Just want to say: a, I admire very much that you've figured out a healthy way to work on your fics that allows you to have fun with it. And also b, am very excited to hear that you are getting there with pez! It has fully given me brain rot ever since I read it last year, there is just such a lack of content for the highly specific trope of using time travel as a device to explore extremely unhealthy levels of self loathing.
I just adore everything you're doing in it. Neither midoriya is anywhere approaching okay for any portion of the fic and I love rereading and mining into all the subtle characterization pointing to that. It's a bit like nhtycth in that some really goofy funny stuff is often hiding some really fucking worrying things, but the fact that characters DO do that stuff—that todoroki uses his teaspoon's worth of extremely stunted social skills to bludgeon his friend's door open and help him, that a rpf shipping war is an actual source of drama despite how goofy the sentiment seems on the surface, that about half of what jon says is deeply worrying and the other half is extremely funny and there's a lot of overlap between the two—really lifts the tension and brightens the universe. It's sort of similar to what you did with gerry, in that endless misery isn't nearly as painful as the ups and downs of a life that, when you step back and zoom out, has something deeply and horribly wrong with it.
(jon sort of reminds me of spider-man in that he uses human to deal with trauma and stress, except I don't think he at any point realizes how fucking funny he is. He's just there, in a home depot, gnashing his teeth because he's got so many bodies to dispose of and this cashier sure is taking her time.)
I really, really, really have had trouble finding fics that take everything midoriya has dealt with to task. It's a hell of a thing to live 14 years as a disabled minority, have it heavily shape your existence, and then one day you wake up and you realize you're...not that, or at least, nobody will ever acknowledge you as that again. You've lost all claim to it. Those experiences that shaped who you are? Dust in the wind. 14 years of pain and life might as well be buried in the ground for all the good they do you. Nobody's going to cut you any slack or quarter, you've gotta simply work harder, be better. And now when you do that you get the results you wanted, so that's fine, then. That's good. There was something wrong with the you before, and there's something right with the you now, and if the transition is a little rough, well that doesn't matter, you're the same as everyone else now, so it's your own job to fill in whatever gaps you need to.
I really can't get over how mentally fucked it must be for midoriya to run into quirkless people, run across quirkless issues, and be silently caught between, incapable of speaking his mind and too scared to do so anyway around those he can trust.
Also I should mention, I'm just very excited for bakugou to get back from the gym. He's been there like a year I hope he's getting a good workout in.
Me realizing that it’s been a year since pez dispenser debris:
I feel like there’s just this very specific type of grief that Izuku has to grapple with in the span of pez dispenser debris that I’m just obsessed with. He’s sort of silently mourning who he could have been, when 1) he has to present like there’s nothing lost to maintain his secret and 2) the entire world is constantly inundating him with the message that there was nothing lost.
Like. I don’t want to get too deep into it because it risks spoiling things and I do have major plans to continue it (I’ve loved this story for so many years before I ever even hit publish), but the emotion that Izuku’s feeling right now is so much more complex than “I hate who I used to be and want him to stop existing” or “I just want to keep my secrets.” And I think the way he interacts with Mirio is the biggest evidence of that.
Izuku’s placed himself at the very center of the Quirklessness debate with his support of Mirio. He fights for Quirkless heroes, very publicly, to the point where he’s not even graduated yet but considered to be one of the most prominent voices on the matter. If you took a poll of Quirkless people as to which hero would be most supportive of them pursing their own career in heroics, Izuku would be right at the top of the list. When it comes to Quirklessness itself, he’s nothing but supportive.
But he didn’t tell Mirio the truth of his own Quirklessness.
Out of everyone, Mirio’s the one everyone expects to know, despite him being a relatively newer relationship compared to someone like Iida or Uraraka or Todoroki. And I tried to imply that he’s sort of the one who knows the most about Izuku out of everyone save All Might.
Like, we’ll get into how much exactly Mirio knows soon, so I won’t divulge what, if anything, Izuku has told him. But we know that Mirio knows, weirdly enough, that Izuku is deeply fucking haunted. He knows that boy has many violent ghosts in his bones. He finds it hilarious and will tell their realtor about it. Izuku told him about the discontent spirits who died in a violent passion and live on inside of him before he told him about his Quirklessness.
And I just feel like one of those things is a little bit easier to discuss than the other.
Izuku has decided to keep his own Quirklessness quiet in a way that surpasses secrecy about One for All. If it was just about OfA, he could tell people he didn’t get his quirk until the entrance exam, and it wouldn’t even be a lie. He’s purposefully obscuring his own past as Quirkless even as he takes a forefront of the Quirkless hero debate with his open support of Mirio.
And the fact that he’s at the forefront of this debate in and of itself requires a difficult dichotomy. He is the world’s most vocal proponent for the first Quirkless hero. He is a known figure in the Quirkless community now.
He isn’t considered one of them anymore. He’s an outsider coming in.
It must be such a strange, odd sort of grief to come to the people you were home amongst for most of your life and be greeted as a stranger. To return home, and to be welcomed in for the first time, and to not even be able to tell people that you’ve lived here all your life and don’t need a tour.
It’s a sort of death of self, I think. And I think Izuku never expected to have to grapple with his own ghost.
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James: Give me one good reason why I should trust you Mr. Smee. Why shouldn't I kill you!?
Smee: Well...that is a good question, we just met a few weeks ago. I'm sorry I don't have an answer for you.
James: .... Nevermind.
Smee: but I didn't-
James: Nevermind, you're an idiot. If you couldn't even come up with an excuse under threat of death, I doubt you could come up with a cunning enough strategy to kill me.
Smee: So.. we're friends now?
James: No... we're...partners in crime. It's more professional.
Smee: Do partners in crime eat tea and bisquets together?
James: ...On occasion...
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the most wholesome thing is seeing that the wholesome post blog runner is probably one of the nicest people ever :3 i’m generally Terrified of sending asks especially to a blog that Does Things like this but seeing you talk in the tags instead of just reblogging and moving on makes you seem very friendly and approachable !!!! and i hope u know i appreciate that :] i hope you have a wonderful day and both sides of your pillow are always cool and that if you see a random cat on the sidewalk it won’t run away from U ♡
woah, META-WHOLESOME!! thank ya for the compliment, i try my best to carry out those kinds of traits i value!!!!! i’m SUPER super glad that ya did!!! THANK YOU THANK U!! always appreciating how much of an impact this lil blog has on top of appreciating u for sharing as much with me :-)
it’s always a TRIP getting to hear that something i do that i wasn’t even really mindfully doing makes all the difference?? i’m just really, REALLY grateful for all the different kinds of posts that get sent my way and seeing cool + uplifting + sentimental + OVERALL WHOLESOME posts that i express my thanks + ramble a bit in the tags haha !!
i ALSO hope you have as terrific of a day as you’re able to! and i hope you’ll enjoy seeing more posts pop up!
AND YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE but i got new pillow cases like a week ago THAT DO JUST THAT! AND THERE’S A NEW CAT ON THE STREET WHO HANGS OUT WITH ME SOMETIMES (i’ve been planning to see if he has a microchip, but i know for a fact that the neighbors who feed all the stray cats on our street already have a cage + are well-versed in TNR, so i’ve been thinking about asking them first because the thought that someone could be out there looking for their pal is enough for me to “do it scared”) !! SO THANK U NOT ONLY FOR THE SWEET SENTIMENTS BUT ALSO FOR THE UNEXPECTED HILARITY OVER THE FACT THAT THEY’VE COME TRUE???
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what do u think seans experience in reform school was like?? apparently the punishments were….well.
OH ANON!!!!! YES let's talk about this!!!!
So, a majority of the reform school horror stories that at least I've been hearing over the past few years have been largely been about schools that operated in the 20th century and into the 2010s at the latest, like the Dozier school or Elan. Then obviously there's the rest of the troubled teen industry but that's a more modern thing. Anyway, there's not a whole lot to go on for the late 1800's BUT I did manage to find a website which has a model for reformatory rules and regulations in 1890's Britain, which if nothing else, gives us something to go off in terms of what conditions could be like.
To start with, I think the fact that Sean was sent to reform school instead of other options interesting. Reform school was for delinquents; criminal children. Most likely, this means Sean was involved in criminal activity alongside his father - though, alternatively, it could mean whoever had to deal with Sean in the aftermath of Darragh's death, took one look at him and decided reform school was where he had to go.
Of course, Sean would never make life EASY for the officers and teachers of the school he was sent to. Not only is he there against his will, but those people and that place would, in his mind, all belong to the same entity which orchestrated his father's murder. That boy CAME to school with the intent to escape.
I think, with my HC of him having ADHD and dyslexia in mind, paired with his undoubted lack of respect for whatever authority figures that'd be at the reformatory, Sean would be singled out as a troublemaker from the get. It'd be one of those 'living up to expectations' thing from there, Sean making enemies out of the adults who were supposed to care for him and definitely coming up with ways to make their lives harder.
Sidenote; I definitely believe the little laugh Sean has after remembering his time in reform school was him reminiscing about all the pranks and shit he pulled to harass the workers there lmfao.
Of course, that also means he saw a LOT of the punishments they doled out. On the website they linked above, corporal punishment was VERY much on the agenda and I think Sean def saw the worst of it. I think an important aspect here is the understanding that once these things are seen as acceptable punishments, there's nothing stopping the person doling them out to up the severity of them despite regulations. A flogging shouldn't exceed 18 strokes nor a caning 8; but this offender has had several in the past few weeks and still keeps making trouble, lets add a couple extra just to get the message across.
I think the same goes for the punishments regarding isolation and meal deprivation; you can't tell me a young Sean already doesn't know the feeling of skipping meals out of necessity by the time he arrives at reform school - losing ONE meal as the regulations say with the assuredness of the next would do nothing to dampen Sean's spirits, nor a day in isolation.
Idk, Sean was truly desperate for money/food after 3 days, like that was when he tried to kill someone for it. Personally speaking, I go more than 12 hours without eating and I'd probably try to kill someone too. The 3 days speaks to a familiarity with hunger.
And idk, I definitely think Sean is used to being alone!!! It's why he likes being around people so much!! He grew up with only his father to rely on in the whole wide world, who probably HAD to leave Sean alone for prolonged amounts of time to do what he did as a Fenian & criminal. His scene in RDO also speaks to this; he gets lost and is on his own often!! It's not that he prefers it, but he is definitely used to it, and a day in isolation would probably make 0 difference to him fr!!
So, better up the ante to truly get those punishment across.
These are based on the British regulations for the time, mind! I couldn't find anything similar for the US, and I doubt there'd been a federal standard at the time, so I honestly imagine the punishments were more severe from the get, for Sean. Of course reform schools were supposed to be focused on reform over punishment, but when you're dealing with someone as possibly incessant and unyielding in their misbehavior as I imagine Sean was, punishment WOULD seem like the only option, with the knowledge they had at the time. I think he probably got the worse end of a LOT of it, because he wouldn't capitulate to the will of the reformatory very easily.
I don't think Sean stuck around for very long; around a year at most, I'd think. I also don't think he aged out of it, as the age of majority was 21 and it was more common for reform schools to set them up for some sort of legal work after 'graduating'. So yeah, he ran away, and promptly buried a lot of the bad shit he went through, as he is prone to do.
Thank you for this ask, anon!! I had a lot of fun thinking and reading about this, yall are REALLY indulging me here lolol
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