Plot Armor But It’s Bruce Wayne’s Wealth.

Ive got this funky aftg au in my head where Nathan loves Mary and Neil and Mary and Nathan both hatch a mad plan where she takes Neil on the run and he chases after them for nearly a decade in order to protect Neil from the moriyamas of course neither of them tell Neil who thinks genuinely that his father is trying to kill them both which is weird this time because while Neil was being trained in the art of serial killing au!Nathan has never tried to kill him before or let anyone else hurt him. the inner circle are more loyal to the moriyamas so they also think Nathan wants mary and Neil dead. Lola kills Mary in Seattle before she can explain literally anything to Neil so he doesnt find out about any of this until Nathan walks into the basement and kills his inner circle. Nathan and Stuart coordinate with the fbi to take down the moriyamas and take over their territory and Neil is just like ????? WHAT IS GOING ON

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

i love it when fandom infantilizes characters to the point of denying them their own agency.

"if people in cang qiong had treated shen jiu differently-" do you have any evidence that they mistreated him? or is it too hard a pill to swallow that shen jiu was the one who decided to close himself off and be an asshole. that cang qiong treated him just fine, that his martial siblings tolerated him to the point that even when he was suspected of murder nothing was done to him?

who forced shen jiu to abuse luo binghe? to abuse other disciples? those were his decisions, that was him acting in a position of power.

the moral of the story is not "shen jiu was misunderstood :(" the moral is: the person who was abused can also become an abuser. the one who suffers violence can be violent towards others. you, despite what you've gone through, have the capacity for kindness and cruelty. so be wise on how you decide to act, because your pain doesn't justify hurting others, and your actions will have consequences.

you have agency, you have whatever amount of power you have over your own life and the things you do have an impact in the lives of those around you and yourself. so maybe try being at the very list neutral to the world and yourself, if you can't be kind.

but no, shen jiu's mentality was "since I suffered, they deserve to suffer too". and by taking that path he perpetuated the cycle of abuse.

bingge is the same, because he could have stopped at taking revenge on shen jiu, but he decided to involve the whole sect and the rest of the world, no matter who was innocent. he was unnecessarily cruel, but so was his master.

both shen jiu and bingge had the capacity for some form of "niceness" (in the way they treated women), so it wasn't as if they'd never known some form of love. at some point in their lives, they stopped being abused children and became abusive adults.

and that's an expression of human behaviour that we have to accept as possible. the svsss narrative invites us to examine ourselves in this light, to witness our capacity for both love and hate, to realize that even in the most adverse of circumstances, there's always a small sliver of agency over how we feel and how we act. that, despite the things that defines us from birth through childhood, our decisions also define what we'll become in the future.

Me: You know how when you were a kid and you’d wish that you’d get sick or injured in a way that would justify why you didn’t live up to your potential?

Everybody, apparently: No?

i truly cannot IMAGINE what it would be like to attend palmetto state university

like wdym the two confirmed murderers are majoring in CRIMINAL JUSTICE and FUCKING PREMED respectively why is no one worried about this

why is 6’1 broody asshole tattooed exy prodigy kevin day getting unreasonably heated in his classical history socratic seminars

and allison??? like imagine if kendall jenner got disowned and joined a fucking college hockey team

why does the redhead from calculus look like hes about to kill himself every time his phone buzzes

why does the angelic pastel haired reborn christian regularly spar with the evil blonde twunk

why does the redhead from calculus have a maserati but literally only wears clothes from walmart

what could they have possibly done to deserve getting all the psu athletes cars destroyed, and even having animal carcasses left inside

it must be especially crazy as another athlete in the tower bc they overhear the craziest shit. like imagine just chilling with the soccer team and one door down the exy players are screaming in 5 different languages and trying their level best to kill each other so you go to the coach and he just brushes it off like nah that happens sometimes don’t worry

and no one for the life of them can figure out who’s dating who on that team bc kevin follows andrew around like a lost puppy despite being a full foot taller, but he has a weird love-hate mutually obsessive relationship with neil, but neil’s the only person who andrew answers to and kevin has an equally big crush on jeremy knox, but andrew spends all his time with making up hypothetical apocalypse scenarios with renee, who might be dating the teams resident millionaire supermodel who wears rainbow stilettos and also was involved with the guy who got murdered, and their coach and nurse are def a thing too like what

there are just SO many outsider povs that i desperately need

- the busboy who got grabbed by some blasted tiny menace begging him to punch his lights out for 100 bucks, and then did

- kathy ferdinand.

- the guy who randomly gave this absolutely plastered pro athlete a facial tattoo at like 3 in the morning

- wymack standing there watching neil just straight up stick andrew’s hand up his shirt

- roland thinking andriel were fucking the whole time come to find out he accidentally outed andrew’s raging neil boner and probably got the shit beaten out of him

- any fbi agents/members of law enforcement that have interacted with (ie. been subjected to and terrorized by) one neil josten

- the cheerleader squad in millport that neil had beef with

- katelyn discovering her boyfriend and his twin brother made a lifelong bros before hoes pact that they’re both actively breaking

- the reporter listening to kevin say that his broken hand wasn’t an accident, wymack is his father, he’s never going back to the ravens, and then proceeded to have a panic attack

- the other ravens during the Riko Roast who had no clue who this mouthy little fuckwad was, watched him verbally eviscerate their leader, then see him weeks later at the nest playing on their field with a court number tat, only for him to fuck off and never come back

- also literally any other exy team at these banquets watching The Kevin Day regularly chug half a bottle of liquor on the bus before walking into formal galas

- the waitress in the mountains who saw neil post-torture and got the explanations of skateboarding, bad breakup, and fell into a tank of piranhas, simultaneously

- that guy who sold neil his new racket only to turn on tv later to find out it was used as a murder weapon, and the dude still wants more of them

- the workers at eden who watched one of their regulars attempt to kill 4 grown men and the other one later successfully kill one

- the sports announcers reporting as riko literally tries to murder neil live on national television

saw a video abt how the “toxic boy mom” thing is just emotional incest/enmeshment and i was like yeah correct. then i looked at the comments and it was all ppl blaming the sons??? mocking them, saying they should just get over it, saying no woman should ever date them, that if their mom is like that then it’s their fault for “allowing” it and like. y’all i do not know how else to explain that a parent abusing their child (bc that’s what emotional incest is) is not the child’s fault. if you realize your partner is a victim of enmeshment/emotional incest, you should handle it the same way you would with any other abuse victim, with care and tact and offers of support. not mockery and blame. jesus christ.

Praying for killer outfits, straight A’s, good sleep, and a consistent workout routine this school year

i do find it very interesting how different the foxes and the trojans go about caring for and supporting each other. well, actually, i mostly find it interesting how differently people seem to feel about it, especially in regards to kevin's drinking problem.

the way kevin's clearly unhealthy relationship with alcohol doesn't get condemned or fixed in the original trilogy for example is something that many people in the fandom have been pretty upset and critical about for many years and jean's reaction to it seemed to have really moved people (though that in particular, imo, had at least as much to do with jean's very restricted and in itself unhealthy relationship to food and drinks as with him uniquely seeing and caring about kevin's substance abuse issues. like, yeah, he really, really cares about him, but i don't think he'd have been thaaat much less upset if kevin was coping by eating chips or something. but well, whatever).

but to me, that never really read as no one caring about kevin or thinking alcohol is the ideal way for him to regulate his emotions.

the whole premise of how wymack runs the foxes and how they treat each other is just very built around the idea that all these people have been through awful things and that the way they'll cope with that won't always be pretty. but as long as they cope at all, they'll be around for another day, and another, which'll buy them to actually get better.

which is how you get stuff like wymack, in good conscience, not only tolerating but at times even soliciting underage drinking. and looking past the harder drugs some of the team are doing. and it's how him and the team all accept that neil is definitely lying about pretty much everything but mostly just leave him be. and how they all agreed to let andrew get off his legally mandated medication during games even though that could have terrible consequences for all of them. and how matt's mom said "sure random eighteen year old calling me on the phone, do give my addict son speedballs, you seem to have a higher success rate at getting teenagers clean than me 👍" because they all view life less as you're either doing good or you doing bad, and more as you're either surviving whatever it takes to do so, or you don't, so who cares if you aren't coping in healthy or acceptable ways, as long as you are coping. (and then once they're ready to work on getting better, they do have a support system in place to help them get there)

meanwhile the trojans are mostly pretty normal and well adjusted, so they have a pretty clear idea of what a healthy person who's doing well looks like, and that's what they generally want for other people, especially those they care about. so when they see someone who's not doing well and not dealing with it in healthy ways they are very direct about it, sort of a "your behaviour is not healthy, stop doing it" thing. your eating habits are really restrictive? try eating different food anyways, it's really good, i prommy. you hurt yourself when you're upset? here's how to physically stop this from hurting. you get incredibly startled when you're touched unexpectedly? well, just let me try hugging you again. you drink to deal with your feelings? please don't, it's not good for you.

and obviously that's a lot more normal and straight forward than what the foxes are doing, and it's done with love and support. and a lot of fans find it very moving and beautiful and sweet. but i also know that i'm not the only person who was really put off by this and still finds it kinda disconcerting. to me it feels, especially in contrast to the foxes, who would largely find this sooo overbearing and rude and uncomfortable, kinda like strongarming someone into doing well, with (at least in the context of these specific books) shockingly little regard for personal boundaries.

my point isn't that one's better than the other or anything, i think both approaches are going to work differently well for different people and within the books it makes perfect sense why the different teams would act this way, and it's also perfectly understandable why some people really resonate with one approach and find the other irritating or unkind. it's simply some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head. building up to: nothing really. oh well