#like they make her more of a villain towards them specifically and personally. she Does Not Know Them

[ariel-s-awesome]

I wish they did more with Tai Lung and Tigeress' indirect sibling relationship in Kung Fu Panda.

Tai Lung's entitlement wasn't born out of pure ambition and arrogance. It was born from wanting to make his father proud by following the dream Shifu had for him.

Tigress was Shifu's second chance. He was emotionally distant and strict with her because he blamed Tai Lung's rampage on him being spoiled by too much love and support. The real problem was raising him for a specific, highly prestigious role that only one person can fill and not preparing him for anything else.

Then when Master Oogway said that Tai Lung wasn't worthy Shifu didn't try to convince his master of his son's talent and potential. He didn't reassure him that he wasn't a disappointment and redirect him towards other goals. He just... silently went with it without thinking about what was behind Tai Lung's anger.

Does Tigress resent Tai Lung for getting raised by a far more fatherly version of her dad and ending up as a villain anyways? Does she blame Shifu's awful parenting on the brother she never met? Does she worry about turning out like him?

At the very least she despises him for hurting her dad.

And what does Tai Lung think of Shifu's new kid? Does he resent her for being his replacement? Is he jealous that she became part of the Fearsome Five while he (in his mind) never amounted to anything? Does he ever wonder what it'd be like to have a sister (in more than name?) Would Shifu's heavy expectations be less crushing with a sibling to share them with?

I wish their parallels, along with the potential parallels between their sibling relationship and Tigeress' relationship with Poe, got a chance to be explored.

[goldenrulemotherfucker]

Real talk, I came to the Fallout series a total newb, knowing nothing about the lore/games and came away with a new favorite show, easily in my top five. In particular, something it does exceptionally well is narrative payoff. Nothing in this show happens just to happen; every choice the characters make shapes their future arcs. As a SFF writer myself, I'm not only impressed--I'm inspired.

I feel this way about the entire story, but in terms of Lucy and Cooper specifically, we get so many great payoffs from their interactions. When he doesn't share his water, it seems like he's just being a dick until we learn that his canteen is full of dirty water. (Yes, he was still being a dick, but he knew she naively thought he was drinking clean water.) When he forces her to use the knife in the "ass jerky" scene, he's absolutely being cruel, but he's also extremely fatigued to the point of near collapse, which only becomes clear only after she's out of sight at the Super Duper Mart. When he cuts off her finger, it seems like nothing more than him "getting even," when he actually took a much-needed replacement part for his hand (from someone he assumed wouldn't be alive much longer).

These interactions are all brutal, give us new insights into both characters, and also set up a massive payoff in Lucy's "golden rule, motherfucker" moment. Even after everything he put her through and how he treated her as disposable, she does the opposite and shows him empathy and kindness. To put it plainly: Her choice in this scene wouldn't carry half as much weight if he hadn't repeatedly treated her like shit. Coupled with her ability to self-rescue, the scene cements who Lucy is as a person--both for the viewer and for Cooper. (And what happens next? He watches a film clip where his old self looks right at him and delivers the line about a villain being ugly and strong but having no dignity.)

The moment when Lucy gives him the vials could have been enough of a payoff for their arc by itself. But it sets up an even better one: The next time they cross paths, he treats her differently. Having already seen himself in her, and knowing that they both want answers to the same (or very similar) questions, he invites her to accompany him on his journey this time--no longer as a pawn, but as someone he trusts and respects at least a little. As a direct payoff for her memorable act of kindness toward him, this fucking rules. It's surprising while also feeling completely earned. "Golden rule, motherfucker," isn't just a satisfying moment (or my favorite line), it shapes the characters' future.

On Lucy's side, when she decides to follow him, she has no reasons to trust or respect him (yet); she likely just recognizes that he's currently the only person who will lead her to the truth. But she's only met the Ghoul so far, not Cooper Howard. She doesn't know that his primary motivation has been searching for his family this whole time. She doesn't know that she's seen him before, in those old movies she watched at home. She doesn't know why he shot the billboard.

Now, I'm not making predictions about how their future arc will play out (nor am I asking for them), I'm just along for the ride. But I feel confident that there will be many more great payoffs to come now that they've gone from "hostile forced proximity" to "traveling together by choice." I've rarely been so pumped for a second season. <3

[bestworstcase]

& in fact one of the things that makes salem compelling as a character is this juxtaposition between her personal cruelty and the rightness of her cause; it bears repeating that she chose to live in exile rather than fight back for thousands of years while ozma dedicated himself to the cause of destroying her, and that her war follows on the heels of ozma forging a global alliance and then, as ozpin, abruptly locking down the relics in apparent preparation to summon the brothers back to remnant. if salem’s true goal is to avert the final judgment—get rid of the gods—then it is clear from the historical timeline and the events immediately preceding her commitment to war that she really did not want to go to war.

but with the information she has and the experiences she’s had there really is no other way to achieve her goal – every other possibility requires her to take it on faith that ozma is willing the break from his task now, against all signs to the contrary. he is still openly promoting worship of the brothers and urging everyone to live as if the final judgment will come tomorrow while zealously guarding the relics needed to summon them – no reasonable person would conclude from ozpin’s public actions that he is, in any way, wavering from his task, and so it is wholly irrational to expect salem to just intuit that somehow. and if ozpin is, as he seems to be, more committed than ever and on the brink of summoning the brothers, war is in fact her only recourse.

what makes salem a villain in this story is the abusiveness toward her associates; her individual cruelty, far more than the war of last resort, because the cruelty has no justification. and i think rwby is interested in the tension here, between how long salem refused to fight back and how cruel she is on a personal level. the tenderness with which she speaks of humanity versus her violent resistance to letting herself care about any one specific person.

i think it’s easy to write the cruelty off as a simple matter of salem… not caring, not having any interest in caring – in extremes this is how we get the "spoiled bitch" reading – but the same could be said of ozma; he’s nicer about it but no less willing to use people as disposable tools. why does he lie? why does he manipulate? why does he get violent when his secrets are about to be exposed? you don’t treat people you care about that way.

so ozma has his reasons – the trauma and the cognitive dissonance and the self-hatred and learned helplessness that motivates his submission to the divine mandate, the palliative fairytales, the retreat into dissociation to cope with being forced to exist as a parasite, and so on – and so too does salem, it’s just that hers are made more opaque. what drives this woman who speaks so lovingly of human virtue to treat individual humans like garbage? some of it is sheer alienation – she hasn’t been allowed to participate in civilization in thousands of years, of course she is antisocial – and the trauma of ozma’s betrayal, the deeper trauma of collective punishment, the fear of being hurt again, the resignation to being seen as a monster no matter what she actually does…

which i expect will begin to rise to the surface over the last few volumes. but the point is i do think her villain -> hero arc will turn almost entirely on ending and atoning for the personal cruelty as opposed to the war, and in fact i imagine there may end up being a stretch of the story wherein salem has moved clearly into the ‘good’ camp (as in: made things right between herself and her remaining associates, cinder in particular, and her true end is known to the audience) and still actively in conflict with the vacuo coalition because Her Cause is just. and that’s the kind of complexity rwby is interested in.

[aimportantdragoncollector]

For the ask game, AU where Izuku is low key embarrassed of his uncle because he is so beautiful he keeps accidentally seducing everyone he meets, please. (Yoichi reserves the not accidental seduction for his husbands.)

Heh I love this one:

1. Hisashi and Inko are business partners who often travel for work, so they leave Izuku to stay with his three uncles: Yoichi, Second (Kaiji), and Third (Sanzou). Izuku doesn't mind because he loves his uncles, but man does he ever hate going outside with Uncle Yoichi. Because it's nothing but trouble! Every time they go out, Yoichi gets approached by modeling agents, every shop gives them discounts, and people take pictures in public. To Izuku's great annoyance, people keep mistaking his uncle for his older brother. Furthermore, Yoichi attracts every train molester, flasher, stalker, and kidnapper. Izuku carries a taser to handle all of them. He's appointed himself as bodyguard because he believes that his air-headed, beautiful uncle is way too clueless, defenseless, and prone to giving people the benefit of the doubt.

2. Over the years, Izuku has developed an itchy trigger finger with the taser and a policy of preemptive strikes towards anyone who looks at Yoichi wrong. Izuku has been capturing perverts and taking them to the police since elementary school. In middle school he tasered Re-Destro from behind for trying to kidnap his uncle (without knowing who he was). Izuku got a medal for taking down such a dangerous villain.

3. Izuku also dislikes how everyone treats him differently after meeting his uncle. He's dealt with bullying issues in the past because of his quirklessness. But as soon as they lay eyes on his uncle, his teachers rush to favor him and even the other kids try to befriend him to have an excuse to come over to his house and gawk. Izuku hates the fakeness even more than the bullying.

4. Katsuki Bakugo is the first person Izuku ever met who didn't go gah-gah over his uncle and Izuku really appreciates how Katsuki doesn't treat him any differently. (Katsuki is not immune, he's just too stubborn to show it. As a result, he tries to avoid Izuku and whatever weirdness is going on around him.) In this AU, Katsuki's bullying got cut off very early on because all of Izuku's teachers intensely favor him. In fact, Izuku's teachers make excuses to come over to his house for frequent parent-teacher conferences specifically during the times when he lives with his uncles. It annoys Izuku that Yoichi does not seem to realize these conferences are unnecessary and can happily talk about his cute nephew all day.

5. Yoichi constantly causes gay/bisexual awakenings in everyone he meets, including women who discover they like women after meeting him. Don't question how that works.

6. Izuku also hates how when he goes out in public with all three of his uncles, people whisper behind their backs about how Kaiji and Sanzou aren't handsome enough for Yoichi. Strangers are disrespectful enough to hit on Yoichi in front of his partners and tell him that he could do better. Kaiji and Sanzou are very secure and just laugh it off. Izuku "accidentally" tasers the rudest ones.

7. Izuku's also embarrassed because Uncle Yoichi dotes on him in public, which attracts attention to him. A lot of suitors see playing nice with Izuku as their "in" with Yoichi or think they will impress Yoichi by showing off how good they are with kids.

8. On the bright side, Yoichi gets lots of hero autographs for Izuku. (Any autograph Izuku wants, including villain autographs.) Izuku assumes that this is because even people in the hero industry can't resist his uncle's smile. He's right, but he doesn't know the whole story.

9. Yoichi is a famous villain. All the heroes and villains alike are infatuated with his alter ego. In this AU, Izuku's entire family is full of villains: Inko is a villain and All for One's business partner, which is why she goes away with her husband on business trips frequently. Kaiji and Sanzou are also villains. Izuku has no idea.

10. Izuku also doesn't know that his uncles ruined lives of everyone who bullied him in past. The perverts who get tasered by Izuku are the lucky ones. You don’t want to know what Yoichi does to perverts who harass him when he’s out alone.

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

Nuanced and Multifaceted Conflict vs. “Good v. Evil” in fiction

So. This is another thing I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. I promise I won’t always be focusing on Helluva Boss in my critiques, and I actually have quite a few other series I want to talk about.

There’s a big chance that I’ll be saying everything other people have already said, but I can’t help but WANT to talk about this specific character in regard to the story’s conflict. I think that it’s important to recognize when a character is written to be a complex person, and when a character is written to be an enemy to be defeated, and how not following through with your set-up can affect your story.

And HB does that A LOT in my opinion.

So. Let’s get into it. This time I’ll be talking about complex conflict between characters vs. black and white conflict, and I’ll also be touching on story set-ups and audience expectations.

I want to talk about a character who could have really made some of the internal character conflicts have so much more depth and intrigue. I want to talk about Stella Goetia

*as a side note this post is MUCH longer than I intended but I really wanted to get into a lot of the background and reasons for how Stella’s character development has actually completely changed what HB’d story conflict could have looked like. I’ll try and sum up everything in the end in a TLDR for y’all

So. Most of the reviews of her character I see talk about how she’s been “ruined” by the writing team revealing that she’s always been very abusive towards Stolas

I have to start off by saying I actually don’t think that Stella or her portrayal was “ruined” by the writing direction her character has been taken in.

In fact, this critique bothers me, because it doesn’t really get to what I think the actual root of why people are disappointed in Stella’s characterization, and the type of conflict that now exists between her and Stolas.

The main reason I believe people are unsatisfied with Stella is because they believed that her character was being set up for a complex and nuanced conflict between her and Stolas, and then that turned out not to be the case.

A quick disclaimer- I do think it’s possible to subvert audience expectations about story and characters in a satisfying way. But it has to be done in a way that respects the audiences intelligence and willingness to think about the story.

If your plot-twist, unreliable narrator, subversion, or what-have-you is done well, the audience should be able to either figure out what’s going based on the little information you’ve given them, and if they don’t, the change or subversion should still make sense and CLICK in hindsight.

Otherwise, your subversion will end up feeling cheap or confusing. Or worse, like a lie.

And this is one of the MAIN issues I think people have with Stella.

As the audience, we were NOT given enough information on her or her character before it’s revealed that she’s just “evil” and always has been, apparently since she was a literal child.

Again, I don’t think it’s an inherently bad decision to have a flat or pure evil villain. I’m fine with Stella being one, even if it’s less interesting to me personally.

But it’s definitely very different from what was initially implied and set-up, and the audience can pick up on that.

Before S2E1 “The Circus” we see Stella a total of 3 times in person, with one time being a flashback.

I’m going to go over those times to analyze if anything set-up in Stella’s appearances points towards her being. Well, totally and irredeemably awful and abusive I guess.

The very first time we see Stella is in the same bed with Stolas—Octavia calls for her parents, both Stolas AND Stella. Stella grumbles and refuses to get up and tells Stolas to go. This doesn’t immediately strike me as a sign of her being a terrible person. That exact scenario is present in a lot of family comedies, kids’ movies, and sitcoms.

Nothing about this screams that Stella is a terrible parent or an abusive partner to me. It just tells me she’s tired and doesn’t want to get up, which again, is not uncommon.

The next time we see her, she’s yelling at Stolas, and she throws a servant at him in anger.

Now, there’s no excuse for this, her behavior here is not okay, regardless of her feelings. But we understand why she’s acting the way she is--she’s furious with Stolas for cheating on her. At this point with the information we have, it’s also very reasonable to believe her feelings have been hurt.

Later Octavia talks about how her parents didn’t used to hate each other, and the way Stolas’ tries to explain their failing marriage to her comes across like his relationship with Stella is one that’s always had difficulties that they have tried and failed to overcome.

None of this information is enough to really convey or hint that Stella is and has always been abusive or evil. It shows that Stella and Stolas have a very rough relationship, and that Stella most likely has anger management difficulties, but you have to do lot of extra work to come to the conclusion that Stella is completely at fault here.

The next time we see her though, things have clearly escalated, because it’s revealed that she’s one that hired Striker to assassinate Stolas.

Now. Usually. Yeah. That would be a HUGE red flag. And I mean. It still obviously is.

But, and I never thought I’d use this uno reverse card, this is one of the few times where the explanation of “But it’s hell, what did you expect???” actually makes sense to me.

Because yeah, it is hell. It’s the end of episode 5 when we learn this, and our protagonists have killed and assassinated multiple people. Taking a hit out on people really doesn’t seem to be that uncommon of a thing in hell.

Even the next scene after the reveal that Stella is the one who hired Striker makes light of how serious this is, by showing that Stella was basically yelling her assassination plot right to Stolas’ face.

This is played for laughs! I genuinely am not sure if the writers intended for this to be foreshadowing of Stella’s abuse or not because if so, they turned her attempting to kill her husband into a joke!

If you cannot keep your themes or tone consistent, how is the audience supposed to follow your story?

There is subtle storytelling, and then there’s tacking information and character points later on in your writing. And this can have two causes.

Either your audience has to do the work of story-telling for you and make up their own reasons for what’s happening to make the story coherent OR they will be disappointed and dissatisfied by the final product.

I think that’s the main reason why S2E1 of Helluva Boss felt so jarring story-wise, and why Stella, to me at least, suddenly felt like a brand new character.

Like I haven’t been this confused by a character being suddenly evil since Hans from Frozen.

(like seriously why the hell did they put this scene in if not to just trick the audience. This isn’t giving us any plot info it’s only giving us contradictory info on his character. Like I talked about before, Hans’ heel-face-turn doesn’t feel like a twist. It feels like a lie.)

Okay so, how does any of this actually affect anything? Who cares if Stella is evil, that doesn’t automatically make the story bad!

Well. Yeah, of course not. Ironically, having the main conflict your story being a battle between “Good v. Bad” characters is neither good nor bad. It’s just a story decision. And ultimately at the end of the day, the writers of Helluva Boss can choose to tell their story however they’d like.

But, depending on how this is executed, good v evil stories can be a lot less interesting than morally grey or complicated conflicts and characters.

I am more interested in the version of the story where Stella and Stolas are imperfect and messy people. I am more interested in the story where Stolas has an affair to escape being in an arranged marriage, and Stella overreacts by arranging a hit on her husband (unless calling out a hit is normal in hell, but we can’t know b/c there is no baseline for what is considered normal in hell)

I am so much more interested in the story where Stolas and Stella are both depicted as being in the wrong, as being incredibly hurt by each other’s actions, and as not knowing how to repair their broken relationship for the sake of their daughter.

That story feels very real to me. It’s one I want to engage and invest in.

I want to see if these characters can grow to accept their mistakes and learn and change for the sake of Octavia and having to co-exist with each other, or if they’ll slip back into mutual destruction and toxicity.

But that’s not the story we’ll get to see, because it seems like the writers are more interested in keeping Stolas from having to grow as a character. And because of that, Stella has been turned into an evil obstacle that must be defeated, instead of a nuanced and real person.

I also feel like I have to say. I know I would be MUCH less frustrated by this if I hadn’t seen an HB crew member talking about how their show is similar to Bojack Horseman.

Because. It’s just not. I’m sorry, I’m not saying that to be mean, or condescending, or rude, but the way characters are written in Helluva Boss is almost completely black and white at this point.

Regardless of the writer’s intent, the vast majority of the choices they have made in Season 2 come off as explanations to excuse the protagonist’s mistakes, and give them a “get out of being potentially in the wrong” free card.

Compared to the writing decisions in Bojack, which almost always has characters confront their wrongdoings, for better or worse, HB honestly feels like it’s the Anti-Bojack.

It would take a TON of character development and time to make HB’s characters as interesting, fleshed-out, and as real as Bojack’s are, and at this point that’s I don’t think it will ever happen.

Again. Having black and white conflict is FINE. It is a choice in story telling that can be done very effectively. But if you are making a black and white story where one side is always terrible and evil, and one side can do no wrong, you can’t act like you’ve written something that is deeper and more emotionally complex and grey than that.

And the first time the writers gave Stella more than 3 sentences to string together, they made it very clear that any chance of her being a more complex and engaging character was being tossed out the window.

————

TLDR:

The main reason people are upset about Stella being shown as abusive in S2E1 of HB is probably because the initial depictions of her didn’t give us enough information on her character to tell that she was just evil/a terrible person.

The way the story was written in S1 to set up the possibility of a very interesting and complex conflict between Stella and Stolas, and when it was revealed that she’s just. The worst. There were people that were disappointed by this, because they expected more.

Audiences actually aren’t idiots, and when you subtly foreshadow something and then completely change things, that can be frustrating.

It’s MORE than okay to write a straightforward good v evil story, but it depending on the way it’s written and executed, it may not be as interesting to mature audiences as a more morally grey story would be.

If you can’t write characters confronting their flaws and being in the wrong, please don’t compare your writing to Bojack, I mean. C’mon.

[antimony-medusa]

"There's just something about that guy that means I don't trust him"

Okay so, Phil has got the wrong read of Sunny. I'm gonna start off with that. He thinks they're a confident unconcerned material girl who is comfortable in the fact that their dad loves them, and potentially he thinks that they're a bit older than they are? Whereas people who have been able to see her one-on-one with Tubbo know that she's quite a bit more shy and insecure and young than she puts on! He's been taken in by the facade they're putting on, and I think that's part of why he is making jokes and comments that don't hit well. To understate how yesterday went. I think he botched the interaction with Sunny in the musuem and I hope someone tells him that, so he can apologize and fix that. And to be clear, as a phil viewer, this does interesting character work with Sunny as a sensitive child and I'm in favour of Sunnymin pursuing this line of lore. I'm staring with my little cube guy watching googles looking for the result when Phil realizes he scared a child, with great interest.

Because when you look at the musum one in context, my read is that was phil pivoting badly from an out of lore discussion into "oh hey I can explain something to sunny, who is confident and centred and knows her dad adores her" and then jokingly tried to explain the tallulah experience, and then we know from Sunny signs later that that went over like a ton of bricks. Mistake. However, when we're discussing it, I think it's fair to not have that understanding of the lore though, and to take a more pointed, villainous read of the lore! Go for it with discussing phil as cold and brusque to people who aren't his family, discuss Sunny feeling all alone in the musuem, fill your boots.

But guys, when you're discussing this as meta, I am seeing a lot of tags that are really really eager to paint Phil entirely and unequivocally as a villain and specifically cruel to children and cruel within the family, and there's an element to that that concerns me.

Phil, the cc, the guy, acts working class. He has an accent from a particular part of england that is traditionally working class, but he also has storytelling cadences and humour styles and attitudes towards challenges that are very familiar if you are from a working class or lower income community. I'm from an entirely different continuent, but the area I'm from is the sort of area that people make jokes about, and the whole way Phil acts as a CC is very familiar to me. (Note: even when he's talking about travel or stuff, he still has the "worked retail for a decade" mentality and pays attention to the staff and stuff and what they're doing, check out the brazil storytelling vod.)

And Phil's cubito, when he's not deliberately making a character like osmp crowfather, tends to have the mannerisms of someone who is working class. Even if you're not from a lower income area, I think most people can clock this, subconciously if nothing else. He swears a lot! He banters and roasts his friends and family but would absolutely do anything for them. He's informal in a very specific way.

Which is why when people pivot immediately into "why is he threatening and bullying children again" and "his wicked is showing", and "oh he's a evil stepfather/cruel stepmother" and "can we kill the child abusers now" I go Oh No.

Working class mannerisms are already stereotyped as especially prone to domestic abuse, among other ills. If you are going "oh something about him just always seemed like he would be cruel to children" maybe— push back on that one?

In the same way that during the election I was going "that may not be the play" about americans who didn't know what it was but something about Forever was just so angry and agressive (and they were talking from a perspective that viewed forever as a person of colour, regardless of how he's perceived at home), you might be talking from a perspective that encourages you to interpret Phil's behaviour with children as especially suspect. Potentially. Consider it.

And again, Phil biffed it in the musuem. That was a misstep that had me (autistic) going "oh no I see how you got there but you can all but see the sims negative relationship marker thing pop up". But I'd ask you at least to consider that it wasn't intentional cruelty, and that people can make social missteps before you jump immediately to interpreting their actions in the worst light possible.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

You've talked about Lucio’s forgiveness before but specifically speaking, Do you think the M6 could ever forgive Lucio for what he did to them ( Besides Portia )?

If they could how do you think it would go and what do you think would happen afterwards? Would they be friends? Would they remain on neutral ground? “ I forgive you but I don't want to see you for a long time”? Etc

OR Do you think there is absolutely no way in the Arcana Realms that they could ever forgive Lucio for the actions ( and crimes ) he committed? ( He did a LOT )

I'm going to go on a tangent about unreliable narrators here which I promise is relevant to the story -

And before I go on, yes, I know the production of the different routes was messy. There's a lot of inconsistencies that can be chalked up to rushed planning, poor work environments for the creators at the time, etc. That doesn't stop me from over-analyzing it though!! :D

Who Lucio is changes pretty significantly from route to route, which feels like inconsistent writing until you take into account the way that who MC is attached to is going to influence their perspective. From Nadia's perspective, he's an incompetent fool. From Asra's, a despicable villain, from Julian's, a scary nuisance, from Portia's, completely irrelevant, from Muriel's, the Devil incarnate, and from his own, the equivalent of a kicked puppy. Forgiveness is much more nuanced process than we like to think it is, and the concept of empowerment and injustice play heavily into it.

When it comes to genuine forgiveness, I personally think Nadia is the closest we get to seeing it happen, and I'm referencing the events of her own route. She's able to go through the process of unpacking the effect of Lucio's actions on her and the people she cares about and addressing it. By her final confrontation with him, she's established and reclaimed the narrative of his involvement in her life, she's able to openly express her feelings to him about it, and once she's toppled their old power dynamic once and for all in a duel, she's ready to put him out of her life on her own terms. Lucio goes running off into the realms and she's able to move on with closure.

Forgiveness in this case looks less to me like "it never happened" or "it happened but I'm not holding it against you anymore." Rather, it looks like "the past has been resolved and now I'm going to rebuild what you tore apart." Both Nadia and Lucio are freed in their own ways. It's a fairly appropriate resolution in my opinion because they chose to have each other in their lives as peers and the processing Nadia did was **roughly ** proportional to the amount of personal harm Lucio caused.

Asra's route has a slightly more typical ending for Lucio as the story's villain. There isn't one point in which the ex-count shows any kind of remorse, self-awareness, or concern for his actions. He's irredeemable. However, Asra doesn't harbor fear towards him as much as they harbor hatred and disgust. They knew Lucio was somehow responsible for their parent's disappearance and assumed death and for the death of their love, but they also saw how easy it was to make a fool of him from a very young age. For them, forgiving Lucio doesn't involve self-empowerment like it does for Nadia or Muriel. It requires a courage to acknowledge the personal pain that someone they hate so much was able to cause.

There's a moment in Asra's route as they lure Lucio into the trap that ultimately causes his death where we see the beginnings of this. Asra turns after running away to face their tormentor down, lists the ways Lucio hurt them, acknowledges that there is still a way for Lucio to hurt them, and then declares their own resolve to work through it regardless. While it doesn't reach the point of forgiveness, it's enough resolution on that front for life without Lucio in it to be free of the previous bitterness. Wrongs were acknowledged, justice was done, and life can continue. I imagine if Lucio had survived falling into the frozen lake, forgiveness would've taken another ten years and proof that Lucio had no further intention of harming anyone important.

Julian's route doesn't get into matters of "right" and "wrong" as much as it gets into "worth" and "guilt". Lucio still blames an inexperienced Julian for cutting off his arm way back when, and Julian in turn chooses to commit to finding a cure for the plague and taking the infected Lucio as his patient. Julian's own poor self-esteem twists all his very real misfortunes into a blame game designed to further trap him. The first step towards forgiveness requires acknowledging that someone else has acted unjustly towards you, but with Julian convinced he's not worthy of being treated with love, he's unable to see the injustice of Lucio's hateful behavior towards him.

Julian's sense of betrayal towards Lucio stems from the hopeless situation he ended up in and all the other lives lost to his selfish choices, but even towards the end of his route he still struggles to acknowledge how Lucio wronged him as a person. He's angry on other's behalf, not his own, but he's only able to forgive Lucio on his own behalf and not other's. The process can't start for him until he's able to hold onto his own worth regardless of how he's treated or what others think.

Muriel's route shows Lucio as something akin to demonic, even having him merge with the Devil later on in the route. Muriel doesn't seem to have ever had some kind of relationship with Lucio, which left the Count without anything to temper his malice. Lucio didn't know who Muriel was as a person and frankly didn't care, as long as he was able to leverage "entertainment" out of him. It's a connection built purely on exploitation, trauma, and ego-fueled malice, and not something to be taken lightly.

The only circumstance in which forgiveness could be healthy and real for Muriel would be if it was part of enabling him to leave Lucio in the past and flourish with as little of it weighing him down as possible. Given what a monumental task that would be, and how thoroughly Muriel likes to take his time to process things, that process would take decades and might never reach completion.

Finally, in Lucio's own route, I'll be honest and say I'm pretty dissatisfied with how the topic of forgiveness was broached. Rather, the word "forgive" seemed to be substituted for the sentiment "it's the in the past and there's bigger/more urgent things to worry about which unfortunately require cooperating with you". We do get the setup for a poignant scene where Lucio has to fight the younger version of himself, but it's more focused on forcing him to recognize what a terrible person he was. Furthermore, as long as Lucio is unable to see himself as a perpetrator or being capable of filling a perpetrator's role, he won't be able to see himself as someone who needs to be forgiven.

With the weight of all the harm he's done, there will come a point in the distant future will Lucio will have to forgive himself. However, that can't happen until the full effect of his actions have completely sunk in and he's matured enough to feel proportional levels of guilt. Even then, there's a necessary period of time where he has to find closure by addressing those wrongdoings before the process of self-forgiveness can start. There's none of that in his route, but I like to hope he makes it that far down the line.

Again, these are all just my opinions (and I'm so sorry it took me days to finish this!) but I hope they help!

[bibibbon]

Miriko shift from "this dude" to "this thing" brings so many terrible implications. At best, she thinks Tomura is becoming a Nomu.

Speaking about Nomu, having their intelligence evolve was mistake since making them more human makes the heroes seem more murderous.

Like, the USJ Nomu had no intelligence or desires outside following orders, yet he was allowed live. However, Hood actively showed intelligence and desires, yet he was killed.

There also the fact Endeavor did the All Might pose after performing worse on either accountings of saving or winning.

I disagree having the nomu's overall intelligence evolve isnt a mistake. Instead it actually plays with the heroes heads and mortality. Will they still be able to kill something that doesn't look human but very much acts human? Is there really a difference between nomu's and humans? Heck you can even bring in the arguement of mutant discrimination and nomu's!!

I for one believe that the nomu's were severely underused in many ways. What does the public think of Nomu's? How were the people who had their family members turned into nomu feel? (This is explored a bit in fics but not really in canon) @thr0wnawayy has a post on the wasted potential of nomu's.

How about how Nomu's are made? How they're used? Or is them evolving to have more intelligence makes them more human? In a society where being human doesn't have a specific look is intelligence the thing that makes people human? Or is it another criteria?

With miriko it's interesting to see her physical switch go from "this dude" to "this thing" because it could very much show that maybe this is how hero society teaches and produces heroes. Heroes are supposed to do easy take downs relying on violence instead of ethically and properly working out a situation. The heroes whole win to save issue and their instinct to fight first talk later is exactly why the first war arc was so catastrophic and why there are so many deaths. Also miriko's attitudes show one way heroes may think of their opponents as non human effectively dehumanising them so they don't feel bad for inflicting harm on them and subconsciously convincing themselves that this is all for the greater good. "I mean killing a puppet who can't think for themselves or express pain is easier than killing a human someone who is the same as you right?" That's probably the thought process of many heroes and we see it with both miriko and hawks explicitly.

However, the whole dehumanisation of villains and enemies can also apply to other characters like Enji and maybe even ochako in the first war arc when it comes to her conversation with toga.

Enji cannonically has tried to kill koichi (a vigilante) in the manga and has expressed quite the aggressive behaviour towards villains and even objects so he really isn't a good person or hero either.

Nomu's and their increasing intelligence for example kurogiri says a lot and brings a lot of moral dilemmas which would be interesting to see how the series could of dealt with them and how it may even reveal some innate corruptness within hero society.

The hitting of the all might pose is something that three characters have all done aka enji, Izuku and shigaraki have all hit the all might pose yet in all of those scenarios it's had different meanings. Even with that the one meaning that they all share with that pose is one of victory (they all struck the pose after their supposed victories) but it all has a different meaning for example with enji his pose was supposed to show that he can live up to the title and that he can try and keep peace within society. The pose also showed the classic upholding of the status quo and hero societies original corrupted ideologies and ideals that enji will go ahead and uphold.

[thecoolerliauditore]

Pls tell me about Scott's views on women in general pls I'm begging you

o7 and I'm sorry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

fyi, the post itself isn't NSFW, but I'll be getting all gender theory in this bitch so I'll be referencing a lot of things and putting in pictures of naked ppl sometimes. maybe skip this one if you don't like that

(long post)

Disclaimers

An explanation for the tweet up there

I usually don't write these because I assume the people on my blog have enough sense to realise when I'm talking about the characters vs the CCs or are comfortable enough being a little confused, but I feel the need to extra-clarify here and expand on how I specifically view C vs CC because I think it differs a little from the average person.

To me, C and CC are two separate entities but not entirely disconnected. What differs (e.g. the exclusion of irl relationships -- their wives, kids, etc.) is poignant enough to severely detach them from the people they originated from, at least in my eyes, but there's also the fact that these are not scripted characters, just creators being themselves with a hint of behind the scenes drama-adding and improv thrown in.

For example, CC Pearl is a car nerd. So I assume her character is too.

This is where I state very clearly that yes, a lot of these thoughts come from things I've seen on Scott's twitter, which is undoubtedly the CC and not the C. However I, to me, am still talking about the C because any observations/judgments I could make on actual irl youtuber CC guy Scott Major would be tabloid at best and slightly invasive at worst. I'm seeing these statements within the context of "the death game guy would say this too and I'm writing this based on that", not "this is the inner psychological workings of the youtuber because I, as a fan, can totally tell".

TLDR I don't consider this post RPF but you might. This is a little more RPF-y than my usual stuff. If you don't rock with it we cool.

Everyone is weird about women, and that's okay

One short-hand I've used in the past to talk about Scott and women is just by saying that he's "weird about women" which I'm sure isn't exclusive to him.

(shitpost I made awhile back)

I see a lot of people now who love "villains" and "evil" but when it comes to any traits resembling real life evil (e.g. misogyny in this case) they suddenly become insecure. Just a couple of days back a saw a post on twitter essentially asking for permission to continue liking CC Scott in spite of the "bad things" he did.

And I think, in order to present an analysis like this, I must address that mindset first.

This is not a judgment on Scott's morality, nor is it trying to dissuade you from liking him. This is not saying that he is any more misogynistic than any other player in the series. This is just me pointing out Scott's attitude towards women and what I read it as, nothing less or more.

The feelings that me pointing these things out - be they apathy, disgust, anger or, what I would hope to see most, interest - are your own. I'm not here to tell anyone how to feel and never will try to police that on my blog.

Scott's Relationships with Women

aka. oh yeah this is about minecraft.

Scott and Cleo || "Yeah, you can kill me."

Scott and Cleo's alliance is arguably the strongest in the entire series, spanning through all five seasons and remaining unbroken with no (serious) drama attached. You'd expect from this that they two have a very settled and stable understanding of eachother, yet this isn't a case.

Their power dynamic shifts dramatically from one season to the next.

3L's initial Widows Alliance began on fairly equal footing, built on the mutual agreement that they were waiting for their respective partners to die. Both understood they were eachothers' "plan B" and felt comfortable in that arrangement.

Come LL, Cleo does what she couldn't in 3L, and initiates that plan, going to Scott after her last alliance, the fairy fort, fell apart. Scott requests nothing from her in return.

DL is the longest the two spent as eachothers main ally. Cleo is the one who initially proposes teaming up to spite their "cheating" soulmates and Scott agrees. Cleo admits to Martyn in private that she's aware she's taking advantage of Scott (which I've always interpreted as her talking about all seasons, not just DL). Due to the time they spend together, it's here where it becomes apparent that their initial assumptions during 3L were not entirely accurate, as Scott shows a level of gameplay competency much higher than Cleo's (e.g. teaching her how to axe-crit) but despite this Scott never berates her or thinks any less of her value as his ally.

LimL is probably this pairing at their most unhinged, as Scott, despite once again asking for nothing (or very little -- I'll be honest I'm a bit fuzzy on this) in return from Cleo, allows them and their allies to butcher him repeatedly for time. He gives more time to the Clockers than he does to Martyn, his closest ally that season. Despite this, Scott is never ever considered as a "family member" by the Clockers, despite them giving that title to even temporary allies (like the Bad Boys being their cousins) -- even Martyn gets a title with Scott completely unattached.

SL is relatively more chill, but shows that the two inevitably end up teaming together even despite their oath to avoid eachother that season.

The point being -- again and again, we see Scott literally and metaphorically making sacrifices for Cleo, with the only real transaction he requires from her being that she continues having his back when times get rough. This is despite that he's aware she isn't any more capable than he is and the fact that so far it has only been Cleo in rough times (LL, LimL and SL) and never Scott.

Speaking from a purely transactional perspective, Scott is not getting a bargain here -- and even Cleo seems acutely aware of it, judging by her comment during DL as well as the way she tends to speak of her survival capabilities very lowly in general ("rubbish pvp skills and spiffy one-liners"). I'm speaking in this sense because I've seen discussions in the past about the transactional way Scott views relationships but rarely does Cleo get brought up.

This is at stark contrast to how he treats Jimmy, whose predicted death was what spurred on Scott and Cleo's alliance in the first place.

Scott assumes Jimmy is "incompetent", where he assumes Cleo is capable. When Jimmy messes up, he reprimands him, when Cleo struggles to crit him, he patiently teaches her. When LL begins, Scott's first instinct was to look at Jimmy's lives and note that he was "useless to (him)", but holds no objections to Cleo joining his alliance despite her already having enemies being a potential liability. In SL, he jokes about how Cleo and him being allied is a given and pretty much expected of them, whereas in LimL he explicitly requests from Jimmy a recognition that he still cares ("say love you back!") before he will help him.

Scott and Gem || "You HAVE TO kill me, Gem,"

In SL, Gem settles in very easily in a leadership position within Gem and the Scotts due to her trying to live up to her reputation but also due to Scott and Impulse's more laid back, passive playstyles.

Both Scott and Impulse let Gem kill them for extra health this season, although Scott is arguably much more subservient than Impulse is, with him not only insisting that she kill him in the final episode but also not fighting back (and only yelling for her to stop) when she starts hitting him with a sword during the episode where her task was to literally kill everyone on the server.

Once again comparing her to Jimmy, Scott in 3L had a tendency to brush aside Jimmy's concerns over alliances (e.g. Jimmy questioning if they could trust Cleo) while in SL Scott runs his plans by Gem (and Pearl and Impulse) in terms of who he wanted to team up with (specifically excluding Joel from the potential mounders alliance) implying he held her opinion in some form of regard.

Before this becomes less of an analysis of Scott's treatment of men vs women and more of Scott's treatment of Jimmy vs everyone else, I think it's notable enough to mention that he and Martyn also lacked this sort of communication in LimL. He would inform Martyn of his plans, but rarely was it ever framed as a request.

SL almost feels as if Scott has slid Gem into the slot he had previously designated for Cleo in 3L (his girlboss ally) as he provides her and pretty much forces onto her by the end the acts of service he'd become accustomed to performing for Cleo.

Scott and Lizzie || "You killed her! I don't.. I don't know what to even say!"

Relatively shorter section because this is the one woman he hasn't teamed with, but there's still some interesting stuff I wanted to touch on.

In LL, one of the first thing Scott does is yell at Pearl to revenge-kill Joel for boogey-killing him. Pearl does as she's told and Joel's wet miserable pathetic LL life gets worse from there.

Several episodes later, the roles are reversed -- Lizzie lies to both of them and manages to isolate and boogey-kill Pearl. Scott, instead of reacting with the anger he had for Joel, is almost in a state of shock as he asks Lizzie to let him down so he could collect Pearl's belongings. He doesn't act aggressively towards Lizzie at all, with his most antagonizing act against her being to lie about his intentions when giving her a wither skull.

In SL, he's the only one aware of her early permadeath, but keeps quiet about it almost as if he's in a state of shock akin to when he saw Lizzie kill Pearl in LL. It's not until the others have noticed when he finally brings it up.

Scott and Pearl || "Tilly death do us 'part"

I wrote a whole post just for their relationship alone so for the sake of my sanity I'll be leaving this here.

So now I get to dedicate this section to the meat of this post -- how the way Scott treats women in general impacts his relationship with Pearl and how I view his heel-turn on her as seeping with relevance to Pearl's perceived gender.

In all three of the previous sections, the running theme is that Scott is 1. kinder and more patient with women, regardless of their competency and 2. someone who likes to be in a supporting role to women, occasionally aiding them more than he aids himself and his closer male allies (e.g. Jimmy and Martyn). As shown with Cleo, he assumes that girls have it together, but even if they don't it's not a big deal. When a girl's actions are truly disastrous, such as with Lizzie's, he goes into a state of shock and doesn't really react, preferring to swallow it down and not acknowledge it.

With the amount of times he sacrifices himself, I don't think it's a reach to say that Scott values his own life less than he values the lives of his (female) allies. This specific point actually does extend to his male allies too, shown when he's happy when Martyn literally backstabs him in LimL, but just as with the Martyn post where I point out his victim status-ing doesn't end at only women but includes all the women, Scott has pedastal-ed all the women he's teamed with.

Lizzie is, once again, the exception here due to his limited interactions with her. However that's actually somewhat patched over if you look at adjacent series (such as x-life) where he definitely shows her a level of admiration and respect.

Back to Scott and Pearl.

Their relationship during LL is very standard of how Scott treats women. While the power dynamic between them is obviously more caused by the initial life trade agreement, I don't think it's a far reach to say that Scott is somewhat comfortable in the arrangement.

However, this is also the first thing that sets their relationship apart from Scott with Cleo or Gem -- Pearl is the one making sacrifices, not Scott. She is the one "sacrificing" her lives to him, just in a more non-violent way as allowed by the season's mechanics.

When viewed through this lens, Scott trying to make it up to her and wanting his effort acknowledged makes even more sense. This is suddenly uncharted waters for him. His assuming that Pearl doesn't value him as a person goes hand in hand with him valuing himself less than her.

What Scott has with Cleo or Gem, situations where the other party is clearly uncomfortable with how he treats himself (Gem) or actively aware they are taking advantage of him (Cleo), is equalized to him because he is inherently worth less. What he has with Pearl, on the other hand, looks more equal to most people (lives vs labour) but is wildly imbalanced to him.

It's one of the many factors I see going into Scott's weird decision to abandon her in DL.

An Interlude, Before We Get to DL

La Pieta, Michelangelo

So this has been a lot of words so far and some of you might be wondering at this point: why say Scott is "weird" about women when so far this has been describing how he values women more, is kinder to them, is more patient with them, etc.? How is any of this behaviour remotely misogynistic?

And I would feel horrible if I forced you to read through all of my DL thoughts before I clarified this -- Scott is not your classic wifebeater "women are lesser" misogynist, Scott is someone who subscribes to misogynistic schools of thought and probably considers himself an ally to women, when in reality his beliefs are still rooted in dehumanizing them and these beliefs end up harming the women around him as well as himself.

After all, seeing women are your superiors is still not seeing them as your equals.

I know it's a bit of a meme on this blog at this point. But. Sigmund Freud identified what we know refer to as the "madonna/whore complex", which he described as a pattern of behaviour in men who separated women into being madonnas (pure, holy and admirable) and whores (debased, sexual, deviant). We'll be focusing on the former, the madonna, as it is more relevant to Scott's character.

Freud proposed that the madonna figure was something men projected onto women as a replacement for maternal love. These women are sacred and untouchable, literally as the projection of the maternal role onto them also makes it so that the sufferer cannot feel any sexual attraction towards her (keep this in mind for later).

Scott projects the madonna figure onto his female compatriots -- they are to be protected, served and supported. They are goddesses, queens, but they are never human. The madonna role in of itself is not inherently harmful to the woman, as seen with Cleo who takes control and advantage of it. However, it is enforced, as seen with Gem who at first revels in the superiority but almost breaks down when Scott offers him up as her sacrificial lamb one last time.

I linked this Utena AMV awhile back when vaguely talking about Scott and women, and this was the point I was alluding to.

Girls are beautiful and pure. They don't spit on the street, they don't piss on the street, they don't build hierarchies -- they subvert all the expectations of masculinity that I hate having to deal with. They are my escape.

But what about the girls who do spit on the street? The girls who piss on seats? Who build social hierarchies, who size up their competition?

The girls Scott interacts with are all painfully human. Cleo weaponizes his beliefs and take advantage of him. Scott is smart enough to know and accept this. Gem's playing into a role she has been assigned into by not only Scott but everyone around her. Scott supports the character she plays. Lizzie reflects traits he hates in Joel and Jimmy, but for her, he looks the other way.

Are they "demons", as the song says, or are they no longer girls at all?

(demons, gods, but never humans)

Weaponized Femininity and Women In Total Control of Themselves ;)

Hylas and the Nymphs, John William Waterhouse

Historically, weaponized femininity I'd argue is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. Whether it's nymphs or sirens or witches or succubi or even more roundabout cases like Helen of Troy, there's countless stories of men's sexual attraction to women leading them to disaster.

One way to view these stories is to see them as warnings, don't let womens allure be the end of you.

There's a lot of good writing done on the femme fatale trope both in the context of weaponizing femininity and as a sexist way to argue against victims of sexual assault, as these stories often say that men who experience attraction to these "evil" women no longer have agency over their own actions.

Look at the painting above, for example - is it the nymphs who are responsible for drowning Hylas, or is Hylas climbing into the lake of his own accord?

Despite the fact we all know sirens, nymphs and succubi aren't real, the belief that men will simply lose control of themselves when encountering a particularly alluring woman persists to the modern consciousness. That there's something inherently dangerous about women and attraction to them.

(this is not 100% applicable to Ninja saying he won't stream with women, but it's the real life example I felt most comfortable putting in here)

Now, let's combine this with what's been said so far -- let's say you don't hate women. You love women, in fact, and you hate the way men treat women. You hate men, in fact.

Yet, you still believe in this inherent power women hold by being female and the loss of agency that men experience when attracted to them -- how disgusting.

It quickly becomes easily to not only demonize men for sullying the holiness of women, but also men, masculinity and attraction to women as a whole.

(apologies for using twt discourse in the meta post but this flew by my TL and i had to grab the irl example of mens non-violent attraction to women being used to frame them as misogynistic before the stupid app refreshed and i lose everything forever)

"To Venner" is a student film exploring a world set within this belief, where all the women have vanished and the men have become monstrous figures as a result of their pent up sexual frustration. fyi this is one of my favourite student films (and ive watched a bunch), but I do think its messaging is worth breaking down (especially its juxtaposition of dirty horrible monstrous sexuality vs pure and beautiful romantic love)

NOTE: this film is super graphic, lots of violence and nudity. have fun. or not

I admit this section is a bit hard to gauge as everyone in the series is gay as fuck. The closest in-series example I can think of is Scott reacting to Martyn's antics in DL with a sort of indigence but otherwise I can't really think of an example of a man expressing attraction to a woman at all, let alone one Scott reacted to. However, I do think it's still worth talking about because it opens up some interesting trains of thought in regard to Scott and Pearl.

For Scott, he himself has never been part of the picture. He's gay, after all, which gives him an edge over the bad straight men who objectify and assault women. Likewise, there's little evidence to suggest he finds the expectations of masculinity frustrating, but I don't think it's too far a reach considering how common of an experience that is for gay men and his adapting of more feminine mannerisms.

Double Life and Corruption

As mentioned in my previously linked post about Scott and Pearl's relationship, I do think Scott experiences what he would name as attraction towards Pearl, so my writing will reflect that.

Pearl is. ahem. not like other girls.

Not actually. But to Scott, she probably isn't like other girls.

She remains unaware of his different standards for her (how could she when she had nothing to compare them to), she acts out, sometimes violently, against Scott's urging (such as when she stole from Scar's wagon). She maintains their already irregular dynamic, and while she appreciates his care for her, she never quite falls into seeing him as a source of subservience the way Cleo or Gem do.

At the end of LL, right before the 1v1v1v1, she monologues to herself that she no longer has to feel bad for killing Scott. Which, in turn, implies she expected Scott to give it his all against her as well.

She entirely fails to embody the madonna with her immature naivete and her questionable morals. She is unpredictable, she doesn't take what she is owed, she is a monster in a lot of ways.

Scott, too, is a monster, to himself, for how he feels about her.

The very foundations of your understanding of yourself being ripped apart aside, let's rewind to the madonna/whore complex. To sexualise the madonna is to corrupt her and make a monster of yourself. Suddenly, you are no better than the men around you, the ones you've grown to hate. Suddenly, you are the grotesque figures in films like To Venner. You are Hylas and she is the nymph. And you are so stupid. Your worldview crumbles around its flawed foundations.

Scott is, however, immune to this corruption. This is a theme that appears in Empires as well, but throughout the traffic series he's prided himself on being loyal and kind and good. His monologue leading up to LL's 1v1v1v1 summarizes it quite well.

He can't let himself or anyone else see this side of him, but the energy needs to go somewhere. To defy fate, abandon your soulmate, is to admit you had a fate in the first place, is to acknowledge that she was your soulmate in the first place.

I've previously talked about how fate and romance are very ingrained in Scott's belief system, if it was anyone else it would've been amazing. He could've been like Bdubs and Impulse or Ren and Bigb, diving into domestic life and performative romance with a stranger. Or the world could've made his happy ending from 3L real, as he got to be Jimmy's husband all over again. I think it says something that he accepts Cleo as a "soulmate" before Pearl.

So what do you do with all that energy and tension, clearly apparent to yourself and everyone else, when you can't let them observe your feelings?

You project them.

Shout-outs to @/legally-allowed-to-slime for pointing out Pearl's comment early on in DL that she "feels like (she's) been broken up with" confirms she never saw Scott in a romantic sense. The "crazy ex-girlfriend" and "this is why I'm gay" comments really did come out of thin air, or perhaps insecurity.

Pearl is the crazy one. She's insane, because she wants me. She wants to be with me, so she does all this crazy stuff. She's lost control of herself because she wants me. She's disgusting.

I mentioned before that Scott is not your classic misogynist, but this is where the gears start turning. Scott's views of Pearl echo that of other players, most prominently Ren and Martyn, that Pearl has been overcome with some sort of corruption. She has become the witch, the demoness, the whore, in their eyes. Scott does not want to be the same as these men and I think his overcorrecting his behaviour in SL makes sense when you view it from this angle, but for now he has to rely on more traditional misogyny in order to navigate this new obstacle.

"Corruption" also implies that she had to have been pure (or at least pure-er) beforehand, something Scott personally knows is not true, but it falls in line with defaulting women to being "madonnas".

This is a Scott post but. shout outs to Ren for being all of this about Pearl but without the complexity of Scott like he literally accuses Pearl of seducing Bigb what the fuck man.

Pearl is, of course, none of that. But she plays into the role of being the witch much better than she fared playing into the role of the madonna.

Sidenote: I know I'm looking at this from a Scott/Pearl POV but I do feel like you can omit Scott's attraction if you look at it from a purely "pearl not performing to standards of femininity I expect and she makes me realise I don't view women as a whole as human which makes me feel weird so now we have to do this" POV. Like idk I think the exact reason he abandoned Pearl is going to be lost on everyone forever so any analysis I could perform is going to suffer at least a little bit of making-shit-up-itis.

I do also think there's something to be said about Pearl being pushed until she performed a role, any role and generally failing at Being A Girl tm but that's another post i think. yknow shes um. a bit. 🏳️‍⚧️ (but also very much not at the same time idk that's gonna need its own post)

anyway yeah uh the minecraft movie looks crazy huh

[rewrittenmha]

Entrance Exam Arc

First official post of the blog! So exciting. Of course we're starting from the very beginning.

I don't have much to change here. The Entrance Exam arc isn't perfect, but it does pretty well as an exposition. I only have a few minor changes.

Instead of opening on Izuku's way to school, I would show more of his life with Inko. Nothing really significant, just her making breakfast for him and showing concern for how withdrawn he tends to be. I would also make her more aware of Izuku being bullied, just not the fact that it's Bakugou specifically. Here, she has actually tried to get the school to interfere only for them to promise to do so and not follow through. Instead, they talk to Bakugou and have him "tone it down," so Bakugou stops being as physically aggressive and turns to being verbally nasty.

(I would also have Inko consider moving because of the bullying, only to be unable to afford it. It's really hard to gauge the Midoriyas' financial status, but I'd peg them as maybe being just above the Uraraka's? It's said that Hisashi is working in America, so it's likely he sends money to them but not enough for them to live comfortably anywhere else)

One thing I would also amend is All Might leaving Izuku on top of the roof by himself. In my version, he walks him down and then leaves to hand in the sludge villain.

Then mostly everything happens the same. I would add more of Izuku and All Might bonding, having heart-to-heart conversations, etc. instead of just training. Aso basic combat training.

At some point, show more quirkless discrimination instead of just saying it exists. I would love a scene of All Might witnessing it (maybe someone makes a comment towards Izuku or another quirkless person) and it's an eye-opener for him because he never realized how much worse it got after he was given One For All.

Other than that, I really don't have a lot of beef with this arc. It's the right combination of cheesy and heartfelt and sets up the inequality within society. It began the story with such a nice tone, it's such a shame it was all ruined.

Feel free to add any thoughts or suggestions in the comments or reblogs. I'm also gonna be opening my inbox back up

[dreamcaught]

There have been so many of these posts, and what looks like an entire website pretty much dedicated to this topic, but nevertheless here I am adding to the mix.

Thoughts on Buffy Season 6, Sex and Seeing Red

This is long and only kind of edited. Content warning below.

CW: Discussions of abuse, addiction, and rape.

Let me just start out by saying: Spike is my favourite character in Buffy. I love him completely. He is contrary and interesting and if there is anything I would do to improve the show it would be to add more scenes with Spike. But, unlike a lot of Spike girlies – and especially many of my favourite fanon creators – I don’t think Spike is out-of-character in Seeing Red. There are some serious problems with it, but I think it’s an important scene.

My reason for saying this comes from the claim that Buffy and Willow are the main villains this season. Well, no, to be fair: in season 6, the main villains of the show are the internal villains within the characters, specifically Buffy and Willow, expressed through their actions of addiction and abuse. The Trio is a red herring Big Bad; they’re pretty much just there to provide laughs and move plot. They’re not like the Master, or Angelus, or Adam, or Glory – there isn’t ever a “gather the troops, we’ve got an apocalypse on our hands” attitude toward defeating them… because they’re just human people, making human mistakes and causing human havoc. (Much like how Buffy and Willow would be if they weren’t already saturated in the supernatural.)

Buffy and Willow’s stories run parallel in this season. They are both dealing with the aftermath of Buffy’s resurrection: Buffy is majorly depressed to the point that she feels essentially soulless, whereas Willow is guilty to such degree that the only way she knows how to cope with herself is through control and the overuse of magic.

Tangent about Sex Because That’s How I Roll:

Before we go further to discuss this, just, briefly, let’s take note that this show does not do justice to sex. In both cases, Buffy and Willow’s “addiction” is to, essentially, use sex like a drug to (sort of) feel, but more accurately numb themselves. Buffy’s use of Spike is blatant, but we must remember that Willow and Tara’s first prominent romantic/sexual connections were initially all linked to their use of magic.

It’s made clear that this idea of magic = sex between the two is continued even in season 6, as exemplified in the Once More with Feeling song Under Your Spell lines: “You make me complete,” which are cut off at the most deliciously appropriate time – and if you haven’t noticed that until I’ve pointed it out here, then well done, you!

Here there is a bit of a problem I have with the show’s messaging because it’s essentially saying that sex is bad. Tara asks Willow to stop using magic (yikes, imagine asking your lover to please stop sexing so much, babe, it’s bad for you) – and at the same time, in the parallel story, Buffy feels the need to hide her sexual tryst with Spike because it’s wrong to want to feel good.

I think it’s important to note that Buffy isn’t really upset about it being Spike, specifically. She makes a big deal of saying that he’s “everything she’s supposed to hate” and “soulless” and “evil,” but Buffy had every opportunity to have this affair with literally anyone else – in fact, she could have very easily gotten her rocks off with a different, random person every night, but chooses to use Spike. And here we can move back to the main points –

Miscommunication

Buffy and Spike’s relationship is abusive, but hardly for the reasons they make it appear on the show. At this point, Spike is a soulless demon. That he doesn’t just kill her as soon as he realizes that he can hurt her is a testament to how much he loves her, despite this. But, because he is a soulless demon, he does try to take advantage of Buffy’s attention to him by trying to convince her that she should be with him. He plays on her fears of being soulless/evil/demonic. Other than trying to persuade her to stay with him, this is the full extent of Spike’s abuse of Buffy.

At no point in their physical relationship does Spike ever abuse Buffy’s consent.

Between Spike and Buffy is a travesty of miscommunication. Need I say again: Spike is a soulless demon. From the moment he realizes his feelings toward Buffy, he is constantly trying to figure out what she needs from him, because he simply does not understand. (“What’s it take?”) He actively tries to learn what Buffy wants and how to respond to her desires. From their passionate kiss in Once More with Feeling: “The day you suss out what you do want, there'll probably be a parade,” to literally his last lines of the show, “No, you don’t,” Buffy and Spike’s communication is the worst!

And this is all Buffy’s fault, by the way! She absolutely, stubbornly, resolutely refuses to talk – to most people! It’s practically a miracle that Spike understands Buffy at all – and to that end, I truly, fully, completely believe that Spike is the best partner for Buffy, simply because he’s the only one who does.

Their first time together, Buffy is verbally telling him it’s never going to happen while at the same time ripping off his clothes. At nearly every encounter between them during their affair, Buffy says it will never happen again, it will be the last time, it was the worst thing ever. These are outright lies, and Spike learns through conditioning to see right through them. When she says “Stop,” he doesn’t have to stop – because that is not what she means. He learns through the complicated, complex, contrary Buffy Talk what she actually wants and then proceeds to give it to her.

Up to Seeing Red, Buffy’s consent has always sounded like: “No.”

Buffy the Villain

Buffy has chosen Spike as her lover because he already loves her. He is emotionally invested in their relationship. He takes care of her. (“I can get money.”) She can be herself with him. (“I can be alone with you here.”) She is safe with him. (“Dawn is safe with Spike, so I can stay as long as you need.”)

During their affair, Buffy takes everything that she’s feeling about herself out on Spike. She calls him soulless, she calls him nothing, she says he’s empty; she beats him up, she kicks him out, she refuses his affection and forces him to hide his own. Spike takes it because he is loyal and in love with her, and this is the extent that Buffy abuses him. She conditions him to think that she can’t love him, she conditions him to think that saying “No” means “Yes,” she conditions him to think that her abuse of him is kinky and will lead to sex.

Buffy’s goal is only to feel something. She wants Spike to take advantage because it makes things a lot easier for her to deal with. If she says “No,” that means that she’s tried to stop him, despite it not being what she really wants or expects of him.

Because of this abuse, in a very real way, Buffy is the one who destroys the safety that Spike represented. Her abuse of him corrodes their trust, but she doesn’t know that. Buffy, despite denying it or acknowledging it, still believes in Spike’s loyalty. And not only that – by this point, Buffy has fallen in love with him. The bathroom scene in Seeing Red happens, in part, because she’s pushed Spike too far – and she’s not ready to admit to anything, because she refuses to acknowledge that she was an abuser.

The events of Seeing Red are the culmination of Buffy’s actions with the complete absence of honest communication. It is because she tells Spike to move on that he sleeps with Anya. It is because she expected his loyalty that Dawn talks to Spike. It’s because she trained Spike to do the opposite of what she says that he tries to connect with her physically to make her happy.

It is because she refuses to acknowledge not only her abuse of him, but also her love for him, that he chooses to show her instead. Because Buffy doesn’t talk – she only acts, and that’s what Spike tries to do, in the way that she taught him – from the start of their affair to the explicit events in Gone, all the way to this scene, Buffy has told Spike that sex is how to get close to her.

The Bathroom Scene

A lot of people have been traumatized by this scene. It is very difficult to watch, since we’ve got these two beautifully complicated people trying so hard to communicate and failing so badly at it. Buffy, finally, is saying what she means, but Spike can’t hear it. Spike is, as he’s been taught to do, servicing her to show her his devotion. These two people are in love with each other but are deeply hurt. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Buffy is hurt by Spike’s actions while he’s hurt by her words, since these are the languages they understand.

If done well, this scene could have been healing. They could have finally come together in grief of their broken relationship and tried to fix it to something healthier. But instead, they were using the scene to push Spike into getting a soul, so he had to go too far, and she had to say too much.

I don’t think that Spike is out of character. I think that both Spike and Buffy act exactly within their character consistencies. Spike would totally seek Buffy out if he thought she was hurting – especially if he had any hope at all that he was the cause of her hurt. Buffy would completely deny, deny, deny any emotional attachment to Spike and take no responsibility for having hurt him. She’s still stuck, here, projecting her own numbness onto Spike with the false idea that he can’t love because he’s soulless.

Because of the constant, completely screwed up ideologies within this show about sex (that sex is bad, that too much sex is bad, that kinky sex is wrong, etc.) and because of the cumulative events that arise from their abusive sex=closeness relationship, the only way they could think of to make it even worse was to escalate to rape.

I know why they did it, because it makes sense within the story of their physical affair. It’s The Worst Thing you can do to someone else. We have to remember that Buffy doesn’t care about being killed, because she sort of wants to die. Also, Spike would never want to kill her. The only other thing he might want to do is turn her, but, to Buffy, that’s the same thing as being killed. Since her belief is that a demon takes over the human host, she might even welcome being turned as much as she would welcome death.

But importantly: there is the significant and completely intentional reverse of their villainousness actions here. In this scene, Buffy can’t be the villain anymore. It doesn’t matter how much she’s abused Spike, it doesn’t matter that their relationship was murky and confusing. Because it is rape, the only villain is the person committing the act of rape.

Spike must be made the villain here because anything else is victim blaming. It was the only action the writers could take to give the title of villain back to Spike away from Buffy. Spike has to end this season being the Big Bad because he must absorb all the hurt, the pain and the soullessness that was entangled with Buffy and incorporate it into himself (“You think I like having you in here? Destroying everything that was me, until all that's left is you, in a dead shell. You say you hate it, but you won't leave.”)

He takes Buffy’s pain and heals them both by – after these events – getting his soul.

The Problem

The writing staff knew their characters (for the most part). They knew that Spike was soulless and needed something drastic to instigate his search of a soul. Hurting Buffy this way did make the most sense in the framework of their affair and in the framework of making sex akin to drugs. But attempted rape was too, too far for the viewers. Talking about sex is already difficult for society, especially at the time this show was made. Talking about and explicitly showing attempted rape caused trauma to viewers and made a lot of people turn away from the otherwise very beautifully complicated relationship between Buffy and Spike.

People against Spuffy use this scene as the ultimate fodder against Spike, but doing so is disrespectful to the story, the lore and the characters. Spike loved Buffy enough soulless, but she was only strong enough to accept that once he went out and got one. In addition to that – Buffy forgives Spike for what he did that day. She admits to her side of the abuse, acknowledges that what they had was real, and doesn’t blame Spike for his actions. This conversation exists in bits-and-pieces in the Buffy comics – it would have been incredible to see it on screen in season 7, but I guess by that point the writers didn’t want to bring it up again and had way too many other things to deal with (which is another topic altogether).

I like the bathroom scene in Seeing Red. I think it’s horrible, and raw, and terribly authentic. The portrayal of hurt and betrayal by both actors is one of the strongest scenes in the show. I do wish, though, that they hadn’t taken it quite so far.

My Problem

Season 6 of Buffy is my favourite season. It is powerful and painful. But, if I could change it, I would have changed the messaging that sex is bad, because it isn’t, and both Spike/Buffy and Willow/Tara deserved something better.

[candycandy00]

Hi! Can I ask for a fem x shigaraki smut where she has mind control powers so she kinda orders him around but even when she stops using them on him he’s still all subby towards her ?

I hope this is what you had in mind, Anon! I’m not great at sub!Shigaraki but I tried!

Smut. 18+. Mind control.

The heroes had sent you in for a very specific purpose. Using your quirk on anyone, even villains, brought up huge ethical concerns, but they had grown desperate. Shigaraki was far too dangerous to be left alone, and so you had been called in. 

With your quirk, you could control anyone. You simply overrided their brains and made their bodies do whatever you wanted. They were still conscious, still able to think for themselves and realize what was happening to them. They simply couldn’t do anything about it. Naturally, this was a major violation of human rights, and even the top heroes seemed uncomfortable around you, as if they were afraid you were using your quirk on them without them knowing. 

The plan was simple. You were supposed to sneak into the Paranormal Liberation Front and use you quirk on Shigaraki to force him to surrender himself to the heroes without a fight. But now it’s been three days and you’ve only caught a glimpse of him twice, both times being so far away that you couldn’t use your quirk. Today, however, you’re going to get your chance. 

When you step into the room, posing as a cook bringing him something to eat, you notice right away how cute he is. Not at all what you expected. This is the most dangerous villain in Japan? He’s sitting on a cushion on the floor, one injured leg stretched out beside him, the other tucked beneath him as he plays video games and eats snacks, wearing a black sweatsuit. 

The more detailed version of the plan was to let the other members of the League of Villains see you near Shigaraki for a few days, so that they wouldn’t be suspicious when he left the building with you. The idea was to lead them to think the two of you were going somewhere to hook up. 

So you put the plan into motion immediately. You’re overly friendly with him, and when other members of the League walk in, you straight up flirt with Shigaraki. The others either give you strange looks or snicker, and Shigaraki himself, frustratingly, doesn’t even seem to realize you’re flirting.  

After several days of this, when you feel reasonably certain that none of them would be surprised to see Shigaraki walking out with you, even on crutches, you activate your quirk. 

Shigaraki doesn’t notice at first. No one does until you force them to do something they didn’t intend to do. That’s when they realize their body no longer belongs to them. 

He’s standing near the small table in his room, his back to you, getting ready to eat the dinner you brought to him. You already locked the door so no one could come in and surprise you. Your quirk seemed over powered at first, but it had several limitations. You could only use it on one person at a time, you had to stay in fairly close proximity to them, and you had to stay focused. If your concentration was broken, you quirk would likely deactivate, and you couldn’t use it again for at least an hour. 

Regardless, you decide to give your first order. 

“Turn around, Shigaraki.”

He immediately turns to face you. He looks slightly confused, but not especially alarmed. He probably would have turned upon hearing that anyway. 

“Put your arms above your head,” you say, testing to be sure he’s not some rare type who is immune to your quirk. 

His arms shoot up, and you can’t help noticing the strip of exposed skin as his shirt rides up. He looks surprised now, and he stares at you as he opens his mouth to say something. 

“Don’t speak,” you command, and his lips close. “I’m sure you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you. My quirk lets me take control of you. My commands override the signals your brain sends to your body. I’m going to make you walk out of here with me and turn yourself in.”

His eyes narrow in anger. His mouth opens but he doesn’t say a word. That look on his face, of bottled up rage, does something to you. Upon realizing this, you can’t help blushing and looking away. He’s too cute! 

You compose yourself and turn to face him. “You can put your arms down now. Don’t make any other movements.”

A crack of thunder draws your attention to the window. A few seconds later, rain begins pouring outside and you see lightning in the sky. Luckily, the sudden thunderstorm didn’t break your focus, but it presented a new problem. Everyone would be suspicious if you tried to make Shigaraki walk out of here with you in the middle of a storm! 

You hear a snort and look at Shigaraki. He told him not to speak, but he can still make some expressions. There’s a small grin on his face as his eyes shift from you to the window. Clearly, he’s already figured out your dilemma. You ignore him and pace about the room, thinking. Finally, you sit down on his rumpled bed and say, “I guess we’ll just have to wait out the storm.” 

Half an hour passes, and you walk over to the window to check the weather. There’s no sign of the storm letting up, so you sigh and walk over to the table where you’d left Shigaraki’s dinner. It’s still a bit warm, so you take a few bites and a drink of the wine you’d brought with it. You glance over at him and notice he seems to be grimacing, as if in pain. That’s when you remember that he has an injured leg, and normally doesn’t stand on it for very long.

Feeling guilty, you command him to go over and sit on his bed. He does so, of course, and you think you see a hint of relief in his eyes.  A few minutes later, you hear a knock at the door. You anticipated that this might happen, so you whisper the command, “Say ‘Just a minute!’”

Shigaraki obeys, and you creep over to unlock the door, then rush back over to Shigaraki and climb onto his lap, unbuttoning the first few buttons of your shirt at the same time. His eyes look startled, but you quickly say, “Pretend they caught us making out. Get them to leave as soon as possible. Say nothing about anything that’s happened in the last hour. Now tell them to come in.”

“Come in,” Shigaraki calls, his voice somewhat strained. 

The door opens and Spinner walks in, then immediately freezes as he sees you jump up and out of his leader’s lap, pulling your shirt together. You make a show of being embarrassed, smoothing your hair and glancing at Shigaraki with blushing cheeks. 

“Uh… sorry,” Spinner says, looking infinitely uncomfortable, “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“What do you want?” Shigaraki asks. 

“Nothing important. I’ll just… come back later. Sorry.” 

Spinner is out the door before you or Shigaraki can say another word, and there’s a hint of irritation in Shigaraki’s eyes. He probably hoped his comrade would notice something was wrong, but that was unlikely in such a short amount of time. Which is exactly why you’d planned it that way. Hopefully, Spinner would tell the others and they would want to avoid the awkwardness of walking in on their leader getting intimate with the cook. 

You lock the door again and walk back over to Shigaraki. “Sorry, but I can’t risk him coming back in here.”

Shigaraki just stares at you, his red eyes glaring with hatred. For some reason, that look really turns you on. He’s sitting there looking so fine, his legs slightly spread apart, his hair hanging loose and soft around his face.

Before you know it, you’re sitting on his lap again, and his eyes widen. “Let me ask you something. Did you even notice that I was flirting with you all week? Answer honestly, saying only yes or no.”

“No,” he says, still staring at you. 

You slump slightly. “Seriously? But I was so obvious about it! And for the record, it started out as a ploy but it turned into genuine flirting. You’re really cute. For a villain.”

He continues staring at you, his expression unfathomable. You turn your face toward his and lean in. He really is irresistible. 

“Kiss me,” you whisper. 

He draws closer to you and his lips meet yours. They’re rough and dry but you like the way they feel. You open your mouth and his tongue slips in, mingling with your own. You didn’t specify a French kiss but it’s a nice surprise. You pull back and notice his face is slightly flushed and his eyes are focusing on your chest. You look down and realize your top is still halfway unbuttoned, your sheer lacy bra clearly visible. 

You also notice something else: the growing bulge in his pants, pressing into your thigh. This surprises you, since you can make him take specific actions but you can’t force him to feel certain ways. 

You slide off his lap and onto your knees in front of him, then lightly touch the bulge. He stiffens but doesn’t otherwise react. You look up at him with lusty eyes as you slide the waistbands of his black sweatpants and boxers down, letting his cock spring free. You find yourself staring at it, at the surprising length, the pale color, the way it stands straight up at attention. Without really thinking, you reach out and touch the glistening tip of it with one finger, and you hear Shigaraki take in a sharp breath. 

With a start you pull your hand away. This is wrong. Even if he’s a villain, you shouldn’t be touching someone like this without permission. You meet his eyes and give another command. 

“Answer honestly. Say only yes or no. Can I… suck it?”

There’s only a very brief pause before he breathes out, “Yes.”

You don’t hesitate. You immediately grasp it with one hand and begin running your tongue up the length of it, holding his gaze as you swirl your tongue around the tip of it and then close your lips around it, moving your head forward to slide it deeper into your mouth until it hits the back of your throat. 

His breathing quickens as he watches you, and you can’t help wondering what’s going through his head. He’s essentially your prisoner, but you’re suddenly giving him a blowjob in his bedroom. You don’t even want to think about the ethical implications of all this. All you want to do is taste him and feel him twitching in your mouth. 

He holds out as best he can, but after a while you feel him shudder and you try to pull away before he cums, but you’re too late. Half of it shoots in your mouth and the rest splatters on your face. You quickly swallow what’s in your mouth and use your hands to wipe off what’s on your cheek and chin, then wipe them on the nearby bedsheets. 

He’s breathing harder, still staring at you as you stand up. You feel unsatisfied, but his dick is soft now. What to do to fix that?

You unbutton your shirt the rest of the way down and slip it off your shoulders, then unhook your bra, enjoying the way his face takes on a pink tint and his eyes seem to zero in on your bare breasts. You then pull down your skirt, revealing lace panties that leave little to the imagination. That’s when you notice that he’s starting to get hard again. Perfect. 

By the time you slip off your panties and turn around to give him a fantastic view of your ass, he’s fully erect again. You step over to him, so close that he could easily wrap his arms around you (or maybe his hands around your throat, in this case) if he had control of his body. Your own breaths are coming more rapidly as you give another command. 

“Answer honestly. Say only yes or no. Do you want to fuck me?”

“Yes,” he says, no hesitation this time, a desperation to his voice that’s just too delicious for words. 

You smile as you mount him, positioning him just right with your hand before sliding down. Ah, he really is bigger than you expected, you realize as he fills you up. You sit there for a moment, letting your body stretch and adjust to him, watching his eyes cloud with pleasure. Then you begin moving, sliding your hips up and down his length, slowly at first, then getting faster and harder until you’re riding him with everything you have, moaning and tossing your head back, your hands gripping his shoulders, your breasts practically in his face. 

You glance down at him, and he’s staring at your tits hungrily, as if he wants nothing more than to touch them. You almost tell him to, until you remember his quirk. Best not to risk it. But there is something else you can let him do. 

“Kiss me anywhere, if you want to,” you say. 

The reaction is instant. His lips close on one nipple, chapped lips scraping your sensitive flesh in such a pleasing way that one of your hands moves to his hair, gripping the soft tresses. 

You’re grinding on him, feeling him hit all the right spots inside you, the soft warm fabric of his shirt contrasting with your naked skin, his tongue gliding over your breasts and then back to your lips, his hands planted firmly at his sides by your command. 

And then you climax, wrapping your arms around him and moaning as you tremble through the orgasm. And in that moment of ecstasy, your concentration slips, and your quirk deactivates. 

You gasp and look Shigaraki in the eyes. He seems surprised as he lifts one of his hands and looks at it, as if checking to see if he was actually moving it. He’d probably been trying to move it the entire time, so he would know the exact moment he regained control. His eyes shift back to you. Thunder rumbles outside as rain batters the windows. And Shigaraki grins, his red eyes gleaming eerily in a flash of lightning. 

You’re frozen in fear, wondering if he’s going to decay you right then and there, while he’s still balls deep inside you. Or will he turn you over to the others to deal with?

To your surprise, he simply sits his hand back in the mattress beside him and says, “So, anymore orders?”

You gape at him. “What?”

He’s still grinning at you. “You can’t activate your quirk again right away, can you? If you could, you wouldn’t be so scared right now. So we might as well finish what we started.”

You regain your composure and give him a smile. “Okay, I command you to cum inside me.”

With that, you begin grinding on him again, barely noticing when one of his hands grips your ass, all but one finger digging into the soft skin. Little groans are escaping his parted lips, and he’s lifting his hips from the bed to thrust into you. Several minutes later, he hisses as his body goes tense, and you feel him shoot his seed inside you. 

Afterward, while you’re pulling your clothes back on and feeling a little awkward as he watches you, he says, “Come back anytime.”

You look at him incredulously. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll use my quirk on you again?”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad. And I’ll tell the others to make sure I don’t leave the premises with you, so you’d never make it out of here with me.”

“You liked being controlled, didn’t you?” you ask, giving him a sly smile. 

“Maybe I did.”

“In that case, come kiss me again before I leave.”

He stands up and crosses the room to you, obeying your command even without your quirk. 

[monst]

General Jason Todd hc’s

General Jason Hc's, Mildy angsty, Mostly random:

   The most likely to actually go to therapy. Stick with it and apply what he’s learned to his life. Not that it’d be easy for him but since I like the outlaws (More so Artemis and Bizarro) I think his decision to go would be aided by observing Lian and Roy. It could be small things too, watching how Roy lets Lian express her frustration and anger and he tells Jay in passing. “It’s frustrating for me too but you’re allowed to feel your feeling” He’d probably like that he’d be able to better gauge his tells, see what triggers him and adapt. (By either leaving or restructuring his thoughts) 

   Not sure if this is a hc but he’s ridiculously kind. He plays at being an asshole and if you believe him even better. It’s something he’ll have to unlearn but he doesn’t think he’s a good person. He does good but he’s not good type shit. (Which is baloney.) It mostly stems from his past actions Mostly the murders But he’ll catch himself speaking much harsher and wish it hadn’t come out that way. Or he’ll snap at someone if he feels like they’re closing in on him and making him uncomfortable Really doesn’t like feeling his feelings. He’ll think back on that and use that as an excuse to say he isn’t kind/good. It’s why he’s okay being the villain sometimes. Real Bruce like to punish yourself ya know

   Fruit jelly. He loves it. No particular reason for this I just think he’d like them. Specifically the ones you can slurp from a straw or the fun fruit shaped ones. 

  Is a struggle meal aficionado. Only have rice and eggs? He’s dressing it up and you best believe it’s going to taste great. Well if condiments are available... And cup noodles have never tasted so extravagant. 

  Has a pink compact mirror courtesy of one Stephanie Brown. Why? I think he tried reading “House of Leaves” as a child but didn’t finish it. Picked it back up later on and one night Stephanie wanted to crash at his safehouse and caught him holding the book up towards the bathroom mirror. She got tired of his footsteps going back and forth from his reading spot to the bathroom, then got annoyed when he holed up in the bathroom to read. She chucked the thing at him and he’s kept it. 

  Whereas Dick loses all his socks and sometimes doesn’t even wear them Jason always has to have them on. He doesn’t like when his feet get cold. Reminds him of when he was slumming it, so he likes his toes warm. That and barefoot in Gotham? That’s crazy! Wears them with slides too. Ignore canon and all the times his dogs have been out, this is a hc

 Loves arcades. Shooting games are his jam and he’s got the highest score the Jurassic park arcade game. He’s also nasty at Skee ball. Anything that requires precision and aim. Which is pretty self explanatory..

   Has a kindle Bruce gifted him. He lies and says that he doesn’t use it and prefers the weight of actual books thank you very much! All his favorites are downloaded... But he still claims he pawned the thing, no one believes him because it's always in his pack when he goes on long missions

  Most often than naught he’s more bark than bite. Not that he wont follow through but most of his taunts are bluffs. Bluff that he could pull off but bluffs none the less. Especially in regards to his family. But he has punted Damian off a roof before. He did not look over the side to make sure the kid was okay. 

    He has a secret tattoo. It’s relatively small but It’s faded and distorted by all his scars. He can’t tell what it used to be. He thinks he got it while traveling during his league training but hell if he knows. 

  Loves his body. Although I hc that he’s got knee pain, right leg to be specific. Landing on all that mass almost religiously, carrying heavy equipment and basically all his work as a vigilante isn’t exactly doing his joints any favors but He likes his body. Likes that he can use his strength to help others, likes that he can still do flippy robin shit and crack skulls with a single punch if he pleases. It makes him feel safe.. Cause had he maybe been a bit bigger…

 Is prone to overthinking like the rest of his family. But he tends to spiral easier, it’s why he’s always cleaning out his guns more than necessary. The dismantling/reassembling process settles his thoughts. It allows him to focus on the movement of his fingers and after a time his mind focuses on the next piece that needs to be moved.

   Is more of a car guy than a bike guy. Honestly this is how he and Bruce sometimes bond. Usually when Bruce has done or said something dickish and wants to make amends he picks up a couple nasty burgers and heads over to a garage Jason owns under a pseudonym. He’ll get underneath the body of an old Mercedes they’re working on and wait for Jason to tell him to leave or hand him something. He usually doesn’t leave but only because sometimes Jason takes the opportunity to yell out his grievances. 

    Is pretty dense when it comes to people liking him. Whether romantically or platonically. 

The food network channel is his baby. He loves watching cooking competitions and has a list of dishes he'd like to replicate. Speaking of cooking, he doesn't do it often with how busy he is but he tries his best to fit it in. He's always a bit hesitant to have people try his food tho.

[lorata]

any particular ideas about the victors and empathy? like are there any that are low/no empathy, or any that are hyperempathetic? it would be interesting to see how empathy or lack thereof would impact their experiences/images both before, during, and after their games (even if panem probably doesn't have a very good understanding of what that entails from a psychology perspective lol)

a fun thing is that both Selene and Petra are low/no empathy, which makes them a fascinating pair. Petra knows she's missing something early and so outsources her sense of right & wrong to The Rules while Selene just does not care and this is a source of conflict for the two of them quite often.

Selene bases her morality around You Are Annoying Me, Personally whereas Petra's is You Have Broken The Rules This Is Bad And Unfair And Wrong which is why they drive each other up the wall

at their first kill tests Selene doesn't feel guilty. she vaguely thinks she should? but she doesn't, and they're here to kill, so, oh well. Petra asks her victim what she did, learns she did something bad, and is like, all right then, I'm good. they have a chat after Selene's about how neither felt bad and it's the one time they're both weirdly sympatico

both Selene and Petra have images that are slightly ... off/wild/feral, in no small part due to this. Selene they have to constantly remind her to pull it back or she'll go full villain (ha ha OH WELL given that she kills her district partner immediately but Misha knows). Petra's original was a bit more on the like ..... off-putting aloof killer vibe, similar to Clove, but with the maces she never got to pull that out so she had to go for the nymphomaniac over the top angle instead.

post-Games it's easy to keep things from Petra re: the state of the world until things explode because she just doesn't think about it. she has enough to deal with re: her own healing and constantly getting re-traumatized and all that nonsense that she doesn't have the mental energy to put towards things like oh what is it like for the districts or the other victors or is the only person who's nice to me actually doing this as part of a giant machiavellian scheme. it all falls apart in canon divergence once she has time to really sit and wrestle with those questions? but boy it takes some time and work and the others (particularly the younger ones) have some choice words for her in the meantime

Callista is also very low empathy, this (ahem) very clearly factored into her image & strategy. She does not care about the other districts and she says what she wants and if you get offended that's on you. Now mind you, while Calli has low empathy and her circle is small, IF you are inside that circle her compassion level is extremely high. Calli knows that Nero is hurting and she wants to do many, many murders on his behalf. She is very angry that she cannot. Ditto with her tributes, most of whom are similarly villainized by the narrative which is part of the reason she keeps choosing them anyway. In the AUs where she does manage to land either Creed or Alec she doesn't get what they're feeling half the time but she will help them regardless and god help anyone who tries to stand between them.

on the flip side we have Devon and Alec, who are both on the hyper-empathy end of things. Devon is able to control and use his fairly well, both in the Games and beyond; Alec has much more trauma and tends to be paralyzed by it for a lot longer before finally managing to work through things as an adult. part of Alec's problem is being unable to make his own decisions or justify his emotions

ironically Claudius is also very high on empathy but has no idea for a long time given that his specific cocktail of trauma and rage responses resulted in him lashing out and hurting people, so his whole "i'm a monster" thing dug in pretty deep and he withdraws. post-games though he can't help it and it lands him in trouble fairly quickly since he can't stop THINKING about other people and it sends him straight to treason town before he's even finished his victory tour, lol. post-canon divergence he winds up being like ... a teen counsellor for ex-centre kids which is the last thing he thought he'd be doing, but there you go. funny enough Eibhlin is the first person to tell him that he's high empathy and he doesn't believe her. but one of the reasons he's so good at 'mentoring' Selene is his ability to get inside her head before she even knows her own feelings really

in general while they don't have official vocab for it the Centre definitely IDs kids who have high empathy and/or compassion and has ways to decentralize that, whether it's giving them a cause or comfort in the rules or helping to carefully dissociate what they do from who they are. for the kids on the other end it's more a question of managing that line so they don't go too far.

[rockybloo]

I randomly got hit with this specific ass Licorice AU near the beginning of this month where Sweetheart and Bitterbat are point blank a hero and villain with no prior history together but they wind up hooking up and having a super secret relationship but Sweetheart winds up pregnant and having Angie but Sweetheart and Bitterbat remain on separate sides of justice.

So Angie spends her weeks with Sweetheart and some weekends with Bitterbat with some variations.

She doesn't have any siblings in this AU as, while Sweetheart and Bitterbat don't hate each other and do have deep feelings, they have more restraint on their hearts and are trying to keep a status quo of sorts.

One of the city's best heroes having a child with one of the city's most dangerous and brutal villains is highly taboo and the peak scandal any tabloid would kill over so Angie's parents do their best to keep their emotions down and give her the best childhood they can while keeping appearances.

This leads to a lot of telephone games where Angie is dropped off at Sweetheart's house after Bitterbat time and she tells her that "Dad said you looked really pretty today" and Sweetheart peeks out the door and sees him in the shadows on a nearby rooftop with his eyes glowing in the darkness before he poofs in a cloud of violet smoke.

And Angie is released into the shadows of the night by Sweetheart where she is scooped up by Bitterbat and Angie has a little goodie bag of chocolate covered strawberries courtesy of Sweetheart with a little note attached for Bitterbat's eyes only.

I don't know if Sweetheart and Bitterbat are actually designated as archenemies in this AU (aka her and him being assigned together like in canon) because the concept of her being a hero separate from him and his villainy really scrubs the mind right. Like her just being a free agent of a hero and him picking on various heroes. It hits the spot extra good whenever Sweetheart is taking on some villains at a crime bust and Bitterbat is one of the villains involved so that makes them running into each other more spicy because there is no fake fighting in this AU. They obviously don't aim to kill but they are more serious even if they still flirt.

Angie does ask occasionally why the two don't just get together like normal parents but they keep coming up with excuses even though they both would love to be together.

But in the mean time, they have that "Divorced but not really as they are madly in love but in mild denile but they have a kid together and are on good terms and occasionally while Angie is at school or with her aunties or uncles, they still hook up and make out" energy.

I imagine this AU winds up going down the route of Angie being what fully brings Sweetheart and Bitterbat together and saying "Fuck the world, I love you" and that's when they finally live in a house all together.

But for now, Bitterbat watches from a distance and thinks about how the mother of his child is the most beautiful being he's ever seen as she eats some ice cream with Angie.

And, after making sure Angie is asleep in bed, Sweetheart tunes in to news reports of Bitterbat's reign of terror and gorey battles against heroes with a blush as she admires how handsome and strong the father of her child is while he is covered in the blood of his enemies.

And occasionally Angie texts Bitterbat where she and her mom are when they are out and about because she knows he'll drop everything just to be near them.

It's led to a couple "surprise drop ins" from him that Angie plays dumb about and Sweetheart still hasn't caught on that her child is setting her up with her future husband.

Angie takes a lot from her mother in terms of looks (save for her batwing ears) but her personality leans heavily toward her father's mischievous ways.

[windstir]

thinking about that scene in kaze to ki no uta where gilbert is just having fun playing tag with some adults, specifically this one girl called sophia/sofia and she's like, treating him so well, and gilbert doesn't have a mother so auguste KNOWS that the poor thing (7 years old) is seeking her attention in replacement for anne marie's neglect, and so he just goes and says "okay fun is over i need you to come here now" and someone (rebec) mentions how gilbert's light "faded" at that very moment.

"that look isn't normal in a child! that's the face of resignation, he's suppressed all his instinct to fight ..."

and then gilbert (who is 7 at the time, it's been 2 years since the abuse started) walks away with auguste.

there's SO much to say starting with the fact that gilbert's attitude is nothing like the one we're shown in the actual timeline (this is from a flashback) and he's, basically, a whole different person in comparison, which fits with the way auguste raised him.

since his purpose was to make a "perfect masterpiece", he had to strip gilbert of who he was from the root, first attacking his "survival instincts", then treating him as if he was incapable of doing anything or learning anything despite the fact that gilbert taught himself to read (at like, 6-7) because he was interested in art, and so on, auguste is just taking away bits and pieces of gilbert to make him what he wants him to be, but he's never clear with what he's demanding of him so gilbert is a mess

the scene also highlights how he flinches at the sight of auguste, and looks nervous when he approaches him and sofia, but when auguste gives his final veredict (that "playtime is over") he just leaves without saying much, because he knows it's pointless, auguste will do anything to drive the people who care about gilbert away even if they will never do anything to stop the abuse. gilbert knows this subconsciously, i doubt he can explain it, but i think there's some level of acknowledgment on his part.

gilbert is not entirely lost at this point though, he's on his way out but he has some of his instincts, he knows that auguste means danger (also shown by their first meeting, gilbert just keeps repeating "danger, he's dangerous, he'll do something to me". this eventually stops as gilbert realizes auguste is the only person around him who "cares" -it stops after their encounter, the one right after bonnard kidnaps him- and instead of pushing him away, he starts to want to be around him more, the evident fear is no longer there, but auguste still haunts his decisions and the way he interacts with others -serge-)

now, remember rebec???? he knows about the abuse, he's definitely worried about the impact it has on gilbert, but he never does anything to stop it because auguste is a close friend of his. i won't go into detail but. that's realistic!!!! okay ending this point to add:

i think the way gilbert was written and described is really good, and as much as i HATE auguste he's also pretty well written too in a weird way. he has many flaws, but he's a perfect "villain" for this i think.

think of humbert humbert from lolita as a base, both of them use flowery language to make their acts sound less terrible (auguste constantly describes his acts towards gilbert as art, as "necessary for his development", as something that's right despite it not being so)

see 41:50 - 43:40

(it's not really evident in this scene i think? but you can see the way he speaks about it, he makes it sound as if it was something necessary, as if it was something that gilbert will benefit from even though it's just abuse)

gilbert IS a different person than he was years ago, and the only person to blame is auguste, that one scene i mentioned at the beginning is just a transition period between point A (rejection, fear, gilbert doesn't want to indulge in this) and point B (acceptance, he's actively seeking it even if he hates it)

gilbert has never wanted to do this, all he wanted was to be held by someone because everyone around him neglected that need, as serge said once: "he was starved (of love) and i could provide him with that"

but, eventually, he learned to suppress that need and, as the world changed his view on him (hypersexual behaviors that were previously encouraged are now seen as strange and gross, gilbert doesn't understand why the change) gilbert just had to go with it, accepting that he would always be seen as someone bad no matter what, he thinks he's broken in some way, that he will corrupt others if they dare to help him, which i think it's a key point to understand if you want to understand why he acts the way he does towards serge:

"doesn't he hate it? if he does, why is he pushing serge (the only person who ACTUALLY helps him) away?"

because he doesn't THINK he deserves it, he thinks he's going to corrupt serge if he does, everyone thinks that, everyone stays in their lane, no one has ever done anything to stop it and when they tried they were pushed away by auguste, and gilbert wanted auguste's approval! he wants him to like him! so he continues, and the cycle never ends ...