#cant believe i used to dislike them cause they were too big of a commitment and i have a shit attention span. now theyre my saving grace

[witchspeka]

Turned my brain on too much by looking for a shitton of books and movies I probably won't read/watch and now it's 5 am and I can't sleep fucking hell

[sidespart]

For the fake fic title, if you're still doing it: Why do you hate me? (I honestly don't know where I came up with this lol)

X-Men AU!!! Found Family + Anxceit friendship. TW: child soldiers, child endangerment, abuse etc

(So typical X-men universe set up: some people are born with the X gene, which typically triggers during puberty, giving that person a mutation which normally results in cool powers. Many people hate mutants for their differences (/ bad press of people using their mutant powers for the evilz) and so most mutants live in hiding. The Xavier Institute is a school set up by an extremely powerful mutant which seeks to provide a safe space for young mutants to learn to manage their powers, get a regular education and hopes to see peace between humanity and mutant kind. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is a group of mutants who believe humans will never let mutant live in peace and do various anti-human, pro-mutant vaguely terrorist-y actions (there’s like a billion version of the x-men and these details may not be correct for all the versions all of the time because comics but this is the vague idea))

ANYWAY PLOT - Containment breach at the Super Secret Child Soldier Lab (SSCSL) - Subject VII has escaped. Subject VII is only 6-7 years old but his mutations were artificially triggered much younger than is normal. He can warp reality and create very sophisticated illusions, but has very limited control over his powers.

Cut too - Virgil and Dee, a couple of teenage mutants living on the street. They find a little boy with a buzzcut wandering around The Bad Part Of Town and Virgil immediately decides they need to adopt/help him (Dee makes more of a fuss about how this is not their responsibility and the kids barely even talking and do you know how hard I work just to keep you and now you wanna add another mouth to feed?? Huhh?? but obviously does not actually say no) (Dee is like. Barely any older than Virgil he’s just dramatic). 

Naturally, just as the three of them have had time to bond, the SSCSL and other assorted bad guys show up to try and take VII back. There’s a big fight, Virgil and Dee have a lot more experience with flight and would probably have ended up dead if the X-men (Patton and Logan) hadn't shown up to save them. 

But they lose VII.

Patton and Logan take them back to the Xavier institute to recuperate and offer to let them stay. They can go to school there, get some training and help the X-men track down VII and the whole SSCSL. Virgil says yes, Dee says no.

(So, reasoning - Virgil's mutation developed when he was 12. It was not pleasant. Various students at his school were injured and the media set up a which hunt for the mutant that caused the chaos. Virgil ran away from home because he was worried about the backlash on his family and about hurting anyone else again. So to him, this school full of mutants who can help him control his power, can offer him stability and a return to normal structures and routines, who are promising to help him get in contact with his parents if and when he’s ready?? This is like every fantasy he’s ever had come true

Unlike the other characters, Dee’s primary mutation is physical. He was born with it, its very obvious and its resulted in him being rejected for most of his life. He bounced around increasingly disturbing foster homes before running away when he was very young, so most of his memories are of living on the streets and surviving on his own. So, to him, number one: all adults are inherently untrustworthy idiots and number two: stay at a school? where they expect him to have a curfew? and, what - write essays? follow all their random arbitrary rules? rely on them for food and heat and all that shit? Completely ludicrous.)

It doesn't occur to either of them that the other one isn't going to agree with them. The resulting argument is epic and cruel, both hurling accusations at the other (Ungrateful /controlling are two of the big ones..) and both basically feeling hateful and 100% betrayed. Dee leaves and although they look for him, he’s got a lifetime experience of hiding and they cant find him.

CUT TO - 5 years later. Virgil is a (semi) well adjusted 19 year old junior X-men. He’s still a bit withdrawn, but is very close with Patton and Logan. He’s still holding out hope of finding VII one day and still firmly pretending he’s not listing out for any possible news of Dee (there were rumours some years ago of him joining the brother hood of evil mutants but then it all went quiet) who he, of course, hates for his betrayal. 

BUT THEN - mysterious knocking at the door in the night. Dee, now wearing a hat and cape and calling himself Janus, has returned. And he’s brought with him a little boy with a buzzcut and a tattoo of XXII on his foot.

Janus and Virgil need to put aside their resentment and work together to help XXII, who really does not seem interested in helping them, and hopefully use any clues he can give them about the SSCSL to track down VII. But that's difficult when they’re both still struggling with their own trauma and have no idea how to reconnect - both of them want to ask why do you hate me but are a bit too scared of the answer. ...

This already got way to long so mutant power/ extra back story descriptions under cut!

Patton - 22/27 years old. An extremely powerful telepath/empath. It takes him serious concentration and focus to not hear peoples thoughts and its almost impossible to not feel their feelings. Some people dislike him because of this as they feel he's spying on them. Grew up in the Xavier institute and 100% believes in and is committed to the future where humans and mutants live in harmony. Has pretty limited life experience in the real world. Sometimes floats. (inspired by professor X)

Logan - 21/26 years old. Fires destructive laser beams from his eyes. Was in a car accident when he was younger leaving him with permanent but apparently harmless brain damage - until his mutation developed and he slowly realised that no matter how much he trained he just couldn't control his power. Has to wear specialised eye guards at all times to keep himself from accidentally destroying everything around him. Had big plans to go to university and was angry at his mutation for a long time for getting in the way of that. Eventually enrolled online and is now a very dedicated teacher at the Institute. (inspired by cyclops) 

Janus - 15(?) / 20(?) His primary mutation is  lizard/snake like scales over most of his body, but especially the left side. Has oversized fangs, and yellow eye and a short lizard tail. His secondary mutation makes him immune to almost any sort of mental based mutation (so Logan could still knock him on his ass with his lasers, but Patton cant sense anything form him and Virgil cant whammy him). Spent a lot of his life on his own and got by being sneaky, cunning and charming. Initially took Virgil in because he saw that his powers could be useful for keeping them both safe, but eventually Virgil became his first real friend.

Virgil - 14/19. Shadow manipulation and ‘draining’. Virgil can make himself (and with practice, people he touches) literally disappear into the shadows. He can also direct shadows as powerful energy ‘blasts’, but in order to do so he has to drain any surrounding living things of their energy. When his mutation first developed  he took out half of the school hall where his exam was being held, leaving 15 students in a coma. (inspired by rouge/shadow cat)

VII - 6? / 11? Reality warping/illusion powers. One of the institutes first successful subjects. He was able to escape by changing the wall of his cell into a door. He finds it hard to talk but can project his ideas as lifelike illusions who can talk for him. One of his best is the image a handsome grown up Prince and he will often use this Illusion as an avatar to communicate. When he was 6 he did have some hazy memories of outside the SSCSL and expressed a desire to go home. Current status is unknown. 

XXI - 7.  Illusion powers  (reality warping has been removed from the program by his time as subjects proved too difficult to control). Has no memories of outside the institute and is extremely uncooperative with his new captors/guardians. He does not understand the affection they’re trying to show him and lashes out a lot, often by creating a lot of extremely disturbing and graphic illusions. Bites. 

[loopy777]

in your version of republic city, how would you have rewritten the sato family to fit into it? would asamis dad dislike his roots(secretly or openly) and how would that have affected his daughter(i know he essentially started from the streets too, but i cant really say i ever got the impression he was a low class man who rose up to become the highest of the high)? there seems like there was a lot of potential in his backstory and how it would affect his life, but its never really fully used.

For the record, Hiroshi describes his own backstory as, “I, too, came from humble beginnings. Why, when I was your age, I was a mere shoe-shiner and all I had to my name was an idea: the Satomobile. Now, I was fortunate enough to meet someone who believed in me and my work ethic. He gave me the money I needed to get my idea off the ground. And I built the entire Future Industries Empire from that one, selfless loan.“

That’s a fairly textbook version of the Ideal American Success Story, so I don’t think there’s a lot to change with it. But I agree that he’s little more than an archetype, and his rather extreme belief in the Equalistsnever seemed to reallymesh with it.

Let’s see how we can improve things.

Regardless of my new vision of the character, I think it’s safe to say the he dislikes his roots. I mean, who wouldn’t dislike being poor? All those dumb “There are some things money can’t buy!” and “Money is the root of all evil!” aphorisms ignore the fact that being poor is a bad thing, and no one likes it, and all the nice things it’s still possible to have while poor – like family and love and purpose and health and whatnot – are even better with a good income.

So, yes, I think Hiroshi dislikes being poor.

I’m not sure what you mean about getting the impression of him being low-class.  To me, “low-class” is more a state of mind and behavior not tied to actual income class. Plenty of poor people know how to behave or can be taught, and lots of people who start out on the top of the world and get the best education all their lives still somehow wind up behaving like neanderthals.If you mean things like HIroshi having a taste for hotdogs over caviar, I consider those kinds of characteristics to be pretty superfluous.

If you mean that his accomplishments don’t fit with his education, I think it’s safe to say that he’s both a genius and got himself either a formal or informal education. Perhaps he used that loan to take some classes, or maybe he just hung around places where professionals were building things and picked up enough to design a car in his head. I expect he also employed some engineers with degrees, and made sure that Asami got the best education money can buy, and he himself probably picked things up as required to fulfill his vision. Him being a visionary seems to be what made him such a success, and that’s the type of thing that a disadvantaged background can aid; if you have a close-up view of difficulties in people’s lives, you’re well-poised to come up with ideas to solve those difficulties.

I think there was an attempt on the part of the storytellers to portray Hiroshi as not being a snob because of his past, but that was with Mako, and unfortunately that got eaten by his Equalist alignment. Still, no one acted like it was out of character for Hiroshi to give help or opportunity to the disadvantaged. Although I do think poor people who become rich are certainly able to develop into snobs, I think the idea is that Hiroshi isn’t entirely lying when he says he remembers his big break and wants to pay it forward. One could even say that his Equalist involvement, which at least paid lip-service to empowering the disenfranchised, is partially motivated by his desire to help lift up people like him.

So I don’t think the Satos need to be rewritten much to fit into my vision of Republic City; I had Hiroshi’s backstory in mind for it. I do think some more could be made of his savvy; he was portrayed in LoK as being of use to the Equalists mainly as an arms-supplier, but I think more could have been done with him being a Man Of The City, able to advise Amon and make connections on all levels of society. In fact, I could see Hiroshi being at the root of the Equalist movement’s rhetoric. It’s revealed at the end of Book Air that Amon is mainly about self-loathing and a death wish, so perhaps all that stuff about equality and opportunity for nonBenders came from Hiroshi. Hiroshi is the one who wants to transform society, and Amon went with it as a cynical way to lash out and drag people into misery with him.

Something I would change, though, is making the root of Hiroshi’s evil the death of his wife via A Firebender. It’s minimally plausible, but there’s no way to keep it from sounding stupid. At the same time, baking a nonBender resentment into his whole life would make his double-life a little more implausible; racists are usually bad at hiding it.

I think my ideal origin for his hatred should be the organized crime in Republic City, especially the Bender-based gangs. Hiroshi rose up through the ranks of the city the ‘right’ way, and I can see him as being resentful of the criminals who rig the system against honest people. The thing that makes those gangs so powerful is their muscle and money, and their Bending makes both of those things a lot more attainable. It’s a bit less random than A Firebender, because any single criminal can punch above his weight by acquiring a deadly weapon, whether it’s Firebending or a good knife, but a whole underground society of such people who were all born with built-in weaponry is a worrying trend, and I think that would be more likely to inspire the kind of systemic hatred that Hiroshi showed.

So, I think Hiroshi’s origin should be changed so that, when he refused to bow to some demand of the Bender gangs, his family became their target. Perhaps Lightning Bolt Zolt tried to lean on Hiroshi to allow his workers to form a (super corrupt, fully infiltrated by mob stooges) union, adding a little ambiguity to Hiroshi’s supposed commitment to helping the disadvantaged. So Zolt or whoever ordered Hiroshi’s wife killed. Nothing could be proven, but Hiroshi knows what happened. He arranged, by donating to the police and politicians, for the guy who did it (a low-level Firebender gang member) to go to jail for something, but he couldn’t get the bosses. Hiroshi only has money, while the bosses have both money and a ruthless tendency for violence. And that’s eating at him. Society is too corrupt to deal with those fiends. They claim to help the poor, but really they oppress anyone who doesn’t pay and serve them. And it’s all brought about by the power they’re born with, power they wouldn’t have if they had to deal with the same circumstances as Hiroshi. Their Bending gives them an advantage, and they use it to build a city-wide system designed to hurt good people.

Then Hiroshi meets Amon, they inspire each other, and the Equalists are born.

The nice thing about this is that it also lays the seeds for Hiroshi’s redemption. Because if Korra and Mako and Asami take down crime boss who had Hiroshi’s wife killed, while he himself is in jail for his part in Amon’s grand attempt at suicide-by-cop, then what does that say about his prejudices? Hiroshi is smart, and he’s an engineer, so he can’t completely dismiss evidence like that. Perhaps it eats away at him for a few years, combined with his guilt at how he fought against Asami, and then he realizes how wrong he went. (Perhaps the story should be changed so that he didn’t consciously try to kill Asami? That always seemed a bit much to pair with his easy off-screen conversion.) He realizes he went about things all wrong, and the people he tried to kill did what he originally wanted better than he could. Power isn’t what corrupts; it’s hate. And so he relinquishes his hate, devotes himself to love, and winds up sacrificing himself to save Asami out of love.

Except I wouldn’t have it happen against a giant robot. That thing looked stupid, as deliciously ironic as it was for Hiroshi to lose his life against a bigger version of stuff he made for Amon. Perhaps he dies going up against Amon II, some dude who took up Amon’s name and cause.