#sound more right for me. rules i will live by (yknow unless i find out im wrong but...im going to trust myself more and right now i feel

[lokioftheloch]

RULES OF BEING OTHERKIN #1

Being authentic and true to yourself is the only way you are 'supposed to be/act like' (insert entity). If anyone else disagrees it only tells you about them.

[hmslusitania]

I see we're going ape over buddie and Choices tonight so

Yknow in 2.07, when Shannon comes back and her and Eddie have their first scene together? The argument at the end, after Eddie says it wouldn't be a good idea for her to see Christopher bc she left them, she says she needed him, she needed a husband and a co-parent - and "I needed someone to have my back!"

To which EDDIE says, "I always had your back"

*insert Incredibles "coincidence? I think NOT" gif here*

(Also side note, I do like that the show doesn't try to sugarcoat what Shannon did being messed up, and that Eddie's own actions weren't really the right thing either[thinking about his conversation with Buck where he says he got to pretend he left for a noble cause even tho he was running], and that it was just a sticky situation that neither of them were equipped to handle in any way, and snowballed. I do kind of wish we could've gotten post-divorce Shannon and Eddie and Christopher interactions, figuring out how they fit together, if at all, bc I like those intricate and messy situations but I could see how that might get too close to retreading old ground re: Michael and Athena's divorce. But I do hate how ive seen the fandom like. Seem to oversimplify things with Shannon sometimes? And make her the ultimate villain, and Eddie Did Nothing Wrong, Ever)

Hi Anon!

The decision to have Buck and Eddie's first bonding moment end with "You can have my back any day" and "or, y'know, you could have mine" only to then six episodes later find out that at least a contributing factor to Eddie's marriage dissolving was that he "didn't have her back" is like. Such a galaxy brain chaos move for them to take, honestly. Like?? They could've had the phrasing be literally anything in 2x07 but instead they had it directly echo Buck and Eddie in 2x01. What was the reason? Why did they do this?

As for the rest of your ask:

(gosh this got long and, uh, opinionated. It is Not Pretty below the cut)

One of the things I really liked about Eddie Begins is that we did get to see him at the beginning of his journey in being Chris's dad because it gives us an opportunity to appreciate how amazingly he's grown as a father. Like, he didn't start out as a perfect dad and he was definitely kind of lost in the woods at the beginning there when it came to the whole "how do I parent" thing. And before Eddie Begins, we'd only ever seen the end result of the growth he's gone through, where he really is a fantastic dad whose son is basically his entire reason for being. Before Eddie Begins, we get to hear him say things like "I left first" and "I've failed that kid more times than I can count but I love him enough to never stop trying" but we kinda have to take that on faith? Because we hadn't actually seen him be anything besides a good dad until we saw his Begins episode. (And even then in his begins it's like "area man in his early 20s unsure how to care for small child while also coping with PTSD and a toxic support system" which like. yeah. no shit. there's one hell of a learning curve there)

The thing about Eddie and Shannon as a couple and as parents that always gets to me is that they were so fucking young. We don't know exactly how old Eddie is in the show, but we can guesstimate pretty safely that he's around the same age as Ryan which would make him between 23 and 24 when Chris was born, and it seems reasonable to believe Shannon was around the same age. It's also a pretty common reading in the fandom -- although I'm not sure how much canon support there is for it because we really, really don't know anything about their relationship pre-Christopher unless I'm forgetting something -- that they got married because Shannon got pregnant and that was the Done Thing. And when you're 23-24, baby on the way, freshly married, that is just like. So much. It sure as hell ruined my parents' relationship when they did that exact thing, and then they disliked each other until they were 27 and then they got divorced, and no one was happier than me about it, I have to tell you.

Back to the show, I can only give you my impressions, obviously, but the impression I have always gotten from the whole "I left too" conversation and the context that goes into it and the different behaviours we see exhibited by the characters is that Eddie "left" first and it comes across to me that he was basically an early twenty-something kid running scared from the abstract concept of being a father in general, and then when he was forced home by an honourable discharge, and was confronted with the reality of Christopher, he managed to step the fuck up and become Christopher's dad. It's there in 2x02, right? "Oh, you've got a kid? I love kids!" "I love this one." Eddie doesn't strike me as a Swiss Army Knife all-purpose Dad(tm) the way Bobby is. Eddie is Christopher's dad. (and like, of course, he's obviously moved by kids when he's on a call, we've seen that enough times to know that if there's a child who can even glancingly remind him of Christopher, Eddie's sense of self-preservation goes out the window, and I love that about him as heart-stopping as it can be in practice)

Shannon, on the other hand, didn't run from the idea of being a mother -- at first. When she left, it wasn't from the abstract. She left Chris (and "gave up" on Eddie, thanks Helena). She was not running from a concept, she was running from a reality. I think Shannon is a fascinating character to include in a television show as a side character, because she really isn't a one note character. Like, she was unarguably a bad mother, and from what we saw, she was a questionable romantic partner to have (but as you said, anon, Eddie was also not 100% the best romantic partner when he was with Shannon either; their entire relationship so far as I can tell was built on sexual chemistry which, uh, super does not sustain a relationship), but she also seems to have been a devoted daughter? I mean, yeah, it's entirely possible that her mom being sick was a convenient excuse to bail -- and obviously she didn't come back after her mom died, and didn't, y'know, contact her son or husband in the interim, so yes, I can see that being a valid way to read the situation. I don't think she's the Ultimate Evil, because she strikes me as a very human character in all the ways that people are more often than not really fucking flawed.

But then we get back to the actual break-up scene. The first time I watched it (and second, and third; then the fourth time the person I was watching with was like "I mean, sure, but it could also be read in this light") her "I'm just learning how to be someone's mother" speech really bothered me? Partly because it was the abstraction of it, right? Eddie doesn't like kids, he likes Christopher, and Shannon sort of had the inverse journey there, I guess, where it went from she didn't know how to be Christopher's mother, to she didn't know how to be a mother. And that speech bothered me because it always sounded to me like she was bailing again. She begged Eddie to let her back into Christopher's life (guilt? I guess?) and like, straight up bribed him with sex which was sure a choice, and then decides -- for a second time -- that she's out. It sounded, to me, she was handing Eddie papers and maybe, in a few years, possibly, once she'd had "time" to "figure out how to be someone's mother" she would try again. Just like she had in the interim between leaving when Christopher was little and the time of season 2.

And like, that could totally be a misunderstanding of the scene and what she was saying. It's what I took away from it, but that could very well be influenced by the fact I was raised by divorced parents and my dad had custody and if you count up all the time I spent with either parent when I was a minor, I was predominantly raised by my father and have had an especially tempestuous relationship with my mother that is mostly (sometimes) repaired now that I'm in my late twenties and have not lived with her since I was sixteen.

Back to the show, and to your comment that the fandom tends to treat Shannon like the Ultimate Evil and act like Eddie Did Nothing Wrong, I mean. Yeah. Fandom as a rule tends to shirk nuance. We're all fools here on the internet sitting in our blue industrial waste container crying about a wee woo show. I personally believe a more nuanced take on that might be that Eddie has shown a great capacity to learn from his mistakes (sometimes to make fun, shiny, new ones, but for the most part, just like ends up doing better the next time) and Shannon did not show that capacity in the time we knew her.

I think, depending on what they did with it, there was potential for an interesting storyline if they'd played through the divorce. I don't think it would've been rehashing ground covered by Michael and Athena's divorce because I can't see Eddie and Shannon having reached a point of amicability and friendship. The only thing we know they had in common was Christopher, and frankly, when you boil it down, the ways they engaged with Christopher as a person were so disparate that -- to me -- it really didn't seem like they had Christopher in common when you get right down to it. But I wouldn't have wanted to see Christopher and Eddie dragged through an ugly divorce process. They deserve better than that.

There's also a conversation to be had about Shannon's blatant ableism towards her own son, but that is extremely not my lane since I am not disabled myself. But even from an outside perspective, basically their entire parking lot conversation in Haunted, uh, haunts me with it's repugnance and the fact that instead of calling her on any of it, Eddie "Chronically touch starved" Diaz's response was to kiss her? Gosh golly do I wish that was one of the mistakes he learned from properly instead of finding a new, shiny version.

ANYWAY this got long, tl;dr (although if you clicked on the read more, you probably read it) version is No, Shannon is not the Ultimate Evil, she's a shitty mom not a demon in a skin suit and a pretty yellow sundress; and No, Eddie is not a flawless human who's never done wrong in his life but holy fuck is he trying and he'd be the first person to tell you he's made mistakes (and often has been); and no, sorry, I don't want to see the divorce storyline play out because we probably would've had to see either Eddie Bashing, Shannon Redemption, or Shannon turning up again like a cardboard cut out of a cartoon villain the way Eva did and I want to be witness to exactly zero of those things.

[jaideite]

Main 1-A (shoto, izuku, bakuhoe, and Iida) boys playing Minecraft with their s/o

*cries in ender pearls* I’m such a loser cause I don’t even remember most of everything that goes on in minecraft. Don’t @ me if something is wrong. Debating if I should buy Minecraft on my phone and play it

i felt bad bc i haven’t posted any good content so heres an old request ima shoot out the inbox for y’all I’m probably so rusty KWKD :(( <3

first time writing for Iida let’s see how well we do hMM ;))

TODOROKI, BAKUGOU, MIDORIYA AND IIDA PLAYING MINECRAFT WITH THEIR S/O (PLUS MIRIO TOGATA)

SHOTO TODOROKI

— doesn’t understand a single thing but still plays because you do

— he spawned into the world and moved two spaces

— he fell into a cave and survived

— then died because a cave spider attacked him

— “That’s rough buddy.”

— He’s one of those people who mines straight down and finds a whole bunch of diamonds

— “What are these light blue things in the stones?”

— “It’s an ore for a gem. You mine them and you get diamonds or emeralds. Is it like a really light blue?”

— you’re on like the other side of the cave you both went into so you can’t go over and mine them with a certain pickaxe you made specifically for mining

— you’re pissed because you always struggle to find them and here he is breaking the first rule of Minecraft and finding them

— jerk

— “So I should just get rid of them?”

— “Well I mean—“

— he throws them in lava and they make that burning “sss” sound and you just slowly look up at him from your screen

— “Shoto...what did you do with the diamonds?”

— he kinda just “oops” from his side of the room and you just rub your hands over your face and sigh

— “Oh god I’m in for a rude awakening.”

— he makes an underground farm and house and has collected sea lanterns as lights

— has collected all the diamonds in the world I’m not even kidding he just followed your rule of mining them with the gem pickaxe and diddly doo went off

— “This world sucks there are no diamonds.”

— “Oh I have some in the chest by my crafting table.”

— it’s literally a large chest and it’s full of diamonds

— like STACKS 64 DIAMONDS ALL TOGETHER

— you are just shook

— “sHOTO HOW—“

— lives in the side of a mountain too it’s actually kinda cute cause he used like stairs as chairs and stuff

— unless y’all are playing with some type of mod that allows chairs then other than that pfft your little “house” is decked out just like his bedroom

— your Minecraft beds are right next to each other too

— he thinks it’s romantic

— kinda looks more like an apartment lmaoo

— he’s more of a peaceful Minecraft player but he can survive survival mode if being asked to play

KATSUKI BAKUGOU

— blows everything up

— but not with TNT and flint and steel oh no that’s too easy for him

— the easy way is not for him

— he’s going to learn how to set redstone traps so you walk into them and don’t know

— you walk into your house and you hear the click

— “What just—“

— next thing you know your getting eaten by endermites that have been spawned in

— or your screen just freezes because of all the explosions that go off

— “No No No my stuff—“

— you just watch from the ‘respawn’ screen while he moves into your house to steal your stuff

— “Haha, I knew you had some good shit in here—fucking taking these— what the hell is hitting me—OH SHIT! NO FUCK OFF STUPID RAT LOOKING FUCKS NO DON’T FUCKING KILL ME—“

— your rolling on the floor at the situation of him raging cause the endermites killed him

— katsuki works hard but karma works harder bitch

— raids your stuff when all else fails

— “YOU TOOK ALL MY DIAMONDS?!”

— “They’re mine now bitch.”

— he is a survival mode player only

— no exceptions

— plays it at the hardest level and rages when he dies but manages to get the hang of it after a while

— the meanest and worst minecraft player to ever play with

— and on top of it all he only plays so he has your attention

— what a clown i swear

IZUKU MIDORIYA

— best one to play with tbh only second to mirio

— knows the basics and a little more

— if he made his own world he could survive pretty decently

— he keeps a notebook on the world you guys share with all the weapons and stuff you could need

— has memorized the most important potions needed like invisibility, etc.

— when you first made the world you had an icon that looked like you so you were looking for a little green haired character amongst the grass (assuming that’s where y’all spawned)

— and you are just so confused cause where is he

— “Izuku where the heck are you?”

— “By the flowers and grass.”

— “Oh no wonder I didn’t see you your hair probably—“

— and like once you finally get to the flowers you see him (or his character) and you just stop in your tracks

— cause there’s a tall, buff pixelated All Might staring back at you

— “Izuku—you know what? I ain’t even surprised.“

— “Haha...sorry.”

— you had to turn away because oh god the face on that thing was going to give you nightmares

— the armour—oh goodness the armour

— of course it’s customized to look like All Mights hero costume

— other than that—he’s a decent Minecraft player

— he has a secret world where he has built the city and all might fighting the villains

— it’s a huge flat world and it’s dedicated to all might

— he can survive pretty well at going off mining on his own but he won’t go without you just in case he dies and loses his stuff

— gets excited when he finds ores especially diamonds

— you get excited when you find emeralds because

— “Oh my god Izuku the emeralds look like your eyes.”

— all_mights_1_fan has left the game

— “Oh wow.”

TENYA IIDA

— y’all know those Minecraft books that they used to have that used to help you with like enchantments and stuff?

— Thats Iida

— he plays by the books

— has the complete handbook collection

— I do too lmaooo

— you ask him does he want to play and he just ??

— two days later he’s knocking at your door with the books in hand ready to play

— “I would suggest you go over these should we play!”

— “...Tenya—“

— when you guys play he immediately wants the rules

— “Theres only one.”

— “One—“

— “Don’t dig straight down.”

— he just stares at you mouth agape before he just starts going oFF

— “That rule is absurd! Surely there are more—“

— “NOpe that’s how you play.”

— he’s just ??

— no wonder you’re so chaotic you play games with oNE RULE

— what kind of g a m e has o n e r u l e ?

— so you guys are playing and yknow Iida isn’t having the best of luck

— he’s fallen into caves, burned by lava, and been buried alive by gravel and sand

— lowkey kinda feel bad for him lmaoo

— “This game is chaotic! At least these strange green fellows are coming to greet me.”

— “Strange green fellows?”

— “Yes! Some have no clothing on, but that’s alright!”

— you’re confused for a bit until it just it’s you

— “IIDA, NO, RUN, NO OH GOD DONT—“

— when the first creeper explodes and he goes flying and he starts scolding it for doing that you know you’re in for a ride

MIRIO TOGATA

— also best person to play with

— a combination of everyone lmaoo

— he’s like midoriya except no notebooks

— can also survive on his own but like not in hard mode like katsuki that demon

— you guys play mini games like bedwars and are definitely a couples teams just like in real life

— you guys are like pros at playing

— “Get that blue bed guy over there.”

— “You have a yellow bed behind you, watch out!”

— wholesome is what it is

— if you are like me and just chaotic at Minecraft and life

— which includes missing almost everything, forgetting the names of stuff, and building a little house on the side of a mountain for the next seven days and being scared of everything

— “Babe where are you?”

— “Uh...I’m... I’m in a cave.”

— “We are in the jungle how are you—“

— “I saw a pig and I wanted to kill it and on the way I just dropped into a hole in the ground.”

— poor mirio is just exasperated

— oh boy y’all are in for a ride

— best therapy for him if he gets depressed about the losing his quirk

[tumblunni]

Also yeah while im on the subject

I really hate fantasy settings where magic is limited by biological sex. Because usually its used to enforce some sort of stupid gender stereotype that the writer believes is "biologically innate" rather than predjudice, by making up a world where it actually is biologically innate. Or its like "oh but women cant do those jobs" but again, a made up excuse for it to be LITERALLY TRUE. And usually they either dont even touch on the subject of trans and gay people (since it often conflates heterosexuality with gender...) or else it actually does bring it up and just creates a cavalcade of even more everything-ism...

Like i mean i love the game Jade Coccoon and considering it came out in the early 2000s i can understand it being more sexist, and its supossed to be a dark game anyway and a lot of the societal structures in Syrus Village are meant to be wrong and evil even if the characters act like its the way the world should be. The villain of the game is basically the toxic atmosphere of your shitty town and their paranoia of things they don't understand. Tho that means the player kinda has no motivation to finish it cos the main conflict is also saving those same villagers from dying and theyre all fucks. Anyway i'm going offtopic! What i mena is that i dont think it was a particularly sexist example of the inexplicable gender segregated magic trope. But just cos its a fave game of mine im gonna pick it to talk about anyway. Hope i dont sound too negative on it, cos seriously i love it loads!

Ok so to use Jade Cocoon as an example, here its a thing that only men can be cocoon masters and only women can be nagi. Tho it also gets a bit complicated because nagi is also an ethnicity as well? Its kinda like being romani, they're a race of displaced people who travel the world giving their magical services to other countries while searching for their lost homeland, which you end up finding at the end of the game. So yeah its extra weird cos male children of the nagi race are born with no powers whatsoever and cant even become cocoon masters, yet they get the ruling position in this homeland place? Like thats a better metaphor for how christian societies work, honestly!

Anyway im going offtopic again!

Basically, cocoon master = adventurer dude who catches monsters, nagi = magician who purifies those monsters so you can use them in battle. So when you catch stuff it becomes an inventory item rather than being able to use it on your team right away. And also nagi women can fuse monsters together to make super badass new ones and basically the gameplay system works really well to make you believe your wife is absolutely necessary to your quest and you would die without her, even if she cant fight. And honestly its actually kinda romantic! I just wish it wasnt presented as this weird sacred heterosexuality arranged marriage nonsense where all women are physically unable to go to a dungeon and all men are physically unable to not fight every day. Or at least thats how the powers work and if you try and step out of that role you fuckin die. Like it would be romantic to have a couple of a battle partner and a supporter magician if they actually chose it, yknow?

And whats annoying is that they actually do bring up the subject of people defying gender roles and canonically state that you not omly die but bring a curse upon everyone and are hated forever. They dont mention trans or gay people, instead the excuse is that a man loved his wife so much that he tried to learn nagi magic to lift the burden from her. Cos oh yeaj women get 'punished' by god for doing this magic?? Cursed tattoos all over their body the more they use it, and everyone hates them and eventually they turn into a fairy and forget they were ever human. And in the japanese version you can actually fight other nagi women who met this fate, theyre just another monster that you can fight and capture. They were censored in english cos they looked like really racist stereotypes of black women! Ugh! So yeah anyway nice straight husband is punished by the magic straightness enforcing rules of the universe for loving his straight wife too much. So what is the even point? If a man tries to use nagi magic it creates the "black cocoon" of cursed doomness and blah. Literal punishment for not conforming to gender. Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

Anyway this setting always made me wonder about all the stuff it just glosses over with this implication that every one of these relationships worked out fine. Like even before we rub lgbtq topics all over a retro videogame, there's a lot of logical holes! Like seriously how many of these arranged marriages ended up loveless or abusive? How many women just didnt want to stay confined to one room forever and not even have anyone look at them because their magic markings are shameful yet its also shameful not to want to do it?? How many men were terrified of going out on this advebture fighting literal demigods sent by heaven to punish humans? How many of them just had no ability to fight and died immediately because of shitty traditions, while perfectly qualified women had to sit there and watch it happen? What if there werent enough straight men and women of the same age and people were forced into gross pedophilic shit or other horror scenarios just cos there has to be this one magical straight couple or the village dies? Whenever theres this stupid gender magic its ALWAYS portrayed as idyllic and never failing ever, unless *gasp* people dont follow the gendrules...

And then SERIOUSLY do no queer people exist in this universe?? Man i'd be so interested in their stories! I actually had an oc idea of a self insert version of me as a travelling merchant. Because maybe what if nonbinary people could do both sides of the magic at once and thus adventure alone without being tied to a village's straight marriage system? So i'd just go around purifying monsters and then be a place you could buy new and rare mons from other villages without having to catch them. Maybe an easier way to get the super rare drop fusion materials for tiger pattern and stuff? And like seriously itd be good to have a character to talk to who agrees that your village is made of assholes. I cant say its bad writing cos it was clearly intentional, but they shoulda at least put a bit more incentive to keep playing even if you didnt care about these people. Also it would help plug the plothole of how a village even survives if it doesnt have the required people to form this magical straight marriage. Have some mysterious enby avengers who travel all across the world and save everyone regardless of country! All we ask is you buy some of our lovely souveniers! Maybe a pet patalchu for your family? Seripusly why dont they ever show anyone using the purified monsters for anything other than fighting the unpurified ones? You'd think they'd be really useful in repairing the village and guarding the walls and like..regular industrial jobs. Help the place actually advance and not have to live day to day on scraps,bickering amoungst themselves as the monsters grow ever closer to breaking through. Hell, you could even have them help spin the cocoons for other monsters! If this magic only depends on having a dick or not, then cant we just dress up some animals in the magic straight marriage outfits? XD

And like aaaa man im getting so emotional just imagining a trans woman who's constabtly told she will literally bring about the apocolypse if she tries to fill the female role in this ritual. And then one day she tries to spin the magic silk and she thinks she's committing the ultimate sin and they were all right. But the magic responds to her touch, and she makes a spell more beautiful than any other woman in the village! It would probably be harder for a trans man cos the magic doesnt have so much of an immediate proof like that. Just going out and winning a fight with a monster can be called "dumb luck", and knowing these assholes they'd probably keep calling it dumb luck even after the thousandth time you save their life!

And man, i wonder how gay relationships would work in such an annoyingly strict system of enforced heterosexuality? Would it be like the magic isnt REALLY gender locked at all, and it can just be any couple with either partner taking either role? Or would it be that it is one magic per gender but the bigoted villagers were wrong about it being impossible to do things without both? Like maybe when you're going into battle alone as a single cocoon master you cant fight without catching other monsters. But when two cocoon masters love each other their magic is amplified and they become able to like.. I dunno.. Imbue each other with elemental strength so they can fight the monsters hand to hand? Cos really the elemental system is the only reason you cant do a no monsters run of the game as it is. Maybe since they cant purify monsters but they can still catch them, they equip the monsters as sort of a power rangers transformation? Or socket them like materia on their weapons? Or just if the world was less segregated into tiny sexist racist villages they could simply buy the purification coccoons from another local nagi, and villages without a coccoon master could buy the services of travelling ones. Oh, and maybe two nagi lesbians could be even more badass! Cos if they can only purify and not fight, maybe their double purification is so strong that they can just straight up walk into the forest and monsters don't attack them. They dont even need to do the full spell, they can calm a beastie's rage just by holding out their hand and patting it on the head. So they coukd be infinately more effective and not have to just tenporarily clear single travelling routes of a few monsters, but actually work towards slowly purifying the entire forest and creating a peaceful land again. Tho i mean the game did have a unique atmosphere with the whole 'no hope of ever beating them' aspect. It was unique to see a society formed around the idea of never going into forests or you Die. But magical lesbians and their family of a million pet dragons is honestly better!

And uhhhh ive gone all offtopic now and i camt stop thinking about how much i love magical lesbians with a million pet dragons

The End