Thinking for the rest of my life how S1 of TWDG begins with Lee in cuffs, life over, because of a man he just killed, who took a girl he loved, and ends with Lee in cuffs, life over, because of a man he just killed, who took a girl he loves, but literally everything about that string of statements has so utterly changed meaning, the end could not be farther from the start. The bookend of finishing right where you started, and nowhere near it.
Both the first and last line in the game are spoken to Lee, about Lee, and reflect regret towards the end of his life, but even the flavor of regret could not be more distant. “I reckon you didn’t do it,” and “(I’ll miss you) - Me too,” do not even share a sadness. The first legacy, remarked on throughout season 1, would have been ‘murderer.’ The real one is so far the opposite, his ghost carries every person who survives for the rest of the series. I hear it described as about redemption, but the focus is never once in the game about Lee making up for something. You never even really know what he did or if it was merited. The game is a second life, and culminates in a stranger accusing Lee of having no right to live or have someone who loves him for every single thing he’s done wrong since the game began, no matter how unfair the accusation, and about that being bullshit. About it being enough, what he did for Clementine, for everyone, for himself. It’s about salvation, maybe. Of the self, by the self, from ruin, through meaning in love and caring for other people, no matter their endings or yours. Ben always dies, but it mattered. Omid always dies, but it mattered. Duck, Carly, Katya, Mark, Doug, always die, but it mattered. And Clementine always lives, and that does too. Lee always dies. It just takes the course of a season. But he’s not lost anymore when he does.
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did the zenin every try to convince megumi to stay with them by not beating the hell out of him? like were they ever nice or kind? other than maki and mai and the few times together, does megumi have any positive memories of anyone in the zenin?
idk just seems a bit counterintuitive to continuously isolate and destroy your relationship with the biggest thing since sliced bread by never showing him an ounce of kindness or sympathy even when he’s a kid.
So yes and no.
In their minds, they absolutely did, but Megumi would say they didn’t. The key issue is that they never tried to appeal to Megumi for who he actually was, but who they wanted him to be. They were trying to be nice to someone who wasn’t real to begin with.
Megumi got special treatment from the rest of the clan. He had the nicest clothes. He had personal trainers. He had the direct attention of the head of the clan. He had a private bathhouse and servants to attend him in it. He had a private room in the home of the clan head, who had the nicest home in the entire compound. All his meals were prepared for him and brought to serve him directly.
In the eyes of the clan, they were spoiling him. Everyone else was fighting for scraps. They all trained, but it was in crowded, sweaty rooms where they didn’t get attention unless they were already exceptional. The Zenin clan is very old fashioned, so they don’t really have private baths in homes. They were all bathing in communal bathhouses where you had to wait for your turn and half the time you got there and realised that you were out of soap.
Beating him was never a big deal, in the Zenin’s mind. They all got beat. It was a part of training. You learn to think through pain and react in a fight if you’re experiencing real pain, which is the exact reasoning Maki brings to hitting Yuuta during training. If they made the Ten Shadows exempt from that, they’d be weakening the person who was supposed to be their strongest by coddling him.
So the Zenin would say Megumi was already being spoiled by the clan, and any attempt to stop his training in handling pain was just another attempt at sabotaging his development.
The thing is that Megumi didn’t want any of the things that they were “spoiling” him with.
He hated the clothes they had made for him. He wanted to wear his own clothes. He couldn’t even pick what to wear. It was another way he lost control. Yeah, they gave him his own room in the nicest house, but he was getting locked into it, and he was only in there when they had finished training him to the point of collapse. The bathhouse was a traumatizing experience for him. He was stripped down and forcibly bathed by strangers. It wasn’t a luxury to him; it was a violation. He would have taken the communal bathhouse any day. He had no say in what he ate, and his meals were brought to him because it allowed the Zenin to pack his schedule even tighter, because he didn’t even get real meal breaks. He just paused to eat and then immediately picked up with whatever they were teaching him. But they never registered any of this as driving him away, because they were too deluded by who they wanted him to be rather than who he actually was. The Ten Shadows in their mind would not only not be upset by this, but he would appreciate it. Megumi was meant to be honoured by the clothes and the room and the private bathhouse. And he would be, as soon as they broke him of Gojo’s control. Any time he expressed upset was just another show of what Gojo had done to him. He needed to be freed from it, so they never actually heeded him begging them to stop.
It’s also important to note that most of the Zenin didn’t know how bad the beatings were.
Again, all of them got beat. The clan head got beat when he was a kid. It’s expected for them. But none of them got beat as badly as Megumi, except for maybe his father when he was Megumi’s age.
Because a lot of the beatings weren’t coming at the hands of someone who wanted him to love the clan. They were coming from Naoya. Who hated him.
Naoya wants him to hate the clan. Fuck, he wants him dead. Megumi is everything he was supposed to be, and he wants him gone. He wants to hurt him.
Naoya got more access to Megumi than anyone else in the clan when Megumi was a kid. He was one of their most gifted fighters and high up in the clan, but not so high up that he was busy with actually running it, so he was tapped in as his trainer. He went farther in hurting megumi than anyone else in the clan thought or expected he was. He was just supposed to hit him when he taught him how to fight, to train him how to take pain, and as a disciplinary measure to break him of Gojo’s influence. But even then, discipline in the Zenin compound usually stops at a few slaps. Like, they still all are abusing their children, don’t get me wrong, but the extent of the abuse that all of them face was no where close to the abuse that megumi was under.
Naoya wasn’t beating Megumi to train him. He was beating him to hurt him. He wanted Megumi to suffer as much as possible. He wanted to make him feel pain.
The rest of the clan never heard Gojo’s claims that he had taken Megumi away because they were beating him, but they wouldn’t have believed them if they did. Megumi was supposed to be their strongest, so if they could take training, he could take training. He was getting every luxury and benefit that they weren’t getting. The whole clan thought he was being treated like a little prince. Of course he didn’t need to be protected from them. They all have the mindset of “my parents hit me when I fucked up, and I turned out fine.”
If Megumi hadn’t had cursed energy, Naoya would have killed him with how badly he was beating him within a month. Even with cursed energy, he almost killed him.
It’s not the expected norm to beat clan members within an inch of their life, unless they’re failures like Megumi’s dad who they actually want to kill. That would be counterintuitive. They need their members in peak physical condition to be fighters. No one there would believe that’s what Naoya was doing if they knew.
The worst of the abuse came from someone who actually hated megumi and wanted to hurt him. But none of the “positive” things they said they spoiled Megumi with actually had any kind of positive impact on Megumi, because they refused to accept him as he was. They were trying to spoil the fantasy they had of him. But the actual child had lost all control of his life, was terrified of them, and was traumatised every time he set foot on the compound.
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"You belong to me."
"Those who die on the battlefield are not royalty, nobility, or commoners. They are the defeated, who die."
"I feel no responsibility to comrades who've lost lives under my command. Because they chose to fight in each battle.. Just as I chose this. But if there is something that... I can do for them. Something I can do for the dead... Then it is to win. I must keep winning to attain my dream. To realize my dream, I will perch on top of their corpses.. It is a blood-smeared dream, after all. I don't regret or feel guilty about it."
"Do I need to give you a reason each time I risk my life for your sake?"
"While many can pursue their dreams in solitude, other dreams are like great storms blowing hundreds, even thousands of dreams apart in their wake. Dreams breathe life into men and can cage them in suffering. Men live and die by their dreams. But long after they have been abandoned they still smolder deep in men's hearts. Some see nothing more than life and death. They are dead, for they have no dreams."
"In this world, some people born are like keys that move the world and exist having no connection to the social hierarchy established by man."
"It is my perception, that a true friend never relies on another's dream. A person with the potential to be my true friend, must be able to find his reason for life without my help. And, he would have to put his heart and soul into protecting his dream. He would never hesitate to fight for his dream, even against me. For me, a true friend is one who stands equal on those terms."
Among thousands of comrades and ten thousand enemies, only you... only you made me forget everything that I wanted.
"I'd dream, that on nights of the full moon, I'd become a small child and find myself embraced with a nostalgic warmth... But... When I wake from the dream... All that remains is a vague sense of longing...
And that, too, soon fades away - along with a single tear, like morning dew."
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Necromancer Finney AU: Before they grew into their personalities, would the recently revived Ghost Boys be in any forms of comatose? Like, would they just sit there quietly staring at nothing with a blank expression on their faces, not reacting to anything due to being revived from the dead
Mmm not necessarily, when the boys were first revived they were very freaked out and lashed out a lot, and cried too. Griffin was sobbing and clutching onto whoever or whatever he could get his hands on, Vance was yelling, and screaming at everyone thinking that this was some kind of trick, PB was confused and refused to let anyone touch him, Robin was also a little disoriented and refused to let anyone touch him and also thought it was a trick, and lastly Bruce was the only one silent, he thought he was still dead and was so confused by all the noise but tried to not acknowledge it.
All of them thought it was a cruel trick and when they saw Finn in their basement beside his own grave they burst out crying because they really thought he was killed and they refused to believe they were alive and had been brought back.
But they do stare at walls kinda spacing out and just get stuck in their own heads, reliving what happened to them in the basement.
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its the way vegas and pete have to let each other go if they ever want to be together.
its the way they have to completely rid themselves of the other, have to completely detach themselves from the other, if they want a chance at making this work.
its the way vegas has to be willing to let pete go, to stop trying to keep him by his side, to stop trying to see him, to stop trying to make him come back. the way he has to let pete go and even if pete doesn’t come back, he has to be okay with that.
its the way pete needs to let go of vegas’ memory, of how vegas made him feel, of the attachment he has to the version of vegas that he put his trust in. the way he has to let that version of vegas go so vegas can show him if it even still exists.
its the way they need to rebuild trust because if they don’t, their entire relationship is going to hang by a doubtful thread. pete will never be able to trust vegas again, trust that he sees him, trust that he’s not being his pet if he’s by his side. and vegas can never trust if pete wants to be there or if he just cant bear to leave.
it’s the way vegas needs to let pete choose him again, and pete needs to let vegas give him a reason to.
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