Maximus was conditioned to kill. He was most at home with a gun in his hand, and he could do drills in his sleep. But when it came to dealing with people (in a non violent way) he didn’t have a clue.

Dane was his life line. They’d joined a bit later, well into their teens. They weren’t as good with guns as Max, but memorizing relics came naturally to them. It was frustrating, though Maximus wouldn’t admit it, that he still couldn’t get the hang of reading diagrams despite being in the Brotherhood for far longer.

It was all the tiny numbers and lines. They all just seemed to blur together no matter how hard he focused, and studying them for too long gave him headaches. Dane tried to cheer him up, saying some saccharine sweet line like: “everybody has different talents” or “you’ll get the hang of it eventually. Just keep at it.”

Maximus didn’t want to keep at it. He wanted to be as naturally gifted as his friend. He wanted the ease with which they navigated the world. He hid his resentment though, like he hid everything. He grew up having to hide behind a mask. Showing emotion was akin to weakness, and to survive in such a hostile environment, he could not be weak. So he took the beatings, seeing it as yet another test. Another trial to test his resolve. Well, he’d come this far, and he wasn’t going to let anyone or anything stop him.

When he jolted awake the morning after Dane’s promotion, he immediately felt a pit of guilt, before he’d even gotten up to see what happened, before he saw the blood or razor blade, he felt guilty. It was like his selfish wants had manifested it, and he wasn’t even surprised when they hooded him, and marched him out to be questioned. Maybe they read his mind, maybe he’d thought it so loudly everyone else could hear.

He expected to die, not to take Dane’s promotion. Guilt was overshadowed by relief and joy. In the moment he didn’t care how he’d gotten promoted to squire. He did it. He was finally on the road to his dream. He’d make up for his shortcomings by being the best squire there ever was. And then he’d become a Knight, and bring glory and fortune to the Brotherhood of Steel.

…

He’d look back on it after it was all done, at the child he was only a few days ago. He had all he’d ever wanted, but it was a sham. He was a fraud. He didn’t know who he was anymore. Maybe he never knew. Maybe he’d look inside himself and find nothing; a hollow empty shell, like a suit of power armor without a pilot.

At this point I'm just staring at it. It's...it's so big. Thick. It's just a little smaller than my forearm. When they talk about fingers just being able to encircle the shaft, this is the dick they're talking about. There are RIDGES on this thing. It's HEAVY. The kind of dick he's too nervous to show you the first time heavy petting gets a little too heavy. The kind of dick that "if I don't stretch you with my fingers and tongue first, you will be split in half" applies to. Completely justifies the statement "the quiet ones always got the biggest dicks".

But if he even attempts to tuck it away, I'm biting him. I waited too long for this dick to stop now. So what if I can't walk tomorrow? I think that would make it worth it 😌

so, like, the main message of stranger things is obviously that it's okay to be different, right???

i'm pretty sure everyone knows that lol. all the main characters are either "weirdos" in some way, suffering from trying to force themselves to conform to societal norms, or both.

eddie even explicitly spells it out for us!!! "forced conformity, that's what's killing the kids" (i'll be comìng back to this quote later)

what seems strange, then, is how this connects to the antagonists of the show. usually, antagonists have goals, values and motivations that act as foils and counters to those of the protagonists. this can be incredibly simplistic, e.g. "hero wants to save people, villain wants to hurt people". occasionally, though increasingly more frequently in the current era of storytelling, a villain will have motives that seemingly mirror or compliment those of the hero, but that are corrupted in some way. this is the classic "we're not so different, you and i" type of villain.

brenner and the russians are both interested in weaponising and studying types of nonconformity. brenner seems to think he has complimentary motives to el, but he really doesn't.

the creatures of the upside down are, without guidance, just feral animals. dustin's relationship with dart literally proves that they have zero malicious motivations, or motivations at all beyond a desire for food.

the non-brenner government is the only antagonistic force actively trying to erase the nonconformity. their goals are the most opposed to those of the protagonists, but they share the same broad motive of wanting to keep people safe.

but henry, vecna, the mindflayer, whatever you want to call him??? the apparent main antagonist of the show??? he hates that forced conformity too!!! he spends an excruciating amount of time monologuing about how much he hates it!!! he loathes his mother for looking down on him for being different, and brenner for taking advantage of him for it. he encouraged eleven by reassuring her that she was different from the others, and that it was a good thing.

his values aren't just similar or complimentary, they are a straight up copy+paste of the show's message, but held by a bitter man with a grudge.

but why??? what does this communicate to the audience??? that it's okay to be different, unless you don't want to forgive the people who have judged you for it???

well first of all, that's a shitty fuckin message.

second of all, if that's the case then el, the main character of the show, is in opposition to the message!!! while s4 played with her morality, she wouldn't be cast in contrast to the statement the story is making, she's not that kind of protagonist.

and then i had a thought.

all of henry's victims are traumatised and struggling with mental health issues, yes, but that's not why he targets them. he targets them because they're trying to hide their struggles and conform with what is expected of them.

in a way, then, he's representative of the kind of deep self loathing that comes from lying about who you are. he's the personification of intrusive thoughts- literally, when he uses the visions on his victims!!!

from a meta perspective, he's acting like the very things he hates. if the structure of society is choking the life out of people who deviate from it, then he is the most drastic manifestation of that. forced conformity is killing the kids in spirit, and henry embodies it when he kills them in reality as well.

from a character perspective again, the problem with henry isn't his values themselves, but his utter lack of tolerance for others. not intolerance for people who actively go against his beliefs, either, but intolerance for those who aren't quite ready to apply them to themselves yet. nobody can ever break free of the confines of society if they are punished and broken simply for being born into it.

i think the message of henry's character is this:

accept and embrace the ways in which you are different, but do not look down on others for not yet being able to do the same.

au where anakin is a very overworked and tired (post)graduate student and obi-wan is a high-up business man who keeps accidentally running into him:

a blond haired, blue eyed man hands him his morning coffee one day, and he takes it without a second’s thought, even though the man is judging him for his coffee with four sugars and four cream.

a day later, he’s letting a cashier scan his groceries and it’s the same man? with the same expression? judging him again for what he chooses to buy?

and then a few days later, he goes out on a date and the person who is his server just HAS to be the same man!!! he even asks and the man arches his eyebrow and says that his name is anakin and if obi-wan doesn’t bother reading name tags then that’s his problem

(it’s the same man)

over the weekend, obi-wan looks out after his 17th floor business meeting and he sees Anakin with the hair and the eyes cleaning his windows but he’s actually fallen asleep so there are no blue eyes to get lost in, and in fact obi-wan has such a heart attack that the man will somehow fall that he wakes him up, forces him to land (anakin thinks he’s going to be fired the whole time, but he’s honestly too exhausted to care), and then offers him a full-time job as his secretary on the spot. with benefits.

Me, every time I attempt to write smut: this is awful, is this even sexy? I'm too ace for this

Wincest Wednesdays

for @wincestwednesdays Sept 1st prompt: Lost

on AO3

When you’ve lived your life in the in-between spaces it’s hard to get lost. Endless two-lane blacktop roads with their white or yellow, double or dashed lines that seemed to stretch on forever, over another hill, around another bend, fifty miles to the next town, no gas for the next hundred miles so you better stop and top off the tank here. Motels with the same layout, same floor plan, same parking spaces, same cars, same voices raised indistinct and angry, happy, sad, moaning, shouting, banging on the thin walls. Diners in every town staffed by the same waitresses, the same cooks, the same menus, the same smells. Paper placemats all with the same ads, just different names. Most of your life was spent looking at the same face, not your own, but it may as well have been. You knew every hair, every freckle, every wrinkle, every scar. You knew his eyes and the pattern of his teeth, the way he licked his lips subconsciously as he looked at you. Waking up each morning and the first thing you did was look for him. His eyes closed, mouth open, softly snoring. His eyes open, smirking and calling you girly names-- Samantha or Princess or Sweetheart, never asking if you slept okay but always knowing if you did. You gave up running away when you realized it was pointless, there was nowhere else to go or be that would ever fit as well as the liminal spaces that your brother navigated so effortlessly. He’d mastered the edge of town, any town, before you learned to read, breezing in and out with barely a ripple left behind, pulling you along in his wake. By the time your dad had given him the keys to the car without ever expecting them back, he knew his way around the country well enough that he didn’t need you to navigate the highways anymore, only asking for help in towns and cities. But he still had a knack for maneuvering through back alleys and parking lots, finding shortcuts and free parking in places you were certain he’d never been. Just like how he always seemed to find a song to sing along with at the best/worst possible times, when you were feeling good and sang along, or when you were feeling low and passed the miles imagining how it would feel to wring his neck, just to make him stop. You could hear his voice in your sleep, a subtle shift in tone, and suddenly you’d be wide awake and ready for… anything. So you no longer dreamed of running away, of finding a real, solid place in the world. What good would it be when your life wove through the fabric of the world so thoroughly, crisscrossing and doubling back, the threads, yours and your brother’s, twisted together, were stronger that way. Yeah, it was hard to get lost when home was wherever the two of you were together, when you stopped running away and focused on running together.

Yeah yeah impossible architecture this, backrooms that, endless hallways and looping corridors, we've all seen it. You know what's really fucked up? What's really terrifying, down to the quick of your soul? A house/building that's almost completely normally but was just atrociously built. All the infrastructure is bad. The planning was bad. An ongoing cascade of bad decisions allowed to reach their dreadful crescendo.

A house with barren walls, no outlets to be seen. Parts cut out of doors and walls because otherwise it would smack into the light fixtures or ventilation ducts. Piping and ducts that cut into each other, somehow. Spaghetti wire that leads to nowhere, abandoned eons past and left to rot and fester. Multiple different crews of people had to actively spend time installing these things. Did they know? Did they care? Could they do anything to stop the tragedy?

And you know, maybe it can take on a supernatural element. Those wires grew and grew like climbing ivy, no goal but to sprawl across the house. A second light switch appears almost completely on top of the previous one, just slightly rotated so you can see the old one underneath. The sharp angles in the ducts get just a little sharper, sharper still until they cut better than your best knives. The appliances sink further and further into the wall with each passing day until the House devours them completely. The pipes are leaking an unidentifiable liquid. Shoddy moulding crackles apart revealing something you'd like to hope isn't raw muscle underneath. Water damage bubbles the ceiling, pops it open like popcorn and millions of tiny eyes stare back. What is it that they're looking for? The termites in the attic are getting louder and louder. The wires creep closer and closer...

Having brain worms. What if uhhhhhh SOS Mianite au

for the wip game - ahhhh it is actually impossible to pick, i am consumed with curiosity about everything on the list ok ok ummmm refractive index or lay-on-the-floor-and-scream dot excel please!

I did lay-on-the-floor-and-scream for zahnie here, so we'll go with refractive index. Also known as “why do the different colors of kryptonite all suck in different ways, why is Tim fundamentally different people around his family and his friends, why would anyone make a pizza out of cauliflower, and other answers Kon absolutely cannot go another day without”. I am again putting the DC timeline(s) in a blender to make a more palatable story-smoothie!

Kon overhears Tim lying to Bruce about his home life, which is very cool (he heard Robin all the way in Gotham) and very uncool (he was not supposed to be listening to Robin while he was in Gotham) and very impressive (Rob lied to Batman! right to his face! and it worked!) and very worrisome (why is Rob lying to Batman anyway???)

Also Deathstroke has a crate of kryptonite samples, Bart keeps going missing, and Cassie keeps ordering inedible food for movie night. The usual problems.

Kon settles into the straw, absently tucking some prickly bits away with his TTK, and closes his eyes.  Why is hearing practice easier with his eyes closed?  Is it really or is that a—what did Bart call it.  Like sugar pills.  Oooh, sugar—it’s a little bit cheating, to go out for hearing practice but then only listen in on Ma and Pa in the kitchen right there, but—oh they are definitely talking about pie.  Sweet.  Heh.  Sweet.  Aw, he lifted his head towards the house when he was trying to listen to the kitchen.  Hearing practice half-fail.  He lets himself flop back down limp in the straw, TTKs a little more of it away from the back of his neck, ugh, and carefully stays put as he listens for Bart.  Bart’s always making noise, even when he’s still and quiet as he can be his heart still goes like a hummingbird, he should be easy to pick out.  Nope.  Nuh uh.  Nothing.  Kon keeps listening for Bart.  Behind him is uh, east—quick check, yeah, house there cows there road there Smallville out thataway, yeah, behind him is definitely east—so Bart should be to his right.  He tries again.  He just listened around for Smallville no problem, even clocked some cars on the road—and this is the middle of nowhere, so there aren’t cars for ages in any direction—so why can’t he find a juiced-up speedster heartbeat, theoretically actually a whole household of speedster heartbeats, to his right?  There’s a piece of straw jabbing him in the cheek.  He turned his stupid head to the right, ugh.  Uuuuugh.  And how is a little piece of straw still so pokey when his skin is invulnerable, anyway?  Rob would know, probably.  He wonders, just out of habit, just for a second, where Robin is now.  How is he, what’s he doing—and that’s when his stupid hearing decides to cooperate. 

Hi! I read the ask about Adonis, and I was wondering... do you think Griffith feels any guilt about the people he kills, or like the enemies who end up dying because they're in the way of his dream? Like - I know he feels terrible about murdering people in general, like he clearly doesn't enjoy it at all despite making himself ruthless, and I know he feels especially guilty about his friends and comrades who die for his dream, but I wonder if he feels actual guilt about his enemies as well? I find his expressions really interesting both when he's facing the queen before she burns to death and when he sends the assassins off (to get ambushed by Guts) with their reward money... like he seems so troubled. Right before he turns away from the queen he kind of just... looks down, kind of similar to how he usually looks down when he feels bad about something. Perhaps I'm misreading it? Is it just that he involved Guts in his scheme that he feels so bad about it... that's the only reason he implies to Guts, but then Griffith never speaks about his severe guilt issues. I'm sorry this is so long, I'm just really curious to hear your thoughts! 💙

I'm not sure if you went in depth about this in your Berserk Golden Age review analysis/breakdowns (I haven't finished all of them yet) so if you already talked about this there, I apologize. Also is it wrong (take wise) for me to think that Griffith was super repressed at that point when he hears about Adonis, so whatever guilt/bad feelings he feels usually when people die due to his dream/actions is buried and replaced with the satisfaction about one less obstacle he has to worry about? I know this ask is all over the place, please feel free to ignore!

I absolutely do think he felt guilty about the deaths he caused as well - he even includes them in his "thousands of comrades and tens of thousands of enemies" summation. It's also referenced in his first appearance when he goes on about how people die meaningless deaths. I don't think he feels as bad about it as he does about his allies, but I do think it's worth noting that even now, in the current series, he goes out of his way to avoid excess deaths among his enemies.

That's the wartime enemies though - the soldiers, who I assume he understands are largely tools of larger forces and no more guilty or innocent than his own troops. I would say the same is true for people like the hired thugs - they're just innocent bystanders caught up in this political warfare and I do think he feels badly about that - thus the disturbed look when they leave and the fact that he left the money they'd earned with their bodies.

As for people like Julius and the Queen...

I think in those cases it's less that he feels bad about killing them specifically than that he feels uncomfortable with what killing them - his willingness to do so and the methods he uses to accomplish that aim - says about him.

Julius and the Queen are not bystanders or soldiers, they're more like enemy generals right, like they're waging war on him and he's a war leader so he puts them down. They picked that fight - a fight he wasn't even trying to get involved in - and forced his hand because they created a situation where it was either him or them. There's no way around that, because they've got infinitely more resources and influence than he does, so all he can do is respond in kind.

But that doesn't mean his feelings about those situations - especially the Queen situation - are uncomplicated. Because he did still compromise the person he wanted to be, but also because he dragged other people into it - not just Guts, either. With the Queen he has a child kidnapped and threatened, he blackmails Foss and makes him an active conspirator in murder and treason, he hires goons to help him and then has them assassinated - it's a lot.

And since he considers these things to be dirty work to begin with, the fact that he does them, and that he brings other people into it with him, is uncomfortable to him.

That said, there is another quirk to it: the actual mastermind behind those attempts on his life was Foss, who he spared. Why?

I think it's because Griffith is ultimately someone who does as little damage as possible and as much damage as necessary.

In the case of Julius and the Queen, killing them was necessary because their positions meant that they could never be intimidated or controlled - and because of his relationship to them and what he represented (the loss of his status to Julius and the loss of her lover to the Queen), they would just keep coming after him if he didn't bring it to a permanent end.

But with Foss there was a better way - instead of literally killing Foss, Griffith did exactly what he did with Corkus: kill his ambitions at the root, and turn him into a sycophantic follower instead of a rival.

As for Adonis, that's a hard one because we don't spend a lot of time with the Adonis issue unlike Julius, Foss and the Queen. My personal perspective is that he was probably aware on some level that dealing with Adonis was likely to become necessary at some point, so having him turn up dead is convenient and spares him the inner tumult of having to give that order since it was an accident.

I mean the thing is, Griffith isn't a cartoon villain but he's also not a saint - Femto didn't come from nowhere. I guess you could say I think that smile is the part of him that ultimately becomes Femto.

sorry to keep harping on this but i finally figured out what bothered me with the "naruto is a loser bootlicker" stuff! it doesn't take into account his trauma and the fact that he was also a victim of konoha.

id even say that if someone from, say akatsuki, got to naruto "first" instead of iruka and they helped him and acknowledged him first then he'd have latched on to them! naruto craves acknowledgement and companionship so much that he'd latch on like a leech to anyone who provided him that.

so the problem isn't that naruto is a "bootlicker" it's unresolved trauma, which is konoha's fault all over again. i think it's a little cruel to call a victim a cog of the system bc like that's the whole point, he's made a cog of the corrupt system unwittingly.

i didn't want 2 touch on boruto bc i don't consider it canon, but this also explains why in boruto he's miserable all the time. bc the village beat out any semblance of rebellion and made him a part of the very system that let him down and he's not allowed to even acknowledge that they let him down! he's not just unhappy bc of the passionless het marriage (which im SURE the village pushed for as well) and bc he isn't with sasuke, he's unhappy bc this is furthest from the life he envisioned for himself and for other shinobi. we can absolutely blame him for getting to this point all we want but that doesn't take away the fact that konoha used his unresolved trauma and issues (that they caused!!) to mould him into this. well, it's that + shitty writing.

.

I always feel weird bringing up new things to my therapist because

a) I feel like it just comes out of nowhere to her so I worry that she might think I'm making something up, and if I push that it'll become something that bites me in the ass in the future

b) those things have become such a regular part of my life that I just don't think of them as problems even though they sometimes cause such problems that I keep internalized very well

and c) my depression has overshadowed so much of what I deal with that everything else just pales in comparison, which is part of the problem and why I worry a bit about recovery because it might unlock a lot of other issues like how digging reveals fossils except it's trauma and various mental health issues I've pushed down to be able to function

Thinking about it, it's not that I was lonely or anything growing up. I had a lot of friends and people I had fun with and talked to a bunch, but due to the way I was brought up, I wasn't able to really deepen and nurture those friendships. It's something that's impacted me to this day and at one point in my life, I became aware that some friends were not as close as I told myself they were except one particular moment, this wasn't because they did anything shitty (and that shitty thing wasn't done out of malice or intent), but it's that thing when you're young and you call everyone your close friends and you grow up and you realize lol, no they're just friends! And that's okay!).

And then I learned to see relationships I had with people very objectively (for the most part! I'm only human) which helped me be a more balanced adult and why I don't particularly get upset that certain friendships fade. That's just part of life, and when you're an adult, it's even harder to maintain a certain intensity and intimacy in friendships and a certain amount of interaction. I don't know if this is weird to say, but I think that's why I get taken aback and it means a lot to me when I have to recalibrate my perspective on a relationship because a good friend actually values what we have more than I expected.

Obviously, this is uncomfortable and bemusing when you know for a fact that their perspective isn't accurate and they're implying there's an intimacy there that in fact isn't, but when it's someone you care about and they level up the friendship like that...I'm not explaining things right. It hasn't happened much tbh even if I obviously had and have friends who have appreciated and celebrated our friendships and that means a lot too, that you know where you stand and you never have to question it, but there are some friendships where you realize oh...I mean a lot to this person. Oh, this is how much I mean to them or they like me this much?

complaining about a problem that I created but this spn fic is giving me a lot of trouble. this is the first time I’ve ever had to do real structural edits on a fic, which I guess is a good thing—I’m learning how to piece sorry beats together more effectively. but damn does it suck.