penning plushie dreadful

// emjei — nineteen. they/them. black. college student. writer.

// about me — masterlist — tags

“therefore, my head was kingless. / i was a head alone, moaning in a wet black field.”

"people who've never sat in a braiding chair for more than five hours"

small (reworked) excerpt from a scrapped fic i wrote five years ago. lmk if you want to know/see more or if i should lay it back to rest 🙏🏽

dick used to love the rain when he was younger. he loved the feel of it. loved seeing the mist it created temporarily hang over whatever city the circus stopped in, loved the smell it left afterwards. he especially loved the storms. the sound of the droplets making contact with his window calmed him in a way that nothing else ever could.

sometimes he’d dream of standing in the rain and letting it drench him, but he was too afraid of catching a cold the day after. between the scolding he’d earn and the pain he’d feel over missing a performance, he was content with watching the rain dance on his fingertips when he stuck his hand through the window.

the only thing he disliked about the storms was the thunder. he couldn’t stand how it made the ground shake and would hide under his blanket to try and protect himself from the noise. sometimes the thunder would last for just three seconds, but it would usually roll for what felt like hours for no good reason. he almost cried tears of joy the day his mother taught him how to observe the lightning—who was she if her son didn’t know how to properly time his retreats from the thunder?

now, as a grown man, it doesn’t make a difference to him. the feel, the smell, the volume of the storm, none of it mattered. it was always raining, be it due to climate change or due to mother nature having unfinished business with gotham. the thunder grew more aggressive with every storm, yet the sound was no more a threat to him than an unlit candle.

the thunder had found itself a purpose, at least. if he lets himself float away, just a bit, the sound of the sky tearing itself apart was enough to drown out the static in his own head.

i feel like a big reason why a lot of people fail to properly digest the plot and themes of whc1/2 is that they can’t turn off ship brain. and no i’m not one of those “it’s a bromanceee😩” people because a. it’s not and b. they don’t understand the show either.

weak hero is a show that requires you to examine every single dynamic with an equally watchful eye. what is sieun to suho? suho to beomseok? beomseok to youngyi? you even need to dive into all their different dynamics with the bullies (ex. what is it that makes sieun a target vs. beomseok, and how does that translate to the differences in how they’re harassed?) you have to understand how every single character and their actions impacts everyone else. if you watch weak hero as the sieun x suho show (which is your prerogative i promise you i’m not going to war over it) and not a show that highlights destructive cycles of violence, the way that ideals of “masculinity” reward and encourage violence, the ways in which children are used, abused, and discarded within society, and so on and so on and so on, then you miss out on a lot of what truly builds weak hero into what it is.

and like? idk walk w me for a second.

suho was sieun’s first friend, the first person that has his back, the first person who actually cared about him. he loves that boy in a way that he doesn’t properly understand because he has never needed to process emotions in such a way.

suho and sieun were the same for beomseok, but he didn’t have the same ability to accept that he possibly had something good. they were beomseok’s first friends, first people that gave a fuck about him, the first people in his life that didn’t beat his ass every day and night and make him feel unworthy of breathing. and he zeroed in on suho as suho was who he wanted/wanted to like him/wanted to be (complex ass set of feelings, right).

i’d honestly argue that everything sieun felt for/about suho, beomseok felt just as (if not more) intensely and was even more lost when it came to navigating that. which is a fucking nightmare when you remember the communication skills he never got to develop, as that doesn’t just mess up how he interacts with others but also how he interprets other people’s words and actions. and we see how that plays out.

you can’t just water down beomseok’s character to him being jealous and “sociopathic” (also please stop throwing that word around? lmao) and the one that broke apart #real lovers, because it shows that you refuse to engage with who his character actually is and what he represents in regards to the show’s themes and messages.

well actually i mean you can but that don’t make it right. i don’t have it in me at the moment to break down all the ways in which being a victim of horrific abuse for years can break down a child’s psyche in ways that will take twice as long to repair, the inner workings of a 16 year old boy’s mind, the fact that it wasn’t just about an instagram follow, yadda yadda, so to wrap this up:

1. shipping is fun i love it woo but i feel that a lot of the show that deserves to be dug into more just… isn’t? at least not by certain areas of the fandom and that’s not the end of the world but it does just upset me (seeing as how in those same circles i often see very odd discussion of beomseok as an abuse victim).

2. i yearn for more detailed analyses of sieun & suho vs suho & beomseok vs beomseok & sieun’s relationships with each other in ways that truly respect all of their characters and the deep emotions they feel for each other (platonic, romantic, resentment, jealousy, allat). GO DEEPER WITH THE “FIRST LOVE” COMMENT FROM THE DIRECTOR! REACH THE CENTER OF THE EARTH!