#those kinds of regrets...
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ministarfruit · 1 year ago
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day 15: haunting ♡
(femslashfeb prompt list)
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honehonn3honey · 6 months ago
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All drawings about Kirishima from 2019 to 2024
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taruruchi · 1 month ago
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She gets really cold when pissed off
Taglist: @solxima @scint1llat3 @distant-velleity @twtysevapr @cynthinesia @h0neybane @viperbunnies @thehollowwriter @wafflethewitchboy @siphoklansan @jewelulu @skibidibabygirl @jadelover69 @savanaclaw1996 @officialdaydreamer00 (ask me if you wanna be added/removed!)
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pez dispenser debris for the fic ask thing? 👀
As much as this is my “kill no darlings you will get EVERY flashback” fic, there’s overarching sociopolitical backstory explaining why Izuku and the rest of class 3A exploded in the public eye that I don’t think I’ll ever fully fit in.
It’s a combination of it being more of a meta analysis than anything and also requiring information from a perspective that I know will never appear in the fic. Like, the fic still gets the different moments that make up this analysis, but there’s no explicit connecting thread to show how they all locked together to create this sort of global cult following of class 3-A. I almost put in a little fake news article opinion piece that was meant to sort of walk the reader through why society is Like This, but I decided it was too heavy handed and deleted it.
Everything that I’m going to reference has already appeared in pez dispenser debris to some degree, and none of it will ever actually materially impact the plot. They may receive a little more detail down the line if they’re mentioned in passing in the fic, so out of an abundance of caution, I’ll stick it below the cut so people can avoid this, but I don’t personally consider any of this spoilers.
Izuku and the rest of the class are famous in pez dispenser debris in a way that’s pretty much unprecedented for students. Canonically, not even all might had a name for himself until after his graduation. Pretty much everyone from class 3A are public figures, with Izuku specifically being considered a major global figure.
In my mind, there was this perfect storm right during their second year that catapulted them into fame. The class personally has varying levels of awareness of why they got so popular, but there was this perfect cross winds of societal unrest and fear that made them household names.
There was an approximately one month span in their second year where they were just hit one after another with a major firestorms of events: The UA Sports Festival, the Sidekick Strike, and the Tartarus Prison Break/Desertion of Yokohama.
The UA Sports Festival is the one that the kids attribute this most to, because so many of the news articles that followed referenced their performance in it. But it probably gave them less mileage than what the other two events did.
What the UA Sports Festival did was showcase their skills to the world in a venue designed to show them off. The public was already on edge. All Might had retired, crime rates kept going up, and people were rapidly losing confidence in existing heroes. Class 2A made such an insane showing of skill in the second Sports Festival that it made the public rave about them for weeks after. It was extremely reassuring to Japan that they had such powerful heroes in the barrel and would soon be on the streets. But that attention probably would have died down had it not been for the Sidekick Strike and Yokohama.
The Sidekick Strike actually had nothing to do with them. But it undermined the public’s faith in heroes at just the right time.
The Sidekick Strike is just one of those things that I have no POV that would even tangentially be involved in it so we’ll get a few passing references in media clips and it’ll never be discussed in depth. Which is a shame because it’s such an interesting conflict to me.
The Sidekick Strike was heavily inspired by the 1919 Boston Police Strike. Effectively, it was the height of the labor rights movement, and police officers got together and went on strike to get the police union recognized. They had tried to negotiate and negotiations failed, and so they all walked off the job. The city descended into lawlessness, the national guard was deployed, it was a whole thing. Famously, Calvin Coolidge fired the entire police force over it on the grounds that there was no striking from public safety.
I thought it would be really interesting if there was something similar that happened with the sidekicks. The thing is that the heroics structure as it stands really incentivizes abuse towards sidekicks. We have a society where there’s a decent amount of heroes who are only in it for the fame. A not insignificant amount of money must come from marketing deals. And it’s a ranked system, so they’re all in competition with each other.
Heroes wouldn’t be incentivized to showcase their sidekicks—they’d be incentivized to take advantage of them and take credit for their work.
Like, think about the work-study experiences. Momo didn’t even officially work for the hero she studied with. She wasn’t getting paid. An adult woman used her for a shampoo ad. Who wants to bet whether Momo saw a dime from it? It’s probably very predatory because the nature of the system incentivizes predation.
I thought the underlying legal issues would be interesting and complex. Who owns a sidekick’s image—the agency or the individual? Who gets the proceeds of their brand deals? This all would be governed by their employment contracts, and sidekicks just starting out have very little leverage compared to big name heroes. And those heroes would want to keep their sidekicks names small and theirs big. The rankings are competitive, after all.
It’s a situation where I do think that like. The sidekicks would have a point in unionizing. The use of their image, appropriate compensation, and proper credit for their busts would all be like, very legitimate concerns in a normal employment context.
I see agencies like Idaten settling immediately with the union and having their sidekicks back on the street before the day is out. In my mind, idaten is considered the gold standard for sidekick jobs already, and their employees mostly did it out of solidarity with the people they worked alongside of. Like, Idaten was already doing most of the union’s demands and signed off very quickly on the remaining ones. If it was just about the Idaten sidekicks, none of them would have gone on strike, but they had a lot of colleagues who they depended on in the field who were in terrible situations. What were they gonna say, sorry, sucks to be you, I got a great gig though so condolences? These were the people keeping them alive. They went on strike because they knew Idaten would publicly settle before the day was out and set an example for the rest of the agencies. Hopefully it would help other agencies follow their lead.
But that didn’t happen. Some agencies, like Endeavor’s, fired everyone immediately. And I think a lot of agencies spent a long time picking over every line item in prolonged negotiations. It dragged out.
And that went over fucking terribly.
All Might just retired. Crime is up. And their sworn defenders are bickering over who gets what cut of the action figure line. Like I think the public would have fucking hated this in a post-All Might world. It would have seemed like the only real hero just medically and irreversibly retired and the rest of them are squabbling about whose turn it is in the spotlight.
I also think that the villains would have taken advantage of it.
The Tartarus Prison Break in pez isn’t the one that happened in canon. Here, the League of Villains attacked Tartarus and set everyone loose. In the process, they made a very clear stance: they are going to leave with All for One, and they are not going to attack any civilians. They won’t fight at all unless attacked first.
All of the horrible and sadistic villains they just let go have not made the same promise.
They chose to do this now because of the Sidekick Strike. All their heroes don’t give a fuck about protecting them, so they’re strapped for staffing. So they’re taking back their leader and going back to ground, and the heroes are free to immediately go after and contain all those bad bad villains who just escaped. And those guys are headed to the heavily populated mainland, so better be quick.
The whole world knew that was their explicit reasoning and promise. Because Himiko fucking lived tweeted the escape.
The Sidekick Strike took the hit for a lot of the blame, but I do see all the sidekicks breaking strike lines to go respond to the crisis. But response times were severely handicapped by the fact that most if not all of them were cut off from their agencies. It was just a complete systemic breakdown.
And then there became the question of what crisis do you respond to: All for One’s escape, or everyone else’s?
I mentioned in one of the little fake tumblr posts that the Tartarus Prison Break was seen as Endeavor’s greatest failure. And part of that is because he chose to sacrifice the nearby area, Yokohama, to contain All for One.
I am one of the biggest haters of Endeavor’s later arc, specifically because it required going back on the nature of the abuse he had subjected his family to that was already established in canon, but that’s a different rant. This is not canon endeavor. I hate what they did with canon endeavor.
That being said, I do think that the self doubt weighed on him once he became number one. And this was the moment of his career where it really crushed him.
All for One had escaped. So had every other villain from Tartarus. He should go after the most immediate threats. He knew this. It was basic triage.
But they would never have a better chance to stop All for One.
Prisoners in Tartarus aren’t exactly hitting all their macros and micros or training daily. They are not adherents to the Bakugou Katsuki Fitness Lifestyle. All for One was coming off spending the last few months drugged up to his eyeballs and strapped to a chair in a straitjacket with at least fifty guns pointed at him at all times. The man has not scratched his own nose in weeks. He’s weaker now than he’ll ever be again.
It was their best chance.
If he escaped, and he went back to ground, he’d have the time and space to get as strong as he wanted, and then he’d come back for real. And he’d be coming back for everything.
Stopping him the first time had cost them All Might.
And Endeavor simply was not All Might. And he still wouldn’t be All Might when the next fight came.
It really was the hardest decision of Endeavor’s life. He had to admit to himself that his own inadequacy was going to cost them countless lives. But he thought it was a hard decision he had to make. He was losing the battle for the barest chance at winning the war.
So he made the call that all heroes were to respond to All for One. They had to hit the league of villains now with their full force if they were to stand a chance. They could not afford to divide their already sparse forces. They’d respond to Yokohama when AfO was contained.
He was also the one who made the call to broadcast the warning message that we hear in the Twitter post. He thought it would give civilians their best chance. He didn’t want them to act with the expectation of the heroes being en route.
Of course, that meant that the entire city got fucking sirens going off and a message telling them that the heroes were not going to save them. Which, as you can expect, did not do a lot for public morale.
In my head, Tartarus is like, the equivalent to Gotham’s Arkham. It’s borderline an institute for the criminally insane. You don’t end up there unless you did something super fucked, are super dangerous, and have extreme violent tendencies. It’s exclusively for the most dangerous and indiscriminately violent criminals in the country.
The entire world was watching in real time while the tragedy unfolded. A lot of people were livestreaming after the emergency broadcast dropped, because they didn’t want the government to be able to handwave away how terrible their death was, or because they didn’t know what else to do, or because they just didn’t want to be alone. The full expectation was that it’d be a massacre.
But it wasn’t. Because Class 2-A responded instead.
The Class 2-A defensive efforts were discussed in one of the silly little fake tumblr posts and in the fake twitter post. In those, we find out that 1) Class 2-A, along with Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire responded to the scene; 2) the entire class rolled out of Mirio’s fucking mom van and tamaki and nejire’s cars like they were fucking clown cars; 3) the HPSC claimed it was a legitimate operation blessed and coordinated by them; and 4) a lot of people think this was a lie, in part because videos leaked of Aizawa bitching them all out in the street afterwards. We also see Izuku’s green lightning at the end of the twitter video, showing him responding to the scene just as the first villains hit the mainland.
This fight has a lot of names in the backstory that lives in my head. It’s called the Tartarus Prison Break for obvious reasons. It’s also been called in some circles the Desertion of Yokohama, because of the call Endeavor made.
But it’s also called the Battle of Yokohoma. And it’s ranked alongside the Battle of Kamino as one of the finest acts of modern day heroics. And that’s because of Class 2-A. If it hadn’t been for them showing up, it would have gone down in history as the Massacre of Yokohama.
Like. It kills me that I can’t include the full details of what happened, but there’s just too much to make in a flashback. It’s a fic in and of itself. But it really was the fight that made Class 2-A.
It was the first fight where they were really the only heroes that could be counted on. Granted, they’d had to fight for their lives alone, but this wasn’t just their lives. These were thousands of terrified civilians who all thought they were going to die.
It was the first true test of them as heroes in the world. And they actually rose to the occasion. They didn’t just fight the villains—they realized that they needed to get emergency services working throughout the city if everyone was going to make it. Momo and Tsuyu conducted a mildly hostile take over of the emergency call center so they could coordinate relief. They had fucking Tokoyami and Dark Shadow single-handedly holding the line on the hospital while Kaminari, Shoji, Jiro, and Sato all learned to drive for the Very First Time while commandeering the city’s fucking ambulances. They were fighting and containing villains, performing emergency aid, putting out literal fires, everything. It was the hardest fight of their lives.
There was a hot second where Class 2-A was The Moment. Like. The entire world was watching them during this fight, and they had no fucking idea until it was over. People lost their minds when the first footage made it out of Yokohama of a bunch of teenagers showing up and immediately throwing hands with S-Class villains.
It was global news. Think of the kind of media attention that was received by the search for the Titan, the Tham Luang Cave Rescue, the Suez Canal getting blocked by the Ever Given (rip queen you will always be famous to me), that kind of thing. Class 2-A was fighting for their fucking lives and then found out three days later while they were all still in the hospital that there was a prayer vigil going on in Portugal for them during the battle and CNN had 24 hours live coverage of the fight that had so many viewers it outnumbered the population of Finland. Like what do you even do with that information.
The world expected a massacre. They didn’t expect a bunch of footage of high schoolers kicking the shit out of superpowered murders and personally ferrying the injured to the hospitals they were also defending.
The other part about this fight that really made them permanently part of the public consciousness is that it was not lost on everyone that every single person who responded to that fight did so at the risk of their license.
All of them had provisional licenses, save Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire, all of whom went AWOL from the explicit directives ordering them to respond to the fight against All for One. The operation could not have been less authorized. They had to steal their gear and jimmy the UA fence to even get out. The explicit plan was to steal one of the UA buses and have Bakugou fucking drive them to the fight (he also did not know how to drive but he seemed the most likely of them to break literally every single motor vehicle code to get them there but still be naturally talented at it enough to not kill them) but Izuku told Mirio what bullshit they were up to and Mirio, who was with Tamaki and Nejire when the news broke, immediately decided he would be on that bullshit too and pulled up in his mom van.
In my mind, there were strict rules around provisional licenses and how they could be used, and they broke pretty much all of them to respond to Yokohama. It would have been grounds to revoke their provisionals and permanently bar them from heroics. Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire could have all lost their licenses for helping them and for going AWOL.
The HPSC fucking fell over themselves to legitimatize the entire operation. They knew they were utterly fucked if they didn’t. These kids already had murals being painted of their faces in other fucking countries. There was a little old lady in Kyoto livestreaming herself working overtime to embroider Iida’s face onto a cushion because that lovely young man saved her darling granddaughter from *checks notes* horrible and painful death directly caused by the failings of the current HPSC administration. There were multiple trending posts online agreeing to fucking riot if those kids got in trouble for this.
Every single actual hero in the immediate vicinity of this disaster had responded to fight a villain who wasn’t actually attacking anyone. And then they fucking lost. They publicly broadcast a message saying Good Luck Champs Because We’re Not Going To Save You. It was an actual PR nightmare that they had a bare chance of salvaging if they just latched onto these kids like an aggressive parasite and that is exactly what they did.
They totally knew. Actually, it was a joint operation coordinated by and between UA and and the HPSC. Why would the kids be in trouble?? They had responded because the HPSC told them to.
UA gave it a week of dead silence and then issued a short statement praising the bravery of their students in a recent HPSC approved mission, and then they never said another word about it. They didn’t have any choice but to go along with the HPSC’s story. If they contradicted them, all of class 2-a would find their licenses pulled by the end of the day, and lord knows they wouldn’t wait for the court of public opinion to work its magic and would just all go out and become fucking vigilantes, because why not. Aizawa has aged 100 years since he got this class. Every single day he thinks of how it was a 50/50 shot between him and Vlad.
No one in the class is fully aware of just how famous they were in the immediate aftermath, because the school bent over backwards to try and shield them from it as much as possible. Like, they have an idea, but none of them saw the full explosion firsthand because of just how hard the school worked to keep it from them. Aizawa confiscated the internet router and told them it was punishment for whatever the fuck they did to the buses (thank god Mirio was just as crazy as them because they were NOT GOOD at hotwiring cars) but really it was to try and insulate them from it a little bit. Like. Japan’s Imperial Family wanted to do an official visit. The White House offered to host them. They received interview requests from every major talk show on the planet. Buzzfeed wanted to do a puppy interview with them.
Right now, Aizawa’s terrified for Midoriya’s graduation, but in the aftermath of that, he was breathing into a paper bag about all of them. Society had sort of latched onto them like they were the last life raft on the titanic. All for One was back, and All Might wasn’t, and the heroes had publicly broadcast a message saying they were useless, but don’t fucking worry, fifteen year old Iida Tenya is on the case. Society will be upheld by Kaminari Denki, currently viral for driving a real life city ambulance one hundred miles per hour down the street while screaming “WEE WOO BITCH.” And don’t forget the pillar that will be Mina Ashido, who rushed over to him earlier that day to show him her extra sparkly pink nails. And if you have a major fight that needs to be won? Don’t fucking worry, just send out bone-breaking boy wonder Midoriya Izuku and his equally reckless brother Toogata Mirio, because their dumbasses managed to take down an S-Class villain team that only All Might could defeat the first time around. Don’t worry about the multi week hospitalization they needed after, because that’s an acceptable burden to put on children.
When Aizawa started this job, he promised himself he would never send a student out to die. Some of them would die. But it would be tragedy, not damnation. He’d have given them their best chance. Part of the reason why he made that promise was because he sort of felt like his teacher sent him out set up to die, and it’s only luck that he made it through his first couple of years.
He has gone to the funeral of every single student he has ever had who did not make it. He goes back to their graves every year.
He was fucking petrified after Yokohama that society would push these kids too far too soon. Every single one of his classes before them had gotten the benefit of being practically unknown their first few years. They didn’t have the world talking about them like they were already the top heroes. He was terrified they wouldn’t have the space to learn and grow when they started.
A lot of teachers would have tried to mine the notoriety of Yokohama to hard launch their students’ careers. Aizawa told Nedzu point blank that he would quit tomorrow if he did not help him quash this thing as much as possible, and nedzu agreed.
This world killed its real heroes. It sucked them dry and left them like All Might, and he just needed fucking time. He needed fucking time to let them be kids and maybe they’d survive.
Izuku ended up being the one who escaped the aftermath of everything the least. His Quirk was too much like All Might’s for the world to let go of him easily.
And then Stain got fucking dogpiled by idaten in the aftermath of the Tartarus prison break and implied he considered Izuku the only true hero in the absence of all might and everyone started asking super inconvenient questions like “how does stain even know you exist” and “no really he called you by your actual legal name how does he even know that” and it just. It didn’t help things. Izuku’s suffering.
So yeah. There was just this absolute collision of a total lack of faith in current heroes combined with a huge swell of public trust in class 2-a that led us to being in the landscape we are now. All of the currently licensed heroes said that they wouldn’t be there to save the public, and then Class 2-A immediately hit back that they would be there. Actually, they’ll risk everything to be there. They’ll die to protect the public and they’ll risk the entire future they had been trying to build and they will fucking be there to save them.
There’s a lot of people that never forgave the heroes for deserting Yokohama. And there’s even more people who have absolute faith in Izuku and his classmates because they didn’t. That’s why the world is watching them so aggressively. These kids are the most trusted heroes in Japan right now.
I wish I could fit in more about what happened, because I love this backstory so much, but 1) some of it absolutely requires POVs like Endeavors, which we won’t get in pez dispenser debris, 2) there’s no one POV that could tell the full story via flashback and 3) it’d just be too long of a divergence. Like. It really is a whole fic of its own. I’d love to write it one day but I probably won’t have the time
#pez dispenser debris#bnha#the sheer drama of the battle of Yokohama#you know the fanfiction battle that lives in my head lol#it’s SO dramatic to me and I’m obsessed with it#when the footage first leaked of class 2A responding people fucking rioted#people all over the world stayed up all night to watch them fight#like They Were The Moment#it was one of those really unique moments of humanity where the entire world held its breath at the same time#and it was just them all really coming into themselves as heroes#there’s so many fucking dramatic moments of it#Izuku had the exact same analysis of all for one’s escape as endeavor#he knew he’d never get a better chance to stop him than right this second. and he also knew that all for one would be coming for him.#no one knew it would one day be his fight. endeavor didn’t know. but Izuku saw afo’s escape and realized that if he went and tried to end#him now it would be his best chance at surviving to adulthood. he picked Yokohama. he doesn’t regret that.#there’s this dramatic moment where all might finds him when they’re breaking out of the school and tells him he’s proud and then lets him go#there’s this huge dramatic fight between Izuku and Mirio and a villain team that wrecked havoc over Japan for nine months until they were#stopped by all might and sir nighteye. there’s TikTok edits of the end of the fight between them and All Might/Nighteye and the end of the#fight between them and Izuku/Mirio. there’s TikTok edits. I’m sick in the head over this fanfic battle I’m sick over it someone sedate me#the entire world is kind of obsessed over this fight but class 3A doesn’t like to talk about it. they were all sort of scared out of their#minds. like no one was coming. it was just them and some of the worst villains alive. everyone close enough to respond was responding to afo#and everyone else was too far away to make it. and like. the UNSPEAKABLE relief the heroes felt when dawn came and Yokohama was still#standing. Aizawa was one of the first to respond to Tartarus before endeavor made the call otherwise he would have been awol too. he got#news mid-battle that UAs class 2A had responded to Yokohama and he spent the entire night terrified that one of them would be dead by the#time he got there. and then he made it and his kids were bloody and exhausted and in shock but they were fucking alive.#he nearly kills yagi in the aftermath what do you MEAN you KNEW THEY WERE DOING THIS and HUGGED THEM GOODBYE#there was also this entire HPSC document leak that happened that I’ve referenced a few times but that was months later so it wasn’t part of#the perfect storm during the twoish weeks surrounding their second sports festival. like what a time. Aizawa has never been more stressed ou#in his life. except for maybe right now when there’s two Izukus and both are in crisis.
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theheirofthesharingan · 1 year ago
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“Tell me, father, which to ask forgiveness for: what I am, or what I’m not?
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Tell me, mother, which should I regret: what I became, or what I didn’t?”
- source
#i realized i almost never do anything with itachi and his parents so this one post is dedicated to them#the regret of killing them would have killed him before his actual death#what kind of child he was to raise a sword against his own parents?#his parents weren't even angry that he'd betrayed them at last#all the nightmares that would have followed him in which they hated him for everything and he would have no defense#who held him when he cried thinking of his mom? who comforted him when he choked on his tears thinking of his father's last words?#who was there for him when memories of his family became too much to handle and he would just collapse unable to breathe#maybe just maybe when the first symptoms of his illness showed he thought#that it was just one of his regular coughing fits that came with the onslaught of the memories of his parents#did he ever want to crawl back to sasuke and tell him how miserable he was and how much he missed their parents#where did the strength to be entirely indifferent and inhuman composure come to him#how much practice did it take? how many days? months? years?#did people around him ever suspect how much he was suffering?#all from thinking about his dead parents whom he killed#whose blood never left his tiny fingers and soaked into his flesh and blended into his own#how much misery was encapsulated into those expressionless features that never gave away even the slightest hint of pain#itachi uchiha#uchiha itachi#itachi#mikoto#mikoto uchiha#fugaku uchiha#fugaku
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transsongtaewon · 10 months ago
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Rereading the early chapters is fun, because you think there's a sort of funny scene coming up and then Kim Sunghan mentions his college days in passing and Yoojin thinks wouldn't it be nice to go to college. And then follows it up with I Need To Get Drunk.
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andromeda3116 · 15 days ago
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Your blorbo posting dragged me into watching The Apothecary Diaries, and it's amazing. Thank you!!! Maomao is amazing and I really like how the episode plots tie into and build on each other. I was expecting most every episode to be stand alone in the detective style and I really like the exploration of consequences, foreshadowing, and long-running plots that the connectedness allows.
(I may have just binged the first dozen or so episodes)
Isn't it fantastic? I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started watching it, but I am now feral. I love that it's more than just a bunch of random Things happening, that it's all building into a wider story, and everything about, like you said, the exploration of consequences. Not as just a "one thing leads to another" kind of thing, but in a specific "what this means in a rigid society like this" kind of way. I love how acutely aware Maomao is of those potential consequences at every moment, how she knows exactly how quickly everything can be stripped away for saying or doing the wrong thing (by whose definition of wrong, which may be capricious or over-wrought), while other characters - even the more savvy ones - aren't as aware of the danger that being smart - being noticed - puts her in.
But she also can't not speak up? She doesn't have it in her to just keep her mouth shut when people's lives are at stake. It's one thing to go "not my problem" about things that she desperately does not want to be involved in, but when a baby could die? And she has the power to save them? The only question is how. Even though she knows that this puts her in danger. Her moral core is dangerous for her, her desire to just be an apothecary and help people is dangerous for her, it all puts her in a position of having to do a political dance that she has absolutely no training for, except what she can adapt from the pleasure district's lessons. Gyokuyou says in the first episode that ignorance is a sin, but she's unaware of the consequences of knowledge. Maomao, on the other hand, is constantly aware of them. It puts her placid face and care with reactions and words into context: she cannot know certain things, and if she knows them anyway, no she doesn't.
It's very complex and fascinating, how it deals with this rigid society and the "renegade" who defies it, so so so differently than everything else. Like, Maomao defying the social structure and rising so high as "merely a servant girl" is incredibly dangerous for her! It's not something she's doing because she's So Cool and Better Than Everyone Else, it's because she couldn't hide her intelligence and people in power have dragged her into their machinations where she is forced to tapdance on a high wire of social expectations and keeping the right people happy. It's funny on the surface how she's the queen of staying in her lane, and how we as the audience know that she's not in as much danger as she thinks she is, because those people in power are head over heels in love with her, but it's absolutely terrifying from her perspective. She has to always be doing the right thing, all the time, or she risks having to choose her preferred method of execution. We know that half the Rear Palace and Inner Court would throw hands on anyone who would hurt her, but what she's aware of is how precarious her circumstances are and what she is perhaps not entirely wrong about (remains to be seen) is how fragile those affections can be. After all, she's seen top courtesans lose all of their value in a flash, or have the chance of freedom dangled over their heads and ripped away by the fickle "love" of a man. She knows that relying on the affection of others to protect her is a dangerous gamble. Maomao is such a complex and fascinating and adorable and funny and clever and heartbreaking character, I love her your honor.
And all of this doesn't even start on how positive the show is about sex work! That's also a massive breath of fresh air that totally took me off-guard like holy shit a show that treats sex as a completely neutral act? Like it's a thing people do with their bodies, either for fun or procreation or work, and none of these carries any moral weight. It doesn't pretend that sex work is not without danger or always chosen by the people doing it - but it's explicitly held up as a mirror to the Rear Palace, where women are also often in similar danger and not always there by choice. I don't know of any other show that treats sex like something completely neutral that has no moral weight, either positive or negative, and sex work as just another form of work, where the workers are framed so positively.
I binged the whole first season on Netflix and then jumped to Crunchyroll for the second as soon as I discovered that it was there, then promptly got my best friend to start watching as well, and she is also rapidly becoming feral about it too. I'm glad I caught another one in my frothing at the mouth over it!
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tevos · 1 month ago
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hey so it’s salem’s EIGHTH birthday this month can you believe he was once such a stripy brown little jellybean?
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neonhellscape · 5 months ago
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fuck it you lot can have this one too
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revvethasmythh · 6 months ago
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So I went and watched all the possible endings, and it confirmed something I had been thinking, which is that the redemption ending choice is, perhaps, the most immediately regretful one--but that they all come with some form of regret. In the redemption ending, Rook has to knowingly deny themselves the catharsis of retribution (should they desire it, which, at least for me it felt difficult not to) in order to offer Solas one last, painful chance to do the right thing. That willful denial of your own catharsis feels like an immediate regret. Giving Solas the opportunity to pursue atonement might very well be the best choice all around, but it is also incredibly painful to offer that to someone who has done so many terrible things (not a small amount to you personally). Why does he deserve another chance? Especially when so many dead (including a beloved mentor) lie in his wake? Which, I suppose, is the point: he doesn't. But you offer it anyway and it SUCKS ASS, because how could it not?
I don't know how this plays with other story choices (a sacrificed Davrin or a Harding who embraced her anger, for example), but within the context of my own choices, I can imagine an immediate satisfaction to either tricking or fighting him--especially the trick ending, where you can actively name drop Varric--but it feels like the sort of thing that would feel worse as more time passes. Once you've calmed down and are able to ask yourself if that's what the people you've lost really wanted. Varric, in Regret Superhell, didn't want vengeance. He just wanted his friend to walk a better path. And Harding always believed there was another chance for anyone, so long as you kept reaching a hand out for them--even when it sucked ass. So the redemption ending feels like a sort of indignance, an instant regret for not doing worse, for not getting comeuppance, for being forced to eschew satisfaction (related: I wonder if the Inquisitor feels those things as well coming out of this ending, considering how long they've lived under the shadow of Solas' actions). Conversely, the other two endings feel like an immediate satisfaction, because you got to trick the trickster with all the wits Varric taught you, or because you finally got to punch him in the face and it felt really good. But I feel like those endings would come with a creeping regret, something that sneaks up on you later, especially when remembering the fallen and what they would have wanted you to do. Ultimately, because of that, it feels like no ending is devoid of regret. Which I suppose, is rather thematic.
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cent-scratchnsniff · 8 months ago
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here together
#lobotomy corporation#lobcorp#lobotomy corp spoilers#lobotomy corporation spoilers#abram lobcorp#i didnt know that the song that plays during day 48 ending is called 'here together'.#couldnt hear it well because i typically have my sound low (sensetive to louder sounds) and also the dialog fucked me up#so when i pressed on it to hear it. to actually listen to it. then to see the name and remember what it Looked like#i got teary eyed. sorry.#it happened quite. afew times when finishing this shitty thing#i was thinking of how camren's not quite corpse looked as if it were reaching out to him inside the container#how it looked as if she had wings. abrams words. the line from one story that was--#something like 'we were hoping it was just one big prank and she would hop out fro. around the corner with a smile on her face'#how do you move forward when all you think you cause is pain? when everything else youve done only brought to bring people you love to thei#downfall and demise inside agony and fear as they lay dying. none of that was merciful. none of that was just. they were told to carry on#her dream and he views as if all he had done was to become cruel and wasnt fit and never even began to finish what she started.#it was so striking to me. the language he used. sleeping. alseep. waken. when all the others never sugarcoated it#in lobcorp they always said it straight. 'suicide' 'killed' 'dead'. but he used something far more.. peaceful? kind in wording in a way.#softer. describing death as if it were a merciful thing. an end that suits them and not something to be afraid of. to just... sink. to slee#to be with carmen again. to put everything to an end#the place they built with their hands. to have it just... stop. not in a way of repeating and staying in the moment#but of a permanent end. to 'sleep'. to die. to just.... stop. forever. to see no more. to do no more#to not be able to do Anything for when ever he had done Something it just cause agony. cruel hands partaking in acts he so deeply#regrets. everything is just regret. it sounds nice. to move on. to just move forward. but how can you move forward when all you think you#bring to those you cherished and couldnt leave behind is pain?#ill likely move this somewhere else as well. ive been meaning to talk about abram#the rest as well actually. mostly just the few final days w abel adam and abram since i am STUCK ON DAY 49#oh dear i uh typed a lot in the tags. oops
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singingcicadas · 2 years ago
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Your boss can be friends with you, but you can't be friends with your boss.
Perfect example of different expectations of different societal roles. Considering everyone a friend is the quality of a good leader, it demonstrates affinity and empathy to the people of which he leads, but at that level no one can ever consider him a friend back, at least not on an equal degree. There's no closeness, no real camaraderie. The position of Prime always takes precedence over any personal relationships. He is a Prime before he is his own person.
This is also the reason why I think Optimus can never go back to being Orion. Why an ending for Optimus as the retired common citizen is never an option. He's been exalted as a political/spiritual symbol for four million years, used to a position of power, it's not something he can simply renounce one day and expect people's perceptions to change. It's not even possible to change his own perceptions of himself, however much he might like to. You just can't erase four million years of ingrained mindset. He will be viewed as a threat to those in power and undermine their presence just by existing. People will flock to him regardless whether he wants it or not. On a personal level, he's never been the kind of peaceful obedient citizen who takes comfort in trying to live a normal life. Giving up being Prime means giving up control: he will never be content to pasture himself out and wait for other people to make decisions for him when the next crisis arises. He will never be content to have his words hold no weight when he speaks out against the next injustice.
Being Prime is not just a job, it's an identity. One that's defined by four million years of experience in a niche societal role with very specific expectations, of which he'd molded himself to fit. It's a lonely, crushing burden, associated with war and the old order and the question of whether one person should even have that kind of power - but for good or bad it's also a part of him. Taking that away would be truncation, not freedom.
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mothcrumbs · 1 month ago
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microwave plushie time. dragonwarmth. dragonComfort
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antiadvil · 5 months ago
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Imo you’re actually phil who runs this account (and your ao3) and are undercover I just have a feeling you are phil
an easy mistake to make, i also have migraines and beautiful blue eyes and am in love with dan howell <3
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pergaminaa · 5 months ago
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Modern au
Manon’s grandmother doesn’t see Manon’s daughter much, if at all. It was a decision both Manon and Dorian have agreed on; Dorian knows how vile the woman is, and while Manon is not cutting the woman off completely, she won’t let her daughter be subjected to that woman.
The Blackbeak matron doesn’t care either way. She knows of the child’s existence, and she already knows that she’s a lost cause, not worthy of her time and energy.
But you know which (great) grandmother gets unlimited time with the child? Glennis.
The woman is so kind and motherly and so very caring. She wants to spend time with the child, and despite the hiccups with Manon (she’s trying okay, but she can’t magically unlearn everything and be normal. But Manon knows that Glennis is a safe person which is why she has no issues dropping off her child at her great grandmother’s house)
Glennis loves it. She knows that while Manon struggles a lot with her feelings, the fact that she’s trusting her with her child for hours is telling the old woman all she needs to know. Manon just can’t express herself properly and that fine, her actions are enough.
So really, whenever Dorian and Manon plan something just for the two of them, baby is dropped off at Glennis’ house to spend a whole day bonding with her grandmother. Also, whenever Bronwen knows the baby is there, she visits Glennis and spend time with the baby.
So really, it’s just baby bonding with the Crochan side of the family with no issues because they’re safe and Manon actually trust them. As for the Blackbeak side, she only trusts her Thirteen and that’s about it.
#booklr#books and reading#throne of glass#manon blackbeak#tog#dorian havilliard#manon x dorian#manorian#asterin blackbeak#glennis crochan#bronwen crochan#idk just imagine Glennis arguing with a one year old who insists on having an opinion even when she can’t speak#she loves the child she has a whole nursery set up in her home and as the child grew she still had her own room with everything she needs#so much bonding between them because Glennis want to make up for not being there for Manon for most of her life#she doesn’t want to have regrets and just want to be close with Tristan’s offspring#those are her blood relatives and doesn’t want to let them go#she has her doubts with Manon at first because she’s just so closed off#but she learned that Manon is not the type to speak about anything#and to watch for other cues#which she did#and she understood her much better but also felt bad for her#because what kind of life did you have to make you this way#Manon def was on the wrong path for a long long while#but luckily at that stage in her life Asterin (and her mother) were there to kind of interfere when things got out of hand#something like Asterin’s mother flying to Switzerland when she learned that Manon spends almost every Christmas alone there#’you know the school is closed right?’ she told the matron while wondering what is a 14 year old doing all by herself#she was so angry at her mother but also needed to travel to find out what’s going on#yes Manon was traveling on her own but ALSO at one point she was noticed by the wrong people#honestly she was so starved for attention all it takes is a little bit and she’s completely won over#anyway that’s a whole other post lmao back to the main point
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ochrearia · 7 months ago
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My RSD versus the fact I can visually see when my follower count goes down. Life could be a dream if I didn't get so dumbly sad about the idea of someone choosing to let go of me for whatever reason but I always take it as a problem with myselfSADSFDGF
Just dont look at it. Its Fine
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