#necer0s

[ image description: Uncolored digital sketch of Conner Kent from YJ animated holding Tawky Tawny’s plush form and inspecting him with a confused expression. ]

Lynn meets his Uncle Tawky, for @necer0s.

One of the big themes of Sam’s life is that everyone who cares about him helps him along his path to becoming the soldier he wants to be, even though they know it’s something that has and will hurt him and even destroy him. Would Kaidan ever reach a point where he’s so unwilling to let Sam be hurt that he would genuinely consider taking Sam away from all of it?

Like, I don’t know what taking Sam to safety even looks like, but if there was a moment where that was a real option… would Kaidan want to do it, even if Sam said he wanted to keep fighting?

This incredible question gets right at the heart of some of the central conflict I have in mind for the ME3 story.

Sam is a sacrificial lamb - the people who love him are forced to use him even when they don't want to, because the alternative is too high a price to pay for the well being of one person. It's very much a case study of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few.

The irony, of course, is that Sam would let the world burn for the people he cares about. He would walk away if Kaidan asked him to. Kaidan is more important to him.

But he also knows that Kaidan can't ask him to do that. Sam would chose the Kaidan over the galaxy, but Kaidan cannot choose Sam over the galaxy. His moral center can't bend that far. Sam knows this. He said as much in the rain in Sonata. He saw the writing on the wall very early: loving Sam would eventually force Kaidan into an impossible position: choosing Sam or being true to himself. And one of Kaidan's founding principles is that he is always true to himself. It's why Sam loves him.

Would the temptation be there? Sure. Would Kaidan be able to live with that choice, while the galaxy Sam could have saved collapses around them?

No.

and GOD do i have thoughts on vanessa and the wild turns her story took!!!! i'm still sorting through them but MAN. it really just felt like they did NOT want to give her a break 😭😭😭

i really loved early vanessa's relationship with diana. i think one of the most striking things to me about perez's run was that he did really understand how to write a teenage girl who read like a teenage girl, and her preoccupation with things like comparing herself to her friends or struggling with school and juggling how it felt to be popular bc of her friendship with diana... it all struck a really nice contrast and balance to the supernatural and mythological and whatnot higher stakes stories going on with diana a lot of the time, and i thought the diana-julia-vanessa dynamic was overall really sweet. it's a little funny bc as i was reading, when i got to byrne's run i was actually like "i wonder if cassie and vanessa are ever going to meet, i bet they could have some fun interactions :)" and then. um. well.

overall i feel like silver swan vanessa was a) WHAT? and b) unfortunately rushed and never actually given space for the appropriate gravity and nuance it deserved. val's silver swan era got a lot better buildup and explanation than vanessa's imo. i think vanessa's silver swan era really suffered from having both major arcs with her coincide more or less with dc-wide crossover events starting up, first owaw and then identity crisis into omac stuff into infinite crisis.

because like - the shock of vanessa getting turned into the silver swan against her will could really have been something!!! however, pretty much all of it was offscreen and only really implicit. we see flashbacks and bits and pieces of ballesteros doing some insanely violating and horrifying shit to her, twice over even bc she gets kidnapped from the hospital and when she shows up again she's been horrifically altered with cybernetics grafted onto her body ? ? ?!? ?! ?!?! !! ! but at No Point in any of this do we actually get any more than a line or two about vanessa herself, how this happened to her, or how she's actually feeling under it all. i think that's partly because of the poor timing bc of the events, and partly also just her being used for shock value and more for diana's suffering (and to a lesser extent, julia's) instead of having her own consistent character arc.

i also think the fact that while brainwashed and tortured into being the silver swan, she did kill cassie's friend tammy, kind of got majorly glossed over, especially in her second appearance as the silver swan when people were going "she's a murderer????" and diana was like "well i'm granting her asylum anyways and taking care of her." like - don't get me wrong, i think that's very in character of diana, especially because she feels like she failed vanessa, but i think cassie in particular should've gotten to react to it more. i really liked the bit where cassie said to julia that if this worked out, she'd get her daughter back, but that tammy's mother would never get hers back. i wish cassie having those feelings got explored more - i didn't really like the parallel set up between vanessa vs cassie and ballesteros vs barbara minerva, re: themes of vengeance, because like... vanessa was a victim, but cassie shouldn't have to forgive her for killing her friend. these two concepts can coexist. (frankly, i would have LOVED an actual conversation between cassie and vanessa about this during/after vanessa's recovery.)

it's probably also due to timing stuff, but the plot threads with veronica cale being directly involved in torturing vanessa into the silver swan (and then threatening leslie about it) got Super dropped when identity crisis and the omacs stuff all started happening, and i think that's a shame because that plotline could've been the key to actually explaining what happened and why - it could've actually tied together the "vanessa got tormented by doctor psycho" and "vanessa ended up with ballesteros" bits because like. what. how. that feels like such a big deal to just leave to the background.

So this answer ended up being longer than expected, but whatever. I have two scenes in mind. First: the Sports Festival!

In this AU, one of the many injustices Izuku faces is that, when the UA admissions board finds out about his quirklessness, there’s a lot of debate over whether to even admit him into the Hero Course. Eventually they settle on putting him on probation for the first few months. During his probation, his homeroom teacher has carte blanche power to decide that he isn’t cut out for the hero course, with the Sports Festival serving as the final test. In order to remain a hero student, he has to make the podium.

It makes for a very stressful experience for Izuku.

Second: the Final Exam arc!

All-Might actually serves as an antagonist for much of this AU. He’s lost sight of his own experiences when he was quirkless, and is convinced Izuku is putting himself in mortal danger. He spends much of his time as a teacher trying to convince him to give up, the culmination of this being the Final Exam arc, when he pulls Aizawa aside and asks to be the proctor for Izuku’s exam.

Aizawa, who up to this point has been quietly supporting Izuku and watching the Symbol of Peace try to set him up for failure, proceeds to tear him a new one for all the bullshit he’s pulled, and tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s not letting All-Might squander all the hard work and potential Izuku has shown.