#as a survivor who isn’t able to get justice it means so much to see her get so much backlash and to see the victims be heard | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

afterartist · 1 year

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any lore you've wanted o share but haven't had an excuse to yet relating to ur aus? :3

OH BOY DO I?!!

Strap ur selfves in, cause I got a lot of lore I wanna talk about :D

(I’ll be sticking to my main 6 tho cause I got way too many aus lmao)

General Lore:

Barrierfall:

Barrierfall is my angstiest AU as many of you know, what some people don’t know however, is that it’s also one of my only True Pacifist a Surface AUs (which kinda makes the fact that all but 3 die sadder but meh)

Magic in this AU is more of a solid thing, it’s why Monsters can create Magical Attacks and Magical food, and in the AU, instead of loosing the ability to use magic, Humans just loose the ability to cast magic themselves and instead have to use items to channel the magic they naturally produce (which is why the items left over by the other human souls have magical aspects)

In Barrierfall Monsters can freely use magic but can’t create it as easily, and Humans create it but can’t use it, this was originally a symbiosis the two species had before the war,

But being locked underground means the monsters were slowly using up all their magic resources, weakening their magic, this is why Frisk has the Reset ability, because they’re not fighting any other magic,

But with the monsters underground, the Humans have a whole lot of magic build up that they’re not using.

So, what happens if you break a window in a submarine?

All the pressure of the water floods in and the sub implodes,

Now, what happens if you break a barrier that’s been stopping any of the magic getting into a basically magic-less cavern?? What happens when a tiny lightbulb is compared to the sun? What happens when a drop of determination is compared to a world of magic??

In other words, here’s the answer to your question everyone who’s been asking why the underground falls and why the reset button is destroyed :D

Spoketale:

The residents of Spoketale know they’re in a game, they’re not supposed to, but when your player is a hacker a few glitches can occur.

386 neutral runs, with various hacking/glitches, Player is curious about how far they can push the characters before something changes, they have however, never done a Genocide or Pacifist route, these glitches can be minor things like; switching item pickups (this is an important lore point to Spoke himself), GodModing and taking no damage, to more impactful glitches,

Like, let’s say… deleting entire characters?? Spoke was right, his papyrus isn’t dead (:

But a side effect of all the glitches is different characters gaining awareness, the story of Spoketale actually takes place where Sans meets Player at the ruins to distract them and buy Alphys and Undyne time to evacuate the underground because they know about the resets and Player (it’s also where Spoke gets the crack in his skull)

Idletale:

If you’ve read the prologue of my fic for Idletale you’ll probably have pieced this together already, but Idletale is set in an AU where Gaster tried to create fake human souls (similar to Handplates) by taking a 16th of a human soul and injecting it into a Host’s soul, after various tests it’s found that a single trait being injected will just overwhelm the soul and kill the host, but with two human traits they cancel each other out allowing the 3 souls to synergies

The three survivors of these tests are Sans (Idle) Papyrus and Undyne,

Sans getting Patients and Justice

Papyrus getting Bravery and Integrity

Undyne getting Kindness and Perseverance

All of them are able to summon the items attributed to the soul traits (yes Idle can summon a gun whenever he wants and yes it’s a horrible idea- who let him do this-)

Another side effect of these tests being that each host can see their soul traits (they can’t see the others only their own)

Sans calls herself a Pb&J Sanswitch much to the chagrin of Patients and Joy of Justice

They’re also able to switch out with their hosts (not this is not DID, I’m not trying to make it an allegory for any disorder) which strengthens certain attacks depending on who’s at the helm

Furcatetale (Rivper):

Not too much lore to tell here, but Rivper himself was the first Sans to receive one of ‘The Keys’, the Integrity Key, given to him by his River Person (due to his Gaster being a massive dick (and the reason Rivper ended up with a half melted Integrity Soul) Riverperson basically adopted Rivper as their own)

The key and internship as a riverperson is why Rivper acts as a multiverse taxi, being able to take anyone to any AU they want (as long as either Rivper or the Passenger have been there before) for 5G,

Their Ferry is also a Gaster blaster (I’ll draw a sketch of it or smthn if y’all r interested)

Helicaltale:

Heck yeah I love this world so much,

Basically helicaltale takes place where after the war, instead of being sealed underground the Monsters were chased away from the safety of MtEbott and instead took refuse in the desert, setting up basically a tent city,

The Humans then placed a curse on them that they can never touch sunlight (I though of this after 47 hrs straight of Minecraft playing so think of how hostile mobs burn in sunlight and that’s basically what happens)

When Sans was 12 (Papyrus being 7) a sickness ran through the camp (it was called ‘The Sunlight Sickness’ cause I thought it sounded cool but now I can think of a better name :/) and during that time the cost of medicines rose 10fold (there’s more lore here but I’ll mention it later in the TW side of this post)

Climatetale:

First things first- basically the polar opposite of Barrierfall where everyone is alive!! Including the human souls

In the AU all the Souls including Frisk and Chara are alive and around the age of 23 (THIS IS FOR JOB/DRIVING REASONS- NOT FOR SHIPPING YOU DEGENERATES. do not use the characters ages as an excuse to ship, both Chara and Frisk are Asexual/Aromantic in this AU, don’t be nasty.)

And all of the Souls work for their Collage newspaper/as reporters, aiming to uncover the truth about the Monsters of Myth.

There was no war in this AU, and similar to Reapertale, a Climatetale monsters are based off ‘things’, Natural Phenomena and Natural Disasters, for Example Sans is based off a Lightning Sprite, Papyrus is based off lighting, Unydne is based off Tsunamis and Alphys is based off Asteroids (cause I think a Dino adjacent character being based off meteors hilarious)

Also, instead of an underground, Mt Ebott erupted Centuries ago (thx Asgore) and its basin cooled and became a massive sinkhole oasis that all of the Monsters live in peacefully,

Frisk and Chara being the first humans they meet in decades

And now onto some of the sadder stuff,

This is bits or lore that are much more confronting, not all my AUs have this,

None of this is too integral so you can stop reading here if the following Trigger Warnings are too upsetting

TW: Suicidal Ideation, Child Abuse/Neglet

Barrierfall:

Despite his vitriol to Ink, Barrier actually blames himself for the loss of his AU,

He was also forced to kill his Papyrus, so survivors guilt and just guilt in general eats at him,

He was the one given the warning by his future self that he didn’t listen to, he was the one that entrusted his AU’s safety to a stranger, he was the one that got himself permanently banned from the Omega-Timeline cutting himself off from the only two other survivors forever,

He says he blames Ink and he’s hunting the creator down for revenge, but honestly, he’s looking for an easy excuse to end up dead,

He knows he can’t beat Ink, he just hopes going into an unwinnable fight would be a step forward in making up for his sins

(Which is stupid cause it’s not his fault but the dumb dumb can’t get it through his thick skull)

Spoketale:

Spoke is cannonicaly dead, while his Papyrus isn’t, Spoke is,

He died when confronting the Player in the Ruins, taking a knife to the eye that killed him near instantly,

Only due to a glitch caused by Players hacking was he able to use a monster candy and restore his HP, leaving him at 10/1HP permanently, but he’s never mentioned it too anyone, not even his papyrus or any of his other friends, too scared that as soon as he acknowledges it, the game codes will realise the glitch and kill him for good,

Never telling anyone about his fears bring mass paranoia making him much more likely to attack when getting defensive

He’s also deathly afraid of reaper sans (pun intended)

Helicaltale:

Remember how I brought up the Sunshine Sickness?? Well it shouldn’t be too bad, their Gaster works in a top level lab in the city with humans to try and find a cure for the curse, making more money then he could ever want

The problem is, he’s always in the city, surely sans is old enough to look after himself and his brother, why would they need a parental figure to take care of them? Phone calls? No, only an email once a month, if lucky

Sure, maybe Gaster doesn’t even know how old his kids are, but it can’t be that bad right??

Papyrus gets sick.

With not enough money for both food and medicine, sans is forced to seek out help from the black market, eventually selling his right eyelight (using it allows the buyer the same teleportation ability sans has) in exchange for the medicine for papyrus,

He’s 12 when he looses his eye, his father never notices, he doesn’t tell anyone, papyrus gets better

This is what inspires Papyrus to join the Royal guard, wanting to protect sans the way he protected him, it’s also what inspires sans to become a magical items trader in the black market (with a strict rule that he doesn’t deal with anyone who hurts kids)

It’s also how he eventually ends up with his own Key, the Bravery Key was given to him in a box along with the orange Glass Eye (this was actually a trade he made with Frisk who needed medicine for their sibling Chara who got sick with Sunshine Sickness as the two had first come to the Underground Tent City)

Anywayssss that’s it for this lore drop

I’m too lazy to actually create in-depth and we’ll thought out lore but I hope this is interesting none the less :D

Also,

WHERE DO YOU ANNONS KEEP COMING FROM??!

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bigskydreaming · 2 years

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And to clarify my clarifications further, because I know I’m gonna end up reblogging that post about my Official Stance On Jason’s Murdering and Also How To Like a Character for Being A Good Example of Being a ‘Bad Survivor' and Not Because You View Them As Good At Societal Reform....

In a nutshell, I have complicated thoughts on stories where Jason kills people on the basis they’re unrepentantly committed to wide-scale actions that negatively impact tons of people and he feels society/the justice system will never punish them due to privilege or institutional corruption, etc. Because I think there’s potential worth exploring in those stories IN THEORY, though I don’t think I’ve ever felt stories explored these ideas in ways that are novel or interesting rather than cliche and essentially just revenge fantasy fulfillment.

That said, this does not in any way translate into being pro-extrajudicial murder in real life, for similar though not identical reasons to why I’m not pro-vigilantism in real life in general.

This is one of those things where I’m like, people have ruined ‘fiction isn’t reality’ as a phrase and I refuse to use it because it lacks nuance and is a performative soundbite....BUT that doesn’t mean that fiction can’t still be used to explore concepts in ways reality can’t duplicate.

For me, the big sticking point is being able to point to WHAT fiction is letting you do that you can’t replicate in reality. Fiction IMO shouldn’t be a catch-all that lets you just spew out any idea or fantasy and essentially platform any thought you’ve ever had while shielding it with some ‘its not real so its exempt from any reactive or critical thought it brings forth in people who see it’ BS. That’s a non-starter with me because it ignores that thoughts, views, ideas and ideologies are all real things that have real effects on people who encounter them, so fuck off forever with trying to dodge accountability from the simple reaction of people encountering a thought/idea/ideology and saying questions, comments and criticisms, we have them.

But what fiction CAN do, when you have a specific REASON for doing something in fiction that you know can’t work that way in reality, without being afraid to just fucking own what you’re doing with that fictional narrative and why.....

Is it allows you to explore various ideas or scenarios or let them play out in ways or to degrees that wouldn’t be possible in reality....because so much in reality is outside of peoples’ control. We can’t ensure that various factors all align or cumulate in the specific ways we need to reach the endpoint that’s the entire reason we started a scenario in the first place.

With fiction though, we CAN line up the dominoes in the right way, steer the narrative down the right channels to get things to a place where we can address the things or ask the questions we started a narrative TO explore.

Its like that one post I made about child heroes, for those who’ve read that. Never in a million years am I going to encourage kids to go out and fight crime or be burdened with the pressure of saving the whole damn world like the protagonist of the average YA novel. But child hero narratives absolutely have validity, because there’s a lot of worthwhile ideas and themes worth exploring in power fantasies for children and young adults, where they can see themselves centered in high stakes situations where they have the power to save themselves or affect real change without having to rely on adults in their lives to do it for them.

A child hero narrative isn’t a how-to manual encouraging say, an abused kid on how to escape their circumstances and leapfrog their way into having actionable power to better their own life. But it can help mentally or emotionally fortify them WHILE they wait or look for ways for their actual circumstances to change. AND at the same time, it can also help them explore via proxy, the ways they COULD use the increased power and agency they might someday have, in order to get certain outcomes, or to see how various problems or fallout might arise from using that power/agency in negative ways. And per my example of an abused kid using fiction for escapism from their own currently victimizing circumstances.....just speaking for myself, a kid in circumstances like that might absolutely be lacking the kind of parental figures that ideally should be present to help them learn how to make good decisions or navigate complicated situations as they grow older. And while fiction shouldn’t HAVE to be a substitute for adults able to give kids personal attention and guidance towards growing up to be a responsible, empathetic adult who makes good choices and weighs the potential effect their choices have on others....it can at least always be a good supplement, and sometimes it actually is the only thing kids have to rely on.

So from that angle, and plenty others, child hero narratives absolutely have validity and contribute meaningful things to even child readers who one hundred percent should not be encouraged to ever put on a cape and appoint themselves the neighborhood watch.

The kind of questions some of Jason’s narratives could be used to explore, even though they never really are, similarly have potential IMO, and that’s why I hold back from being like ‘extra-judicial murder is never valid and thus Jason’s character is A Literal Bad Guy for engaging in it’. Because this is one of the areas where I think used with intent, fiction can present thought-provoking or morality-examining questions that can’t actually play out in reality.

I’m hardcore ‘no extra-judicial murder’ in real life, and firmly against the death penalty, but not because I believe that there’s no human being out there, no crime that can be committed, that doesn’t deserve death. Sorry not sorry, but unrepentant mass murderers, serial rapists, etc, people who have full awareness of what they’re doing and the harm they’re causing others, absolutely have the means, resources or privilege to make other choices and still do the things they do not out of necessity but out of want, who commit their crimes not because they’re unaware of their impact on others but because that impact absolutely is the whole point of their crimes for them, who have had abundant opportunities to change or reform but dismissed them time after time because they flat out don’t want to change.....hypothetically, yeah, they can fuck right off to hell, as far as I’m concerned.

The value of that kind of person’s life will never IMO rise to the level of the value of all the lives they destroy with intent, who will never have the opportunity to make better use of the same kinds of power/resources/privilege they themselves abuse and exploit over others, all because they’ve used those things specifically to ensure their victims never get similar opportunities, or significantly hijack or derail their lives before they get a chance to. My bleeding heart does not extend to people who have already voluntarily chosen to sit back and watch while a person bleeds out in front of them, from wounds they inflicted. Its extended to their victim instead, and I truly do believe that many of the people who end up in the latter position would never be victimized if more of the people in the former position did face something like the death penalty after their first several victims instead of a dozen in.

But that’s just a hypothetical for me. The reason I’ll never support the actuality of the death penalty is there is flat out no way to be sure, in 99% of situations, of the actual culpability, motivations, or possible rehabilitation of the people actually faced with the death penalty. And given the institutional biases and the nature of most of our societies, and the way they’re largely set up by people in power rigging the systems they themselves help install and shape in ways quite literally intended to cover their own asses and allow for them and those of like-minds to continue exploiting or victimizing others their entire lives while setting up marginalized or disenfranchised people as scapegoats that societies are usually all too willing to accept as the True Face of Crime in their stead, given that the very nature of marginalization and disenfranchisement speaks to how selective society can be in applying personhood and empathy in the first place....

Well, duh. Obviously a disproportionate number of people who have not done anything to deserve the death penalty are gonna end up the victims of it while untold scores of people who have deliberately victimized people in the hundreds or thousands will never so much as get a slap on the wrist all because their address is a penthouse while the average victim of the death penalty hails from a low income, predominantly marginalized neighborhood.

Except, of course, its not actually that obvious to a lot of people, considering that the vast majority of Criminals in Fiction and the real life prison populations they reflect....tend to be blue-collar POC waaaay more often than they are white-collar white people.

So no real life death penalty is getting my vote. Not when there’s no way to ever be sure its applied to those truly culpable, and only those, with no actual innocents statistically sacrificed on the altar of the societal greater good. And not when additionally, the state appointed judge, juries and executioners determining both the greater good and who society needs to sacrifice for said greater good.....are y’know, all picked and appointed according to the rules and guidelines set in place by many of the same people in power looking to scapegoat others in order to cover their own asses and divert society’s focus away from their own crimes and victimizations of others. And thus, uh, they’re not picked because they inherently are the best moral barometers of society and what it needs, or even because they’re truly and accurately representative of society as a whole, but rather they tend to actually end up in the position to play judge, jury and/or executioner quite literally because its expected they’ll make their judgments in accordance with what those in power want or are hoping for, rather than according to the actual spirit of a Justice that isn’t completely arbitrary and self-defined.

The death penalty as a consequence for people who destroy lives on a huge scale, over and over without remorse, is one of those things that makes sense to me as a hypothetical, but that I understand just isn’t possible to implement as a real, actionable thing in any way I would accept and wouldn’t have reservations about.

But like I said, this is one of the times and ways fiction as a departure point from reality can be used, with intent, to explore stories of accountability, consequences, and the way these things play out on both an individual and societal level.....because fiction is completely defined by an author and their intent. In fiction, a writer can present scenarios where there is zero doubt that the perpetrator of a particular crime, however heinous, is one hundred percent guilty and did it of their own free will, has no remorse and absolutely intends to do it again, etc.

Because the writer has full control of what information readers do and don’t have about a situation or a character, they absolutely can craft scenarios where there is no narrative doubt that hey, this dude did the thing. Its not even in question. The only thing in question then, is the thing that I’ve expressed would sometimes have a different answer if it were possible for that to be the only question, with no question as to their actual guilt: what happens next.

And that distinction can make all the difference in a story, or when expanding on a certain topic. Its the difference between something that’s a non-starter in real life becoming a useful thought experiment in the realm of fiction. Where suddenly it can be used to raise and explore all kinds of different questions like:

How do people in-story and out-of-story react to a vigilante who applies extra-judicial murder to criminals he targets.....when those criminals don’t look anything like society-as-a-whole assumes from the outset? When his targets aren’t the ‘expected’ drug dealers or addicts, marginalized low income men who look like they expect rapists or violent murderers to look....but instead are CEOs who’ve paid off a dozen different women they’ve assaulted over the years and are still doing it like clockwork? A senator who got away with a hate crime in college because the all white jury judged it a youthful indiscretion when he was drunk and didn’t want to ruin the life of a young man with such a promising future, but who since then has gone on to back white supremacy groups and craft legislation that further marginalizes people of color all while using his connections and political capital to smooth over the crimes of his ‘constituents’ while demonizing and scapegoating black men in their stead? Etc, etc.

With fiction, with the guilt of said vigilante’s targets actually assured instead of a troubling question that can’t ever be indisputably put to rest.....instead, here we can use that as a springboard to examine what happens after....does finding out the reasons for why the vigilante went after these individuals in particular change how people in-story and out-of-story view that vigilante and his own actions? Do those who view him as bloodthirsty and morally wrong do so regardless of who he targets and the low likelihood they would ever be punished for their crimes by the actual institutions they hold so much power and sway over themselves.....or do some of them show awareness of the system’s existing biases and seem more entrenched in defending it and how people have to trust in the system and not go outside it because they’re concerned that changing it might make it less effective at covering their asses for their own misdeeds or shortcomings?

Do those who praise said vigilante and his actions seem to support him primarily because he’s ensuring accountability for people the system has failed to protect society from, or does it seem they’re more just enchanted by his seeming fulfillment of their own personal revenge fantasies, letting them see various bosses, politicians, people who’ve exploited or lorded power over them be the ones running scared and enjoying the view of those in positions of power cowering like they’ve so often made others?

Does the deliberate juxtaposition of these things, the narrative raising these things as questions in the narrative, change any readers’ personal stances towards the vigilante and his actions?

Do some of the pro-vigilante readers start to second-guess themselves, ask whether they’re really sure their enjoyment of the narrative and defense of this character IS rooted in a fairer application of justice, or whether they might just be finding empowerment in the disempowerment of others and justifying it as ‘well as long as its the right people’? If the latter, is this something they’re actually okay with, or does it raise questions of its own, as to whether secondhand enjoyment of others’ disempowerment is ever truly valid or always just a stepping stone to making excuses to enjoy the disempowerment of anyone positioned to have less power than they themselves?

Do some of the anti-vigilante readers encounter things within the narrative that spark questions about their stances? Does it ever confront them to acknowledge whether they’re projecting more onto the vigilante’s direct victims than the victims of his victims, the ones he’s seeking justice/revenge on behalf of? Are their judgments of his actions and morality truly a reflection of their own supposedly neutral perspective, or are they predisposed to be more defensive about one group within the narrative than others? Are they more uncomfortable with the fate of the vigilante’s targets than whatever the narrative reveals the fate of these characters’ various victims to be, because they just can’t justify extra-judicial punishments and say well it was still up to the system to punish them, no one else - even if that meant they likely would never face real consequences.....or is their insistence on adhering to the system’s take, even knowing that it would likely enact no consequences and thus no real justice for the targets’ initial victims, because it just feels like this isn’t real justice, isn’t natural, just isn’t the way things should be done?

And if the latter, does that ever prompt anyone to examine what it suggests that they’re more willing to defend a status quo even once proven unfair and completely useless in some cases....than they’re willing to defend consequences for criminals the status quo refuses to ever hold accountable, not if that means actually challenging the status quo and suggesting it be changed into something new and unfamiliar, with no idea whether it’d be better or worse for them as individuals?

Can stories whose premise has a vigilante side-step an in-story legal system, built as it is on the biases and skewed tendencies of an out-of-story legal system, and applying capital consequences specifically to criminals who parallel those that readers and characters implicitly assume will never be faced with those kinds of consequences.....and with the narrative assuring readers of the actual guilt of those characters....thereby effectively raising questions about how much we ‘let certain people in society get away with’ versus how okay we are with ‘throwing the book at certain people in society’ for far less actionable harm to far fewer people? And how much of this might be rooted in readers’ own biases, readers’ own projections and which characters they personally relate to or identify with most…how much of this is readers just assuming or accepting that the difference in the ‘two groups of criminals’ and how people and the system react to them, is like, just the way things are and they’ve never put too much thought into any alternatives because they’ve never truly spent any time contemplating a different status quo, or what society might look like if one group’s lack of accountability and the other group’s scapegoating weren’t so guaranteed?

With fiction.....you can explore all these questions and more (regardless of how much readers are willing to entertain this narrative and y’know, actually engage in honest reflection of whatever questions you’re aiming to raise), even if, like me, in real life you’re never gonna vote yes on the death penalty let alone morally sign off on extra-judicial murder-by-vigilantes.....because in real life, unlike fiction, there is no way to ensure the consequences only get applied to people you think actually deserve them.

And that right there is another question....what is the line, for you, if the question of whether a person actually committed the crime is taken off the table completely? Do you even know where exactly it lies for you - because honestly, the reason I’ve been so vague and ambivalent throughout this post about who this hypothetical vigilante kills and why is because I do not actually have a clear idea of what I would even consider to be a crime definitively deserving death, even if I am clear on the fact that if questions of guilt and institutional bias can be removed from the equation, I do think that yes there are crimes - or at least degrees or scales of crimes - that can justify a criminal’s death? So apparently we can jot that down as one of the questions I’d read stories like this to explore if I felt any of the stories about extra-judicial murder-by-vigilante were actually interested in exploring questions of morality and accountability rather than just building bad-ass street cred by way of arguably sympathetic/justifiable body counts:

What actually is the point at which we see the inherent value of a human life as no longer outweighing the value of the harm/damage a person does to others, with their own lives’ value and worth taken into consideration? Can we truly be said to value the lives of all a person’s victims, if we know that they killed and traumatized these victims with total disregard for the value of their lives....or does that inherently position us as actionably treating their victimizer’s life as having more value?

Of course.....none of this really matters except in theory, if like, the stories never actually apply similar consideration or try to examine big picture questions.

And my own feelings about Jason, his stories, tropes, and potential aside....I will get a rolled up newspaper and smack the nose of the first Jason stan to try to insist canon Jason ‘the greatest blight plaguing society today is the neighborhood drug dealer who is definitely never disenfranchised/marginalized/driven to crime by necessity or desperation, just Evil and Deserving of Murder’ Todd is actually nuanced in any of the ways this post wishes he was.

But the fact that writers haven’t used him this way doesn’t mean that the potential isn’t there, and well, anyone familiar with how intensely I stan two-line characters on the basis of But The Potential knows that’s more than enough for me, lmfao.

Like, all of this might not be present in his canon or a lot of fandom reaction/building upon his canon, but the capacity for all of it is there in his stories, history, and tropes.

Its Schrodinger’s Stories: both there and not there, at least until someone writes him that way or doesn’t, with far more of the latter than the former but both still existing in the as-yet-unwritten chapters of every new arc or story starring him.

So I’m not like....self-deluded or in denial about Jason-as-is or the way he and his extra-judicial murder marathons are actually written, buuuuuut because I’m pedantic as fuck and always keenly aware of whatever whole big qualifier exists in my head as a footnote every time I round-down to a generalized statement or reference about a character or trope......

This is the qualifier that exists for why I’m ambivalent or vague about not definitively wanting to say Jason and murder always equals bad. Its like, yes, true, it does, but like, it doesn’t have to, there is stuff that could be done with the set-up already given us.

It just....hasn’t been tapped.

Anyway. So this has been a post. A post was had. My thoughts on Jason and extra-judicial murder: Here. Have them!

#hah i said in a nutshell #im so silly #why such a silly goof me?

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veliseraptor · 3 years

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What do you think xxc, sl, xy, and a-qing’s greatest personality strengths and weaknesses are? Why?

mark this one down for "asks that were sitting in my inbox for forever because they needed a fair amount of attention and time and I kept forgetting to do something about them when I had the attention and time and only remembering when I didn't"

but okay! here goes. going to pick one for each on account of otherwise I’m going to end up rambling even more than I probably already am going to. this is a mix of like...semi-textual evidence, wild extrapolation, and headcanon, so jot that down for the record, I’m not claiming any kind of authority here

but this was fun as an exercise in also thinking about how I write them all

Xiao Xingchen

Strength: So I was struggling to articulate this one and I don’t think it’s quite right but I’m going to say compassion because that’s one thing that Xiao Xingchen has in abundance. Not in this sense that he’s, like, nice to everyone all of the time, but in the sense that he believes in the capacity of people to be good, and the capacity of the world to be good, and that if he tries hard then he can - and will - bend the arc of the world toward justice, by himself if he has to. And when I put it that way it doesn’t sound like that’s about compassion at all, but I think it is rooted in that nonetheless.

I do think that’s a strength. It’s one that gets very much used against him, but it’s also the thing that drives him and one of his most admirable traits.

Weakness: I feel like it’d be easy to put down naivete or something similar here, but I think that’s to a certain extent unfair, and I think honestly the greater/deeper flaw in Xiao Xingchen is that he has a pretty severe lack of emotional resiliency. He’s brittle, in many ways. When things go south with Song Lan, he panics, gives up his eyes, and runs away. When he learns that he’s been living with Xue Yang - even before he knows the other stuff - there’s again that panic, and that only escalates into his ultimate fracturing, which he then makes very literal.

Xiao Xingchen isn’t weak. But I think he doesn’t deal well with emotional upheaval - it hits him hard and he doesn’t recover from it quickly, or, really, at all.

Song Lan

Strength: I tossed this one around for a bit trying to decide where I was going to come down, and ultimately I decided on (generally speaking) steadfastness. I mean, you see it in his searching for Xiao Xingchen for years, the determination to track him down and be able to reconcile. Their bond to begin with - that he stands with Xiao Xingchen, the two of them more or less alone in isolation on their own path - that’s not an easy thing to do or way to live, but he decides that’s what he’s going to do and he holds that course. And the moment where that wavers - when he lashes out at Xiao Xingchen, in anguish about the deaths of his temple - becomes probably his greatest regret.

Weakness: This one is easy, at least for me: temper. I mean, the big glaring example is with Xiao Xingchen, but it’s also one of the things that trips him up in his last fight with Xue Yang - he gets angry and it distracts him just enough. I think this is something Song Lan is aware of about himself and does a fair amount of work trying to have discipline about it, but when it slips it slips hard, and the consequences are severe.

Xue Yang

Strength: Okay, like, I could go with intelligence which he definitely has in abundance and serves him very well, but ultimately I’m going to go with resilience as Xue Yang’s greatest strength. Xue Yang is a survivor, and he’s also someone who will take what life throws at him, no matter what it throws at him, and get back up, and probably throw it back but harder and worse. By all rights, Xue Yang should’ve died several times over.

But it’s not just literal survival, either - I’ve talked about how there is a certain kind of power in declaring your own worth above others when everybody else sees you as worthless. Whatever he did with it, the determination to make something of himself, the belief that he deserves something from the world and the determination to get it, I think represents a very strong core to Xue Yang.

Weakness: This is another one where like, I could go with something straightforward like vengefulness or the belief that violence solves all things or whatever, but ultimately I landed on fear of vulnerability because I think that’s what lies at the base of a lot of the worst things Xue Yang does and why he makes the choices he makes: the underlying determination to never again be a kid who can be beaten and have his hand crushed in the street, never again be that weak, that reliant on the goodwill of others (which doesn’t exist).

That need for power, for security, for certainty that nobody can hurt him, is I think one of the major drivers of how Xue Yang behaves toward other people - I’ve said before that I think in his eyes what power means is the ability to hurt people and get away with it. That being strong means having the strength to destroy others before they do it to you. And, too, that the best way to stay safe is to hit first, hit harder, and make sure nobody comes back for more.

A-Qing

Strength: A-Qing is kind of incredible, actually; I went back and forth between bravery and cleverness for her and I think I’m settling on cleverness because while she is very brave I think her cleverness, her ability to be quick on her feet and adaptable, insightful about the world around her and able to respond to it as necessary, is truly deeply impressive.

And she keeps it after her death, too! Working as much as she can to thwart Xue Yang despite the fact that she has almost no power - and ultimately, finding a way to (again, despite her lack of power) bring him down.

Weakness: This was...harder. I feel like in some ways a-Qing is someone for whom its hard to judge a character weakness because she is so young - there was so much that she didn’t have time to develop. In what we get of her, though, I think I’d put down pettiness as a weakness - pettiness and maybe a little bit of a tendency toward vindictiveness. But also that feels unfair because, like, she’s a teenager.

But I guess if I think about how I write her that’d be one of the things I tend to include as part of my characterization.

#conversating #nagisachan1 #xue yang #song lan #xiao xingchen #aggressively headcanons #this is so old i have no idea if it's even still relevant to you BUT #what am i here for if not to talk at length about my yi city quartet feelings

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 3 years

Note

How long would it take the volturi to solve the Kira case?

Fascinating question, anon, I like it. So much so you get answered much earlier than you normally would be.

Shinigami and the World of Twilight

In Twilight there are few supernatural creatures that remain in our world. There's vampires, children of the moon, and the shapeshifter. However, these need not be the only supernatural creatures.

There have likely been mass extinctions (seen in Children of the Moon) and there may be more creatures that are so uncommon that we just don't see any hint of them.

Death Note's Shinigami easily fall into this category.

They live in another dimension, and in the human world (which they rarely visit in person), they're invisible to the eye save for those who have touched their death note. Their methods of killing are so unobtrusive, (heart attacks by default or whatever method they please), that they're unlikely to be noticed unless someone (i.e. Light) is trying to make a point. And in the grand scheme of things, Shinigami also kill relatively infrequently, meaning that any odd death gets passed off as that: an odd death. Also being forbidden to kill for the sake of a human being means that the deaths tend to be a) random b) whatever amuses them the most. That'd be hard to pick a pattern up of.

Shinigami exist in such a manner that I doubt even the Volturi are aware of them.

Some Ground Rules For the Post

I don't see why vampires would have an innate ability to see Shinigami that humans lack. As a result, the Volturi are in the same boat everyone else is, they can't see a Shinigami unless they touch that Shinigami's notebook.

Also, per the manga, the Kira case takes place from 2003-2010, meaning that as Twilight is happening (or before if Aro and the gang somehow solve this faster than L would), the world is mired in the Kira case.

Bella would certainly have been talking about it in Twilight. As would Edward, as he once had his Kira foray as well if on a much smaller scale and with a lot more junkies.

For the sake of my nitpicky need to have everything line up, we're going to push Death Note back a few years, to the beginning of Twilight.

Also, we're taking out L. If L's there, Aro can rely on him doing most of the work for him and only show up at the end to either murder or turn Light once L's narrowed down exactly who it is. That's not really fair per the ask, we have to leave the Volturi on their own.

With that, let's start.

Kira Makes His Appearance

Light's appearance was by no means subtle, he wanted to be noticed immediately, but he also didn't want to be noticed as a human being.

He made no televised announcements, left no messages, sent in no letters saying, "I am God, tremble before me". Instead, he let his silence speak.

He killed via heart attacks those he considered having broken the law to some heinous degree and then he sat back and watch. The public dubbed him Kira first and he only became a confirmed presence, something more real than a specter and a human who could be caught and brought to justice, when he murdered Lind L. Taylor in a public spectacle.

But this is a world without L, which means no Lind L. Taylor, instead we have Volturi and company in Volterra, utterly unconcerned with the human world.

Of course, they immediately notice once an undeniable pattern becomes clear. Human criminals are dying en masse of heart attacks, someone is making a message. The question is, to what end?

Aro wouldn't immediately think this is a human. This kind of power, this kind of gift, to be able to seemingly kill any person in the world at any time no matter the distance, is something too strong for a human. It would be unheard of to have this much power as a human.

Which means Aro believes he's looking for a vampire breaking the law.

The trouble is, it's only humans. The newborn wars are raging as always, every major coven he's ever heard of remains untouched, and there's been no noticeable uptick of deaths among the vampire population.

The only difference to them is that more of them are dangerously close to breaking the law, as crime rates are now plummeting as criminals live in terror of a spiteful god who might strike them down at any moment. This makes murders performed by vampires, in certain areas, far more noticeable.

(As Light is probably killing off known gang leaders, drug lords, etc. left and right, it's probably pandemonium in certain cities/countries. So vampires are probably alright in these places as I'm sure there's a lot of murder going on as survivors try to fill the power vacuum.)

Still, the Volturi have to put their heads together and try to think why any vampire would do this? To what end would they murder all these humans, in such a noticeable manner, and not even to eat their victims?

Aro concludes he's looking for a very young vampire, likely newborn, someone who still thinks of himself as very human and beholden to human society and who isn't aware of Volterra or else does not consider them a threat.

The Volturi Investigators

I think Aro's going to take the lead on this one. There's his gift, obviously, but he'd by far have the most interest.

Caius would be upset by the nerve of Kira, but he has no patience to track him down either when it becomes exceedingly obvious that this is going to be tricky. That, and it just doesn't seem like his thing to me. He's going to mostly sit this one out.

As for Marcus, he's not up to it.

Which makes Aro our lead detective.

The Investigation

Like L, the first thing they do is try to pinpoint the first deaths. There was the immediate deluge, of course, but that screams of confidence in this assassination gift.

Kira likely needed practice to perfect his gift or even realize he had it at all. There's going to be a first victim and it will probably be messy.

Given enough investigation, this probably leads Aro to Japan, where a man taking children hostage suddenly dies in the middle of the hostage situation when televised on national TV (though not outside of Japan). Given that Kira's a vampire, he could have moved from where he started quite easily, but Aro's willing to bet he's still somewhere in Japan.

What Aro does know is that Kira's keeping close to human society. Kira will be reading human papers, watching human television constantly, and appears to be very well-informed concerning his future victims. Both locally as well as internationally. Kira is likely still in a human settlement.

So, the first thing Aro does is look for an unusual number of casualties in any city or town in Japan. Kira will probably be in the newborn phase, may truly be only a few months old, and given his actions has probably been abandoned by his sire. Even if he has unusually high control, he's got to eat sometime, and thanks to his own actions the murder rate in major cities is way down.

Except... there's no uptick.

Crime, murder, in Japan is universally on a downwards trend. Major cities like Tokyo and small rural villages it's all the same, there's nothing noticeable.

Kira either isn't in Japan or... he's not eating.

Aro wonders if, perhaps this assassination gift of his, somehow feeds Kira. He is, after all, stealing life. He does it via heart attacks but maybe, somehow, the very act of stealing life is all Kira needs. Perhaps he doesn't have to drink blood due to this.

This blows Aro's mind for a few days but eventually he decides that, no, he's never heard of this. True, he's never heard of this gift either, but all vampires drink blood. Even Carlisle, who drinks animal blood, still drinks blood and suffers great negative effects for his avoidance of a natural diet.

Kira the vampire must still eat.

Which means, in the absence of any other explanation... Kira's not a vampire. Kira is likely a very gifted human.

Aro's mind is blown again because Holy Fuck, what a gift. Kira has blown Jane and Alec, who were only immediately noticeable in their own village, completely out of the water.

Except, the trouble is, neither Aro nor anyone else in the Volturi is a detective. Aro knows enough about human society to pay his taxes, to hire secretaries, and keep on the up and up, but he doesn't actually solve human crimes.

What he's looked for for thousands of years are vampires who break the law: and they have certain patterns, motivations, etc. that are more or less easy to spot. More, the entire point of his law is that, if Aro notices then it means you broke it. There are those that can and do fly under his radar.

How is he supposed to find a gifted human who can kill anyone in the world any time he pleases? From a brief perusal of Japanese news, there's no one immediately obvious as gifted or strange by local papers.

From earlier killings, Aro notes that Kira doesn't seem to kill between 8 in the morning to 4 pm, which might make him a student but also could mean he's working those hours.

And even if he is a student? How in the world is Aro supposed to touch the hand of every student in the entire country of Japan? Aro, who makes it a point not to navigate the human world.

Aro Calls in the Expert

When you want to hang out with the humans, there's only one vampire to call: Carlisle Cullen. As we're setting this in early Twilight, neither Eclipse nor Breaking Dawn have happened. To the Cullens, and Carlisle, Aro is simply a wise king and Carlisle's old friend.

And I'm sure Carlisle has been watching the Kira case very closely and is very disturbed by the entire thing. Kira's methods are very much not Carlisle's m.o.

Aro gives Carlisle what he knows: Kira's probably a gifted human, probably somewhere in Japan, probably in school, and has access to an extensive amount of human media.

That's it.

That's all Aro's got.

As for the police at large, without L, they haven't even narrowed it down to Japan yet.

Carlisle points out that, as much as he hangs out with humans, he doesn't think he could find the needle in the haystack either. However, he definitely wants to help in any way he can.

However, they do have something. Aro can't touch the hand of everyone in Japan, however, Edward can unobtrusively listen to a much larger segment of the population.

(Alice is off the table as she's best able to see the future of those close to her. Without knowing who Kira even is, let alone being close to him, she has no idea what he's going to even do next. She's likely very frustrated by this.)

Surely, whoever Kira is, he or she will be contemplating their victims more often than not. It's a long shot, but Edward might be able to find that needle in a haystack.

How's Edward Feel About That?

Edward's extremely conflicted. On the one hand, he doesn't want to disappoint Carlisle, and this is the first time Carlisle has ever asked him for a favor of this magnitude. And, in theory, Carlisle is right, all creatures are worthy of life.

On the other hand, Edward's on Team Kira. He thinks these rapist, murderer, pigs all deserve to die and is rooting for Kira to put the fear of God into them. Emphasizing this is when Bella was nearly raped in Port Angeles, but her would be rapist suddenly remembered himself and vomited in terror at the idea that he might be next should he get caught raping her. (As it is, Edward catches him, and a few weeks later he dies of a heart attack in prison. Edward pops the champagne).

More, if Edward goes to Japan, it means he has to leave Bella. Bella has proven she cannot survive without his personal protection. More, he's not sure he can survive without her presence. He can hardly contemplate the idea of leaving Bella, though he ultimately must, but to do so soon? He though he'd have a few more years, likely until they graduate, but now he and the family would have to move all the way to Japan in a matter of days.

Not to mention this would be letting Aro know that Edward's... not technically breaking the law but not not breaking the law either. Bella clearly suspects he's not human, she just doesn't have the right word.

And then to give Kira up to the Volturi? To have his activities stopped, to be turned and placed into the guard, or else murdered? Edward feels like he'd be selling out the brother he never knew.

But also Carlisle and imagining Carlisle's sad, disappointed, face.

Edward says yes but he really wants to say no.

He sneaks into Bella's room in the middle of the night, and for the first time, makes her aware of his presence. He tells her that regretfully he must leave her, he's off to do a man's work and catch Kira, and that they will never see each other again.

Then to Edward's horror and disappointment, Bella's completely on board for Edward catching Kira and thinks it's the noblest thing he could do. Charlie, being a chief of police, utterly despises Kira and Bella carries forward this sentiment. People deserve the due process of law, not being murdered off by some jackass conning people into believing he's a god.

Bella wishes him luck and tells him to return as soon as he can.

Edward just numbly says he won't be returning. This really is it. Goodbye forever.

Bella's utterly broken (though not nearly as much as canon as Edward didn't dump her for being boring).

Edward in Japan

Well, turns out, Edward's not actually that useful. There's a few problems.

First, there are a lot of people out there claiming to be Kira, or even convincing themselves that they're Kira. They do this to brag, to feel special, for any number of reasons.

None of them are Kira.

Second, Edward can only go out on cloudy days or at night, this severely limits when he can wander the streets and the people he'll run into. More, even if he starts with Tokyo, Tokyo's a big place. That's a lot of wandering to do.

Third, say that Edward does come across Light Yagami. Edward immediately dismisses him as being utterly insane. See, Light Yagami is talking to his imaginary friend, Ryuk, bickering about which apples they should buy from the store. Edward sees the giant clown demon that Light believes only he can see and goes, "Ah, another lunatic, cheerio."

Edward does not find Kira.

The Investigation Continues

Aro likely keeps Edward at it for months. It doesn't matter how long it takes, they're going to track down Kira and they're going to find him. It might take years, but dammit, they'll find him. Edward despairs that he will ever be able to go back to normal life.

Luckily for the gang, Bella saves their bacon.

Bella, ruminating on Edward's mission and on Kira, starts doing her own internet investigation. She doesn't get very far, but she does have those prophetic dreams to help her out.

Bella has a seriously weird dream about the moon, night gods, Kira, demons that look like giant crows, notebooks, and Light Yagami's face. Somehow, just as in canon with vampires, Bella's able to somehow put this together.

She calls up Edward (as they parted on more amiable terms, and so quickly, Edward did not yet disconnect his number) and tells him that Kira's name is Light Yagami, he's attending the University of Tokyo as the top student, and his murder weapon is an evil notebook.

How does she know this?

She looked it up on the internet.

Well, Edward isn't sure how to take that, but he also has nothing to lose. They find Light Yagami, Aro shakes his hand, and holy shit, Bella Swan was right. (Aro now decrees that she will be turned, much to Edward's horror and insistence that she has no idea he's a vampire, and has plans to recruit her for his guard).

What Are We Going to Do About Light?

Well, on the one hand, Aro discovered a new species today that he can do nothing about. Luckily, they seem to have their own laws that have more or less the same result as the Volturi laws: don't get noticed.

On the other hand, he's disappointed that this all-powerful gift was not a gift at all.

On the other other hand, Light does not seem to be an ordinary human. He's... lucky, for lack of a better term. No, it's more that he doesn't need luck, he somehow has such an awareness of everything around him that he assimilates it perfectly into his own plans. As if he can manipulate the very universe to his favor.

That's intriguing and useful, and in any other situation, Aro would jump on taking that chance and at least seeing what happens.

So the question becomes, does Aro turn Light or not? On the one hand, that's a useful gift, on the other hand, this kid's a loose cannon and a lunatic.

This Kira thing cannot continue, and Light, even as a vampire, would likely insist on continuing it somehow.

Luckily, there's a solution to this.

Aro burns the notebook, much to Ryuk's protesting despair. Light loses his memories of Ryuk, the notebook, and having been Kira. Before Light even knows what's happening, Aro turns him.

Three days later, Light wakes up a very confused vampire, gets the Volturi pitch with Chelsea there to help loosen bonds, and accepts a position in the guard to, oddly enough, stop those like Kira.

Aro's confused, but hey, they'll see how this Light thing works out. Aro also likely tells himself that he will watch for Ryuk trying to drop Light another notebook like a hawk.

The Kira case is never solved for humans: Kira just disappears one day as if he never existed. As for Light, I imagine he plots the destruction of the newborn armies, and Caius watches in utter fascination as this kid ruthlessly exterminates them all.

Bella is shortly turned into a vampire, much to Edward's despair, and due to the giant mess of this is also likely recruited to Volterra.

How Long Does This Take?

Given the need for the Volturi to first investigate, then Edward, I give them at least a year. Maybe a year and a half.

And really, it's Bella who saves their bacon.

#twilight #death note #twilight meta #death note meta #twilight headcanon #death note headcanon #light yagami #ryuk #carlisle cullen #edward cullen #anti edward cullen #aro #caius #the volturi #bella swan #meta #headcanon #opinion

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elfyourmother · 3 years

Note

Haurchefant Greystone ships 👀

HOW CAN I JUST PICK THREE AAAAA

I mean seriously he’s my bicycle gjgjfjfh

Top top is obviously WoL but after that:

1. Aymeric. Aymeric Aymeric Aymeric!!!!!!!! Dear lord everything they have in common!!! The hero complex, the stubborn determination esp. when it comes to refusing to be defined by their (shared!) backgrounds as bastards, the selflessness (at times to their own detriment), the utter fearlessness and optimism, the way each of them embodies every romantic ideal of knighthood and thinks the world of each other. I’m. Help

And to top it all off, Edmont even canonically says he sees much of Haurchefant in Aymeric and considers him another of his sons!!!!!!!

2. Estinien!! The grumpy one and the sunshine one dynamic!!!! The implicit trust!!!! Haurche practically swoons over him!!!! (“I have nothing to fear with the Warrior of Light and the Azure Dragoon at my side!”) But even beyond those things, Haurche understands Estinien more than people might realize at first glance because he can relate to being small and angry and bitey—while it was for different reasons, they both experienced trauma and both obsessively trained to be knights because of it. And I think more than anyone, even Aymeric, Haurchefant can and does help Estinien learn to open up and accept that he’s worthy of love and affection and deserves it (because I think Estinien’s obvious survivor’s guilt makes that difficult for him at times).

Like there is a sincere reason why I absolutely ship Aymeric/Estinien/Haurchefant even without Gisele and still would even if she wasn’t in the picture, he is the perfect balance between the two of them to the point I am absolutely fucking baffled that this ship isn’t as popular as Estimeric tbqh. It’s like making a chicken parm hero without the bread I mean sure it tastes good but you have absolutely no idea what you’re missing

3. Ysayle!!!!! Again with the being able to relate to her because of the childhood traumas (though varied), but also because Haurchefant is so very easy to love, and he’s exactly the sort of person Ysayle needs in her life, someone who will love and accept her unconditionally—she is a desperately lonely woman, ultimately, who clung to the delusions of grandeur as a coping mechanism for feeling lost and alone. Even the grand crusade for justice as she saw it was ultimately about giving her a purpose imo. And Haurchefant, much like Aymeric, represents what the Holy See could be, embodying with utter sincerity the very best of the ideals that weak and evil men of faith cynically espouse with all their hypocrisies (such as the Ward), that Ysayle didn’t believe in after the people of Falcon’s Nest were abandoned by House Durendaire. As Scions in my verse, well, they fit together like a glove, and they’ll forever be bound by nearly losing their lives to save Gisele. It really is an unshakable bond and I get really emotional just thinking about it.

#I’m sorry for the exclamation points!!!!!#I have a lot of feelings about this elf and his loves!!!!!!!!#and that’s just three of them!!!!!#lord baestone #ice wife #azure the grouch #stupid sexy aymeric #allycryz #ask bisho

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fairy-serigala · 3 years

Note

Are you forgetting that gray stalked lucy, by trying to follow her home?. Then getting caught by natsu. Then he broke into her apartment and stripped nude. It really shows that men can't be seen as stalkers while women characters like juvia are easy targets because she is an important side character. I literally don't understand the logic?, they did the same thing but nobody cares because gray is the tall dark and handsome guy everybody gloats over.

Look, there are other blogs for this kind of discussion, and this isn't one of them. This is the only butt-hurt gr///uvian I'm responding to, because it's the first, but from here on out I'm going to be deleting any and all messages like this.

(This ended up being much longer than I was anticipating so here's a cut so you don't have to see it all. TW: Mentions and discussion of abuse, stalking, gaslighting, sexual harassment & assault, double standards & misogyny, abuse apologism, and a single mention of rape culture.)

Let's get this over with quickly-

Gray stalked Lucy by trying to follow her home - Gray followed Lucy home because she said she thought she was being followed. He followed her to make sure she got home safely. He said this, even when he was caught by Natsu and Happy.

He broke into her apartment - So did Natsu and Happy and Erza and many, many other characters. No, it's not right when Gray does it. But it's also not right when anyone else does it. Either punish all off them or none of them, you can't cherry pick Gray because you don't like him.

He stripped nude - Yep. You're right. Go get yourself a cookie.

My friend runs the blog @absolutezerotolerance and I've heard all about you, Anon. I get it, you don't like Gray, you think he's an awful person who deserves all the abuse he endured, but here's the thing because you refuse to listen.

Just because Gray has done some shitty things, does not mean he deserves to be stalked and abused.

If you think he does then I hope to GOD that we never meet because you are an abuse apologist and I do not need to know someone like you.

Men who stalk women should be held accountable for their actions, it is not acceptable. Women who stalk men should be held accountable for their actions, it is not acceptable. There should not be a double standard, but unfortunately there is, and it doesn't go the way you think it does.

We hear all too often about men and masc. folk who get abused and stalked and hurt and no one believes them, because men are meant to be strong and tough and hide their emotions. I've seen on this very website people who believe that men are incapable of being abused because of some made up genetic component.

Men and masc. folk need to be listened to. This is not something that can be brushed aside, it is key and it is crucial. The wellbeing of men and masc. folk cannot be ignored.

And this is what's happening here, with Gray and Juvia and Lucy. No, it's not okay when Gray does it to Lucy. But Gray has suffered more at the hands of Juvia. That's all.

Gray should be held accountable for his actions, but Juvia's actions are simply further reaching and far more detrimental. They are indicative of a problem that makes me so, so sad to see.

Juvia isn't an easy target because we're looking for someone to hate. That isn't how this works, Anon. We hate Juvia because she gave us a reason to. Because she stalked Gray multiple times, including across several countries to Isvan. Because she has emotionally manipulated and gaslit him multiple times both after Ultear sacrificed herself and saved Gray, and on top of Gray's parents' grave after his father died a second time. Because she has a history of sexually harassing him - including touching him without permission and refusing to let go, and asking him to spank her when they a) aren't a couple and b) he makes it clear that he isn't comfortable with that. Because she objectifies him to such an extent that everything in her room is Gray-themed in some way - from multiple stuffed plushes, to a bar of soap that she uses to wash herself with. Because she admitted to sexually assaulting him during the one year time skip. Because he does not consent to what she does to him and she doesn't listen. Because she drugged him in an attempt to make her love him - removing consent from the equation all together.

What Gray does to Lucy isn't okay. But Juvia has a much, much longer list of crimes. This isn't okay to ignore. Especially when it's romanticised to this degree.

Your reasoning for ignoring everything Gray has gone through is the exact same reasoning that abuse apologisers and devil's advocates use to ignore women when they report abuse against them. "They're too pretty" or "this person did [x] to [third party] so they deserved it". It's a couple steps to the left of rape culture. Going to absurd lengths to ignore and dismiss Juvia of all wrongdoing and instead putting all the blame on Gray.

When I, or my friends, talk about GrUvia, we don't have to talk about Lucy. If she isn't relevant to the discussion, we don't have to bring her up and say "oh but don't think Gray's perfect because xyz". It doesn't cripple our arguments and it doesn't suddenly make everything we say redundant.

There are parts of Juvia that need to be discussed critically because they're a microcosm of a much bigger issue with today's society and the way it responds to abuse, abuse victims and abuse survivors.

We need to be able to look at situations like GrUvia and recognise that they're dangerous. Otherwise, how are we meant to do that when it comes to the real world? How am I meant to trust that if someone comes to you, Anon, saying they've been abused that you'll believe and help them?

This isn't about who's done worse, this is about the victims of stalking and abuse.

Laser focusing on the perpetrators only makes it more likely for victims to fall through the cracks without justice. And some, like Gray, may end up giving into their abusers and that isn't okay on any level.

Suffering isn't a competition, Anon. Gray is able to do shitty things and still be a victim, his right to health and safety can't be taken away because he isn't flawless. No one is flawless, but everyone deserves to be safe. This is all about empathy and listening to victims and having the ability to realise when a piece of media is perpetuating an idea that hurts and kills real people.

#anonymous #fairy tail #fairy tail discourse #anti gruvia #anti juvia lockser #i will not be anti-gr///ay no matter how much anon wants me to be #you can hate him all you want #but you can't change my mind #and I will delete any and all future responses from you anon #you are not welcome here

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transhawks · 4 years

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I got into dabi*hawks because of the potential of rivals/enemies-to-lovers and I thought they could have really interesting interactions and fics involving them could delve into some really interesting areas about morality and the grey areas (and the fact that they’re basically foils, a son of a villain who became a hero blinded to certain shortcomings and the son of a hero who became a villain because that was all he saw, yet they share similarities in their fucked up childhoods and the fact they’re basically going further down ‘bad’ paths in the current chapters, the fact they’re on different sides but in another life in another context in different events they may have been able to relate to each other..)..all to say I basically just started liking it because the idea of them interacting and their dynamic was interesting especially if they’re forced to consider the other’s views and work together (hawks in general I’m a big fan of vigilante or villain fics where he becomes more against how fucked hero society is and decides to take an alternate path to fix it) and I think hawks deciding to take more of the villains’ side is a more interesting plot line than if he ultimately dies trying to make up for his mistakes a hero, but..I feel like with how popular dabi*hawks got people think people only ship it because it’s hot or whatever and the view of it has significantly tipped down to where people get made fun of. (even though I feel hero/villain pairings are popular for a lot of these reasons in basically any media.) I have no idea where I was going with this when I started typing but I wanted to express my appreciation for finding a blog that can both like the content while neither pretending canon events didn’t happen/justifying bad things either one did nor acting like dabi*hawks fans are rabid yaoi fans who “ignore canon for their hot ship” or support abuse (I’ve never understood that one, they’re on opposite sides in canon and of course are going to fight, it’s not an interpersonal relationship in canon, so that’s basically saying all enemies to lovers is abuse regardless of context for no real reason, which is like of insulting as an abuse survivor)

One, the immense popularity, and subsequent lack of quality of shipping (as with everything, not everything made is good, and a lot of it isn't meant to be 'good' as you or I define it) does in fact give people the wrong perception or a very skewed one.

Additionally, some Dabihawks fans are in a bit of a tight spot where very hero-approving Hawks fans, the type who think he did nothing wrong, think the pairing is just a bunch of denial of little substance, meanwhile the other of the spectrum, a lot of hard-core villain stans hate it due to Hawks not living up to a lot of the 'promise' much of us saw early on.

And you talk about that promise; hit it dead on. Hawks's narrative is fascinating due to a lot of the could haves. It's why he is so richly paralleling most of the League. It's why his character is so goddamn complex.

Dabihawks started as a joke you know, I remember it. I was still new in the fandom and skipping ahead because I hate the overhaul arc when Hawks debuted. And at that point I hadn't really focused too much on the villains besides liking Dabi for being very obviously connected to Shouto, but Mirshroom kind of drew a "what if hawks and dabi went to hero school together and knew each other" thing even before we knew Hawks was a spy, and we all started calling it hotwings and thinking of the irony since Hawks was a walking icarus parallel to us...

And then.. The narrative happened.

Suddenly we were embroiled in a spy plot, and an intriguing story of a boy forced to become a hero who looked up to Endeavor, and Endeavor's likely son, born to be a hero but couldn't be one, so he became a villain. And Hawks had to work with him, pretend to be a villain.

It was beautiful.

It is beautiful.

It's gotten so much better: Hawks, the son of a villain, saved by Enji. Dabi, who has ruined Hawks's life, and yet, managed to free his shackles by destroying the cage, and yet Hawks will go back and defend the man he feels created him.

Even people who hate the pairing, and there are many good reasons I can list of stuff I don't care for in portrayals, might find it hard to deny; the setup reads like a Greek tragedy.

It reads like an epic romance novel.

And no one says those end happily, in fact, the appeal is, that they usually don't but so much of what affects us in the end is the knowledge it could have.

The clashing of two different ideologies, two perceptions of wrong and right, of justice.. One boy who was 'saved', one who wasn't.

There's so much richness that can be mined in the dynamic.

And, I guess, many are let down by canon not delivering. First off, clearly whatever this stuff between Hawks and Dabi is, it's still happening. There's unanswered questions and Horikoshi did not choose to end 299 and 300 in the exact same panel for both of them for nothing.

Whatever Hawks's fate is, it's tied to Dabi. It's tied to the Todoroki storyline. We don't know what will happen. There's been so many fics early on of us predicting one will try to kill the other - usually Dabi, and it's happened, but it might happen in reverse. That Hawks might try and kill Dabi.

The more optimistic among us, like me, can hope that Hawks somehow redeems himself by returning to his real origins - not of loving Endeavor, but being the boy who saved people he didn't know. By actually beinf a hero and saving someone who by all accounts shouldn't be saved, even if it means his life.

Even this far, through this much, can't you see how there's still so much ifs and can happens?

That's the beauty of it.

This is not a post, I think, saying other pairings are worse, or lack these qualities. Because that isn't true. But it is a post explaining why, even in the swamp of awful out of character portrayals, or people undervaluing the importance of the League, or ignorant inconvenient truths about Hawks's motivations and character, there is still so much promise and beauty in dabihawks. It's why I still ship it, and why I likely will until the end.

It's not happy. It's not neat. Like most enemies to lovers ships, there is messiness. But canon has provided a framework full of potential and exploration. And that's why it's still here as a ship.

Because we see the beauty in it.

#Dabihawks #Hot wings #Asks #Dabi #Hawks #The abuse stuff is asinine in my opinion #I can write a long post about dabihawks peeves if someone wants #But I guess this ask made me want to write a post about why I love dabihawks

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heliads · 3 years

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A Ruse By Any Other Name

Pietro Maximoff has just discovered the occupant of the HYDRA cell next to his- another Sokovian survivor of the experiments. Y/N L/N can tell any lie, convince someone to do anything she wishes. All Pietro can think about, however, is the life they could have together.

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There is no way out of this cell. Pietro knows this, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. He’s been given this accursed gift, he should at least be able to do something to leave. He slams against the walls with enough of an impact to shake the ceiling; nothing happens. He’s tried this enough times for bruises to cover him like freckles, but even those disappear faster than they should. No matter what he tries, the walls remain.

It feels unfair, somehow, like if he’s been giving this raging pulse and this overwhelming need to run he should have a place to do it. You gave this to me, he wants to shout, now take it back or at least make it feel like I don’t want to tear myself apart. Pietro knows that if he says anything like this they’ll drag him back to the labs and it’ll be even worse than before. So he keeps his mouth shut, and lets his frequent attempts to escape do the talking for him.

There’s a resulting thump on the other side of the wall, and he falls quiet for a second. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that he isn’t alone. All Pietro knows is the rough mess of a schedule that has become his life as a test subject of HYDRA- some days in the labs, most of the time spent in this cell unless he’s deemed useful enough to be allowed out into the field. Even then, on those scarce days of reprieve, they’re careful to keep him out of sight so the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t pick up on his presence and try to stop him. Otherwise, they’ll send over a team to kill everyone in the vicinity and call it justice.

No, Pietro isn’t alone. On one side of his cell is another containment block, one that holds his twin sister Wanda. She doesn’t share his same speed, his same need to move and move until his feet are raw and bleeding. He’s seen the way she can manipulate the objects around her, twisting minds like they’re toys in a display. It should scare him, he supposes, yet he just feels numb about it. She is Wanda, she would never hurt him. Not unless they made her, and no one has ever been able to make Wanda do something she doesn’t want to do. Not now.

He’s making it sound like they didn’t want this, like they weren’t volunteers. Pietro and Wanda were the ones to show up at HYDRA’s door, asking for a chance to turn their ghosts into weapons and their dirty palms into those of saints. People have failed them over and over again, it felt like time to tip the scales back the other way. HYDRA hadn’t said a word, just welcomed them in and locked the door behind them. Sometimes, Pietro wonders if he would have changed his mind had he known the full extent of what they’d undergo. Would they stay away? Or would they have come anyway, knowing there was nothing left for them but broken houses and the bodies of their parents right next to that bomb?

Pietro and Wanda aren’t the only HYDRA volunteers to survive, however. There is one more: a girl, one about their age. Pietro has never seen her in person, only heard the rumors in pieces and snatches from security guards whose usually stoic silence is broken by nervous chatter. Her name is Y/N L/N, although the guards all call her the Ruse. She has powers not unlike Wanda, in that she can manipulate people’s minds, but the similarities end there. Y/N’s powers have an entirely different edge, something that can convince the toughest of guards that they have something to fear.

The Ruse got her name because of her powers. She can convince you of anything, get you to believe any lie no matter how false. They say she whispers things into your head, can make you believe that your family is out to kill you and that your lover has poisoned your mind. With just a second’s concentration, she can rewrite your entire head and convince you to do anything she wants. That could involve giving her information, selling out an organization, killing a thousand people before you knew it. Pietro sometimes wonders if her victims know what’s going on while she’s controlling them, if they’re silently screaming even as their trigger finger tightens. Then a shiver runs over him, and he forces himself to stop thinking about it at all.

HYDRA allows the Ruse into the field more often than Pietro or Wanda, using her as a spy and a mercenary and whatever else they can think of. She has considerably more freedom, if you could call it that, because HYDRA’s taken another precaution with her. They’ve experimented with the old Winter Soldier programs, placing basic mind control over her. HYDRA can make sure she only tells the lies they want to spread, and that she has no way to control any of them. And so it is that the spider is caught by the web, that the one with the power to spin any lie is trapped by one greater than herself.

There’s a loud sound in the hallways, pairs of boots thudding down the hall. Through the barred window on the cell door, Pietro can see them dragging someone through the corridor. A guard steps forward to unlock Y/N’s cell, then they throw her unceremoniously through the door. The lock shuts with a click, and all guards leave the block, presumably to check with an official to make sure she hasn’t caught them within any lies.

There’s quiet for a long time, and then Pietro hears something else. It’s barely there at all, and he wouldn’t have noticed it were it not for the inhuman abilities given to him by HYDRA. To be honest, it almost sounds like somebody is crying. Pietro slows down for once in his life, crossing the cell hesitantly until he stands before the wall neighbouring Y/N’s cell.

Over the past few hours, Pietro has found a hole in the wall, a chink in the cinderblock and concrete where you can see through to the other side. It’s about the size of his fist, disguised by a low-hanging scrap of material. Pietro pushes it aside, allowing him to see Y/N for the first time. When his eyes first fall on her, he draws in a breath sharply.

She’s beautiful. Pietro doesn’t know what he had thought she would look like- cruel, maybe calculating, a glint in her eye that never seemed to fade? How do you portray the Ruse? But the girl slumped against the cell wall before him doesn’t seem like a villain, somebody who scares everyone in HYDRA’s payroll. No, she just looks afraid.

She must have heard him, because her head falls away from her hands and she looks up at him. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, cracked from the tears. “Are you Pietro?” Pietro nods. “Sorry to spy on you. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.” Pietro isn’t sure what he was expecting she’d say, but he doesn’t anticipate what she does next. She laughs bitterly, leaning her head back against the wall.

“I’m not. Not at all.” She lets her gaze drift from the ceiling back to him. “I don’t know what’s real. I don’t know anything at all. I’ve told so many lies and had so many more pumped into my head that I don’t know what way is up. Nothing makes sense, because everything I can remember contradicts itself. I don’t even know who I am. I’m the Ruse, I guess, but I don’t even know what that means.”

Pietro listens to her, feeling his spirits sink in sympathy. “You’re Y/N L/N. You’re a spy, and you’ll be able to work through this because you’ve been working through this for as long as you’ve been here.” Y/N sighs. “I’ve been breaking apart as long as I’ve been here, and I don’t think I can figure things out again. There are so many stories in my head, Pietro, and I don’t think any of them are true. If I say something and I believe it, is it true or am I using my powers? Nothing makes sense.”

It’s hard to look at this utterly broken girl in front of him and think that this is the all-powerful Ruse that has the directors of HYDRA quaking in their polished boots. Pietro doesn’t know what to say, and he tells her as much. Y/N chuckles. “Well, I don’t think anyone could know. I can get in your head, but you can’t get in mine.” She squints at him now. “Why did you check on me in the first place? Aren’t you scared that I’m going to control your mind like everyone else?”

Pietro shrugs. “I don’t know what you could do to me that hasn’t already happened. I can’t leave the base, I already have powers, there’s nobody I could hurt except myself and I heal pretty quickly. It’s kind of my thing.” Y/N smiles at that, a genuine smile. Pietro doesn’t think he’s seen it all day, and he wishes he could tell another joke so he could see it again. Y/N might not know what’s true and what’s not, but Pietro knows that she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen when she smiles at him like that.

Y/N clears her throat. “Tell you what, Pietro, if we ever get out of here I’ll think about what you said. Figure things out and whatnot. Keep moving forward.” Pietro smiles ruefully. “That sounds pretty good. I might even walk instead of run.” Y/N snorts. “That’s a little extreme, Maximoff. Don’t go making promises you can’t keep.” The sound of approaching guards makes Pietro hurriedly duck back into his cell, but he still thinks to himself that he’d give up all of his powers and then some if it means that he could have a future with Y/N away from HYDRA. They may have just met, but it feels like he could spend a lifetime with her.

When Pietro and Wanda meet Ultron, the first thing he thinks is that it’s a way out. If they go with him, they can escape HYDRA, turn their backs on the labs and the tests and the sinking knowledge that by signing up they may have made the worst mistake of their lives. His second thought is that when he and Wanda don’t return, he’s damning Y/N to stay at that facility until the end of her days. It cuts at him like a knife, a guilt that he can’t quite shake.

Ultron promises many things. Power, legacy, a chance to rebuild. All of it calls to Pietro in the same way that HYDRA’s programs called to him all that time ago. He’s terrified of making another mistake, and finds him wishing that he could turn to Y/N and ask her what she thought. Y/N has seen a thousand decisions being made, and had a hand in most of them. She tends to have some pretty good advice on what to do, and Pietro could use her voice right now.

In the end, he makes the choice himself. They decide to throw their lot in with Ultron, turning their backs on HYDRA and opening a door to the future ahead. When this doesn’t work out, they switch to the Avengers like handing off a baton. There’s a fight coming, a fight that Pietro knows has a pretty good chance of turning south. If he dies, there’s something he wants to do first.

When he tells Wanda his plan, she thinks it’s a terrible idea. “You want to go back to the HYDRA facilities? If they caught us, they would kill us.” Pietro shrugs. “That’s why we won’t get caught.” Wanda had rolled her eyes, telling him that she would haunt him forever if his stupid idea got them killed, but in the end she had agreed to go along with it. That’s how Pietro and Wanda ended up breaking into the HYDRA base, or specifically the cell block along the southern perimeter.

The bonus of having lived there is that Pietro knows which guards have the keys and which don’t, when to time a break-in so that the guards are still on rotation and won’t find them, and the exact cell where Y/N is locked away. When he opens the door, she stares at him for a second, then runs over and flings her arms around him. “I thought you were gone for good.” Then she steps back, doubt creeping over her. “Is it really you, or is this just something they’ve made up to mess with me?”

It hurts Pietro to think that HYDRA would use him against her, so he gestures towards his head. “Check and find out. I promise, it’s me. I’m getting you out of here.” She grins at him, a wild grin full of hope and excitement that she’ll finally have the life they both dreamed of on the nights they couldn’t sleep for the nightmares. Pietro picks her up in his arms, running as fast as he can to pass by the guards before they can even draw another breath.

They come to a stop outside the facility, Wanda joining them shortly thereafter. Y/N flashes her a smile. “Thanks for the rescue.” Wanda waves the gratitude away. “Don’t thank me, it was all Pietro’s idea. He practically begged me to come help you out.” Pietro’s about to chide Wanda for saying this, but when Y/N turns to him with a beaming look he feels like he could break into a hundred more HYDRA facilities just to prove it to her that he could.

They both end up joining the Avengers for the fight. Y/N refuses to leave if they need to defend the city against Ultron, especially if Pietro will be there. “You just saved me from HYDRA. I can’t leave you here to fight alone.” Pietro shrugged, saying that as long as she remained safe he would be alright with it, but secretly he couldn’t be happier that she was staying. They’re out now, out for good. He doesn’t want to leave her side for a second.

The fight against Ultron is difficult to say the least. Ultron summons up hundreds of drones out of nowhere, which swarm the streets like insects. Pietro, Y/N, and the rest of the Avengers take them down as soon as they appear, but it feels like they’re fighting on borrowed time. How long until there are too many, and a wave of metal robots chokes out the sky from above him?

At last, the fight looks like it will be over. They’ve managed to get the last of the refugees onto the ships, and Y/N is seconds away from boarding one herself. Pietro’s about to join her, and then he looks over his shoulder and sees them. Clint, who’d made sure Pietro could join the Avengers in the first place, and the child he’s carrying to safety. Pietro also sees the ship swooping over them, the bullets about to hit them.

Time seems to slow down. Pietro knows what he has to do to save them, the only choice he has. It’s the only way to pay Clint back for saving him, for saving Wanda. They’ll be able to make it after this. He has time to wish that Y/N will forgive him for this, and then he’s gone, twisting through the street just in time to block the bullets. Clint’s head is ducked as he prepares for the metal to tear through his flesh, but he looks up with a startled look as no impact occurs. Pietro manages a cocky grin. “Didn’t see that coming?”

Then the pain hits, and he collapses to the ground. There are too many bullets for him to heal, too many to save him. Pietro can hear a scream, and he realizes it’s Y/N. He wants to tell her that he’s sorry, but he can’t find the words. She’s kneeling next to him now, and he can see the tears glistening in her eyes. Even like this, pain lacing her every feature, she’s still just as beautiful as the first time he’d seen her.

Pietro can feel his heart rate slowing, stopping. Y/N gets this look in her eyes of panic, of fear. She cradles his head in her hands, forcing him to look at her. When she speaks, her voice seems charged with some kind of power. It’s unlike anything he’s ever heard before. “You are going to be alright. Your wounds are going to heal, and you are going to survive.” Her gaze is captivating, impossible to ignore. For some reason, Pietro listens, and for some reason, his wounds start to close up.

He can feel the flesh reknitting, but it makes no sense. He died, or he should have. Why is he healing now, why is he standing up and taking in another lungful of air? He goes to take a step, then stumbles. Y/N catches him, and he draws her close. He can feel her sobbing in his arms, but they’re aren’t sobs of sorry anymore- they’re of relief. Pietro forces himself to speak. “How did you do that? I thought I was dead.”

Y/N speaks through her tears. “You were dead. I just needed you to stay alive, so I used my powers, I guess.” She looks up at him, and Pietro realizes that she’s nervous, as if afraid that he’ll be disgusted by this display of powers and move away from her. Instead, he draws her closer. “You’re amazing, Y/N. Honestly. You saved my life.” She lets out something between a laugh and a sob. “Just don’t ask me to do it again.”

Pietro grins, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t worry about that. I don’t intend on dying anytime soon. We have a future to plan, remember?” Y/N smiles up at him. “How could I forget?”

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patchesthegothictramp · 4 years

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Feather Seeker and the Okinawa Jail

So anyone who’s been talking to me knows Feather Seeker is a game that’s perked my interest from the get-go, and I’ve been thinking of talking about it for a while. Now that I’ve been able to replay Royal and play Strikers, some other things have come out in the meantime and I’ve been paying more attention to additional media, I want to make a meta post about Feather Seeker, the Okinawa jail from Strikers and it’s connection to Akechi specifically. Be warned, this ended up being a very long post.

Let’s start with just getting a few questions out of the way:

Isn’t it just a mini game made to raise your stats?

Yes, absolutely, it’s optional and honestly if you don’t care for playing the video games it’s easy to miss. I don’t think it was honestly intended to be some massive breakthrough on a character’s backstory but rather an Easter egg that gets you to think about it.

It’s just about Neo-Featherman, there’s references to it in all persona games, so why is this one different?

It’s not different. There’s been plenty of times when Easter eggs have led to something bigger in this game, even specifically featherman ones. There’s an episode of Featherman that describes exactly what happens in the 3rd semester, where a character loves another so strongly it brings them back to life. Now whether you want to apply that to Futaba and her mum, Ren and Akechi or whoever it still fits- there’s an entire semester where at least one character loves another one and wishes them back to life through Maruki’s power. So having another piece of media, like the Feather Seeker game, be another allusion to something else isn’t entirely unjustified.

Feather Seeker is just detailed cos it’s about Featherman, why are you comparing it to other games?

See, here’s the thing and why I needed a second playthrough to make sure I was right about it. Feather Seeker is the odd one out. All of the games have some kind of plot or something going on (except for Golf sim but y’know... it’s a golf sim), but they’re all very, very basic things. Train of Life is just board game with very simple characters, the Goemon game has you just walking through hell but doesn’t really go more in depth with characterisation. Whereas you find out so much about what’s going on with Gray Pigeon and Osagiri in Feather Seeker that it feels a little… weird to simply ignore it. Do I think that the simplest answer, that they just wanted some plot in there for fun, is the right answer? Honestly I think that’s highly likely. But it’s the boring explanation too, it’s easy enough to just write any kind of intrigue like that, so whether what I’m writing about was intentional or not, I still want to discuss Feather Seeker and see people’s own thoughts on the possibility that it could be more than just a basic game.

So with that out of the way… let’s get into it.

First, there’s establishing who’s who. I can pretty confidently say that Gray Pigeon is Akechi in this entire metaphor. This one is the most obvious for multiple reasons, first of which being that it’s the exact same costume Akechi gets in the featherman outfits DLC so there’s the direct correlation there. Beyond that, Gray Pigeon is a character who awakens to a new power and wants to become a hero of justice, just like the feathermen, the hero’s he’s heard about before. Ring any bells?

Also the final revelation of Feather Seeker is that actually the Feathermen see Gray Pigeon as their enemy, who ends up sacrificing himself so they can keep fighting.

Which brings me to discussing who Osagiri and the Feathermen are. Given the timeline presented, I don’t think it’s possible for them to be one specific character or even group of characters. I think these aren’t supposed to be characters, but rather the major influences in Akechi’s life. Osagiri is a scientist (possibly Wakaba, I’ll get into that later), but also the one who pushes him to do bad things. Osagiri starts by training Gray Pigeon to become one of the Feathermen, the good guys, but eventually ends up manipulating Gray Pigeon into trying to kill them. Osaigir at the bare minimum has to be two people- the cognitive scientists who were able to uncover more thanks to Akechi’s escapades in the metaverse and the people who pushed him to commit crimes- the conspiracy.

The Feathermen, at the end of the game, have to be the Phantom Thieves- they’re the ones Gray Pigeon/Akechi ends up sacrificing himself to save but… that can’t be possible. Gray Pigeon’s journey starts with him gaining a new power and wanting to use it for good like the Feathermen do and of course the Phantom Thieves weren’t an inspiration for Akechi to do what he did. I think then the Feathermen are what Akechi aspired to be- the heroes of justice who fought the bad guys.

I can’t lead myself to believe that at 15, Akechi thought of this overly convoluted plan where he would help Shido to become prime minister only to then ruin him, there’s way too many factors in this that could change. I think originally Akechi wanted to avenge what happened to him and his mother, make sure that the man who wronged him would face justice. That’s what the Feathermen would do, right? They fight bad guys. Translating it from Feather Seeker, Akechi was angry, furious even and that rebellion woke hm up to Robin Hood, the embodiment of justice for him.

There’s plenty things that point to Robin Hood being first, his placement when Akechi awakens to Hereward on 2/2 being in the same spot as everyone else’s, the fact that for all of the other Thieves their third tier personas are different versions of their initials personas and that applies to Hereward/Robin Hood and that the trend of initial/second awakening personas is that the first is a fictional who was considered a criminal (Robin Hood) and the second is described in game as a ‘mythological trickster’ (Loki).

Here is where I want to get to the Okinawa jail and why I didn’t post this theory/metapost sooner.

I mentioned earlier that Osagiri could have been in some part Wakaba, Futaba’s mother, and when I initially wrote this I didn’t have all that much to go off of. There’s concept art in the original p5 artbook of Wakaba experimenting on someone. There’s no context given and it’s sort of the odd-one-out. Of course, human subjects would have been necessary to study the cognitive world but this research is so under wraps it seems it’s almost impossible to get. There’s no military connotations anywhere so why is it such a secret? Well, illegal human experimentation would certainly be a good reason to keep this away from the public. They must have figured out somehow that killing a shadow can cause a lot of damage, even death, to a person, we know that from the research notes, but Wakaba was a scientist, working in a lab, she must’ve done experiments that weren’t entirely legal.

Here I wasn’t sure because accusing Wakaba or anyone of illegal human experimentation was a pretty big reach but the Okinawa jail in Strikers shows us that illegal human experimentation is something that was used for cognitive research. I don’t think that Akechi was experimented on there or that was where Wakaba worked, there’s no indication of it but… Konoe and Owada seemed to build on the work that Shido and his scientists began. That being said, I think the Okinawa lab is a continuation of that human experimentation, with whatever lab Wakaba worked in being its predecessor before Shido probably shut it down to prevent it from ever being discovered. Which is also why he had Wakaba killed- the research was only meant for him and no one else.

Beyond what we see in Feather Seeker of Osagiri/sometimes Wakaba experimenting on Gray Pigeon/Akechi, we’re also told (albeit this is of course biased information), that he only targeted people he deemed deserved it but… Wakaba is the odd one out here for the most part. Okumura was hardly a good person and the principal decided covered for a sexual abuser, most of the others were survivors except for accidents which are mostly uncontrollable and unpredictable. Wakaba however, like Kobayakawa and Okumura, were targets that were supposed to die, Akechi intended to kill them. How then was Wakaba a bad person? Illegal human experimentation would explain that, especially if it was done on Akechi himself.

So then, Akechi was experimented on by Wakaba. I don’t think he was fully informed about what he was doing either. Gray Pigeon certainly wasn’t. Akechi was still trying to be a good person, using his power for his own vengeance yeah but I don’t think murdering random people was part of his initial plan at all. I think that Feather Seeker also emphasises just how little he knew about what his actions were doing. How would he know what his effects of shadows are on the real world? He could only know that from the scientists, from Shido. Of course he did find out, eventually, and that rage he must have felt about being used and lied to gave him the power to awaken to Loki, as Futaba puts it, the representation of his anger. It’s only then that he forms his plan, to get back at Shido for all of this, not just him abandoning him and his mother but for using him for his own means as well.

And we know how the rest of the story goes.

The overall story presented in Feather Seeker, as I see it, is this: Akechi awakens to Robin Hood, and realises that his anger is no longer a hopeless endeavour, he can use it, show that he’s useful and get acknowledged by his father. Shido sees this, sees that he can use this power and subjects him to experimentation, as someone who can actually survive the cognitive world and even have an impact on it. Wakaba sees what he can do, tests him but he’s never told what he’s done. He’s manipulated through praise and lack of information. One day he does find out, he realises this wasn’t getting him any closer to vengeance or getting acknowledged by Shido, he’s just another test subject being used by them. He’s angry, he awakens to Loki and now with the unique power of psychotic breakdowns, Shido recognises him and hires him as his assassin.

Granted this is all just my own theory, I think there is a lot pointing us to at least something similar but of course I also think this is wishful thinking as well. At this moment, my biggest wish is that Atlus makes a game that actually delves into what happened to Akechi. All the explicit information we have is given to us from biased sources, ie. Akechi himself, and it’s really the only question I have left for persona 5’s continuity.

#p5r spoilers #p5s spoilers #p5r #p5s #akechi goro #goro akechi #metapost #theory #p5a #proof of justice #persona 5 #persona 5 strikers #persona 5 royal

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lesetoilesfous · 3 years

Note

For DWC: "These chains never leave me, I keep dragging them around" from the Florence prompt list for Anders/Fenris?

Ah I had so much fun with this, thank you! I hope I did it justice!!

(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Fenders

Characters: Fenris, Anders

Tags: hurt/comfort, angst, canon-typical graphic depictions of violence, Anders was right, anti-chantry, graphic reference to infanticide, Tevinter is awful, graphic reference to abortion, oblique reference to sexual assault, self-hatred, mention of self-harm, suicidal ideation. Basically post-Danarius, and all that entails. Characters dealing with trauma, PTSD and survivor’s guilt.

Rating: Mature

It’s been one week, two days and three hours since Fenris killed Danarius. He is sitting with Hawke and her friends in her mansion, because he had not been able to conceal his discomfort when they’d visited The Hanged Man, unable to remove from his recent memory the stain of blood on the floorboards and the sting of his sister’s betrayal. Corff had, at least, worked a miracle with the former. As far as the latter was concerned - Fenris did not think that Isabela was the only one who’d noticed him startling in the Lowtown crowd at the sight of every redheaded elf. The trait was, blessedly, a rare one. There was that, at least.

In the beautiful marble fireplace, Hawke’s fire roars loud and red, crackling with heat that licks gold light over the sandy, muscular back of her mabari, half asleep on the wine purple rug laid over the stone. Sandal is humming somewhere in one of the rooms nearby, and occasionally, under the loud sound of Hawke’s voice and her companions’ laughter, Fenris can make out the soft sound of Bodahn talking to his son. Orana, of course, is inaudible. She knows better.

Fenris bites the inside of his cheek, hard, and drinks deeply from his cup. The wine in it is thick and rich and velvet. Fenris can feel Marian’s eyes on him, but he can also see, from the corner of his eye, the way that her muscular arm is looped casually around Isabela’s shoulders. As he lowers his cup, he catches the way that Isabela tilts her head back, thick black hair falling over Marian’s tunic as she brushes her lips against her ear. He can see the way Marian flushes.

Fenris gets to his feet, and by the fireplace Dog raises her great sandy head. He gives her a small, calming gesture, and next to the low table onto which they’ve scattered their cards, Marian frowns at him. “Fenris?”

Fenris motions vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. “I need some water.” He tries to ignore the eyes of his companions on him as he goes. Instead, he leaves the warm, firelit parlour and walks into the cold, empty rooms not baked gold by fireplaces. Fenris feels his shoulders lower as soon as he gets to the second room, standing in the grey and black dusty shadow of an utterly deserted music room. Through the narrow stone windows of the Amell Estate, he can see the deep black sky of Kirkwall, scattered with stars. Houses fall like broken marble down towards the sea, which crashes with a distant roar against the cliffs. At the edge of the horizon, moonlight races silver across the waves. Fenris stares at it, and thinks about being a younger man, on an island, thinking that it would be the last thing he ever saw.

“Nice view, isn’t it?”

Fenris whirls on instinct, limbs moving with muscle memory as the lyrium sewn into his skin sets his nerve endings on fire and he plunges his hand into the intruder’s chest. In the dark, Anders’ blonde hair is grey and silver. If he’s bothered by the pain about which Fenris’ victims had so often complained to him before their grisly demise, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he raises his eyebrows at Fenris over the wrist plunged into his chest. Fenris squeezes his fingers, and feels the frantic, shuddering jerk of Anders’ heart in his palm, the warm, wet sensation of it dulled by the distance of the Fade.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

Anders breathes out, a long, shuddering breath that belies his calm demeanour. Fenris had not previously thought him capable of such a poker face. His heart beats in Fenris’ hand like a bird, struggling. “I don’t know.” Anders meets his eyes, and in the dark his are almost black, but his blonde eyelashes are gilded silver by the moon. “I guess I trust you.”

Fenris’ fingers uncurl around Anders’ heart, and the mage’s shoulders lower from where they’d been scraping his ears. Fenris’ gaze falls to his long, crooked fingers, but there’s no telltale spark of magic there. Slowly, Fenris withdraws his hand, watching it fade through the frayed fabric of Anders’ coat as he tries to ignore the burn of a hot, embarrassed flush pushing up into his cheeks.

Outside the mansion, on the streets of Kirkwall, a pair of mabari start barking, great bellowing things that echo against the stone buildings. A cat yowls, and far off there’s the sound of people shouting. Fenris stares at his bare feet on the stone floor of Hawke’s mansion and hates the fact that his eyes are burning as he tries to untangle his tongue, and dispel the impression that Anders will do something awful to him for his trespass. (Hadriana’s smile flickers behind his eyelids every time he blinks. Her fingers curl, wreathed in green light. His own screams echo in his ears long before the pain hits.)

“Are you alright?”

Anders’ voice is rough and soft, and Fenris jerks his head up, falling back on the easy confidence of anger and letting it buoy him up out of his despair.

“What do you care, mage?”

As Fenris speaks he surges forward, feeling his lips curl back from his teeth in a sneer. Anders doesn’t back away, and it leaves their faces mere inches apart. Anders is looking at him oddly, and abruptly Fenris wishes for more light: knowing the man well enough by now after almost a decade to be able to read the spiderweb cracks of wrinkles in his face as the giveaway they tended to be.

“You haven’t been yourself since -” Anders hesitates, and Fenris hates him for it, and abruptly cannot look at him. So instead he turns away, throwing his hands into the empty air as if that will satisfy his urge to hit something.

“Since what? Since I killed him. Tell me, mage, what is my ‘self’? What am I?” Fenris means it as a challenge, but his voice cracks, and when he turns back to Anders, chest heaving, he’s horrified to realise that tears are running down his cheeks. He glances at the open door, leading into the dark and deeper into the mansion. He takes a step in the direction of the doorframe.

“Brave.” Anders says the word quickly, and Fenris stops, unable to force himself to turn around but unable to leave either as some stupid, childish part of him that he had long since thought irreparably ruined rises in delight. “Funny. And you know it, though you pretend you don’t.” It’s getting hard to breathe. Fenris stares into the thick shadows of the next room, where Orana’s drawn the curtains across the window. Elsewhere in the mansion, there’s a cheer and a crow of triumph from Isabela as the rest of their friends laugh.

“Smartest man I’ve ever met, probably.” Anders goes on, but doesn’t move. “Fucking stubborn. Annoying. Terrifying, with a greatsword. And without one.” Anders hesitates, and Fenris hears the catch of his breath as clear as a bell struck at daybreak. “My friend.”

Fenris clenches his jaw so tightly his teeth hurt, and shuts his eyes. More tears fall down his cheeks, tickling his chin as they go.

“A good man. That’s what you are, Fenris.” Anders delivers the proclamation with the same certainty with which he insists on his desperate, hopeless, flawed revolution.

Fenris whirls on him. “And what do you know of good men?” Fenris means it cruelly, and he tries to take satisfaction in the way that Anders flinches. But then the stupid, stubborn, ridiculous man lifts his chin.

“Enough to know one when I see one. And know when he’s being an ass.”

“You know nothing of me!” Fenris almost bellows, and cowers when the words echo. For a moment, both he and Anders hold their breath as they wait for one of Hawke’s servants - or worse - their friends, to come and investigate. But a minute passes, tense as a knife edge, and no one does. Fenris goes on, and tries to ignore the prickling in his sweating hands. “You don’t know what I am. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Dust motes dance silver in the starlight as they fall onto the piano. Anders purses his lips. “Alright, I don’t. But I know that you dress up as Fen’harel for the kids in the alienage every Wintersend. I know you win more often at cards than you say you do, and that you let Merrill win. I know you’re a little bit in love with Isabela, and a little bit in love with Hawke, and it kills you that they chose each other because it kills me too. I know that you have more reason than any bastard I’ve ever met to hurt me until I forget how to breathe and you’re one of very few people who never has. I know that I’ve known you for a decade and you haven’t killed me yet.”

“I might.” It’s not a threat. Fenris doesn’t look at Anders when he says it, staring dully instead at the painting on the wall: some rainy Fereldan landscape, the details of which he can’t make out in the dark.

“But you haven’t.” Anders steps forward, and Fenris steps back, and feels dizzily as if they’re dancing. The moonlight catches on Anders’ chin, and Fenris can make out the faint tooth of a scar just below his bottom lip, hair thin in his stubble. Anders swallows, and breaks Fenris’ gaze, eyes tracing over a lute hanging on the wall. “You know mages don’t get to keep their kids.”

The subject change is so abrupt that Fenris feels as if he’s been physically thrown off kilter. “What?” He’s been standing here long enough to feel the cold, now, and taste the wood polish in the air. Anders goes on, still not looking at him, massaging one hand with the other as his fingers flex.

“They take them away. Can’t abort them, not under Chantry law. I’m a Spirit Healer.”

Fenris’ frown deepens, the back of his head already aching with the dull constant stress of the last fortnight and the sleeplessness that came with it. “I know.” He tries not to make his frustration obvious. Judging by the small grin Anders gives him, he doesn’t succeed.

“I started working with the Circle Healer when I was 17. Day after I was Harrowed. First day wasn’t so bad. A couple lashings. Attempted suicide. Self-harmer. Some kid who said he walked into a wall.” Anders rolls his eyes, huffing a laugh as his hands move to massage his wrists. Fenris watches him carefully. “Second day. There was this girl. Fifteen, Templar father, obviously. I helped deliver that baby.” Anders’ expression shutters. “She wasn’t allowed to see it. I did. I got to hold it, give it to some lieutenant who held it like it was contagious. I don’t even know if it made out of Kinloch. But she begged me to let her hold it and all I could say was that it was already gone.”

“That -” Fenris picks his words as carefully as he would navigate a floor covered in broken glass. “I do not think that you were the one at fault, there.”

“I know.” Anders says the words simply, and reaches up into his hair to pull the tie loose, scratching the tangled waves that fall around his head as he does so. “My point is, when you’re a prisoner, most of the time, the burden is on your gaolor. And you aren’t Danarius’ crimes.”

“It is not the same.” Fenris grinds the words between his teeth as his fingers tighten into fists hard enough to hurt. “I was - the things I did - I did not take babies. I killed them. I broke their skulls on his altars. I aborted them from their mothers before I killed them, too. I cannot - there are not words for the marks that what I have done, what I did, has left on my soul, and I do not know if I will do them again, and I fear them and I fear him, and I fear myself, and I hate them and I hate him and I hate myself, and every hour of every day I live with these cursed chains on my body that I cannot shake no matter how far I run and I do not know how to make it stop.” Once Fenris starts speaking, he can’t slow down, the words falling from his tongue with the tears that run thick and fast down his cheeks as he tears at his arms hard enough to make them bleed. Anders startles forward, and Fenris jerks backward, thrusting his burning hands into the air between them. “I would tear it from my skin. I would rip myself apart piece by piece if I did not know that killing myself would only be a mercy that I have never deserved.” Fenris breathes, and it splinters in his chest. He finishes in a hoarse whisper. “You know nothing of what I am, or what I have been, or what I have suffered, or what I have done. You never have.”

Behind Fenris, through the window, the sound of the ocean beats incessantly against the land. Elsewhere in the mansion, their companions are quiet, and the sound of Sandal’s singing has ceased. Fenris can feel his blood roaring in his ears, and doesn’t bother to brush the tears from his cheeks. Standing in the middle of the room, Anders stares at him, his tall thin figure swaying like a sapling in a breeze.

Then he says, “You’re right. There’s a lot about you that I don’t know or understand and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m kind of an asshole sometimes. But, Fenris? I need you to know this.” Anders steps forward and gets, stiffly, to his knees, one leg bending more slowly than the other. Fenris stares at him, bewildered, and steps backward until his head bumps softly against the wall. “Forgive the melodrama but uh, I don’t get on my knees for just anyone.” Fenris doesn’t think he has ever seen Anders on his knees, and he realises abruptly that he had never wanted to. Anders gives him a small, nervous smile, and takes a deep breath, swallowing before he speaks. “Fenris. From a mage, on his knees, asking you to listen to him. You deserve to live.”

The sob that works its way out of Fenris’ chest is a living thing, and Fenris chokes on it, sliding down the wall as he begins to cry in earnest. Anders, mercifully, doesn’t move. Fenris doesn’t know how long he cries, only that at the end of it his throat aches and his eyes burn and his head is pounding. But when he opens his eyes, Anders is still there, silver in the dark on his knees next to the piano. Fenris stares at him, and tries to clear his throat.

“You’re a very strange man.”

Anders shrugs, and moves with a visible wince to take the weight off his left knee, leaning against the piano stool as he gingerly unfolds his leg. “I’ve been called worse.”

Slowly, he reaches out into the space between them, scarred, crooked, calloused hand palm upwards, fingers outstretched. Anders looks at him, and his brown eyes are almost black in the dark. Slowly, fighting the sensation that this must be some kind of trap, Fenris reaches out and takes it. Anders’ fingers are cool against his, and his knuckles are bumpy and uneven. But he squeezes Fenris’ hand so hard it’s almost painful, and Fenris feels more tears stinging at the back of his eyes.

For a moment, they sit like that, peaceful in the quiet. Then there’s a soft knock on the doorframe, and Bodahn ducks his head in, face lit by a candle in a brass dish. “Sorry to interrupt messeres, but Mistress Hawke wanted to know if you’d like some libation to keep you company?”

Fenris glances at Anders, half moving to pull his hand back. But Anders’ hand tightens on his, and instead, feeling strangely childish, he nods at Bodahn. “Yes, please. That would be appreciated.”

Bodahn gives him a small, kind smile and ducks his head. “Very good, messere.” He turns, and leaves, and Fenris watches Anders as he shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the barstool, hair fanning out around him like some Orlesian princess.

“I thought you didn’t drink.” It’s not an accusation, motivated more by curiosity than anything.

Anders’ lips curl, and he opens one eye to look at Fenris, fingers tightening in his. “For you? I’ll make an exception. It’s been a long week.”

#dadwc #my fic #fenders #da2 #fenris #anders #tsuraiwrites

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god-of-dust · 3 years

Text

since i already posted Rising Sun, i thought that it would be interesting to show part of my writing process for it. this is part of the first, unedited draft that i wrote without any finesse and then rewrote completely. notice the “send help” bit XD

He waits until Aang's finished with his mantras before speaking. “Can I have your opinion on something?”

“I'm listening,” Aang says, voice deep and resonant.

“The anniversary of the genocide will be in a few months,” he begins, unsure on how to approach the subject.

Slowly, Aang exhales, rolls his shoulders and neck and opens his eyes to look at Zuko. “Yes.”

“I'd like to make it an official day of remembrance.” He passes a hand through his hair, gathering his thoughts.

“That's... incredibly thoughtful, Zuko. Thank you.”

Zuko scratches at a bit of sealing wax that's stuck to his desk. “The power I have means nothing if I don't use it to right the wrongs that my family has done. To be honest, there's a lot that needs to be mended, especially when it comes to your people, and even for this anniversary I have no idea what to do. What's the appropriate way to do this?”

“In truth, I have no idea either.” Aang briefly clutches his beads. “Now that the war is over, I have more space to think about what happened and how I want to honor my people so that their teachings aren't forgotten, but it's—well, a lot.”

“I was thinking about theatre—a play that tells the real story, what truly happened that day, instead of that bullshit militaristic propaganda we've been fed during the war.” Zuko offers cautiously.

“That could work. Can I think about it some more?”

“Of course you can. But, um, on the topic of propaganda... there's also something else I've been meaning to ask you.”

“There's always something else,” Aang says, and even though his tone is neutral Zuko still flinches. There's unconcealed tiredness in those words, one that Zuko is well-acquainted with; long nights spent wondering if the demands of his title will pile up and pile up until they swallow him whole, followed by long days where he brushes away the bruises under his eyes and puts on his best diplomatic face to attend to those very same demands.

“I'm working with my advisors to completely rewrite the school curriculum. They've been a great help, but for all their genuine interest they've been indoctrinated about Air Nomads as much as anyone else in this nation. I want kids to be taught about your culture, and for that I need you.” Before Aang can reply, Zuko speaks again. “I know that I'm asking too much. I know that this would be yet another responsibility you got saddled with... but you're also the best person possible for this.”

Aang's smile is a wry, bitter thing that makes Zuko's chest ache like a hollowed out tree. “Not the best. The only one.”

“You're not the only one. I could recruit some of the Air Acolytes if you think it's a good idea.”

“No, that wouldn't be enough,” Aang says, shaking his head minutely. “They're passionate scholars, and their presence soothes the part of me that was afraid that any hope for community had been lost. Still... they can never get it completely. There are things that can't be taught, only lived.”

There's nothing that Zuko can reply to that. No words will ever be enough to restore what has been destroyed and taken away from Aang; as much as that wound appears to be scarred and healed, Zuko can see that there's a well of grief that Aang doesn't let anyone get close to.

Some gaps can never be closed, but others can.

He rises from his desk and crosses the distance between them, kneeling before Aang. They're at the same height now, and Zuko gently presses his forehead against Aang's; after a small moment of hesitation, he places a hand against Aang's cheek. This tentative touch is all he has to offer.

“I wish I didn't have to ask this of you,” Zuko murmurs, eyes closing in surrender, thumb stroking soft skin.

They breathe together like this, slipping into a state of shared equilibrium. It doesn't erase the pain, but it makes it bearable. A thing that they both can carry together.

“I'm the last airbender. I won't disrespect my people by running away. Besides, I'm the Avatar, and my voice carries authority that I'm meant to use exactly for reasons such as these.”

Zuko sighs. Outside of the window, where the sky is beginning to darken, a handful of stars begin to emerge from its expanse. “I want more than anything to see you at peace, and yet I find myself burdening you with heavy choices, over and over.”

“Your choices aren't easy either, Zuko.”

“No, they aren't. But then, I'm honor-bound to rule this nation to the best of my abilities, regardless of my wishful thinking about how easier it should be.”

Aang squeezes one of his shoulders, reassuring him with a simple touch.

I know how it feels. You're not alone.

And Aang does understand, better than anyone else. The feeling of suffocation that comes with the high stakes involved in any misstep, the anxiety that has taken permanent residence under Zuko's ribs ever since his coronation. He never speaks about it, not out loud, and he's glad that he doesn't need to.

Aang puts a hand on the back of Zuko's neck, lightly kneading the lingering tension away.

Why is it that Aang makes it easy to accept a touch so loving and tender? He'd struggled to accept his uncle's hugs and comforting pats, feeling unworthy of his freely given affection.

Aang doesn't owe him anything. And yet here Zuko is, unmoving, his own palm still cupping Aang's tranquil face, fingers tracing absent patterns on it. Thoughts slip away, awash by the simplicity of this moment.

"Be here, Zuko. There's a lot we must do, a lot that's been appointed onto us, but now we have this."

"Thank you," Zuko whispers, and he means it.

The pressure of Aang's hand on Zuko grounds him. They breath as one, and for a moment they are one, a single essence.

“The first time I entered the Avatar state I experienced visions of the world that can't be expressed with words,” Aang says. “I saw the oneness of all things. I saw impermanence, the mutable nature of everything. Going back to being myself, with a body, after that... It took a bit of adjusting. Okay, a lot of adjusting.”

“How did you do it?” How can a person contain all that? is what Zuko wishes to ask, though he doesn't quite dare.

“I don't know. It's an apparent contradiction that I have yet to come to terms with. I have a duty as Avatar Aang that I'm meant to uphold, while having witnessed that, ultimately, I have no separate identity at all.” An exhale, long and deep. “Sometimes it feels meaningless. Why bother, why struggle, when we are all one and the same? But it's what we're here to do, what I am here to do.”

“You're the most selfless person I know.” It tumbles out of Zuko's mouth, unfiltered. Aang is... all that.

At Aang's age, Zuko had only cared about firebending forms and maybe his crush on Mai. He'd still hoped for his father's approval. Then there's Aang, a hero, a survivor, who's seen more than any person would be able to bear; the most profound loss, the glory of victory, and the ultimate detachment from it all.

It's impossible that this larger-than-life being can be so unassuming. That he has love for Zuko, so much that his scarred heart can drown in it.

Never has he felt so cherished, with no strings attached, no familial bonds, no hidden treachery glistening behind constructed gestures.

His chest isn't hollow anymore. It feels full, the fuller it's been in a long time, overflowing him. The naked affection he holds for Aang is humbling, devastating.

Aang has the supreme quality of making Zuko feel like he belongs. They belong together, as strange and different as they might be, as conflicted Zuko might feel about it. It doesn't matter.

When Aang talks about oneness, this is what Zuko can compare it to. Their mingled breaths, Aang's hand on his skin. That time at the Sun Warriors temple, along with now. They have everything. They are everything, and when they're together, Zuko can believe that they can achieve anything, overcome any struggle.

There's no obstacle big enough to stop their combined strength.

Is this what unconditional love is? The complete, utter perfection Zuko feels?

Nothing can mar this. Not when Aang is with him.

“I want to be there for you. I want to do everything in my power to provide reparation, to acknowledge the harm that's been done to your people, to offer my effort to make it right again... but I don't know how. I need you, Aang.” He stares into his eyes, gold meeting gray. “I need you to teach me. To tell me if I'm doing it wrong.”

“Okay,” Aang says, simply. “I'll be your advisor in this.”

“I'm so sorry that I'm asking this of you. I'm sorry that this is yet another burden piled up on top of your other responsibilities.”

Aang sighs. It's not a sad sigh, nor a frustrated sigh. Just... a deep exhale. “Someone has to do it. Might as well be me.”

“I wish you didn't have to.”

“Wishing is pointless. We might as well act on what we have.”

Zuko shakes his head. “I still can't accept the things that I suffered through. I haven't forgiven my family for what they've done. My father is rotting in prison, and he deserves it. For what he's done to me, to you, to this nation. The fact that you can be so calm about it... how? How can you be so calm?”

“Forgiving is not forgetting. What has been done has been done, and it's still impressed in my memory and will always be. But punishment serves no one.”

“So he should just... not pay for what he's done? Where's the justice in that?”

“Justice is meaningless. Justice is the illusion of balance, based on false ideas of truth.”

“Aang I don't fucking get it. He's a genocidal maniac. Send help.”

“The pain he's caused can't be mended through punishment. It cannot be solved in any way. We can only acknowledge that pain and make sure that it doesn't happen again. And... I'm glad that you're thinking about this. It warms my heart that you feel this way.”

#writing #zukaang #fanfic #yay writing #avatar the last airbender

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mimicutie · 4 years

Text

Pit is Autistic - A “Brief” Analysis

Kid Icarus: Uprising is my favorite game of all time, and one thing I love about it is the characterization of Pit. Specifically, I see him as autistic. Of course, this is just a headcanon of mine, but I wanted to write out a little discussion explaining why I see him as such as well as show some of the autistic traits he demonstrates in Uprising (and the occasional reference to the Guidance conversations from Smash).

(fair warning, this is not very brief)

Difficulty Understanding Words and Jokes

It’s made abundantly clear that Pit isn’t the best at picking up sarcasm or jokes. At times, he struggles with understanding words, phrases, and context. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 11.

Pit: Good! There are survivors! Palutena: They’re a stubborn bunch hanging on like that. [...] Pit: Uh… stubborn? Palutena: Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.

Here, Pit doesn’t understand what Palutena means by “stubborn.” It’s pretty common for autistic people to struggle understanding parts of speech, such as words being used in different contexts than what they’re used to.

Medusa: Hmm… Now this is a little… bizarre. Pit: I know right? The mouth on that guy! I’d never talk like that! Medusa: That’s not what I meant. Palutena: Sorry. He can be a little… thick.

Once again, Pit is misinterpreting the situation. He doesn’t understand what Medusa is alluding to, thinking that she is talking about Dark Pit’s brash behavior. Palutena’s last comment hints that it’s very common for Pit to misunderstand people like this.

Pit: I’m Pit, servant of the goddess Palutena. I’m here to defeat Dark Lord Gaol. Magnus: So you’re here for a slice of the pie too? Pit: Huh? Pie? Where?

Chapter 2 has several examples of Pit not picking up on obvious jokes or idioms, and here’s one. Pit takes the idiom literally, not understanding what Magnus really means at first.

Viridi: Pit certainly is devoted to you, Palutena. Hades: Only because she squeezes his head wreath when he doesn’t follow orders. Palutena: You mean like… THIS?! Pit: No no no no no! You’ll squeeze my brains out! … (sigh) Why do I always fall for that?

In this example from Chapter 15, Palutena is clearly messing with Pit, but as he stated, he always falls for her jokes. Even though it’s clear she is just teasing, Pit can’t pick up on the fact that she isn’t being serious. He consistently struggles with understanding tone.

Pit: This is so annoying. Lady Palutena, help me out here! Palutena: Deploying the Palutena Super Sensor… Pit: I didn’t know you had a super sensor! Palutena: Hee hee. I don’t. You know I like to make stuff up. Pit: I can’t believe you’re messing with me at a time like this!

This dialogue from Chapter 13 is just another example of Palutena clearly joking while Pit does not pick up on it. Even though Palutena has done this time and time again, Pit still struggles to tell when someone, even a person he is incredibly close to like Palutena, is just messing with him. These are just a few examples. Pit commonly struggles with understanding language and tone throughout the game.

Using Words Differently

We can see that Pit has his own unique vocabulary with his own creative phrases like, “Calamaried!” “Re-defeated!” “Pulverazed!” and so on. Pit also makes LOTS of noises throughout the game, all of his “woohoo”s and “woah”s and whatnot. It’s just how he communicates, even if it's a bit particular or different.

Expressiveness

Pit is excitable. Like, really excitable. Sure, he’s a fun video game protagonist, but he’s always very happy-go-lucky and upbeat in a way that reads to me as autistic. Just look at how he jumps in excitement!

And when he gets the Three Sacred Treasure?! Gifs can’t really do the excitement in this scene justice. (link in case tumblr embed isn’t working)

youtube

Additionally, while Uprising doesn’t have a lot of cutscenes with Pit just standing around talking, in the ones where he does he is usually very expressive, using his hands to talk and whatnot. Added with his excitability, I feel that this shows us that Pit is so expressive and emotional because he’s autistic!

Extra Help

Pit needs more help with understanding things in comparison to others. Palutena often goes out of her way to guide Pit, whether it be giving him directions or explaining how to defeat an enemy. While Palutena’s advice does work as a guide for the player, it’s clear that Pit needs the help more than someone else his situation might. The clearest proof we have of this comes from Chapter 22.

Palutena: Watch out for that heart-shaped crystal barrier! You see, it’s— Dark Pit: Reflecting my shots back at me, right? Palutena: Well… yes. Dark Pit: I got it, so stop telling me what to do!

Palutena is expecting Dark Pit to be like Pit, where she needs to explain to him what’s going on and offer her guidance. However, Dark Pit was able to figure out a strategy to defeat Pandora all on his own. Palutena is very aware that Pit needs a bit more help and prepares accordingly for him.

Accidental Rudeness

Many times throughout Uprising, Pit is shown speaking “rudely” towards gods or characters who have authority over him.

Pit: Oh, great! You’re the guy I’m looking for. Listen, I have a favor to ask you. Would you mind if I borrow your chariot for just a little while? Chariot Master: Your foolishness is matched only by your rudeness. How dare you charge in here, flinging unreasonable requests at me? [...] Viridi: You can’t really blame him for being upset. That was kind of rude.

Here, Pit is talking to the Chariot Master very casually, treating him like a friend despite the fact he is breaking into the Chariot Master’s tower and asking him for a precious artifact. Pit doesn’t see it as rude but Viridi and the Chariot Master clearly do. He is breaking an unwritten social norm by talking so casually to someone of high authority. Autistic people often misinterpret social situations or don’t act appropriately, sometimes resulting in “rude” behavior. There are several examples of this throughout the game, such as in Chapter 24…

Pit: You know, the Three Sacred Treasures weren’t exactly durable. Can you please make sure that this new weapon won’t just fall apart? Dyntos: Palutena, you’d be wise to put a muzzle on your chicken. Palutena: I apologize for him. Again. Pit: I… I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to be rude.

To Pit, he is just stating a fact. However, it comes off to Dyntos as Pit being rude or even insulting his work. This is something that autistic people often do; they are blunt or honest about something, which is again mistaken as being rude.

Pit is also seen being more blunt when under emotional stress, such as in Chapter 20.

Pit: I trusted you because I knew you were on the side of justice, and… and light! But something is blocking that light now. This isn’t the real you. Viridi: Someone cue the strings… Pit: Would you mind holding the commentary for two seconds, Viridi? Phosphora: There are goddesses you’re talking to here, Pit. Watch your tone. Pit: Butt out, Phosphora! The goddess of light has turned dark. Skyworld is destroyed! Everything is wrong, and it’s up to me to make things right! Palutena: Oh, Pit. You’re just as naive as ever. Pit: I’m not naive!

Phew. This scene is pretty noteworthy to me because throughout the game, Pit is never really that angry or upset. He does show hostility, but he never really snaps at anyone, much less gods, like this. But when his home is destroyed and Lady Palutena is not herself, his emotions get the better of him. He doesn’t even seem to care that he is being “rude” to Viridi. I definitely see this moment as Pit having an outburst because of the stressful situation he is under.

Scripts / Scripting

The most obvious example of Pit using a script is with his “rally cries” that he prepares before fighting enemies. Look at the idol description for this AR Card.

He practices his rally cries a lot in order to be prepared for battles with bosses. Pit even mentions practicing his rally cries in a later chapter.

Pit: Cells of Hades, hear my words! And, um… see my actions! Uh… something, something… I’m going to rain death on you! I can’t remember all the words, but that’s the general gist. Hades: My innards have so longed to hear your battle cry. How could you forget the words? Pit: I didn’t have time to rehearse. I’ve been busy fighting evil, okay?!

While some may see the rally cries as meaningless fun, I think it could be seen as Pit having a script that he likes to fall back to when facing enemies.

His many references and quotes to video games could be seen as scripting, too. There are lots of instances in Uprising, and especially in Palutena’s Guidance, where Pit quotes famous video game phrases or imitates sounds. Which leads me to…

Special Interest

Pit’s special interest is video games. While Pit’s very vast knowledge of video games could just be because of Uprising’s fourth-wall breaking style of humor, I think it could also be seen as Pit having an intense interest in games. He references various video games such as Metroid, Nintendogs, and Super Smash Bros. in-game. He seems to enjoy bringing up video games or referencing video game mechanics whenever he can, which is very similar to how autistic people enjoy bringing up their special interests in conversations whenever possible. Additionally, while the Palutena’s Guidance conversations aren’t 100% accurate to canon, Pit constantly references and alludes to various video games in them, such as quoting Reyn in Shulk’s conversation or Peppy and General Pepper in Fox’s (which ties back to him scripting). It’s clear that he loves video games and talking about video games!

Pit: Those Aurum troops are doing their best Game and Watch impression! Viridi: Check out the gaming IQ on this guy! You’re a regular video game historian!

See, even Viridi is impressed with his video game knowledge! :D

Sensory Issues

Throughout the game, Pit seems to have an obsession with hot springs. It is never outright explained why he loves them so much, but I’m led to believe it is because of sensory reasons. Many autistic people use extreme temperatures to help soothe or calm themselves, such as cold showers or hot baths. It can often help with sensory overload. Hot springs, similarly to hot baths, may be a way to help soothe Pit and keep his sensory issues to a minimum.

Pit’s habits with his tunic seem to hint towards sensory issues, too. He doesn’t like to be without his robes, stating that he keeps them on even when he’s in the hot spring. When his clothes seemingly get messed up in Chapter 21, he gets upset, exclaiming that it’s his only tunic. Wearing the same clothes or same types of clothes/fabric is pretty typical for autistic people, and Pit wearing the same tunic everyday is similar to that.

Additionally, Pit’s habits with food could be because of sensory differences. He very well could be hyposensitive to food and tastes, which is why he eats a lot and doesn’t seem to care about what he eats (as long as it isn’t vegetables, according to the Revolting Dinner short ;D ) .

Small Social Circle

Pit doesn’t have a whole lot of people he can rely on. Before Uprising, the only person he seems to have any affinity for is Palutena. Other than that, he doesn’t seem to talk to anyone else. We don’t have a clear picture on what his relationship with the Centurions is like, but based off of the Revolting Dinner short and Chapter 17, he only really talks to them when he’s working as the Captain of the Army and not as a friend.

While yes, Pit is the only angel left in Skyworld, I still think it’s important to bring up that Pit only really has Palutena to rely on. By the end of Uprising, he has Viridi and Dark Pit as well, but his only clear and completely positive relationship is his mother-son bond with Palutena. I see this as Pit struggling to really befriend others. He’s had over two decades between the original game and Uprising to befriend the Centurions, but again, he only really has Palutena. It’s pretty typical for autistic people to have very small social circles, consisting of just one or two friends. Palutena seems to fit the role of mother and best friend for Pit, and she even remarks that he should make more friends in Chapter 4.

Working Alone

This is a small one, but still something that I think is worth pointing out. Pit seems very adamant on accomplishing his missions on his own, telling Dark Pit on two separate occasions (Chapter 9 and Chapter 21) that he can handle the situation by himself. Similarly, it’s common for autistic people to prefer working by themselves rather than with others. Paired with the previous point about having a small social circle, this just reads to me as Pit not feeling too comfortable in situations with others.

Conclusion

There’s a few other points that I feel I could bring up but overall I think these are my main points summed up (and yes, I said summed up. this used to be over 2500 words) ! Thanks so much for reading! If you have any other traits that you think Pit has that I didn’t mention, feel free to share them, I’d be more than happy to hear! ^_^

#kid icarus #kid icarus uprising #pit #kiu #autism headcanon #autistic headcanon #LOL idk what else to tag this as #thank u to anyone who reads ; __ ; this is .... a Lot

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Also that Jason post very much does not do a good job of expressing my actual feelings about his character which are conflicting, complicated and rooted more in his status as a ‘bad survivor’ rather than his code of vigilantism re: killing, etc, I’m like ugh I gotta finally do a post getting into all of that don’t I, otherwise its gonna bug me all day.

Like, I have zero patience for DC’s stance of ‘Jason should kill people and be right to’ because that makes for extremely shitty commentary on actual crime and consequences from a real world perspective, and I’m much less interested in stories about capital punishment than I am restorative justice.

BUT when it comes to that last part, its key that unlike how, say, a lot of writers like Spurrier (over in the X-books) tries to frame the concept of restorative justice, restorative justice flat out doesn’t work unless its about giving a victim the tools to say what it is they need to feel safe again and ask for that.

This is in direct opposition to how a lot of writers have this weird expectation that its totally fine for OTHER characters to approach victims and say “this is what you need to recover or move on, do this and you’ll feel better, that’s restorative justice.” No. That’s not. That’s missing the point entirely. Restorative justice is about centering actual victims in the narratives of their own victimization and empowering them to seek what THEY see as actual restitution.

And the reality of that is that hey, guess what, victims aren’t always going to be about turning the other cheek! Some victims WANT their pound of flesh. And they’re not WRONG for being bitter or angry about their victimization and no, this doesn’t actually mean ‘okay so you’re saying as long as a victim wants to kill their victimizer, they should get to, huh?’

No. Nuance. Get you some. It’s your friend, you’ll like it, I promise.

Its about simply acknowledging that the more society tries to force narratives where victims HAVE to forgive and be merciful for ‘their own good’ even when said victims are quite certain its NOT what they actually want or need....the more society stays keeping its own wants for comfortable aftermath to crimes centered at the expense of never actually letting victims claim that podium and say what they think should happen next.

Which of course is where we get ‘bad survivor’ tropes from in narratives in the first place: victims who are upheld as basically doing it wrong and self-harming the more they express that they won’t feel safe or comfortable or able to move on unless there’s actual display of consequences or accountability for their victimizers. Rather than accept that they should be able to let it go and move on regardless, because they don’t have power over anyone but themselves so they should just focus on what they CAN control aka their own self-acceptance of things.

Thing is, this ignores a fundamental component of victimization.....the fact that victimization is directly born of someone exerting power they shouldn’t have over a victim who at the time is powerless to stand against that power. A key part of what KEEPS so many victims unable to move on is their awareness that yeah maybe people are only SUPPOSED to have power over themselves and their own actions, but their own victimization brings front and center for them the fact that this isn’t always true, and their victimizer proved it.

And forcing a resolution on victims that says ‘and now, healing looks like you accepting that other people can and will at times exert power over you whether they should be able to or not, that they will literally affect the direction and trajectory of your life via their wishes and power with no concern for what you want, and you just have to accept this is how life is and there’s nothing you can do about it and just find peace with the fact that society is affirming that you can and SHOULD have less power and agency over your own life than the people who broke the rules and exerted undue power over yours that you will never be able to match even just in an attempt to course correct’....

Like, that’s just not the win so many narratives think it is.

Because, see, its not about whether or not handing control over what happens next to the victim in effect gives them the power over their victimizer that their victimizer once held over them, and essentially creating an eye for an eye scenario.

Its about the fact that people so often argue AGAINST giving victims that kind of power because the implicit assumption IS that they would just enact an eye for an eye scenario like there’s no other alternative, and thus there would be an inevitable cycle of violence and retribution.

But here’s a truth ignored by so many stories about abuse where ‘abuse victims inevitably grow up to become abusers’ BS is stated as a truism, and similar narratives about victims and survivors.....

Guess what? Lots of people don’t want to be anything like the people who hurt them!

So its NOT a foregone conclusion that victims who aren’t bombarded with ‘you must forgive your victimizers for your own good, the only healthy path forward is forgiveness’ narratives would inevitably choose to be just as harmful to their victimizer as vice versa, if given the opportunity.

There’s absolutely one hundred percent room for them to be bitter, angry, not forgiving, and STILL not seeking to abuse or hurt those who harmed them because they can be all of those things and yet also not want to actually be in practice no different than their own victimizers.

With all of the above being their own actual CHOICE.

So what is actually being denied to victims when forcing them to just accept that they have no real part to play in what happens in the punishment of the crime that was inflicted on THEM specifically, and NOT just ‘society as a whole’.....

Is the chance for them to express that ‘I am not like this person who did awful things to me and would not be even if given the opportunity. That’s not even on my radar. Just because they took the opportunity to exert power over me and my life in harmful ways does not mean that putting power back in my hands in an attempt to even the scales they CHOSE to willfully imbalance, means that I want to just tip the scales back the opposite way to just as extreme an angle. I wouldn’t choose that, because that’s not the only choice available to me, and we are NOT the same.’

And at a certain point it becomes paternalizing as hell, the way society flat out doesn’t trust victims to use any power they’re given post victimization to simply re-establish agency and their self-determined trajectory for their life, and thus instead says its better if you just come to terms with your new reality of knowing society is better prepared to handle people exerting power over you than even the possibility of you being able to fully reclaim that power and say “since it was my life that was affected by my victimizer’s choice to entangle their life with mine but wholly in ways of just their choosing, I should have a role in saying how our lives get untangled from here on out, and what that looks like.”

Restorative justice, at its core, is about restoring power to the hands of a crime’s actual victim, giving them agency in how the storyline of their own victimization is resolved.

Essentially, its about giving victims choices where previously choices were denied to them, and upholding them and what was done to them and how it affected them as the most important part of a crime, rather than its affect on society as a whole, with the actual victim being relegated to little more than an afterthought.

Its about affirming to victims that they matter, what happened to them mattered, the fact that it was wrong and should never have happened MATTERS....and the fact that it did is the literal, actual CRIME, that is what should be upheld as front and center, affirmed by society as something that was wrong, something that did harm to the victim, and there should be an acknowledgment of this by society and the victimizer rather than simply a banal speech about how "well it sucks but this happened to you and the sooner you recognize that there’s really nothing you can do about it and its all over and done with, the better off we’ll I mean you’ll be.”

Its about saying fuck this notion that society as an abstract is what’s ACTUALLY harmed by a person’s choice to harm another....no, the VICTIM is who was harmed, and the victimizer owes a debt, owes penance, owes some expression of remorse to THEM more than to SOCIETY AS A WHOLE BUT WITH THAT WHOLE WEIRDLY SEEMING TO MORE OFTEN THAN NOT LEAVE OUT THE ACTUAL VICTIM IN THE PROCESS.

But....the key to all of this is restorative justice is ultimately about choice, about a victim’s choices, and there’s no real choice to be made, no real power to any choice being made....if ONLY one choice, the most optimal choice (according to society in general) is seen as ‘the right choice’ or something people are prepared to ratify as a valid choice for a victim to want or make.

And that’s why Jason’s a compelling character for me, because he’s one of the ultimate case studies for a victim who chooses to say no, fuck that, I DON’T forgive, I WON’T forget, and I refuse to be told this is more harmful to me than the fact that a fucking clown beat me to death and blew me up and for some reason IS STILL WALKING AROUND DOING MORE OF THE SAME TO OTHERS. I promise you, the fact that he’s out there doing that still is actively more harmful to my mental health than my ‘refusal’ to get over the fact that he did that to me in the first place, and my not being willing to move on until there’s actual accountability and acknowledgment of the fact that he did that to me and to countless others, and it matters, and it needs to stop.

BUT again.....all of that works for the JOKER, because the Joker was Jason’s literal victimizer.

It doesn’t work for Jason to step into the role of the state and just name himself judge, jury and executioner on behalf of any and all other victims without even an attempt to find out, case by case, what it actually even is that each of those victims want in terms of what happens to their victimizer....

For the exact same reasons it doesn’t work when other characters try to make those decisions for Jason and say they’re doing it on HIS behalf same as he’s nominally doing it on others’ behalf when it comes to random other criminals.

Just because he’s choosing ‘you should want your victimizer dead’ as their ideal path forward whereas other characters repeatedly try to tell him his ideal path forward stems from ‘you should let it go that your victimizer isn’t dead’....

This doesn’t actually make what Jason’s doing any different from what people complain about other characters doing to him.

The very things that make Jason’s attitude in regards to the Joker a super compelling story worth telling.....make his attitude towards killing in countless other stories just.....not only bad, but directly hypocritical.

Is Jason’s ultimate stance about centering victims in the crimes committed against THEM specifically, or is it about centering someone else’s feelings (ie, his) about crimes that have been committed against other people entirely?

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