheeler i know what you are

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brodinsons · 1 year

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"Instead of highlighting the character's Jewish origins, 'Man of Steel' features a Randian Christ-figure who commits genocide against his entire race, then causes multiple mass casualty events."

I apologize in advance for the incoming rant but I am sick and tired of sitting quietly for this relentless bullshit and at some point, enough is enough. I'm not naming the individual I'm quoting because I'm not interested in starting fights. This is my space and I'm venting a collective decade of frustration and anger.

Noun. Randian (plural Randians) A follower of Ayn Rand.

God damn, y'all just can't help yourselves, can you? You just slurp up every bit of nonsense from all those puffed up "YouTube Essayists" with god complexes from 2015 and take it as fucking fact.

Not to mention, y'all cannot seem to let a random baseless accusation from a disgraced sexual predator go. That's him! He's the one who started it! The very one to fling the first scrap of "Zack Snyder is a Randian Objectivist who hates Superman and is poisoning the DCEU!" bait out into the twittersphere for the rest of the ravenous bloggers to jump on. I refuse to take anyone's treatise on the modern superhero myth seriously if this is the depth they'll stoop to in the middle of their piece.

Snyder made one single offhand comment about maybe adapting 'The Fountainhead' (for its aesthetics, mostly) years ago and now he's a sexist racist fascist objectivist and the root of all evil.

Objectivism: "The exceptional people among us have a divine right to decide our fate and we should not oppose them."

Does that sound like the message of any of his DC films? Movies that end with speeches about heroes wanting to be on the ground to do good in crises and how good humanity can be despite its faults? What about MoS specifically, where the ultimate immigrant allegory struggles to find his place in a world that does not accept him yet still fights for and protects humanity because this world is his chosen home?

Not to mention, where the fuck is this genocide-committing Jesus Superman? Clark t-poses out of the Black Zero one goddamn time while looking sadly back at his dad because Snyder is a visual filmmaker with a penchant for dramatic shots and everyone loses their fucking minds. He goes to the Lutheran church he presumably attended with Martha & Jonathan as a child to seek the counsel of Father Leone because Clark Kent is not canonically Jewish (may the memory of his Jewish creators be a blessing). There's stained glass iconography of Christ in the background at one point because it's a Christian church in middle America. Clark himself never once espouses any religious lines or strict beliefs. Nor does he position himself as a "Christ-figure", either through himself or via the story??????? He doesn't want the responsibility that comes with putting that suit and cape on. But he does it anyway because he understands the stakes when shit gets real and he refuses to let his adoptive world pay for unwittingly bringing the worst remnants of his old world here.

Also, Clark only kills one person: Zod. The U.S. military "bombs" the Black Zero with the starcraft that brought Clark to earth in order to re-open the Phantom Zone and send Zod's forces (the pack of militaristic extremists known as the Sword of Rao) into it. Given what we know of the Phantom Zone in various canons, that's a fate almost worse than death. Then, after being given an ultimatum that either he dies or Zod will, he makes the impossible choice that will haunt him the rest of his life to save a human family moments from being obliterated by Zod's heat vision and kills the general. Nowhere in this catastrophic battle did he "commit genocide against his entire race" (did everyone forget that he himself is the Codex's host and therefore the living possibility of Krypton's rebirth?) or "cause multiple mass casualty events".

I understand that the scale of fictional damage was perhaps a touch more realistic than the near identical scale featured in all of the Avengers movies. It's fine if it's not your thing. Move along. That discomfort still doesn't give you enough leeway to point the finger at a rookie Superman on his first day on the job and say "all that destruction and death was his fault". He tried to take it out of the city! Zod—a vastly more experienced military leader with blind genetic fanaticism on his side, by contrast—refused to allow it. His goal was the annihilation of earth and as much collateral damage as possible (preferably the entire human race). Clark had to stand between humanity and that with zero combat experience and no clue he'd be forced into a no-win scenario to stop the carnage.

I'm tired. It has been ten years. I'm so fucking tired. Can you people give it a rest? None of you are the ultimate authority on superheroes and positioning yourselves as something dangerously close to that with these twitter threads and blog treatises and reviews full of big words in nerd outlets only poisons the fandom well further.

You are allowed to dislike things. You aren't even required to justify that dislike. What you aren't allowed to do is declare something objectively bad based on nothing but your own subjective reaction to it, then invent criticisms that aren't even applicable to the thing in question.

The day we lost the ability to differentiate between "I did not enjoy this media so I guess it wasn't for me" and "I did not enjoy this media and therefore NO ONE SHOULD BECAUSE REASONS I WILL INVENT FROM SECONDHAND HEARSAY" is the day media literacy ceased to exist in pop culture.

#snyderverse meta #extremely long and ''toxic'' rant #this literally does not matter because superheroes are fictional and do not matter #but this director and the world he created matters to me and i am sick and tired of being attacked from every angle for defending it #stop drinking the kool aid #zack snyder is not the boogeyman under your bed or waiting to jump out of your school locker #he is a fucking nerd who made some capeshit movies and everyone collectively lost their fucking minds about it #can we move on now?

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pelgraine · 2 months

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Rewatching Halo s02 episodes 3 & 4

And I had to post here because I had so many thoughts and feelings about how sad and awful the whole situation with Ackerson and his manipulation of Kai 125 is.

Kai, who is still so new to navigating the complexities of being a whole adult human being, is conditioned to trust those in authority and Ackerson takes such advantage of that. Rewatching the conversation that happens between them after John gets taken off duty really hits extra hard the second time around.

Kai has gone to Ackerson to defend her team and John, but also to get answers because she's so lost and so worried about John. We know that Ackerson has very recently received news that there's a 97% chance of Reach being obliterated, and by extension the heavy implication that he will lose his ailing father in the process. Kai, of course, has no idea of what a corner Ackerson has been backed into (backed himself into, perhaps), and therefore has no idea how dangerous each word she says can potentially be in the circumstances.

The second Kai says send just me, temporarily till John is cleared, it sinks in how distressed at her circumstances Kai really is. The second she exposes that weakness, Ackerson goes in for the kill by berating her for something John has done that she has absolutely no knowledge of, twisting her previous words against her to very effectively thicken that sense of isolation, confusion and guilt that Kai is no doubt feeling.

Then comes the "this isn't me speaking to you as your superior" line. It's akin to the flashback memory John has of Halsey speaking to him as a child asking him to keep this a secret just between them. But then, Ackerson tells Kai that sometimes people don't get better, and that sometimes we do more damage by holding on.

We as an audience know that Ackerson is talking about his father. But watching it all again, looking at Ackerson's facial expressions and movements - well, it got me wondering. I think that in that moment Ackerson is also scared, verging on despondent, and isn't really sure what Kai wants from him. Right up until she offers herself for sole temporary deployment. I think that the second she does that, Ackerson knows Kai has accidentally walked herself right into the perfect spot to benefit his plans to discredit Halsey's Spartan II program and for him to take control of the Spartan IIIs, with Kai at the helm for training.

What worries me is the absolute number this is all going to do on Kai's mental health, especially after what happens in e04. Just in that one conversation alone Ackerson has managed to plant some seriously poisoned claws of guilt, responsibility and isolation into Kai, made worse by the fact that she's already finding (what she's led to believe is) John's apparent descent into madness too difficult to watch (and potentially accidentally enable.)

Kai's plea of "Tell me what to do" is not too different from Perez attending the chapel for prayers. Which makes Kai's absence during the time her team arguably needs her most all the more horrible. She's been manipulated by a figure she trusted and expected to guide her at a point when she is probably the most vulnerable she's ever been, if only in the emotional sense.

I think Ackerson's comment of "I'm not a monster" to Halsey when he leaves her alone with Soren is somewhat of a Freudian slip. He's busy mentally reconciling his choices to euthanize his father to save him from worse suffering, and to leave Reach to be glassed with minimal survivors being evacuated so as not to cause panic, and all the other terrible choices he believes were necessary along the way. I think for the most part Ackerson wanted to believe he wasn't a monster, but that by the time he's leaving Soren with Halsey, Ackerson is almost despondent enough not to care whether is a monster or not. Like, an 'everything's gone to shit might as well embrace the dark' sort of attitude.

And so he's likely going to take a lot of that darkness out on Kai. Now that Halsey and Soren have escaped, that Ackerson's father is dead, that John and the other Spartans have (as far as Ackerson knows) died on Reach (along with everyone else he's condemned there) - now Kai alone is going to be a symbol of all of that; of the Spartan program and Halsey and everything that Ackerson hated, by association.

If Ackerson really does go down the monster route, and Kai gets the full brunt of the guilt of Vannaks death by virtue of her having not been there - and by extension, the anger and sense of betrayal from Silver team because she left them when they needed her - then Kai is going to be in exactly the wrong spot to take the brunt of all of Ackerson's anger and grief, all the while feeling the brunt of all of her own grief.

I really hope I'm wrong and Kai finds her feet and doesn't let Ackerson give her shit about anything, and that she's able to reunite with Silver team pronto.

I also hope that the reason the last shot of the Reach episode is that hole in the ceiling with a bird hovering over above is because we're actually seeing things from Vannak's pov and one of his birds (probably Keith) is watching over him, and that we see that pov and the bird because Vannak is actually still alive.

Needless to say, I am counting down the hours till the next episode. Also very curious as to what has happened to Miranda Keyes and whether we'll be seeing more of her soon.

#halo tv #halo tv spoilers #halo tv show #kai 125

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skits-things · 1 year

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IronStrange Fic Idea

So I came up with this, but I'm flip flopping between actually writing it or leaving it as a short thingy as it is. Part of the problem with my motivation to write this is what tense to use (present or past). Part of the problem is that I'm not sure how to write Pepper as I like her, but her character in this is complex and I'm not sure I'd do it justice. I'd probably need a beta but I got no idea how that would work. Therefore: Throwing the thingy out there and seeing what people have to say. Idea is below the cut.

A monkey's paw-like magical item is appearing and vanishing around nyc. Stephen Strange is on the hunt for it.

Meanwhile, Pepper and Tony are going through another couple's argument about the same old problems. Namely, Pepper wants Tony to give up Iron Man again.

Pepper shouts at Tony "I wish you never became Iron Man!" (Exact wording variable.)

The monkey's paw is nearby and grants the wish. Except Tony Stark always insisted that Iron Man WAS him.

To Tony, Iron Man was all the good parts of him. The parts that care about other people. The parts that made him sacrifice himself to keep the world safe. The parts that made him think about the future for the benefit of mankind. The self-doubt that makes him hold himself to a strict moral code.

Pepper gets her wish alright. Iron Man is no more. Instead, there is only SUPERIOR. History changes to match a world where Tony never could have been Iron Man

Tony was always Iron Man, the suits just gave him a more obvious way to show it - one mostly unaffected by the twisted public perception caused by the media that he grew up under. With Iron Man gone, there was only the arrogance, the belief he is better than others, the desire to be worshiped by the public. The future he imagines can so easily fall under his control because he's a Futurist. The Merchant of Death.

Stephen is horrified by the ads of EXTREMIS propagated by a Tony Stark with no inhibitions about shaping the world in his image. He used the residue from the wishes to track down the monkey's paw, but with this wish spanning so far, even if it seems to be centered on Stark, he is left researching a way to undo this with less brute force.

There is a compulsion on the item to give it away or lose it somehow after use, so the wish would backfire on the wishee without a way to reverse it. It goes dormant for a while, however, from the sheer energy expenditure Pepper’s wish requires.

Pepper, full of regret, wants to undo this, but is also terrified of making things worse. She goes to the only person she knows the location of that might be able to help. At 177a Bleecker Street.

Stephen learns everything from Pepper. They have a rather frantic conversation about the situation. Aside from people in the Sanctums or Kamar Taj during the time Pepper made her wish, only Pepper herself is aware of the world's changes.

Except Tony Stark interrupts them.

This is after ENDGAME, changes: Tony lives due to magical dance powers courtesy of The Guardians of the Galaxy. Gamora and Natasha come back in exchange for the soul stones when they return to their rightful places. Other things mostly stay the same. This also means that Stephen Strange is pretty deep in denial about being in love with Tony Stark, making himself believe he feels only guilt, trust, and respect towards the man.

Tony Stark, on the other hand, was half fascinated, half obsessed with the man he viewed as his equal that literally gave his life for him. Now as SUPERIOR, that obsession turned possessive and unhealthy.

In the aftermath of ENDGAME, Tony and Stephen struck up an odd friendship in which Stephen let Tony run tests on his magic due to his trust in the man. Secretly, due to his paranoia, Tony created ways to block Stephen's magic. Stephen knew (because of the 14,000,605 futures which indicated that Tony would likely do this) but pretended not to because he knew that Tony might need to protect himself from other magic enemies and that Tony had the designs under incredibly strict defenses.

This makes things incredibly worse.

SUPERIOR Tony Stark is fully aware of the sexual tension between Tony and Stephen and has little to no concerns about taking what he wants for himself. SUPERIOR has also gotten rid of his Pepper Potts not long after they met when she discovered what he was doing and tried to stop him. Thus Tony has no idea who Pepper is (the incident was before EXTREMIS, and thus not very memorable for him) and sees a very pretty woman acting very familiarly with the person he's interested in.

It is in a fit of rage and jealousy that Tony captures Stephen for himself when Stephen just manages to send Pepper away to Kamar Taj to protect her from Tony.

Stephen and Tony play Captor and Jailor for some time. Meanwhile, Wong and Pepper are desperately trying to get the monkey's paw back to fix everything and thus rescue Stephen when Tony is back to normal. They rush to Pepper's residence to get it, only to learn that some cleaning crews have been through and took the monkey's paw with them.

Pepper spends a lot of this time searching with Christine, who was visiting Stephen at the Sanctum when the wish was granted. Christine had long since returned to work and was brought in by Wong to talk to Pepper while he continued the search. They talk a lot about how it was to date a man who constantly put themselves in danger and the differences in their approaches.

Pepper eventually recognizes that her behavior of forcing Tony to become the man she wished him to be was not the right course of action. Christine is sympathetic and critical by turns, all the while being extremely worried about Stephen. Christine knows that Stephen would be aware of the Masters of the Mystic Arts fighting to break the wish. She also knows that Stephen is self-sacrificial enough to focus all of Tony's attention on him to buy the others time to break it.

Stephen eventually gets injected with a perfected EXTREMIS like Tony has for some reason. Probably because he made Tony mad somehow. It fixes his hands and the complicated feelings that result from it makes him conflicted about his feelings towards Tony.

The Wong manages to track down the relic and uses the remains of Stephen's research to reverse the wish. The wish breaks and the world returns to normal. Except. Stephen was never affected by the spell in the first place. There was nothing to reverse on him. He's still infused with an EXTREMIS. Similarly, Tony keeps his SUPERIOR body. There was too much change to revert him to normal. He integrated with tech on a level that Magic just couldn't undo.

Body Horror time: Every time Tony looks in the mirror, he sees the man that raped (or at least did some dubiously consensual things) and kidnapped Stephen. His friend/kinda man crush.

Tony struggles to come to terms with the kind of person he can become if he truly stopped caring. Stephen tries to comfort him, but Tony's guilt complex with for him is now ginormous so Stephen is just trying to get it through to his thick head that he's felt something for Tony since Titan.

Stephen eventually convinces Tony that he really does want a relationship with the man despite what happened between them. There could also be an additional flavoring of angst where he has negative reactions to Tony despite what his mind tells him.

Extra (maybe): This story could end with Pepper asking Christine on a date.

Please note that this is a plot contrived view of Pepper and Tony's relationship. Some fics write their relationship BEAUTIFULLY and I love seeing them like that. Their relationship is written negatively here on purpose for the sake of the story.

#ironstrange #fic idea #pepper potts #tony stark #stephen strange #working title: the devil comes as everything you wish for #tony stark/stephen strange #inspired by superior iron man (SIM)#dubious consent

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mks-grin · 1 year

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The Quarry AU Headcanon: The counselors each gained superpowers. What power would each of them have?

(( EDITED bc I forgot to include Max’s other power.))

You’ve absolutely MADE my day with this question let me tell you!

So I’ll give you two for each person - “The Power they would most naturally have” (like if they were born with it) OR “the power they would have later in life because it would torment them” (like it happens in order to force them to grow.)

Jacob - “Super Strength” OR “Time Travel”

Super Strength makes sense at first glance for Jacob because he probably is already a strong guy. He would fall into typical Superman rules. Minus the flying and laser? Vision.

However, Jacob is the type to deeply regret his actions, he also seems like the type to not be able to accept reality. He might use a time loop ability to go back in time in order to change his relationship with Emma. Yet overtime he would realize that there are some things time travel can’t change. Others will always have free will, desires, and will die. Nothing can change that.

(He ALSO has the most possible deaths / therefore you’re most likely to use your Death Rewind on him vs. any other character! Get it? Rewind? Ok.)

Ryan - “Invisibility” OR “The Touch of Death”

Ryan would prefer to be invisible, I’m sure, most of the time in canon. Invisibility would allow him to eavesdrop without consequences and hide when he wants to avoid others. It would come so naturally to him. He might only be visible when giving his lessons or when talking to Chris.

However, being given a “touch of death” ability would doom him to always be alone in some capacity. He would feel othered and have to constantly be aware of how close he got to others. While he doesn’t want closeness - knowing he can’t ever have it would make him a little bitter. Or really bitter! I think he would actually opt to try and remove this power vs. adapt to it.

Abigail - “Manipulate Nature” OR “Lie Detector”.

Abi would naturally connect to nature, because she can appreciate the world in an artistic sense she would also have the connectedness needed to manipulate said nature. Being able to better care for plants and ecosystems, she would thrive doing this wonderful and peaceful work.

However, if she were to be able to detect lies, without others knowing, she might lose faith in them faster. She may not trust people or will simply be disheartened with most people. It may cause her to have a gloomier look on life. Until of course she realizes people also lie to hide good things like crushes and surprises - realizing that people are more complex than their actions. Their intentions are just as important!

Emma - “Charm” OR “Mimic”

Initially Emma is our summer season heartthrob so it makes sense that she might have the ability to charm others! She would use this power usually for good, but the occasional boost in an interview never hurt anybody? People might question whether or not they’re under her spell on a day to day basis. She would insist however that she doesn’t use it on a daily basis for constant life hacking.

However, because Emma lacks a true sense of self she might be given the power to look and sound like other people. She is able to use this ability to have conversations with someone without them knowing it’s actually her. This leads her to realize her peers know a lot more about themselves than she knows about herself. This may bother her until she knows more about who she is.

Dylan - “Calculation” OR “Clean Slate”

Dylan, being a little genius, might be able to solve problems with more confidence than another. He may have a better sense of geometry, physics, surface area, and bodily capabilities that he can quickly solve those sorts of issues. In a tight situation he might be able to work out a solution! Can you fall from this height without breaking a leg? How fast can you swerve to not hit a deer and not flip your Minicoop? Sometimes it feels like guesswork to others - but it’s almost like having a completely accurate scientific instinct.

Clean Slate meaning he can clear someone’s mind of a specific thought. He can wipe information into the subconscious. Sadly, he would find this power to be a burden and find himself feeling guilty whenever he would wipe away a memory. Dylan eventually feels that mistakes, failures and loss are all important aspects of life. Wiping those experiences away from friends stunts them a little and robs them of development. They are capable of remembering what they forget - and when they do they also remember that he wiped away that memory. This has ended in a fight before.

Kaitlyn - “Ice Breath” OR “Intuition”

Ice Breath, while ironic, would be a fun power for Kaitlyn. She would say her typical snide or cynical comments to friends and whenever it hurts their feelings she would remind them she is “ice cold”. She may even sing “Ice Ice Baby” as a sort of theme song. Having this sort of narrative following her and in her mind / she would be able to actually believe it. Therefore, hardening her heart and increasing her ability to thrive in a crisis. She would be a worse team player on a day to day basis but when you NEED her she’s there.

Intuition is a little more haunting for Kaitlyn. While she is smart, her ability to understand the intuition isn’t too sharp. Intuition is a sort of meeting of the mind and heart, in a way a lot of people can’t describe. Kaitlyn is a very logical thinking person. When gaining this ability she struggles to understand what the “feeling of dread” is. She gets little premonitions and cannot always figure out what will CAUSE that premonition to happen. Sometimes her actions, intended to avoid a specific future, are what lead her to that future. She wouldn’t share her premonitions with other, and instead feel guilty when she can’t motivate someone to do what she thinks they ‘need’ to do. This hurts her relationships because she starts to become pushy and has too alienated of a mindset to share her issues.

Nick - “Shield / Bubble” OR “Animal”

Nick seems like the type to obtain a sort of ‘boring’ power like this. He wouldn’t mind it in the slightest and would make it look cool because he has the sense to use it well! He certainly could manipulate the shields for practical use and for party trick use! It’s one of the few abilities that can be used to embarrass Jacob, which Nick can easily appreciate.

Because we see Nick go absolutely 😬 in canon, I think it makes sense to transfer that here. He’d just turn into a more werewolf-esq version of himself. I think this power would be triggered by Nick’s emotions. Not because he is new to the power, but simply because that’s a trait of the power. This would force Nick to have to come to terms with his emotions more directly than he does in canon. ( He can’t let emotions bubble up or take the back seat anymore.) Simultaneously he needs to keep a leveler head to remain human! If not he becomes a feral version of himself.

Max - “Healing” OR “Sense Deprevation”

C’mon obviously Max would be born with a healing power. He’s just mad sweet.

( Also did you see the lawsuit Max’s actor is going through right now?? Look that shit up. Yikes! Skylar, as many Judge Judy episodes have taught me, idt he has anything to sue over”.)

Anyways, Max would absolutely love to help people and has the right sort of temperament to help others. Medical school wouldn’t be his thing - but hey if he’s born with the ability that’s different!! Line up because this clinic is OPEN! (Also Skylar plays a character in another series as a kid where he is a fake church healer!)

In contrast, Max might have the ability to rob someone temporarily of one of their five senses. He might do this when people argue, by taking vision away for a few minutes, these people can’t keep hitting each other. He does this for Laura whenever she wants to eat something healthy that she doesn’t enjoy. He also could do it for kids (and Jacob) who need medicine. He never uses it on people without saying he’s going to use it though.

However he has faced instances where the sense didn’t come back when he thought they would and he does not know the rhyme or reason to when this happens. Once Laura lost vision in one of her eyes for like 12 hours. Whoops!

Laura - “Animal Communication” OR “Regeneration”

We see why this would be Laura’s calling right? Best vet ever. Or a constantly sobbing vet. She also would be able to tell more about animal abuse and rats people about to her and Max’s buddy, T-Money. Laura loves and hates this ability bc she now has the ability and responsibility to do more than just yearly pet checkups.

And regeneration! The ability to not die / or can’t die as easily as others do. It’s a blessing and a curse. In her everyday life it’s good to know she heals from paper cuts, burns, and hangnails faster than everyone else - but realizing that her mortality could come into question might sorta ruin her summer vibes ya know? Could she die? Would she age?

Despite this she decides she absolutely must use this power for vigilante justice.

#the quarry #TQ #supermassive games #laura kearney #max brinly #ryan erzahler #dylan leviny #emma mountebank #abigail blyg #jacob custos #Kaitlyn ka #nick fucillo #the quarry headcanons #headcanons for the quarry

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