#to being about him isolating himself rather than abt control

[messiahzzz]

i have been thinking a lot about mystra’s relationship with gale, how reducing her to “his ex” really is an understatement. she was and still is so much more than that. moreover, using the term “ex-girlfriend” in relation to her plainly feels wrong and diminishes the influence she has over him, as well as the role she played in his life since his childhood (and it also trivializes the abuse he suffered through her).

there are several instances where gale gets defensive when his companions mention or ask him abt mystra. he claims that their relationship was no less real even though most of their interactions were incorporeal.

we have already established that gale is an unreliable narrator in this particular case, still not having fully come to terms with the fact that he was groomed, manipulated and abused. he ping-pongs between bouts of realization (even in his romance), gaining clarity that he was merely used and eventually discarded and that mystra never truly cared for him, back to making light of his situation, idealizing her once again. realizing the extent of his trauma, that he is indeed a victim in this scenario, unlearning what he has been made to believe from a young age is a slow and painful journey. he is in the process of healing, but it takes time. time he deserves just like anyone else.

which makes me wonder what their relationship really looked like, once the lines between teacher, muse, and lover began to blur. i also feel like one of the reasons why part of the fandom still struggles to identify mystra as his abuser, is because she is a white woman who initially presents herself in a soft-spoken, benevolent manner… and well, the fact that gale himself is ambitious to a fault and a lil insane about the promise of power. he also briefly mentions "crossing mystra’s boundaries” when he confides in tav and tells them about his folly. (“i am, after all, the villain in this story.”) which led to a looooot of misinterpretations.

leaving the overall lore and mystra’s treatment of her other chosen aside — what we can discern from her interactions with gale in-game, is that mystra is civil as long as she remains in control and gale follows her demands, but as soon as there’s even a slight mention of challenging her power or defying her rule, she rather quickly changes her tone.

there is also one particular exchange between them that just won’t leave my head:

“you were many things to me, but never a threat. and never a savior."

even if we choose to blatantly ignore the fact that mystra is a deity, his goddess - there is no possible way that their relationship ever could have been equal by any mortal standards. the power imbalance that comes with her being his teacher and a symbol of his admiration, plus the sheer control she holds over him and his powers are simply too great. don’t even let me get started on how it is a common tactic of abusers to isolate their victims from any outside influences so they can exert full control over them. and how up to meeting tav and their merry band of misfits, every single soul he was close to was inevitably tied to mystra in one way or another. he briefly mentions his colleagues and then there’s elminster, also mystra’s chosen and former lover, and tara, who is a fine wizard in her own right. he spend so many years in service of her, dedicating his life to her, that now there is no one left he can truly call a friend. most of his little anecdotes and stories he tells are restricted to his childhood and university days, everything else was mystra.

evidently, ordering gale to detonate the orb is the most efficient course of action in her eyes. he is just as expendable as any other mortal, after all. maybe once significantly more useful given his status and the extent of his powers, but she doesn’t feel sorrow nor remorse for ordering him to end his life. his death is simply the most convenient means to an end.

another thing i would also like to briefly touch upon is the trigger/detonator itself. a dagger to the heart. it could have been literally anything else, a simple incantation. it is well within mystra’s power to stabilize the orb and also to remove it from his body entirely. but no, what she requires of gale is to stab himself. one might argue that it was simply a cinematic choice meant for a more dramatic effect, but it really leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. especially considering the fact that she is commonly known and referred to as a jealous goddess. it almost makes it seem like yet another form of punishment or mere pettiness. after his long period of isolation, gale is now surrounded by fellow humans. people he cares about, even perhaps people he might eventually consider good friends — which is enough of a reason for him to not want to die, to keep going and try to find another way, rather than to blindly follow mystra’s bidding. now there’s a group of people who support him and are genuinely invested in him staying alive. hmmm...

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #bg3 spoilers #baldurs gate 3 spoilers #mystra #yes again ugh #i know we have been through this so many times #also another thing i forgot to mention: #apparently there are several ending variations where gale relinquishes the crown of karsus to her #but mystra only temporarily stabilizes the orb and doesn't remove it #huh #this was a long one sorry #bg3 meta #grooming cw #abuse cw

[thatoneudguy]

As much as he's a pain in the ass, Mike is a fascinating character to me.

Like. He's so well liked in the group, even when he says/does bad things he seems to get away relatively unscathed. This coupled with the fact his honesty trait is so low makes me believe he achieves this through lying/bending the truth to make himself seem better. He's seemingly the type to tell people exactly what they want to hear rather than what would actually be his honest opinion. And that makes people like him.

He also needs to be the hero/in control of any given situation. He takes charge a lot, (his dream job is literally being the US president) and the group generally listen to what he has to say. On the flip of this, he fears isolation. He hates being alone, because there's nobody to back him up, because as confident as he seems in his choices theres usually some kind of support, or at least something he can interpret as such. He's lost without others to agree with his decisions, and that makes him anxious.

He's got a pretty fragile ego. He hates it when pranks are played on him, he goes quiet immediately when Sam tells him to shut up when the stranger is talking, and stays quiet because nobody encourages him to rant more. He's only going to keep talking if the others actually feed into what he's saying and agree with him. Which is part of why he's so dishonest, because he cares more about whether the others will still like him rather than his actual opinions.

Idk I just think Mike is super intruguing when you actually think abt him and his actions and traits instead of just putting him in the 'hero character' box.

#until dawn #i am so tired #this makes little sense i apologise #mike munroe #michael munroe #ud mike #he is not a great person #but hes a super interesting character

[equalseleventhirds]

If it helps, I don't think it's the idea of Martin being manipulative in general that's evil. In canon it's pointed out a lot that he has that trait, but he also uses it to do things like letting people have a brief respite within fear domains. Probably him being an Avatar for the Web would have been that but on a bigger scale. So, betraying and manipulating a corrupted Jon for the sake of saving the lives of people in the apocalypse. Or something, idk.

sorta? idk i may just be unclear on the q&a, but jonny and alex talk abt how fandom wasn’t receiving martin’s pettiness & manipulation, and so making him web at the end would land wrong and make ppl think he’d been lying & evil the whole time (which i read as implying they... did not intend for him to be lying & evil the whole time, just at the very end, but thought fandom would think that based on his minor manipulations culminating in him being taken over by spiders)

which is still not a. happy implication, for me. it’s nice that jonny & alex maybe would not have intended it that way, but i’m saddened by the fact that a huge chunk of fandom WOULD have taken it that way (just look at all the ‘martin’s secretly evil’ stuff that went on during s5), and that jonny and alex didn’t see this as an issue they could rectify by making martin’s pettiness/manipulation come across more clearly in canon

#fandom wank #don't reblog thx #part of it for me is that this fandom tendency to go 'martin isn't manipulative he's a good person' #(which i have seen a LOT of ppl say and i joined after s4) #was strong enough that they didn't think his manipulative side was landing at ALL #so leaning into it would've made ppl think of him as evil? #like i LIKE lonely!eye!martin i think that's such a neat angle #i like to think that to THEM it just changed the background behind his pettiness and manipulation #to being about him isolating himself rather than abt control #which would be good i think? #i just. idk. #i've heard SO MUCH 'martin's never petty or manipulative he's always good' stuff from fandom #as tho those things are mutually exclusive #that i hate to think of THAT mindset having serious influence on his canonical arc #.........like i said i am just mopey and sleepy it's fine #Anonymous

[bluejayblueskies]

Please say more abt how Martin fits the closed off trait I'm begging 👁👁

Okay, so I got a bit carried away with this and it got quite lengthy....

I've put a TLDR above the cut and the details, transcripts, and general discussion below the cut!

.

TLDR: Martin is at his core a closed-off character who keeps his vulnerable feelings hidden and close to his chest. He instead focuses on caring for others and considering their feelings above his own, particularly in the case of Jon, who he cares for (sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice) throughout the podcast. His arc with the Lonely in season four and his interactions with Jon in season five demonstrate this lack of emotional vulnerability, and it's really only during the moments he spends by himself that we get significant insight into Martin's emotional state and inner thoughts.

.

Martin, to me, is a character who is very used to hiding how he feels. He tends to care for others at the expense of himself, has low self-esteem, and has a predilection towards the Lonely, all of which go hand-in-hand with somebody who is very used to hiding their emotions--particularly the negative ones--because they either think they're not important or that they're inconvenient and inappropriate for the situation. On a textual level, that's probably due to growing up with a sick (and likely unsupportive) mother who he had to take care of, where there was 'no time' for his emotions to get in the way or for him to prioritize himself in any way, shape, or form.

Martin is self-destructive, dislikes moments of emotional vulnerability, and (I would argue) genuinely struggles when he doesn't have somebody else to prioritize over himself. (His mother at first, but as the series goes on, Jon settles comfortably into this role for him.) Additionally, the biggest way that we, the audience, know anything about Martin's emotional state is when he's alone and self-reflecting (such as in MAG 170 and 186 or when talking to the tapes) or when he's forced to talk about something vulnerable (such as when Jon confronted him about his CV).

We don't get much insight into Martin's character between seasons one and three (at least not as much as we get in four and five), but I find myself drawn to this bit in MAG 118, when Martin is talking to Elias:

MARTIN

So what? I don’t get to be angry? I don’t get to burn things? Just, just run around, making tea, while everyone else gets to actually have feelings?

I think two things are important to note here. The first is that Elias is surprised (or least intrigued) that Martin is acting in this way--specifically, acting on his emotions in such a dramatic way. (And given that Martin is doing this as a distraction, rather than actually acting out because of his own emotions, maybe he's right to be surprised.) The second is that this line very much implies that Martin doesn't talk about how he's feeling, not like 'everyone else' does. He doesn't talk about it, doesn't act on it--just 'runs around, making tea.' And when Melanie comes back in after Elias is done, Martin immediately focuses on the plan and whether it succeeded, ignoring Melanie when she asks if he's okay or not. He closes himself off, and as far as we know, doesn't talk about it at all after that.

And then Jon goes into his coma, and we reach season four.

Martin is incredibly closed-off during season four. He's self-isolating, self-sacrificial, and approaching a state of genuine emotional numbness by the time he's cast into the Lonely. There's a lot to unpack there, but I'm going to focus on a few main things, many of which can be drawn from this bit in MAG 158:

MARTIN

It’s not him! It’s not anybody. It’s just me. Always has been. I…

When I first came to you, I thought I had lost everything. Jon was dead, my mother was dead, the job I had put everything into trapped me into spreading evil and I… I really didn’t care what happened to me. I told myself I was trying to protect the others, but… honestly we didn’t even like each other. Maybe I just thought joining up with you would be a good way to get killed.

And then… Jon came back, and… and suddenly I had a reason I had to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control so you didn’t take it out on him. And if that meant drifting further away, so what? I’d already grieved for him. And if it meant now saving him, it was worth it.

When you started talking about the Extinction, though… you had me actually, then, for a while. But then – (laughs sardonically) then, you tried to make me the hero. Tried to sell me on the idea that I was the only one who could stop it. And that I’ve never sat right with me. I mean, I mean, look – look at me, I’m not exactly a – a chosen one. But by then I was in too deep. So I played along. Waited to see what your end game was, and here we are.

Funny. Looks like I was right the first time. It’s probably still a good way to get killed?

This monologue is a big insight into Martin's thought process during this season, and I'm mostly going to focus on two parts: the self-sacrifice and the prioritization of Jon.

Self-sacrifice

There's quite a bit of discussion about Jon's self-sacrificial tendencies, but less so about Martin's, both in this season and in season five. In my opinion, Jon's self-sacrificial tendencies originate from (among other things) survivor's guilt from his traumatic childhood experience with Mr. Spider, his increasing belief that he's less than human, and the fact that he prioritizes the lives of others over his own. Martin's self-sacrificial tendencies, while very similar, come from the fact that he thinks he only has worth if he can help and care for someone else and the fact that he doesn't think he's important enough to live. (For example, he says in MAG 158 that he's 'not exactly a chosen one' and says in MAG 198 that he's 'not important enough to kill.')

It's a subtle difference between these two things, and I would argue that while Jon's tendencies are more rooted in the 'help' (ie, 'I want to help other people and I will sacrifice myself to do it'), Martin's tendencies are more rooted in the 'hurt' (ie, 'I will sacrifice myself and other people will be helped in the process'). There is, of course, overlap, and it's not a black-and-white distinction between the two, but ultimately, I think Martin is so used to prioritizing others' emotions and needs above his own that when he's left mostly alone as he is at the end of season three, with the only person left to hold onto being in a coma (possibly forever), he falls back into the same patterns of self-destruction and closed-offness, only without the 'help' to go along with the 'hurt' because there is nobody left to help (especially after his mother dies). Ultimately, he joins up with Peter because he thinks it 'would be a good way to get killed.'

Prioritization of Jon

But then Jon wakes up from his coma, and now Martin has justification for his self-sacrifice again, because he can protect Jon by continuing to work with Peter!

... Maybe.

Jon isn't harmed by Peter during season four, sure, but he does climb into the coffin and visits Ny-Ålesund and is tracked down by Julia and Trevor and struggles emotionally and morally with his own humanity and is hurt, in a way, by the distance Martin puts between them. And I hesitate to place blame for the apocalypse on anybody but Jonah, but if we're going to argue in-canon that Jon was responsible for the apocalypse (he wasn't, but that's not the point of this post), then Martin contributed to that blame and responsibility because it was his actions and decisions that ultimately drew Jon into the Lonely and resulted in him getting the 14th and final mark. (Again, I don't think Jon or Martin are at fault for the apocalypse, but if we were to blame Jon, we could blame Martin as well.) It was only after getting that mark that Jonah was able to use Jon to end the world, something that was hugely hurtful for Jon. So did Martin really protect Jon at all by staying away from him and continuing to work with Peter? Or was that just a convenient excuse to keep self-destructing?

Jon and Martin, in my opinion, had very similar arcs in season four. Martin was sinking further into the Lonely and Jon was sinking further into the Eye. We hear a lot more about Jon's emotional struggle with this given that he's the POV character, sure, but Jon also talks about this with other people. He talks about it to Helen (MAG 152):

JON

…

When does it stop?

HELEN

(impatient) What?

JON

The guilt. The misery. All the others I’ve met, they’ve been – cold, cruel. They’ve enjoyed what they do. When does the Eye (inhale) make me monstrous?

And to Daisy (MAG 136):

JON

My – (large sigh) My memories of the coma are not clear, but I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I – I don’t know if I made the right decision; I’m stronger now, tougher, I can – (he cuts himself off) If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever? I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else, so if I can maybe – stop that happening, and the only danger is to me, I – I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario, the universe loses another monster.

But all we really get from Martin are the things he tells the tapes when he's alone and the monologue he gives in MAG 158. It makes sense that he wouldn't be as open, yes, given the nature of the Lonely, but I can't help but think of (MAG 154):

JON

The Lonely’s really got you, hasn’t it?

MARTIN

(no hesitation) You know, I think it always did.

Jon was always curious and hungry for knowledge; the Eye amplified it. Martin was always closed-off and isolated; the Lonely amplified that as well.

But then Jon pulls Martin out of the Lonely, they flee to the safehouse, and three weeks later, the apocalypse begins. Martin isn't as consumed by the Lonely as he was in season four, he's with Jon--the person he loves--for extended periods of time, and they're in an extremely stressful situation that's sure to be incredibly emotionally charged. There's a lot to be said about Jon's emotional vulnerability during season five and how Martin both pressures him for it and rejects it in different ways, but for the purposes of this post, I won't go too far into detail about the motivations behind how Jon is feeling and acting.

I will say, however, that in season five, Martin still continues to place a lot of focus on asking Jon how he's feeling, encouraging (or pressuring) him to share, and getting frustrated when Jon can't or doesn't (MAG 167):

MARTIN

Okay, so how exactly would you describe your current emotional state regarding all of this?

JON

I –

MARTIN

(overlapping) Go on, I’m all ears.

JON

I feel…

MARTIN

(go on) Mhm.

JON

(sigh) I feel… sad.

[Brief pause.] MARTIN

(flat) Sad.

JON

Very sad.

MARTIN

(*very* flat) Very sad.

[He sighs slightly as he says it. Their bags jangle.]

A few moments prior to this, Martin expresses displeasure that Jon is Knowing things about him, specifically pointing out his emotions (MAG 167):

MARTIN

It’s just – it’s weird knowing that you can know literally everything I think and feel. E-Especially since you’re not exactly the most open of people – emotionally, I mean.

I think Martin is making an effort to open up more to Jon. But I still think it's difficult for him to talk about how he feels so openly, and while he is completely in the right for not wanting Jon to Know things about him without his permission, I think it's interesting that the focus is on his feelings and that he brings up how Jon isn't emotionally open immediately after. It scares Martin to think that Jon could know, at any given moment, how he's feeling, and I think it's partially because he's not used to that level of vulnerability. He turns the focus on Jon, away from himself, and doesn't really make an effort to talk about how he's feeling about all of this, instead prioritizing Jon's feelings and mental state like he's grown comfortable with.

And when Martin bottles up his emotions--of which there are a lot, in such a stressful environment, they can explode out in hurtful ways:

MARTIN

(overlapping) I know! I know, okay, I just – (bracing exhale) Look, I j,just – don’t want to get burned, all right? It’s, it’s like my least favorite pain ever.

JON

Is that – a joke?

MARTIN

(a bit faster, a bit shaky) No, no, okay? I, I legitimately hate burns, alright? They’re, they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just – it – it just makes me sick; I, I hate it. Hate it!

I don't think Martin really thought about what he was saying when he told Jon, who has a large burn scar on his hand, that burn scars make him sick, and I don't think he meant it maliciously. But he'd spent the greater portion of the conversation talking around the fact that he didn't like burns and that was why he didn't want to go into the building, and so when it finally ended up coming out, it did so in an explosion of emotion rather than a conscious decision to share. Martin doesn't have a good handle on his emotions, and he doesn't have a good handle on sharing them.

(Is it too much for me to say that Martin was more emotionally vulnerable with himself in MAG 170 than he was with Jon when Jon finally found him?)

Throughout season five, Martin asks Jon questions, he expresses frustrations with Jon, he shows discomfort or fear at times, but for as much as Martin feels frustrated that Jon isn't talking about how he feels about their situation, Martin really isn't doing so either. The most he talks about his feelings is in MAG 170 and MAG 186, when he's by himself, and I remember MAG 186 in particular because before that, we really didn't know what Martin was thinking about for the majority of the season! And in this episode, we find out a lot of very important things about Martin's character. Like (MAG 186):

ALSO MARTIN

Look, I know what you know. Maybe I’m just a bit more… open about it.

Also-Martin acknowledges that Martin often doesn't say what he means and hides what he really feels, telling him that it's 'hard to be vulnerable,' and Martin is initially very resistant to the idea. And then, when Also-Martin suggests that Martin wants to stay so that he can be 'quietly sad,' we get (MAG 186):

MARTIN

We could talk to Jon about it.

ALSO MARTIN

We could. But we both know that loved ones make the worst therapists. They’re too wrapped up in trying to stop you hurting to actually help. But hey, we know all about that, am I right?

MARTIN

There’s nothing wrong with comforting people.

ALSO MARTIN

A cup of tea isn’t a resolution. At best it’s a… a plaster. At worst… a muzzle.

This is very interesting to me, because for all that Martin tries to help other people, he also believes that comfort doesn't always help and that you can't be your loved one's 'therapist.' I think this gives a lot of insight into why Martin doesn't share his emotions with the people he cares about, especially Jon; he doesn't want to put Jon in the position where he'll become his 'therapist,' and he doesn't necessarily think Jon can help. So instead, Martin just chooses not to be vulnerable at all, because he doesn't want to burden the people he cares about. But, when it's just him (MAG 186):

ALSO MARTIN

Don’t lie. You don’t need to. Not here. It’s just us.

He doesn't feel like he needs to pull his emotional punches. He can't accidentally hurt somebody or put them in an awkward position; it's just himself. But what's said to himself remains with himself, and (at least on tape), he doesn't discuss any of this with Jon. Not even the bit about, if it came down to it, Martin would have rather had Jon smite him than continue to rule over a domain. He goes right back to being closed-off around Jon, but now we, the audience, know what lies underneath, and how little of it reaches the surface.

In fact, the thing Martin's probably most vocal about is how Jon's feelings about himself bother him (MAG 199):

MARTIN

I guess that’s why it really bothers me, you know? I try, but I can’t actually imagine ever making a decision that I knew meant losing you.

And it… It hurts to know you can.

And I think he has a tendency to use anger and frustration to cover up hurt, shying away from the admission that something Jon's done has hurt him (an incredibly vulnerable thing) and instead relying on the less-vulnerable and more external anger to cover it. This is more speculation than true analysis, but I think that's a lot of what's happening in MAG 200, when he discovers that Jon has already assumed the position of the pupil and has, in Martin's eyes, broken his promise.

.

TLDR: Martin is at his core a closed-off character who keeps his vulnerable feelings hidden and close to his chest. He instead focuses on caring for others and considering their feelings above his own, particularly in the case of Jon, who he cares for (sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice) throughout the podcast. His arc with the Lonely in season four and his interactions with Jon in season five demonstrate this lack of emotional vulnerability, and it's really only during the moments he spends by himself that we get significant insight into Martin's emotional state and inner thoughts.

#tma #the magnus archives #martin blackwood #tma meta #jonathan sims #(because i do talk about jon a bit in this too) #i actually think martin isn't good with emotions at all #both his own and others' #i think he doesn't quite know what to do with them so he puts on a mask and defaults to things he knows will work #*thinks about the low empathy autistic martin high empathy autistic jon post with love in my heart*

[nyaagolor]

may we please get the mirror world headcanons?

heck yes u may

Most of it will be under the cut bc I talk a lot

I like to think the Mirror World is a reflection of the regular world (I call it Prime World for convenience's sake), and by reflection I mean opposite. It's not opposite in a "good v evil" way, just in the sense that a mirror world counterpart is the inverse of their prime world self, for better or for worse. For example, Noddies in Prime World sleep for most of their lives, while Mirror Noddies barely ever sleep and are constantly alert. Instead of a Sleep Ability, they give Panic, aka the Kirby equivalent of slurping down 15 espresso shots in a row. The mirror world counterparts are no better or worse than the prime world, just different!

Headcanons for all the mirror world counterparts of the Star Allies (or at least the ones I've thought abt) are under the cut :3c

Shadow Kirby (Skirby): Where Prime Kirby is reckless, bold, and overconfident, Skirby is reserved, cautious, and kinda pessimistic. They're no weaker or meaner than Prime Kirby, but seem a bit shy and non-confrontational because they always want to scope out the scene before they launch into anything. Some might call it cowardly, but Skirby thinks it's pragmatic. Much like prime Kirby, though, he's the hero of Popstar and is usually the planet's last defense against whatever eldritch horror comes their way. He deserves a break, though, since unlike Prime Kirby he's not surrounded by friends to help him out

Shadow Dedede (SDDD): He started off as a good king, always being diligent, professional, and responsible in contrast to Prime DDD's self-serving, goofy ways. He wanted what was best for the mirror world, but life didn’t make it easy. The mirror dees, rather than the loyal helpers we know from the prime world, were backstabbing jerks who were loyal to no one but themselves. SDDD tried so hard to be a good king, but had no one to help, no one to pull him out of a slump, so he just slipped through the cracks and got worse. Bitterness and anger consumed him until he started looking out for himself and himself only. He became a tyrant, turning into an iron-fisted, merciless ruler whose laws were enforced through violence. DDD got better with the help of his friends, but SDDD got much, MUCH worse as a result of his isolation and loneliness. Also he has a battle axe instead of a hammer bc I think it's cool

Dark Meta Knight (DMK): He's basically the antithesis of a knight: he's willing to work for anyone no matter how rotten they are; he always plans on backstabbing them later, cares about no one but himself, never plays fair, and is a lazy, rude jerk. He likes spicy foods instead of sweets, challenges children to duels WITHOUT offering them a sword first, and is deathly afraid of heights, despite having wings. He was in the process of creating a land-razing tank called the Halberd, but his crew betrayed him and cut up his wings and mask so now he isolates himself out of anger and fear. After being with the Star Allies, he's made some friends and realized the value of teamwork-- also he likes teaching Adeleine swears. With Dark Mind gone and the Mirror World still a bit of a dump, DMK would much rather hang out in the prime world and get on Meta Knight's nerves. He tries his best to protect the two (2) people in the mirror world he does tolerate, though (it's skirby and sddd).

Mirror Bandee: Hates SDDD with a passion. In fact, he's attempted to assassinate the king at least 26 times, but fails both because SDDD is way smarter than him and also Mirror Bandee is a sniveling coward who runs at the first sign of danger. His repeated failures have made him more of a scaredy cat, so no one takes him seriously anymore. He has a knife and ties his bandana around his "mouth" like a scarf, but it doesn't help to make him more intimidating. His repeated attempts to kill the king (and more recently Skirby and DMK, who hang out with SDDD) have become a constant in their lives and weirdly enough they don't mind his company.

Mirror Marx: I always assumed that Prime Marx was a noddy with Mirror instead of sleep. Well Mirror Marx is the opposite-- instead of having Panic like the regular hyperactive Mirror Noddies, he has sleep. He didn't show up for the events of Amazing Mirror bc he was snoozin. Because of this, he never got the Nova's powers, never tricked skirby, and never did anything evil. In fact, unlike Prime Marx, Mirror Marx cares too much about everyone's feelings, is always kind, and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He's the glue holding the mirror world together bc not even the worst of villains want to hurt him. He's just so darn CUTE

Mirror Animal Friends: Imagine the animal friends. Give them angry expressions and sunglasses. Now make them part of a gang. Yeah that's it. The Animals are no friend of skirby's and would sooner maul the poor kid than ever lend him a paw (or flipper or wing). The forest bows to their whims and they rule it like your typical mafia boss. They're jerks.

Mirror Daroach: See these posts.

Dark Taranza: Hoo BOY he's bad. He's real bad. He rules over Mirror Floralia (Sporalia?) which is underground and filled with nasty creepy crawlies. He hates getting his hands dirty and will do anything it takes to get more power and luxury so long as he doesn't have to put himself in danger. He only cares about one thing, and that's himself. What about Queen Sectonia, you ask? She was the original queen of Mirror Floralia, but Dark Taranza mind-controlled her into his puppet to do his bidding. When the people finally snapped and declared war on the tyrannical queen, it was her they shattered, being none the wiser that Dark Taranza was the one pulling the strings. He still has a box of her shards in his castle, just in case he needs a new puppet to play with. He loves jewels and machines, all things inorganic. The imperfections of flowers? Not his style.

Mirror Magolor: Quick tangent here: Mirror Lor Starcutter, rather than being a ship to BRING people to paradise, is a sort of pocket paradise, a little virtual reality magic... thing. It can also be easily modified to only open from the outside. That's important for later. Anyway, Mirror Magolor is brutally honest, but also rude, unfriendly, impulsive, and incredibly violent. He hates machines and will start punching a lamppost if he accidentally walks into it. Scrappy little dude. He would actually rather claw his ears off than be friends with another living being. He just likes brawling and destroying ancient artifacts and that's it. Well one day he tells the mirror crew he wants to go get this thing called the Master Crown so he can destroy it. SDDD, Skirby, Mirror Bandee and DMK realize hey, that'd be nice for us to have, let's join him and then betray him at the last minute. As soon as they get there, though, the crown ends up choosing Mirror Mags as a host before anyone can do anything. Oops! The others manage to shatter him... but then the crown pulls his shards back together and attacks them again. Realizing he's both totally lost it and also immortal, the others lock Mirror Mags inside the Lor as the crown erodes the last of his humanity. Consumed by blind rage and the crown's power, Mirror Magolor just lashes out at anything that moves, biting and clawing at whatever he can reach like a feral cat. There's like a 80% chance he has rabies.

Sorry to Susie, Gooey, Adeleine, and all the non-Star Allies crew, I haven't thought abt them yet

#THANK U FOR THE ASK #i love sharing headcanons #kirby #dark meta knight #shadow dedede #shadow kirby #dark taranza #mirror world #amazing mirror #mirror marx #mirror magolor #mirror daroach #mirror animal friends #Headcanon #mod vex

[mariaiscrafting]

ahhhh ty ty ty <3

ok, so I think that what makes Dream act this way (iykyk) is how dreamwastaken became so big so quickly. and by quick I mean fucking lightning speed.

he didn't have enough time to learn enough about cc etiquette, especially in these three aspects: influence, boundaries and fanbase/stans/whatever you call it. I'll try to explain it:

• Influence: Does he know the influence he has? Like, when he hears that he is the myct with the largest fanbase, does he really process that? I remember he talked about not being able to control all of his fanbase and there's bad apples everywhere -- which is true, and that only like 1% of his fanbase breaks his boundaries (that include sending hate for him, harassing, doxing, etc. yk, basic twitter culture lol) but, honey, with your big ass fanbase, 1% is still a lot of people. As a content creator you *have* to be aware of that.

let's take the hbomb situation. First off, as a streamer, it's you that set the mood of the stream. Even if he was only messing around with his pals, even if they did say to do not send hate to hbomb, dt dunking on him created a toxic environment, which caused his fans being toxic towards hbomb and you know what happens next. Hell, when this happened, I was watching Tapl and he was watching them and he was crying laughing over them screaming bc they were just. so loud and so aggressive that it was kinda ??? Sirs, this is literally a Minecraft Stream lmaooo

my point is, that was not the road that dreamwastaken, 21M fans, should've taken. he don't condone his fans actions but he knows his fans are diehard and will always be on his side, he should be more careful before stating negative opinions, especially if its towards another person.

• Boundaries and Fanbase: He posted a list of his boundaries a while ago, idk if you know or seen it (btw please george copy your bestie for the love of god <3) but I'm not talking about those boundaries, I'm talking about the basic boundaries between cc and viewer. boundaries that, in my opinion, should exist between cc and viewer. I get that Dream is an open person, an oversharing type of open person if I may add, but I think he should take a step back regardless. When I heard that he was taking a time from twitter, I genuinely got so glad, not because he couldn't start any drama then, but because it would do so so good for his mental health. I'm not even that fond of him, it's just that for me, any cc taking a break or outright leaving twitter is a win for me. I know how RSD is hard to deal and honestly letting shit out it's better but dream you have dt you have bbh so please don't make things worse online 😭 I know how good can be to feel validation from millions of people but. it's not a good idea, especially in the state that his fanbase is on rn (this topic is kinda sensitive to talk abt for me bc people be outright ableist and hide it as criticism like. say that shit's not helping his reputation and whatever without acting like he's fucking. manipulating his fanbase for being affected by his rsd💀 or, on the other hand, don't say that hes just being adhd🤪 when he's just being an asshole like damn that's a Him thing bro lol)

(omg it's so big I'm so sorry and theres a part two I'm so sorry tumblr user messed-up-gal ToT) - morango 1/2

pt. 2:

Dream is the proof that the people who loves you can be your downfall. istg. Have you noticed that every drama that Dream enters, people usually get more mad abt how his fanbase reacts (85% they'll react in a bad way) than Dream himself? it's not always, but its definitely more likely. I'm not saying Dream is saint, he Is petty and his ego does him dirty and made him choke multiple times before,, But! i dont think hes a bad guy. he's literally just a dude. ok, he's a 21yr old white gamer man that has a trumpie past (maybe?? idk. I think hes cured now ig lol) so he's bound to do some shitty things but he still tries to get better and hopefully he'll mature. 21 is old enough but it's still so young, yk? I kind of lost my mind during the end and my eyes are literally begging to be closed so tl;dr: Its gonna be hard for him to become a better cc bc his fans don't let him be criticized (by infantilizing his adhd symptoms or the mob mentality as soon as someone says anything abt him), the honest criticism get lost between lies from antis that don't know shit, he still has a lot of growing up to do and overall he became famous too fast and he needs to learn things even faster bc as soon as there's not a single one dream hater on sight they'll turn their back and attack him instead lmao I hate twitter i definitely have more to say but I'm tired and my memory is shit. just-- hate dream if you want, love dream if you want, nobody is obligated to have an opinion but I wanted to express mine. have a lovely day! -morango 2/2

Aight, there's a lot to unpack here, so Imma try to only go into the points I have something to add to (here's what I talk about in each paragraph, if you want to jump to a specific point):

Speed of Dream's rise to fame

The "bad apples" in the Dream fanbase

Post-MCC HBomb stream

Not condoning versus actually condemning his fans

Manipulation & RSD

Criticism of Dream, his fanbase, and his brand

The “just a dude” argument, flipped

First, I agree that one of the many factors that has resulted in the current image Dream has set up for himself, the way his fanbase functions, the ways people hate on him, and the way the Dream brand functions, is the speed of his rise to fame. It's unique, and there are probably a hundred social/psychological angles that could be used to examine the exact effects of that speed upon all of these facets of the Dream Name; did rapid fame beget the rapid rise of unrighteous hatred, did those waves of hatred then instigate the rise of a surprisingly overdefensive fanbase, did that rapid fame get to his head and/or result in an inability to appropriately handle all the after-effects of rapid fame, etc.? That point you bring up, about how the speed of his rise to fame requires him to learn even more quickly, is so interesting to me. I think that maybe Dream expected to get pretty famous pretty quickly, hence the preparedness in regards to some mechanics of influencer fame- merchandise, business-building, networking, knowing how to manage his fanbase to best benefit him. But I don't think he expected to get this famous this quickly. This is all speculation of course, as are this entire post and your ask, but I think that he just couldn't anticipate having to learn how to handle enmasse controversy, waves of antis, or every Youtuber speculating/knowing about him; and yeah, that results in him having to learn all of these things very quickly, lest he allow his whole brand and fandom to fall apart.

Second, I disagree with the frequent argument that Dream's fanbase is only marginally toxic. Personally, I think that the circumstances of Dream's fame, his personality and management of his fanbase, and his brand of content have resulted in the very specific kind of stan that Dream stans are. I don't think this is simply a case of "all fandoms have a small percentage of assholes who take it too far;" rather, the nature of the community itself breeds the kind of mentality of "an asshole who takes it too far." I only even know this because I was a Dream fan (kinda a stan, I'm ngl). At one time, I watched every single Dreamwastaken & Dream Team video multiple times; I listened to the Manhunts on repeat, as though they were podcasts; I followed mostly smiletwt and dttwt accounts on mcyttwt; I had upwards of 10 tabs for AO3 DNF fics open on my phone at a time; I watched DNF and Dream Team Being A Family-esque compilations on repeat; I watched every George and Sapnap alt stream I possibly could; I went out of my way to defend Dream against Redditors and Twitter antis regarding the cheating scandal. For the latter half of 2020, and a couple months of 2021, I lived and breathed this part of the fandom; so when I say that Dream stans are a whole other breed than any other kind of mcyttwt stan, I say that because I used to be like that, too. I usually use parasocial very loosely or ironically, but Dream stans are genuinely one of the most parasocial fanbases I have ever seen or been a part of. The level of investment Dream stans have in this man's life, the lengths they will go to to defend him, the amount of psychonalysis and digging they do on his life and character, the amount of emotion he can evoke in them- it's taken to another level, man. This isn't just characteristic of a fraction of his fanbase; this is what the fanbase is like as a whole.

Third, I partially disagree with your take on the HBomb thing, but not in the way one might think? I actually empathize with the way they reacted much more than I thought I would, simply because I suspect I have RSD (also suspect I have ADHD, have for several months now) and I can see myself getting insanely frustrated because of something like that. Like yeah, it was "just a MC stream" or "just an MC game," but that's kinda disregarding the fact that something that might seem like "just a [insert inconsequential thing]" to a rational mind might have a major emotional consequence/take a major emotional toll on someone with RSD, or really anyone who gets easily impatient/angry about video games (Sapnap reminds me of many of my friends, in that way). The issues I, personally, had with the way they handled the HBomb situation is that these are simply explanations and reasons for my empathy; they are not excuses. I have no excuse when I get irrationally angry about something inconsequential in my own life, for a couple of reasons. One, because I am an adult and I need to learn how to handle my reactions and manage my own anger. Two, because as someone with many mental problems, it is my responsibility to learn coping mechanisms to ensure my own emotional stability and livelihood; this includes learning whatever I need to handle RSD- whether that be isolating myself from others when I know I will become violently/passionately angry about something, creating and sustaining a support system that can get me through bouts of extreme emotion, finding healthy emotional outlets for my negative emotions that won't harm myself or others, or a combination thereof. I don't think what they said about HBomb post-MCC was an irreversibly horrible thing, or anything. I think there were errors committed by two men who should be fully capable of foreseeing and preventing those errors, but I don't unconditionally hate Dream or Sapnap for the post-MCC stream or comments. I just wish they had made amends quickly, publicly, and sufficiently, because the greatest consequences from the whole thing weren't even from those two criticizing HBomb themselves; they were from the waves of backlash because of their immense influence on the MCYT fandom, which could've been prevented, if they had acted maturedly and responsibly after the stream.

Fourth, you’re right, that he doesn’t seem to condone his fans’ behavior. I detest the frequent anti argument that one of the reasons Dream should be criticized is because he explicitly uses his fanbase to attack others, or something of the sort. Personally, I think he created his fanbase in a very specific way and interacts with them in such a way so as to benefit him as much as possible, yes, but he never actually tells his fanbase to go and yell at or harrass anyone. Still, there is a significant difference between not condoning something and condemning something. It might seem unfair, and it might be annoying of me to say this, but I truly think that someone with this large a fanbase, especially one as overzealous as Dream’s, needs to be condemned every single time it goes on some kind of rampage/harrassment campaign. Either that, or Dream needs to make a definitive, permanent statement against any kind of harrassment of others on his behalf. I know he’ll occassionally make the odd tweet or serious stream addressing something his fanbase did, but one of the many reasons his fanbase keeps doing the same damn thing is because he’s so lukewarm and spotty about this condemnation. A fanbase like his needs to be given explicit guidance and boundaries for the numerous things they do in his defense- harrassing/doxing antis, harrassing people who criticize him who aren’t antis (respectful criticism, other CCs, other MCYT stans, etc.), harrassing the people he critcizes (i.e., HBomb), speculating about his personal life (his relationship with his gf, his mental health/ADHD, his romantic life, his childhood, etc.), and speculating about his relationships with his friends and colleagues.  My personal ideology is that, if you have significant influence over someone or a group of people, you are at least somewhat responsible for the things those people do or don’t do, if it at all relates back to you. I’m so fucking tired of the argument that CCs aren’t responsible for what their fans do. Obviously they aren’t responsible for every single one of their fans, and obviously they can’t fully control their fans at the end of the day. But I think there are certain things that reach such a level of extremity that does make those CCs responsible. This can be measured by either scale or intensity; that is to say, if a CC’s fanbase does things on an extremely large scale, or one person from/a fraction of the fanbase does something really extreme, then the CC is made all the more responsible. Another CC I’ve always had trouble discussing with other people on this subject is Pewdiepie, in particular, about the extremists in his fanbase. Because the things a small handful of his fans have done in reference to him and/or in his name were so fucking extreme, I thought Pewdiepie had to take at least some responsibilty. Along a similar vein, because the things Dream’s general fanbase does are so widespread and on such a massive scale, Dream has to take at least some responsibility.

Fifth, okay. Hmmm. I want to tackle this point you made about the ableism he faces in some criticism of him carefully and with empathy, but not coddling. One, I do think a lot of the criticism he receives for the ways he handles criticism (post-cheating Tweets, reactions to John Swan, post-MCC HBomb stream, etc.), disregard his RSD and can be oftentimes ableist. I’ve actually encountered people irl who criticize this aspect of Dream’s character, and have had to explain to them their disregard for how ADHD/RSD affect neurodivergent people’s reactions to criticism. But - and this is a big, and very controversial but - I think mentally ill/disordered people can 100% leverage their mental illness/disorders for the sake of manipulation. This is actually something I’ve learned from a psychiatrist, regarding the ways people I know and I handle our anxiety and depression. This manipulation can be unwitting or intentional, but it is entirely possible, and the possibility shouldn’t be entirely dismissed as ableist. Living with a mental illness or disorder that others know about/that you are very public about puts you in an interesting position to receive frequent sympathy, empathy, and/or pity. I’m not saying that empathy for Dream having ADHD/RSD is entirely unjustified; on the contrary, I have frequently expressed how I can relate to his ADHD symptoms and have defended him for expressing those symptoms, both on mcytblr and in real life. I am saying that Dream fans tend to use his ADHD as a kind of shield for a lot of criticism levied against him, including the supposition that he could be manipulating his fanbase to defend him because of his public expressions of RSD. So yes, my theory is that Dream knows how to levy every aspect of his life for his personal gain and for the growth of his brand, and that includes his ADHD. I think he has courage for his openess about his ADHD, I think his openness has contributed to the rise in awareness of mental health and empathy for neurodivergent people within Gen Z, and I think at least some of his expressions of RSD publicly/online weren’t intentionally made public. All that being said, I also think he has to know just how much his fanbase cares about defending him for his ADHD, and I think he has to know that some of the things he does related to his neurodivergence endear him to his audience, in a coddling, baby-ing, mildly ableist sorta way.  Maybe this is all incredibly presumptuous of me. Of course, I can never know the real intentions behind any Dream video, Tweet, or stream. Maybe I’m just projecting, because I can see myself doing just this, if I had the maturity I had circa 2018-2019. Idfk know, man.

Sixth, I actually agree with you here, people probably do get more mad at his fanbase than him. Dream puts out content pretty seldomly, considering the frequency of content output for other Youtubers/streamers in his field/at his brand size. And yet, he has received masses of criticism. Considering that the things Dream himself does/says do not entirely correlate with the amount of criticism he receives, I think it’s a logical assumption that a lot of that criticism actually goes back to the size of his presence online, rather than the man himself. That is to say, because of the massive community he’s amassed, the exponential growth of his fanbase, their presence on every single social media site and in virtually every single Internet space/fandom, and the size of his metaphysical presence in his fields, Dream is much bigger than the man himself, so the criticism he receives will, at least in part, be a direct or indirect result of all these other aspects of the Dream brand.  Something I don’t think many Dream fans/stans, or even most MCYT fans in general, understand, is that Dream isn’t just “one guy” in the eyes of the Internet- at least, not anymore. He hasn’t been for nearly a year. Like Pewdiepie, Mr. Beast, and other CCs who have amassed similar levels of fame and wealth via Internet content creation, Dream is a brand now, and most people will treat him as such. He isn’t just some uwu soft boy playing Minecraft anymore. He is on a whole other level from any other MCYT in his friend circle or colleague interaction bubble. His words will never again live in a vaccum or private bubble, his friend circle will never again be under anything less than intense scrutiny, his past actions will never again be simple mistakes or silly errors, his words will never again be casual tweets or streams for laughs among a couple thousand followers. Dream’s name represents something much bigger than just the one man. As such, all aspects of his brand, including his fanbase, will tie back to him and, ultimately, to any general criticism of him.

I’m not saying I like any of this, and I actually think the evolution of influencers from people to a marketable brand with similar mechanisms, responsibilities, and liabilities as a corporation is some kind of late capitalism nightmare fuel; I’m just stating my own observations and theories as to why so much anti-Dream criticism seems to be directed at his fanbase, rather than him.

Seventh, he’s just a guy, you’re right, but I think a lot of the antis on Tumblr understand this more than you know. As I’ve seen it, the sentiment among much of the “DSMP stans DNI” crowd seems to be that of “Dream/other MCYTs are such ‘bad’ people, so why do their fans stick to these mediocre, racist men, when there are so many better people to watch/better content to consume?” We know this argument is flawed for many of the obvious reasons - the conflation of all MCYTs’ actions regardless of individual identity, the equating of a CC’s fanbase’s morality to that of the CC they enjoy watching, the exxageration of any error MCYT CCs have committed as bigotry/racism, the fundamental misunderstanding and misinformation that led antis to believe this exxageration of the facts, etc. But I want to focus on the general, underlying sentiment of, “why not watch someone better, when your creator is problematic?” Sometimes, I ask this of Dream stans. Yes, being mildly ignorant, getting involved in the scandals Dream has, and being a right-leaning/libertarian centrist in the recent past all seem like harmless things, all things considered. One could say Dream isn’t nearly as bad as many antis who are misinformed seem to believe, and that there are much worse CCs Dream stans could be watching and creating fan content for. But I think what Tumblr antis wonder is, aren’t there also much better MCYTs/CCs people could be watching and stanning? Because he’s just some guy, right? Is his content truly so exceptional or is he really so exceptional a person, that people have to stick by him, despite the things that spike up regarding his current or past actions? I think that’s what made me finally decide to stop watching Dream. I realized he was just Some Guy. The Dream Team was a comforting dynamic to indulge in, DNF was a cute ship to read and speculate about, and Manhunts were fun videos to watch; however, once the Reddit posts came out and I read them in-depth, the cost-benefit analysis tipped over to the “not worth it” side for me. I realized Dream’s content, while fun and comforting, was not entirely unique, and wasn’t worth sticking around for, given what I then knew about his past political leanings. If he is just Some Guy, then there are a hundred more like him out there. There a hundred more ships, a hundred more found family dynamics, a hundred more entertaining and skilled Minecraft players. So while I agree with you on the point of people being allowed to love him regardless because he is just a guy, at the end of the day, I think that, if we are to believe that sentiment or use that argument in such a manner, we should also understand the flip side- that, if he is just some guy, why is it worth sticking around? To that I say, maybe because people just enjoy the simple things they enjoy.

Anyways, I wholly agree with your tl;dr. Thanks for that insanely long ask, this was a fun thing to keep me occupied while I’ve been at work, facilitating Zoom sessions this whole morning.

#ive been writing this on and off since 830 am est SHEESH #dreamwastaken #dream critical #eh i think im relatively lenient of him here given my past posts ab him #but still just in case the blacklist tags for yalls convenience: #discourse #/neg #asks #long post #long posts #this a LONG one bois #morango

[minnie-mei]

yandere oc | kody makarov

yandere oc intro !

note; this is the second of 4 yandere oc's I'll be introducing. i take requests for all of them and will answer any questions asked. i tried to give just the basic info so nothing in this is too long. I wanna explain more of him through scenarios :)

WARNING(S): Obsessive behavior, abusive themes, delusions, mentions of kidnapping and other sensetive topics

general.

full name: kody dmitry makarov

nicknames: ko, kovy, marky

age: 21

gender: male/he/him

height: 6'3"

hair: blond

eyes: blue

occupation: professional hockey player

likes: his darling, hockey, video games, cuddling, working out, fighting, music, smiling, pizza, teenage mutant ninja turtles

dislikes: anger, being dismissed, losing, cooking, horror movies, drinking alcohol, olives, mouth guards

personality: childish at heart, kody can be both selfish and competitive, quick to get angry over losing at anything. despite of this, he's generally very well-liked among his peers for his cheerfulness and humor. as a hockey player, he fights often but believes it to be all in good fun.

abt. yandere.

yandere type: clingy, obsessive, manipulative

despite being big™ he's very soft and loving a himbo and simp

he desires attention, love, and praise, giving it back in return

although typically gentle, sweet, and fun, he has a very bad temper and will lash out if rejected

he's never purposely violent, but he can't control himself when upset

he's pretty famous as a pro hockey player, therefore has a lot power and status over his darling

there isn't really a way to escape him

he prefers to isolate his darling over kidnapping

because of his wealth, he loves buying gifts for darling and will show interest in anything they like

he's extremely clingy, not leaving his darling alone for even a second when he's home

because of his job, he has to go on road trips every couple weeks, leaving his darling at his house alone

he'd want a puppy or something with his darling, but it wouldn't be the best idea with his jealousy issues and short fuse

he calls constantly when he's not home, sure to leave his darling with a phone that can only call him

his darling has to watch all of his games on the tv, he'll check by asking them questions about it afterwards just to be sure

he has no set punishments or rules, it's all a matter of upsetting him

fun facts.

he was born in Omsk, Russia but raised in upper-class New Jersey

he grew up very wealthy and has his own wealth now as a hockey player

he's not close with either of his parents

his left canine tooth is missing after it was knocked out by a puck hitting him in the face he now wears his mouth guard even though he hates it

his hair is extremely messy, but he refuses to cut it because it looks bad when it's short

his messy hair isn't tamable; it's become his signature look to fans

he's fluent in russian and english

he has a lot of small scars from playing hockey for so long

he doesn't drink alcohol because of a bad experience he had as a teenager

he is absolutely terrible at cooking, he can't even boil an egg correctly

bad at driving too, he has people drive him long distances rather than driving himself

he has a license he doesn't know how he got it

but he tries really hard okay?

he tends to appear dumb because of his eagerness when he's actually quite smart

he did very well in school and is doing well as a hockey player

___

next yandere oc . . . Helena !

- Admin Duckie

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere oc imagine #yandere oc #yandere oc x reader #yandere ocs #oc x reader

[pluviophile-imagines]

Could I ask what your sexuality headcanons are? I love comparing mine with other peoples’!

Ok second half of this; this is just like. non-students who i Actually have thought about HJBAFV not at all a comprehensive list. Again disclaimer i write all these chars as bi in my fics, also i am bi myself so the vast majority are also bi, and also leaving a lot of these vague so u can imagine ur favorite ship or urself or w/ever

ok lets start this off with Aizawa. I think....... hes another one who's rlly unlabelled, doesnt super care to think it through and define it, but calls himself gay bc his interest in women is very, very rare and it's just way easier to say than explain all that. Definitely do buy into the idea that he had a crush on Oboro in hs but i do NOT buy into the easermic agenda sorry. Definitely not someone who goes looking for dates, but doesn't say no if someone asks him and hes interested (also im not gonna give her a whole section but i saw a hc a while back that the Ms. Joke stuff is literally that shes a lesbian and hes gay and shes fucking with him and i love that so much i just wanted to put it out there)

on the topic of the erasermic agenda: Hizashi's pan and knew it before HS, had a sudden & intense crush on Aizawa for the first month they knew each other and then immediately got over it in favor of a similar sudden, intense, and then immediately fading crush on Midnight. Hizashi and Aizawa r just rlly good friends imo; maybe they messed around for a bit in their twenties but it never went anywhere serious. He dates around a lot, not even necessarily to settle down just to have some fun

Midnight is aro/ace but does get in qprs & gravitates towards women wrt that. Most people dont read vigilantes but theres a woman in that, Kazuho, who i imagine she's been in a long-term qpr with; her relationship with aizawa and hizashi leans a little more towards a qpr than a normal friendship, too, but it's not rlly defined that way

All Might is married to justice queer but v much not interested in relationships. He and that one guy from the first movie are ABSOLUTELY exes and i won't hear otherwise; it's the only relationship he's ever had, and they broke up bc he had to go back to japan. He was heartbroken but did eventually get over him; his lack of romance afterwards is from genuine disinterest and not being hung up on his past. I can see him finding someone else in his later years, after he's retired. Definitely feels like he's not worthy of it tho

Hawks is bi but unfortunately didn't get to figure that out until like Now in the timeline...... if youll let my dabihawks history shine through i think dabi was the reason JHBASFGJHB he was basically brainwashed by the commission to become a hero so he didnt have time to Figure That Shit Out; he knew he was into women bc that was easy & what the commission expected from him but then he started this undercover assignment and met dabi and realized Oh...... Fuck. Hawks is hard tbh, bc i think between the control that the commission has over him and his own convictions as a hero he doesn't pursue any romance (tho he does get crushes or find people attractive) and most of his flings are done to keep up his prettyboy act, not out of genuine interest in being a fuckboy. Can't imagine him having a relationship until well after canon but I do see him being interested eventually

Onto the villains, Shigaraki is unlabelled but probably would call himself queer if asked. Definitely admires women more but isn't very interested in romance; AFO actively encourages him to pursue the things interested in so imo if he were he'd talk abt it more lmfao. I kinda see him as demi as well, not the type to fall immediately but requiring a friendship beforehand; tho unlike Bakugo as i said in my last post I dont think it happens suddenly but rather slowly. Y'all know im a big fan of shigaraki being absolutely whipped for his s/o so i do thing hes a big piner, tho he's also pretty bold and unashamed of his affections. I'm a big fan of him falling for a member of the league or a civilian; definitely can't see him falling for a hero unless the hero was already halfway to turning sides already. I think he's also attracted to intelligence and someone who pushes him to think more abt his ideology...... maybe im just projecting at this point JSHDFBVAJKSHD but my point is that the gender of his partner is definitely the least of what he considers/notices

Dabi is bi and, here's my bold take, demisexual; not interested in sex unless its with someone he loves. Absolutely doesn't even think abt romance for most of the years where he's on his own. He's got revenge to plan. By the time he joins the league that hasn't changed much, and he's demi so he's not interested in sleeping around, plus he rlly denies any attachment to people at all. As I said in that other ask tho I do rlly like the idea of him with Magne, so I think they have a fling for a bit before her death :( it's one of the things that leads him to isolate himself further, unfortunately, even from Jin and the other League members with whom his relationships aren't romantic. I can see him dating someone post-canon bc i think hes gonna be redeemed lol. It could be someone he knew before but they probably didnt date again bc he was v guarded; i think magne was rlly the only person he dated

Magne is pan and heres the kicker: I think shes t4t, which led to a little moment just before she and dabi got together where he was like "she wouldnt be into me :/" but she was into him anyway so all was good. She got around in her circles, mostly casual stuff tho she yearned for something more serious.

Spinner's bi & trends towards women but does occasionally get things for men and they're almost always intense. He thought he was straight for a while even once he joined the league and then suddenly got a crush on Shigaraki (around the time of MVA) and realized otherwise LMFAO he's definitely a hopeless romantic type, the whole mutant prejudice thing makes it rlly hard for him and i can see him being rlly happy with another mutant-type; i feel like as he matures he starts to gravitate towards them

Toga is canonically pan to my understanding, iirc her interest in Uraraka and Deku is the same (and romantic) in canon tho i might be wrong. Poor girl just needs therapy. I like the idea of the two of them becoming her friends over her being involved with them but i totally can get behind her having a thing with Uraraka (and maybe Tsu) at some point post-canon (presuming she gets redeemed), tho I think a qpr between the two/three of them would be longer lasting. And again presuming she gets therapy i can see her settling down with someone, gender irrelevant

Jin is unlabelled bc he hasn't much thought abt it, definitely had a thing for dabi and for hawks which does make me sad on both counts. I think he likes women slightly more abstractly/aesthetically and gets crushes more on men,. The dabi thing fades as they get closer and start to view each other as brothers. In his later years he doesn't rlly care about romance, I think he enjoys the experience of crushing but doesnt like dating people; his found family in the League is far more important to him. But i can see him falling head-over-heels for someone quite suddenly and having a bit of a whirlwind romance. Also someone for whom gender isn't much of a factor

Mr Compress is also queer and also hasn't rlly thought abt it. Definitely leans more towards women; he's like 30 but i like to think he also goes for older partners, 10 or 15 years his senior KJBADSJFHB idk he just has that Vibe with the way he calls himself an old man etc. A lot of the league i cant see sleeping or dating around much, i feel like they prioritize each other, but I do think mr compress gets around more than the others. i can see him having a bit of a fuckbuddy who he catches feelings for

Kurogiri is fun; as Oboro I do think Aizawa's crush was reciprocated, tho he wasn't around long enough for them to act on it :( he's bi, tho kurogiri isn't supposed to have personal interests. I like to imagine the brainwashing isnt as good as AFO wants it to be tho so I like the idea of him falling for someone anyway. I also like the idea of the heroes managing to undo the nomufication and I 100% can see him, aizawa, and someone else (someone he was involved with as Kurogiri) ending up in a triad as a result of aizawa and the third partner helping him through the aftermath of all that shit

Lady Nagant is a manga-only minor character but im in love with her so imma talk abt it. Shes bi and leans VERY heavily towards women, probably spent years questioning whether she was rlly bi or a lesbian before finally having a fling with a guy that she genuinely enjoyed. Has only ever been in long-term relationships with women and I v much think she has a gf at home who stayed even when she was arrested 🥺

Finally imma talk abt Natsuo bc i love that boy. He's one of the few unmarried chars with a love interest and he canonically has a gf. I do see him as IDing straight in canon ngl, but the kind of straight where he might actually be bi but his preference leans so heavily towards women and he grew up in a bad home so he just doesnt rlly think abt it bc hes v happy with women anyway. In shiganatsu thoughts shigaraki is the first man he has a thing for; i rlly can see the two of them in a triad with a woman specifically, who helps the two of them find each other and is the one who initiates bc its definitely a weird situation for natsuo

#ask.🌧 #anon #pattering on the roof #char.🌧 multi #again these r just the ones ive thought about so sorry if i didnt bother with any chars u care abt ajkhsfbgsjdhfb #thank yall for asking LMFAO any excuse to ramble abt this shit #it does impact the way i write these chars #obviously #bc this is meta more than anything else and so is fanfic lol

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

[SPOILERS FOR LEO’S ROUTE❗️] okay so i just got to the bit after leo reveals what he is, and mc and comte are talking on the balcony & comte offers to turn her into a vampire if she would like. obviously mc declines but i guess my question is, how do you think leonardo would react if mc DID agree to that offer? i am enjoying his route, but i kinda get the feeling he mostly/only loves mc because she is human :/ im interested abt what might happen if she didn’t say no? thank you v much💖💖ly lots

Aww, ily3 hun tyty 💕💕💕I’ll offer my thoughts below, I hope I can answer your questions to satisfaction! 

Ah yes, the point in Leo's route where I essentially get shot in the leg and limp through my walk of shame

Jk jk, but I think there has been a considerable degree of displeasure associated with Leonardo's line in the proverbial sand. No life with him can be spent as a vampire, MC must remain human. Despite his easygoing nature, he remains stalwart in his opposition no matter what the MC or Comte has to say. To summarize it quickly, Comte’s relieved exasperation at the end of Leo’s MS gets more across than I think any of my analysis can convey “Thank heavens one of you has good sense.” It offers the implication that he has tried to broach the topic with Leonardo out of concern, only to be met by a brick wall--or doesn’t try at all for fear that he’ll only ensconce Leonardo further into rejecting a greater future for him and MC.

As to how he would react I......really don’t think it would go well? Only because I think it would serve to reinforce the rifts that already exist in Leonardo’s self-perception. He would believe it was his own fault for pushing her in that direction, and while I don’t think he would hate Comte, he would definitely become estranged from one of his only close friends in life. (What GUTS ME about Comte offering to turn MC is that he is probably well aware Leo might beat the shit out of him, never talk to him again, or both--and he still fully accepts that he could lose his best friend to guarantee a future for both of them. Excuse me while I bawl in the corner) He probably wouldn’t hold it against Comte for too long, but he wouldn’t be any less aggrieved and hurt. And when Leonardo is vulnerable, he will hide and nurse his wounds until he can behave with some level of calm--or at the very least until he can pretend he’s okay after an initial explosion. He doesn’t feel comfortable troubling people with his own problems, so he tends to fall into silence when personal things come up. This doesn’t necessarily mean he resolves all of his emotional turmoil, or heals that fast; it only means that he wallows in those feelings alone unless they’re tugged out of him and worked through forcibly.

Basically, I see only one of two possibilities coming to fruition. The first is that he and MC would wobble only to completely fall apart if some kind of resolution could never be found. He’d continue to blame himself and start sabotaging his own happiness, and that would likely mean some level of selfishness directed at MC--resulting in anguish for the both of them. If MC takes on too much without complaint or Leonardo goes too far...I get the feeling that relationship would either end in shambles immediately, or result in a kind of twisted union in which both feel responsible for the other’s hurt but neither one can relieve it (until they’d be forced to split up before someone gets seriously hurt). They would be the source of each other’s suffering, so much so that the walls climbing between them might never again lower. 

This might sound odd, but if there’s one thing that Leonardo needs it’s control when it comes to his relationships with others. It is a subtle, but acute trait that might not seem obvious knowing his magnanimous disposition. He decides if MC gets to be a vampire, he bargains with Sebastian because he refuses to be a test subject, he refuses to validate Comte’s conclusions (despite knowing he’s right) because he doesn’t want to cede the power silence/smokescreens offer his emotional vulnerabilities. Even around villains like Shakespeare and the final serial killer, pay close attention. Shakespeare begins revealing deeply personal information and wishes that Leonardo holds close to his heart on purpose, snatching Leonardo’s agency and ability to control how his feelings are being conveyed. How does Leonardo respond? With explosive, forbidding anger--instantaneous and barely contained, nothing at all like his breezy attitude and calm.

If you think about it, it’s a fairly obvious extension of the humiliating powerlessness by which he was raised (he needs to be in control; he needs to be the one who decides who gets to walk away and who doesn’t. He doesn’t come on to MC because he wants to, he does it for the sole purpose of scaring her out of wanting to be a vampire. He doesn’t even attempt to explain where he’s coming from because he falls into whole-scale panic. When he loses control of the trajectory of others--of how they perceive certain things about him--all of his charisma fails him. If he can’t explain or justify where he is mentally, when he’s too afraid they won’t hear him or care, then he needs to redirect the opposing party). Additionally, he feels responsible; that he can better adjust the outcome with his experience--and while that may be true for some things, sometimes he gets ahead of himself. Only an individual can decide their own future and their own happiness, the most others can do is enhance or worsen aspects of life. He doesn’t have enough faith that his presence is positive or worthwhile enough to guarantee his spouse’s happiness ;-;

The other possibility I see is MC coaxing him as best she can into reassurance that she’s happy with her new life. While he may have doubts, there is absolutely room for her to help him approach those fears little by little. If Leonardo has even a hint of doubt in regards to his dismal feelings about her being turned, a potential for acceptance may be nurtured. I don’t think his uncertainty would ever fully vanish; there will always be a lurking fear that a fate tied to his can only mean suffering and disappointment. Prove his worth and compassion with time, and this man will be unable to remember how life was lived before her. It would take a great deal of patience and a sizable obstacle, but it wouldn’t be impossible. His heart is much too big for that, I think.

I don’t think happiness with a turned MC is impossible, only that it would take a lot of work to swing it after a heated moment of decision. I think the way to go with Leonardo is a more enduring effort. He shows much more receptivity after years of being together. I think time, ironically, helps him relax into the possibility of forever as a couple. I think he cannot conceptualize a world in which he is in love, and that this love is not conditional--not dependent on his ability to be the perfect companion, the brilliant inventor, the equanimous mentor. I think he needs to see for himself that love can be gentle and real and whole even when he’s at his worst (by his self-perception). 

Also I put some extra meta under the cut because I have brainworms and just can’t stop thinking about Leonardo rn so read if you like, but it’s more related to why he feels this way abt turning MC than necessarily about the outcome. 

That being said, I'm conflicted because I don't necessarily think Leonardo only loves MC because she's human? (Rather, I think it’s more a result of his history and the values he’s developed in response to that upbringing. But I’ll loop back to this in a bit, so stay tuned)

I say this for two reasons. Firstly, I don't want to say that no person in this period shared his values (I mean look at Comte)--this would be an overstatement, even if it was rare. But it does appear that Comte and Leonardo are acute exceptions within vampire society in elevating human beings to an equal status among vampires (if not a higher status at points or depending on the person). As such, a vampire partner he’d be comfortable living with is unlikely. Human beings are more optimal in some regards (more adaptable and more egalitarian than vampires, most likely), but he also knows that he’s more susceptible to falling in love with a human; so he makes sure to squash his feelings or remove himself when his feelings become too intense. 

Secondly, he's in close quarters with MC by necessity, and reacts to her isolation by virtue of the situation. That's probably half the reason they get together at all; he was fully intending to keep his distance despite his initial curiosity. One thing this signals to me is that even when Leonardo did feel attraction to any person he was in contact with, he would avoid them until they were removed from his presence--or he deflected their romantic approaches enough times for them to give up. With this in mind, it can come as no surprise that Leonardo has kept to himself for nearly five hundred years now. If it was another vampire hitting on him (especially a pureblood), he would be playing into his parents' expectations and would approach the vampire social hierarchy he was working so hard to escape. If they were human, he would deem himself a burden; he could never love them within the normal expectations of a human couple (growing old together, raising a family, etc etc). So ultimately I think it's less her being human, and more their compatibility and context.

As such, I think he just locks himself into a kind of Catch-22? Because in the end I think this is more about his own fears and insecurities--that he can never make someone happy, that he himself will never be enough (hello child of abusive home). Not to oversimplify his character, but one crucial element of his upbringing must be considered if he is to be analyzed properly.

There's something I often think about:

Comte, quoting Leonardo: "‘Not all parents love their children, or even think of them as such.’"  [Though he got away and was able to make a life for himself, he had to do it alone.]

There is. A LOT to unpack here. While we may not have evidence of what his familia is like firsthand, this description tells us...so many heartbreaking things. It tells us that Leonardo never once felt like anything more than a child intended to carry on a legacy. The likelihood that his insights, his feelings, or his entire self-hood were acknowledged is pretty much at a hardcore negative three. While it's been a good number of years since he was the problem child/family disappointment, I feel like so many of those experiences seep into his capacity to properly accept the love of another person. It's a good portion of the reason he struggles so intensely with being loved despite his unfathomable wealth of affection for other people. When a person is diagnosed with unlovable and cringe for having positive feelings for others, it's not really surprising that a person might have trouble accepting a commitment or attraction to another person. There is...a kind of Sisyphus dilemma that surfaces in the wake of that kind of life, a constant push + pull between craving acceptance and either expecting it’s loss and/or fearing it’s disappointment. Though he shows signs of healing from it, there are still portions that linger. (Jean-Paul shakes him from this self-berating in his MS, but after four hundred years he still struggles to overcome those instincts. I wish there were words for the extent to which that knowledge breaks my heart...Many say time heals all wounds, but sometimes I think only others can heal them.)

Keep in mind, I don't think his enduring fallacy that "human beings are the epitome of untainted purpose and vitality" is irrelevant or less problematic here. I just think it's a reflection of a deeper disturbance and loss. It's a reflection of his parents' unilateral rejection of the kinder parts of him; his devotion to patience and understanding. It's a kind of reiteration or what he's already known: he's doing exactly what his parents did in an odd way, he's rejecting vampirism whole-scale despite evidence of both pros and cons (just as it is for humanity). I will always offer that his fear of something going wrong during the change is completely valid--but it does feel more like a fear of admitting that vampires (and eternity for that matter) aren't inherently awful. He ran away from his parents for good reason of course, but for all his running he didn’t escape their black and white logic.

It’s funny too, because his absolutism is kind of reflected in his inability to commit to a single discipline in some ways; while part of it is that he probably exhausts study, I have to wonder how much of him oscillating is a fear of eventual failure. (Think his reaction to MC’s knowledge that he can’t dance, his mortification and utter...shock that she wouldn’t use it as a way to make him feel terrible about himself). He probably prefers to hone his skills helping people because the motivation of providing relief is a much more powerful motivator than knowledge for knowledge’s own sake. He needs the impetus, that drive to move him.

Granted, I won't fault anyone for feeling like Leonardo only loves MC for her humanity. At first glance it really did feel that way! But the more I think about it, the more I feel it has more to do with the weight of his life's experience, and the parts of himself he hasn’t been able to reconcile.

Sometimes, with Leonardo, I urge gentleness. So much of who he is disguises all the ways in which he has been hurt. While his decision is selfish and foolish, it comes from a broken place. My unhappiness will always lie predominantly with the fact that he believes to his core that happiness and self-respect is something he doesn’t deserve. 

#asks #ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp leonardo #ikevamp mc #ikevamp meta #ikevamp saint germain #ikevamp comte #er this response got a lot longer and more detailed than i meant it to be but uh #i hope it's helpful? #this is just how i tend to think about the game but then im also a feral leo stan alhkjadagd #im just that meme like 'i love you but i hate you but i love you' with leo LMFAO #sometimes u just gotta smack some sense into the man (which is why i love that Jean-Paul does exactly that HAHAHA) #but yeah most of the time i look at leo and have to resist the urge to cry and the recent event has been absolutely no exception #i would die for him

[murder-by-sk8board]

Anyways I was talking with my psych professor abt BPD stuff for my final paper and someone in my class mentioned "favorite person" and he'd never heard of it before. And after she'd explained it he connected it to the technical terms of idealization/devaluation and/or identification.

I think in Adam's case it's definitely closer to idealization/devaluation in reference to Langa being his "favorite person." But maybe a little bit identification as well. All of my information in this post is from my professor and the book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis by Nancy McWilliams.

Idealization is this idea that "some attachment figure is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent." That with this person they are "safe;" whatever "safe" means for them. "The more dependent one is, the greater the temptation to idealize." It is common and actually good on normal *low* levels but can be dangerous on extreme levels. With Adam, we can assume he has spent his whole life being told he's "better than" or "above" most others by his aunts and father. He desires someone that is equal to him on some level. In this case it's skating. He had someone equal or better to him once before: Tadashi. Devaluation is what follows idealization. "The more an object is idealized, the more radical the devaluation to which it will eventually be subject." When Adam's father burned his board and Tadashi "abandoned" him by not doing anything about it. (Reasonably so as far as we can see; but Adam cannot.) Tadashi went right back to being a lowly servant. Lesser than.

Adam idealized Tadashi because he taught him to skate and was so amazing at it. While his level of idealization wasn't quite as high as it was of Langa it was still pretty high. And when that all fell apart. His devaluation of Tadashi was just a great. He fell apart. Probably isolated himself while simultaneously searching for his new eve. For YEARS Tadashi was merely Adam's pet. Nothing more.

Adam continued searching for this special person that would be equal or greater to himself. Someone to idealize. When he found Langa, he projected these thoughts onto him. Thinking Langa was the One, he started to idealize the kid to and extreme level. Langa was living his life doing as he pleased mostly unaware of just how much Adam thought of him. (Adam's obsession and eventual spiral was completely out of Langa's control.) In Adam's eyes Langa was better than everyone in every way when it came to skating. He chose to race Reki because Reki was lesser then. Lesser than Adam for sure. And Lesser than Langa by an incredibly large margin. After the race it hit Adam: If Reki could possibly beat him so easily, then was Langa truly that amazing? He was angry and upset at both himself and Langa. Langa was supposed to be this amazing skater and yet Langa has let him down. His idealization of Langa was on an incredible level, so the devaluation of him will be equally as great. Thus, the Wedding Beef becomes a literal death race.

I highlighted "both himself" because extreme idealization and devaluation tie into narcissistic personality disorder. McWilliams says, "self-esteem strivings in people who need to idealize and devalue are contaminated by the idea that one must perfect the self rather than accept it." If Adam himself has the capacity to be perfect. Then so does Langa. He's projecting this perfectness onto Langa. And when he is proven wrong, it is Langa's fault. (Projection being defined my McWilliams as "the process whereby what is inside is misunderstood as coming from outside.")

Anyways, I'm going to go into far greater detail about all this in my paper. Let me know what you think!

I also think that he could definitely be experiencing Projective identification towards Langa, but I might make a different post about that. :)

#rys psych final #bpd adam #sk8 adam

[autisticangus]

anyway im so out of the loop on the mcelboys

i pretty much only keep semi-up to date with Sawbones at this point, not cuz i dont still LIKE everything else, just a lot has been goin on in my life

if anyone wants a long and rambly update on All Of The Bullshit im gonna stick a read more down here, asks are open and its cool to message me abt any of it if u want cuz i have some really nice and cool followers/mutuals here that make me comfy talkin abt that shit

as far as the future of this blog goes i wanna start using it more again! the mcelroys have gotten me out of some really dark places before so i hope having more connection to this community and the people here and their content again will help me like it has in the past! ill probs post more general mcelroy content here than previously rather than just taz btw i just gotta fuckin uhhhhh,,,, catch up on a bunch of shit again before this blog is even semi active lmaoo but im like alive and on tumblr regularly again!!

Wow u clicked on this and wanna hear me talk? Ur awesome and sweet, thanks for caring!

These past two years have been extraordinarily tough. This is gonna be a pretty long and detailed post that deals with the sensitive topics of emotional abuse, abusive relationships, and alcoholism. Please read on with caution.

Back in March of 2019, so this was about 3-4 months after i left tumblr, I got a new boyfriend and things started out really good, he was kind of a "bad boy" and it was fun at first. Im kind of a goody-goody so it was very interesting for me at first to be with someone so different who had such different life experiences than me. I liked hearing his stories of living in a traphouse, and running with gangs, and selling drugs, and knowing people who had killed people. I assumed a LOT of it was lies, obviously, who just brags about that shit u know? I just rolled with it, didnt take it seriously, and found the imagined scenarios interesting to listen to. So much of it was obviously played up to make him seem cooler, and I shouldve seen that as the red flag it was, and all my friends did but I didnt. 

He had a serious alcohol problem, I mean I had coffee in the morning and he had 2 four lokos before noon. it was bad. about 6 months into the relationship he decided i was cheating on him with my ex who i had recently reconnected with, we missed being friends and things were really going well talking and being friends again, he was really important to me! but my boyfriend saw this as yet another thing i was doing wrong. when he decided i was cheating, that become his focus of alcoholic rage. nearly every time he got drunk, which was several times a week, he would accuse me of things, he would yell and scream, he would call me horrible names and make me cry for literal hours, he never hit me but that shouldnt even matter, i was emotionally battered and mentally bruised and everything hurt. he gaslit me into believing i said and did things i never said or did, i admitted to things that were not real, and then i was yelled at for admitting them. i didnt know what to do.

he was threatening my ex too, he would get drunk and say he knew where he lived (he didnt) or he knew what car he drove (he didnt) and explained to me many times that although he had never killed someone, people had been killed before at his command. he said a bullet in the back of my ex’s brain was just a phone call and $500 away. somedays he would tell me he was just going to do it himself, with a hammer, or a kitchen knife, or whatever weapon he could get his hands on during his explanation of how he would do it. my only option was to agree, to say it didnt matter to me what happened to him, i had to pretend my on

/ly concern was him going to jail for the crime, if i showed any sign that i didn’t want my ex murdered, it clearly meant i was cheating on him. 

i pretended to block my ex on social media to get him off my back and it worked a little bit but he still brought it up. and even if he didnt directly mention him, he would always tell me when he was drunk that i was the cause of all his problems, i was why he was so self conscious, i was why he drank so much, i was why he had to work so hard, i was why every single issue he had was happening. logically i knew it was wrong, but i was so conditioned to it by then that i just went with it. i knew that agreeing and apologizing made the fighting end quicker.

things spiraled this past summer. his job needed us to relocate so we moved like 4 states away, away from all my family and friends, and lived in a tiny hotel room for a month. during this time, his drinking was somehow worse. he was drunk literally every night but he was passing out so we didnt fight and i was relieved. i was depressed being stuck in the hotel room all day alone, but thankful i wasnt being abused at least. then he started getting into drunken fistfights with his coworkers in the hotel parking lot. one day he came home just in time to find one of his drunk coworkers trying to break into the room with me there desperately trying to keep him out. i was terrified and wanted to go home but he convinced me to stay. a couple weeks after that we travelled for his work again several more states away. his drinking got a little bit better here, but i was so depressed and lonely, i was so isolated, he was all i saw day in and day out besides his coworkers and i was nervous around them. one day the guy who tried to break in on me, purposefully, while drunk, hit another coworkers car and totaled it and tried to run the guy over and i saw the whole thing. a week later my boyfriend was also fired because he got so drunk he passed out in the hotel parking lot and the company needed to save face with the hotel after the whole car incident. 

so we travelled back home, but not my home, to his where we lived isolated on a mountain with no phone signal or wifi. the house was old and not well kept from being empty for several years, half the appliances didnt work. i was more isolated than i have ever been in my life. for 4 months i stayed there and just dreaded him coming home because i knew he would be drunk again and he'd yell or accuse me of things or otherwise belittle me. it was horrible. my friends all said to leave and my parents said to leave but i was so brainwashed into thinking that if i was just a good little housewife and if i just stayed home and did the dishes and the laundry that he would be nicer but he still found things to point at and say i was cheating. he was also becoming really controlling about my food intake and weight and i already struggle with an eating disorder so that just made me feel even more like i had to stay, my brain felt like if i wasnt under his watchful eye id gain weight again, like somehow it was thanks to him i had lost weight and not my own choices.

one day last week i expressed to him wanting to leave, saying how unhappy i was, i told him how sad i felt and how i didnt think we were such a good match. he didnt take me seriously, so the next day when he got sloppy drunk before 5 pm i packed a small bag and went to my moms. i was just gonna stay for a night or two but he called and screamed at me for leaving without telling him, i told him he just didnt remember me telling him because he was so drunk, and he accused me of not caring about his feelings and made me sound like the bad guy for leaving without his permission. i told him it was just for a few days but the angrier he got the more i knew i was in the right and told him i was done. i told him we were breaking up and id come get my stuff soon.

i got my stuff while he was at work this past weekend and moved in with my best friend. im safe and happy now. things are looking so much better for me and im so thankful to my friends and family who supported me all the way to the end.

i just wanted to make this post because, i know its not mcelroy related, and a lot of ppl probably dont care for stuff like this on this kind of blog, but i think its important.

its important to friends and family of people in abusive relationships to be steady. dont give up your ground. even if the person keeps pushing back and wont leave the person, keep being there for them, it can take a long time, it took me almost 2 years to leave, it takes some people even longer, but just stay there for them and be there for them when they finally make that step. dont give up on them.

and to those who have been in these kinds of relationships, and especially those who are there right now: it is not your fault. it is so, so hard to leave, i know, but please try to find help and support and resources to do it. if all your friends dont like someone, theres a good reason for it. please dont fall into the trap of thinking your friends dont have the best intentions for you. there are so many things you may overlook in the moment that others can see from a mile away are horrible. especially if you have been abused in the past. its incredibly hard to tell what is a red flag when your gut instinct is that anything and everything is a red flag. surround yourself with people who you can trust and listen to them

and trust me, i know how hard it is when youre stuck in that spot of KNOWING you should go but fearing that first step away. its scary. its difficult. but it is worth it. find someone safe you can be with. and if you arent sure, find a reason to leave for just a few days, an excuse, anything. give yourself space from the abuser, tell yourself youre going back in a couple days, just get out from under the thumb long enough to clear your head and things will make more sense with the fog lifted.

when i first got in my car and put my kitten on my lap and told her we were going to my moms for a couple nights, i didnt know if that was the truth. i planned to come back and i knew i didnt want to. i only took enough stuff for a couple days. i couldnt imagine my life changing so drastically. where would i live? how would i make money? who take care of me? i had no clue about any of those things. but after a couple days away I realized i would take care of me. i remembered that i had worked jobs before i was with him, i could do it again. i remembered that i had options of where to live. all of those things were so clouded when i was with him, they felt like impossibilities. once i was away, even just for a short time, things were so much easier to parse.

and i know i had many privileges in this journey not everyone is afforded, and my heart goes out to those who read this and are in this situation and the options i had just arent accessible to you, i am so sorry, i wish i had something more to offer you but all i have is my story, and a wish that it gives you some hope at the very least, and a promise that if you need someone to talk to, im here, i will listen, and you will be heard and loved.

i just want everyone who reads to take something small but important away from it. love your friends, love yourself. please stay safe. please dont give up. remember love should not hurt.

#angus.txt #getting deep in here but it felt good to write #i love u all so much ok pls be good urselves

[clairecrive]

"Visitor" - Bronson x reader

a girl on Wattpad asked: "Could you do one with charlie Bronson? Where the reader is more innocent but not completely sane and abt 18 yr." This is my first time writing Bronson so idk if I made him justice.

Tag list: @mollybegger-blog, @evelynshelby, @br0ck-eddie, @deaflikehawkeye, @fandom--0verdose, @shadow-of-wonder, @innerpaperexpertcloud (let me know if you wanna be added)

You were visiting him in prison. For the last two weeks, you weren't allowed to see him because he was in isolation. So now you were even more eager to see him.

The first time you went to see him, the prison guards didn't want to let you in affirming that you weren't of age and that your I.D. was probably fake. You did look younger than you were, by at least 5 years; these things always happened to you so it didn't really take you by surprise. While most of the times you were annoyed by the mistake there were situations where it came in handy. Like in this moment.

Surely, everyone that saw you must be wondering what the hell you were doing in a prison and even more with a man like Charlie. But usually, they wouldn't give you another look.  What could a little sweet thing like you do after all? You didn't bother to prove them wrong and used it to your advantage. When you walked in the common room, you looked around trying to spot the bolded head you missed so much. When you saw him at the far back of the room, your heart flutter and you could barely contain the smile that crept on your face as you skipped over to him.

"Hi sweetie." You cradled your arms around his neck from behind, leaving a kiss on his balded head. Then he turned his head and you pecked him gently on his mouth.

"Trying to see you is a harder task than meeting up with the queen." You joked knowing that he wasn't having the time of his life in confinement.

"These fucking cunts put me in confinement. Not my fault." He mumbled a poor excuse which he didn't believe himself in the first place

Not getting your hands off of him, you just moved them to his hands, adorned by cuffs, while you took a seat on his right, your back to the guards.

"What did you do Charlie? They didn't let me see you for three weeks." You ask softly knowing that of course, he must have thrown one of his tantrums of his. Sometimes, you wondered if it wasn't all a plan to stay in prison longer, if he even wanted to get out.

"I might have kept the librarian in my cell and threatened to hurt him, but I didn't so I don't know why they got angry." He grumpily explained getting a hold of your hands as best as he could. You sighed showing all your disappointment but not letting go of his hands.

"Have you missed me Charlie?" you ask not meeting his eyes

"Of course I have, love. Like hell. I've made you a lot of drawings, you know? They didn't let me bring them, these cunts."

"Then why do you keep putting yourself in situations that prevent you from seeing me or to get out sooner rather than later?" you couldn't wait around for a man that didn't want to come back, he needed to see that. He had sensed that there was a subliminal question behind your words, he wasn't sure what it was but he hoped he could find the answer in your eyes like he always did.

"Maybe it's time that I show you what you've been missing since you've been locked up in here."

If you couldn't reach him with words you'd find another way, more practical, more tangible. He was a man after all. Slowly but steadily, your bare foot trailed his leg moving up. He slightly jumped at the contact but you managed to keep a straight face for the sake of the guards. Eventually, your foot reached his destination and stroked his balls before gently applying pressure on his manhood that was starting to react at your touch. His eyes began to darken and you couldn't help but smirk a little before removing your foot entirely. Acting none the wiser, you crossed your legs and tilted towards him until you were able to whisper in his ear.

"Does this jog your memory?" You nibbled his lobe to further prove your point and you felt his hands twitch.

He didn't answer you vocally but before you knew it, he was somehow able to put you on his lap, all the while being handcuffed. 

"Why are you doing this to me, woman? I'm already going crazy in here." He whispered in your neck before attacking it with angry kisses. For a moment you let him, the contrasting feeling of his soft lips and rough moustache bringing you back to a time where things were easier. However, when you felt him trying to dry humping you, you stopped him pushing him gently away. You could see at the end of your eye guards noticing what was happening and coming your way. Cupping his head in your hands, you softly speak to him.

"This is exactly what you're missing out on Charlie. So you better behave. It's not going to wait for you forever." 

Somehow angered by your words and still turned on, he got up and lifted you to the table standing between your legs making it look like you were about to have sex.

"You are mine" roughly putting a hand over your core he continued, "this is mine only. Don't ever forget that." he growled. Things were definitely getting steamier and you weren't sure that Charlie would refrain from taking you over this very table, so you took matters into your hands. Shooting a pointed look to the guards, you asked for a moment, letting them know that you had it under control. Then taking hold of the hand he had between your legs, you brought to your lips to give it a soft peck.

"Then come and get me, Charlie. I can't keep doing this forever. If the next time I come they tell me that you got yourself into trouble again and that I won't be able to see you for another couple of weeks, I'm not coming back." You softly promised and although deep down neither of you believed it to be true, he was still taken back, enough to fall back into the chair. He looked lost for a second, his empty eyes following your movements as you recomposed yourself.

"But I love you." He whispers quietly looking for your eyes.

"And I love you but now it's time you show it." You knew it wasn't fair to him since he had always been very affectionate to you but he had been in prison for the past two years and you were near to reaching your limit. 

Whatever made him behave.

He just nodded never leaving his eyes from yours, even when the guards came to collect him. You watched him go, waving your hand a little with a comforting smile, hoping to see him soon.

Part 2

#bronson #charlie bronson #bronson x reader #tom hardy bronson #bronson imagine #bronson imagines #tom hardy x reader #tom hardy #tom hardy imagines #tom hardy fanfic

[crptkng]

I feel like I need to post about this because I have nothing better to do and because I would genuinely like to share my experience with BPD (borderline personality disorder) 

Now this will get pretty ugly and show the worst parts of me but please don’t think I’m an inherently toxic person for my behaviors that I could not control and that I have better control of as now. 

One of the first things you’ll notice about BPD is a marked disturbance in interpersonal relationships I’ve always had a very hard time keeping friends. I would have a certain friend for about a year and then we’d drift apart for no reason. Nothing totally horrible has happened in most of my past relationships, we’ve just either drifted apart or lost contact. However, that’s not to say I haven’t had a few not so healthy relationships. With BPD comes this fun little side effect of you possibly developing an unhealthy attachment to a certain person or people. This has happened to me on multiple occasions, 3 to be exact. This coins the term FP or favorite person.

The earliest I can ever recall and that I recognize now as being such was a good friend of mine that I met back in 2010/2011. My relationship with them wasn’t directly stormy in the beginning. I would see them at least once a week and all, but whenever I heard them mention another friend of theirs or that they would be hanging out with someone that wasn’t me I would get very angry and passive aggressively take it out on them. At first it was just that but it did start to go downhill when we hit high school and we started seeing less of each other. I would still be passive aggressive about the people they hung out with and all but the cake was taken when they got a boyfriend. I didn’t like him for one reason or another, still not entirely sure why but I but I went as far as accusing him of possibly making my friend “do something they didn’t want to” and kept nagging them about it. They ultimately broke up and we slowly lost most communication. I was sent spiraling into hysteria about losing my “only friend”. My whole school day was compromised to the point I called them into the school counselors office to force them to talk to me. After this we talked it out and were friends again. 

Around this time they introduced me to this guy who was and, to this day, still is one of my absolute best friends. The three of us were all really good friends and even had a group chat on skype together. After a few months of being friends I started having feelings for him but he had feelings for the friend that introduced us. I took this pretty hard and started accusing them of going behind my back outside of group chats and talking about me and just in general having more fun without me.This is the part where it all blew up and I decided I would rather isolate myself from this guy so I deleted him from skype and my phone contacts. Stayed friends with the first FP for a while before that eventually fizzled out. About a year later the dude my ex FP introduced me to popped into my head and I readded him on Skype. Come to find the two of them dated over the summer but broke up and he’d already gotten a new boyfriend. Everything was fine and we almost immediately got back into our old routine of watching stupid videos and shows as well as listening to music, sometimes inviting his boyfriend to join us. the three of us were friends for about 2 years before his ex developed feelings for another friend of theirs. My friend unfortunately had to hear it from a third party and not directly from his ex himself. This sent me into a rage and I verbally attacked his ex a few times, going so far as to harass him for a year before we made amends this fall and we’re even friends now!!

After they broke up with my friend and I had verbally ripped his ex a new one, about 3 months later my friend/FP and I confessed our crushes for each other and started dating in the spring of 2017. Summer 2017 came and he and I got to meet up for the first time in our almost 5 years of knowing each other. Our romantic relationship was not at all healthy in the slightest. I would need constant assurances of his feelings for me and if there was the slightest change in tone i’d immediately shift into a sour mood. Along with this I had the repeat actions of getting passive aggressively angry when he’d mention anyone else but me or make plans with someone else. Summer comes and goes and we’re still together even though i’m out of line, we even make plans for me to fly fully paid for by his mother to come see him over the Christmas break. this is where things got worse. I was constantly clingy and wouldn’t leave him to do his own thing, and would get jealous and passive aggressive whenever he’d hop on voice chat to play games. I would have major anxiety whenever I wasn’t near him and so on. Eventually while I was there we broke up. Him needing to focus on schooling and not being able to keep me happy and under control. Although we broke up I stayed the duration of my trip and we remained good friends.In fact, I’m trying my best with my holiday job to earn enough to buy him a ticket up to Seattle to see him again <3

My unhealthy relationships don’t stop there but are more brief than the one beforehand 

After my FP and I broke up I started talking regularly to this guy I used to talk to on skype before the great migration to discord.  

He and I talked from around January to June 2018. We’d go back and forth teasing each other and had an amazing friendship overall. Around the February is when I developed a crush on the guy which was... Not too great. Not only was he my crush but he was another FP. I would fixate on him when I thought I made him upset and would have major anxiety about it until proven otherwise, as is usually the case with most people for me.

Cut to March which just happens to be my birth month and I plan a desert date with a couple of my friends, him included. We all go to the mall near by and have a good time. This would be the first, and last time I got to meet him in person as he lived over an hour away by bus. We part ways with a hasty hug because I had to catch my bus back home. After this we plan on meeting up again but it turns out that he’s being kicked out by his mother that recently remarried and has to move to California. He ends up moving but we still stay connected on Discord and are still friends. April is when we start flirting with each other and we eventually send nudes back and forth to which I get a less than pleased response about my body.

At first I brushed it off bc you know I was enchanted by him. But then he proceeds to ghost me twice after this, once because of the nude and twice bc I told him I liked him.

During this he also blocked me on Discord for a few days as a joke because I insulted a titty anime he liked but came back and told me excitedly he was moving back to Washington but because he didn’t feel like he could tell me he didn’t want to have sex like we talked about he ghosts me. I eventually have an encounter where I was sexually assaulted and he said nothing about it and ignored my distress, eventually blocking me for good because I started going off on him like I did with my friends ex.

The next FP has a short history as he’s my current FP.

This guy is still kinda my friend but we don’t hang out in person anymore and he hardly responds to my texts or calls. But!!

I noticed this one when I realized I was doing the same thing I do with all my FPs which is get jealous of the people he talks about. One person in particular, too.

I reconnected with him during the summer 2018, about a month after the incident with the last guy mentioned, we quickly started hanging out again and even had a couple make out sessions. I didn’t notice right away that I was reacting the way I was until one day I noticed myself using manipulative language because he declined my invitation to go get food. This happened a couple of times, most significant of which was when he texted me the morning after he went out and partied. I jokingly asked him “ without me?” “Yee”. I was able to restrain and reroute what I was saying to make it seem less manipulative. Going back to me being upset when he mentions someone else. He has a crush on this girl who’s a mutual friend of ours and one night he invited me over to hang but we ended up going to the mall she worked at so he could try and convince her to join us. She said no, and we left. But he proceeded to talk about her for a good half hour after. He also knew I had a crush on him at the time so that double set me off. Halloween rolls up. He and another best friend of mine come over for drinks and to just chill in general. He asks me who all is coming and asks abt her. I don’t invite her because she’s leaving for a trip the next morning. Previous to this I met up with her and her now boyfriend and she tells me they got back together. She hadn’t told my FP and was never going to in the first place. He mentioned her again and I consider telling him then and there but decided not to at the moment. After Halloween is when he starts ghosting me and I get angry bc he’s not giving me attention so that’s when I tell him. Not out of the kindness of my heart but out of spite for being ignored. He and I don’t talk as much but I assume we’re on ok terms!

These are my most relevant people attachment stories. But I’m far from over with this post which is already a LOT.

Another fun part of BPD that I experience is the lack of identity.

I can easily attach myself to fictional characters and identify with them so strongly that I feel like I become them. This has happened most significantly with Dean Winchester from Supernatural and Charlie Kelly from Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

With Dean it was probably the strongest. I started listening to the music he did and wearing leather and becoming aloof like he was. Just overall taking small traits and becoming like him.

Charlie was more of a comfort character who I also took small traits from and started dressing like him.

As well as taking on their traits I considered career paths similar to theirs. Bartender and janitor for Charlie and a cop for Dean.

It doesn’t stop at fictional characters either. I notice I take on bits of the people I’m with and mold myself into who they are. I laugh like them and want to do the same things that they do even if I’m bad at it. Another HUGE symptom of BPD and one of the most common criteria for it is uncontrollable bouts of anger  First and most recent example I have being when my last ex broke up with me. I spent two days in a rage threatening to do harm to him and, as he is an addict, told one of his friends that he could “Die in a ditch with a needle in his arm”. Every time I thought of him my body would go cold and I would shake with rage. Second example I can think of that I’ve had to do on many occasions is my plans and needs being shoved behind by my mother and me getting so enraged I had to go chop a dead tree in our back yard. Third and final example I have of some of my rages comes back to the person who ghosted me because I was fat.After he did that and found out he was lying to me about everything I sat for a good half hour staring at the group call he was in on a mutual discord server and planned on going in and yelling at him while everyone was there. I ended up not doing it but that was another example of me shaking with rage and my body going cold.  Mood swings are prevalent in people with BPD The most notable examples i have are, with the most severe being the time I took a book and smashed it on my desk, cried and then started laughing at the Mishapocolypse  all in the span of about 15 to 20 minutes and several times when I felt extremely inadequate to everyone or when I misinterpreted the tone of my FP and sent myself spiraling into a depression.  Some people with BPD may also have hallucinations I’ve had one that’s the most notable, being the time I hallucinated the smell of doritos when there were none near me at the time because I was outside away from home, Another when I was sitting in my therapists office. she noticed me looking away from her towards the floor at what I saw as a blue dot that looked like a very small light from a charging cord on a laptop battery pack. And last, but most recent is when I was outside on a walk and seeing several blue dots blinking in the bushes where no other lights would be.   Another marked trait of BPD is Impulsivity    I’ve dealt with impulsivity in a couple different area. Notably though are the several unsafe sexual encounters I've had with multiple partners, turning to drugs or alcohol to cope with stress or sadness and my spending money when I have very little. People with BPD can suffer from intrusive thoughts These are NOT fun or cute like tumblr likes to make them out to be. Here’s a list of mine that go from not so bad to holy shit go get help. 

Fp not talking to you this exact moment?: Pull your hair out 

Chugg the whole bottle of asprin

Punch that dog

Bite the cat

Feeling angry and wanna take it out on something?: Grab one of the hamsters and SQUISH!!!

I wanna peel the skin off a frog

Step on your grandpa’s ventilator tube

Take that baby by the legs and swing it’s head into the wall

These are just some of the symptoms I suffer from and my personal experiences with BPD and as I say in the tags, people experience these symptoms differently. If you can relate to these symptoms and are not diagnosed, I suggest taking it to a professional who can help you further research and help you recover.

#this is the fucking logest post i've made #god if you read all of this pls like it or something #this is MY PERSONAL STORY #people can experience it in many different ways this is just how i experience it so- #personal #bpd #borderline personality disorder #actually bpd

[wingheadshellhead]

Hi, I love your blog! So I've been reading a lot of 616 stevetony lately, and I've noticed that in both canon and in a lot of fiction, Steve seems to really dislike Extremis (even before superior iron man). Why do you think that is? Even without looking at this with shipper goggles (which I always am), I think it's really strange that Steve has so much disdain for something that essentially saved one of his best friend's lives.

(THIS HAS TAKEN ME 5 BILLION YEARS BUT HERE IT IS FINALLY)

i used to be in the same boat and automatically assumed steve’s dislike of extremis was one of those fandom headcanon things that was so commonly accepted it’d basically become fact, but it’s really, actually, all 100% canon. but the comics that deal with it happen right before civil war so i think many ppl have simply forgotten or skipped over that part of tony’s timeline.

execute program is the 6-issue arc that comes right after extremis and it’s the main thing i tell everyone they have to read if they’re putting themselves thru the ringer that is 616′s civil war. it is so so important to understanding tony’s headspace and where he’s at before the events of civil war occur. 

READ EXECUTE PROGRAM. a) bc it’s absolutely crucial to tony’s side of civil war, b) the follow-through from the extremis arc is just… amazing, virtuosic. i really genuinely think it is a fascinating, excellently-written arc, c) when it gets gay it gets very gay. truST ME you do not need your shipper goggles for this at all bc guess which of the following things are canon: the sound of steve saying his voice being the only thing that snaps tony out of (likely a dissociative episode) trying to murder a villain that nearly kills peter, dyeing his hair blond when he’s going on the run, tony stopping his heart to save steve’s life. all of them !!! all canon !!!!!! 

extremis is, basically, terrifying. to the average human being, hell even the average superhuman. it’s p much unfathomable the sheer level/magnitude/scope of extremis. extremis allows tony to access and control any piece of technology on earth and even in earth’s atmosphere, he can hear satellites. it’s like having the singularity as a superpower. 

so part 1, iron man vol. 4 #7 (2006), opening issue and we have tony stopping a villain with lethal force, all while counting down the milliseconds and bidding on priceless artefacts.

now, avengers don’t kill. and tony doesn’t, he stops the man’s heart, then restarts it, basically performing defibrillation. 

and then we get this conversation: 

and after tony jets off leaving the new avengers to sort out the aftermath, we get this disturbing reminder:

a proper reread might prove me wrong but i don’t think the writers ever clarify whether this transformation in tony’s personality is due to extremis or outside manipulation (which is the culmination of execute program’s arc as i’ll go into in a bit). but when your brain is literally a machine and you Have Become more machine than human, this is the natural progression of tony’s humanity – the aspects of compassion, empathy, etc. – fading into the background to accomodate for extremis. 

extremis brings out everything about tony that steve (and possibly the world) fears most. it makes him cold and calculating, and with a brain like tony stark’s elevated by the superhuman capacity to think and react at the speed of a machine, he’s unstopppable.

part 2, iron man vol. 4 #8, we have tony nearly straight up burning a man alive for almost killing peter and laughing about it. 

he’s so deep in Destroy Mode that he doesn’t even register steve’s warning, and here i think he acts entirely out of instinct –– like extremis is thinking for him rather than his brain prompting him to do this. 

extremis is also the cause of tension between tony and the newly-formed new avengers (one of my favorite line-ups!!), he almost gets into a fight with logan and jessica has to break them up. it turns out tony is missing time in his memory, which is extremely worrying for someone w/ his level of power…

what’s so fascinating about extremis, and why we have so much to thank warren ellis for (the writer of the extremis arc), is that it is the perfect and the most logical climax of the modern iron man story. tony’s worst villain, as we’ve known since the very beginning really, has never been anyone else but himself. and in the case of extremis, it’s a highly technologically advanced version of himself that can do and be everything he’s ever dreamed of being able to achieve vs. him. 

the question extremis asks is at what cost? at what cost does technological advancement, bleeding-edge breakthroughs, and the spirit of human innovation come at? how far would tony go to become the Ideal version of himself that he sees as superior in every way? what would he sacrifice for that?

extremis represents basically the pinnacle of sci-fi tech in iron man comics, it’s why even god awful superior iron man used a 3.0 version of it as the foundation for tony’s sins. it’s the farthest point he’s ever reached, and it’s also the lowest in terms of the damage and fallout that comes from it. because ofc, tony stark can’t have nice things like this, but also bc the hubris + nature of extremis allowing its host to play god can’t exist without there being negative consequences. really b ad consequences. 

huge respect to danial & charles knauf, the authors of execute program, too, because they find a way to perfectly bring the arc full circle as ellis did with his extremis. the central villain plot revolves around ho yinsen’s son. the kid hacks extremis and uses it to control tony, sending him to subconsciously assassinate a bunch of people on his kill list, i.e. a list of all the men involved in yinsen’s death. i mean like, HOLY SHIT, an iron man plot where a literal ghost from tony’s past – a direct victim of events tony was involved in, the son of the man that sacrificed his life so iron man could be born and so tony stark could live – shows up, weaponises tony’s own body + technology and uses him to murder people who are scheduled to participate in a peace summit despite the blood on their hands and the human cost of their involvement in the weapons industry.

DRAWING PARALLELS BETWEEN YINSEN’S LIFE’S WORK AND TONY’S LIKE DEATH AND DYING WOULD BE KINDER. again bc of my memory or even regardless due to constant retcons + reruns of the iron man origin story, i don’t know if it’s ever been explicitly stated before that yinsen also got into the weapons industry in order to get the funding necessary to support his other revolutionary work. but his son literally conflates yinsen with tony here, blending them into one + the same with that final panel and it becomes very obvious that at least a small part of him blames father for entering into weapons design. if he hadn’t, he might never have been captured by the the terrorist group that wanted him and tony to build them missiles. 

also, yinsen + villains involving yinsen are a recurring theme in iron man history but can we talk abt the fact that tony has never ever let himself forget the man bc jesus christ

yinsen’s kid is killed by a SHIELD sniper, activating the dead man’s switch and unleashing all the peackeeping units tony built that are now compromised. now, tony’s no jean grey or wanda maximoff but if this arc shows anything it’s not to underestimate him bc intentional or not (lmao) if he put his mind to it there’s literally no limit to the damage he could do. 

we see various heroes fighting off the peacekeeping units, and the new avengers are at the peace summit fighting a hulkbuster. 

and here it is people !!! the 23989485th time tony kills himself so steve can live. 

JUST. THE LOOK ON HIS FACE. AND THEN THIS ABSOLUTE LACK OF HESITATION:

so, yes. extremis was traumatising for pretty much every single person involved. steve has extremely good reasons for HATING extremis, even in the early stages or even if a fic is taking place before the events of execute program.

if you read the full arc, you’ll see tony running himself into the ground with his new abilities (world’s greatest multitasker can now multitask 192483958 things at once? ofc he’s going to use and abuse and exploit that), you see him spiralling and losing his grip on reality (mainly because he’s actually having dissociative episodes and losing time due to being remotely controlled to assassinate ppl but also bc of the Effect extremis is having on him). i brought up wanda and jean earlier as a casual reference but like, to put it in that kind of perspective, people just weren’t made to have this much power.

on a smaller scale, apart from eating up all of tony’s time and attention and mental health in a really bad way, it just Distances him from everyone. especially from the team. it’s Isolating, having this much going on in his brain and no one else in the world to fully understand it. 

and on steve’s side, you also have the fact that tony’s genius is both one of the things he loves and lowkey resents most about him. he has this deep-set anxiety about tony with all his brilliance and intelligence leaving him behind in the dust, or worse, laughing at him and how outdated and dim-witted he is in comparison. this is steve’s version of tony’s “i’m never going to be good enough for him”, a sentiment summed up in a quote from him as early as tales of suspense vol. 2 (1995): “yes, tony stark, a man of today and tomorrow is the man i’ll never be.” he’s so afraid of being abandoned + alienated by tony’s mind and the future that tony’s worked so tirelessly to build that might render him irrelevant. he’s scared of a future where he has no purpose, but more or just as importantly, he’s scared of becoming obsolete in tony’s life, of not being needed by tony anymore. one of the things that endeared him so much to tony, and which laid the foundations of their lifelong friendship, was the fact that from Day One (1), tony made him feel At Home. he never let him feel ashamed or isolated as The Man Out Of Time, he actively worked to make steve feel comfortable and to give him the things he needed to acclimatise and to fit himself into this brave new world. 

extremis undoes all of that. it propels tony so far and so fast into the future that it makes tony untouchable to steve. all of the ‘i can hear satellites’ stuff renders steve helpless and even more out of his depth than usual. it presses all of steve’s secret buttons and then some.

to sum this all up, and to finish my extra rambling abt tony bc u asked me about extremis and i couldn’t not finish with this:

here we have, ladies and gentlemen, everything u need to understand abt tony going into civil war. and it’s not on any of the official civil war fucking reading lists which really pisses me off because whether or not they did it on purpose the knaufs basically wrote all of execute program as the perfect precursor and characterisation groundwork for an antebellum tony stark. 

a tony stark who was just very recently manipulated against his will into assassinating people and causing a world-threatening incident that could have resulted in the deaths of thousands, including his own friends and teammates (and the love of his life), is a very different tony stark to the one ppl see in civil war #1.

what happens in stamford was an accident, too. no one meant for that to happen. tony knows first fucking hand what that means and what it feels like to carry that responsibility and guilt. his position in civil war supporting the SHRA is not only to protect the potential lives that could be lost in another stamford incident but also to protect superhumans and superheroes from ever being exploited against their will by villains to kill and hurt and destroy. 

superheroes are inherently susceptible to being used, it’s just part of the narrative convention –– a superhero is brainwashed or mind controlled or otherwise forced against their will to do something awful. and even if it’s not their fault there needs to be  accountability  for the victims. both the victims that suffer directly because of superhuman incidents but also the superheroes that become victims of ppl who abuse their powers. it’s abt protecting superheroes not just from civilians but from themselves. and if u’ve read a single comic u kno that this kinda shit happens way too often and way too easily.

sO YE S T hIS iS W HY. AND IT Ex PL AINS SO MUC H AND i j UST WISH P PL WOULD GODDAMN REA D THIS. LIKE EVERYONE WHO EVER WANTS TO SAY ANOTHER A GODDAMN THING ABOUT TONY STARK IN CIVIL WAR NEEDS TO FIRST READ EXECUTE PROGRAM FIRST OR PAY ME $10

anyway…………… one last time, i’m so so so sorry this took forever to get to. hope the wait was worth it!

#mod: answer #averageapplepie #stevetony #stony #extremis #text: meta #universe: 616 #comic: iron man v4 #original: meta #i'm so sorry u had to wait so long like #i should warn ppl that ever ask me a meta question that i might take half a yr to reply #......not to deter u tho bc i promise that my answer will be as well thought-out and in-depth as i can make it