tl;dr meme

[glassinine]

Vilkommen, Herren und Damen, to the...



~TL;DR MEME~

Fucking magnets, how does this work?
Step 1: Post a list of your characters.
Step 2: Sit and twirl your moustaches until other people post their characters, then go and ask them questions about their folks. It can be anything, from "So how deep DO Tony Stark's daddy issues run?" (Answer: "they swim amongst giant squid and anglerfish and the trench the kaiju came out of") to "Tell me your least favorite thing about the DC canon" (Answer: "Holy shit are there some cockmongling dingleberries running that company").
Step 3: Other people will ask YOU questions. You go and answer those questions, and be polite - ask THEM a question in return after you're done answering it! (So, it's not just "Nick Burkhardt decided to become a cop when he heard about police brutality and wanted to get in on that" but also you follow up with "What magnificent auroch did Loki hunt to get those beautiful horns?") Then when THEY answer their question, they'll ask YOU a question! ("They came from being cuckolded in Shakespearean times. What are Nick Burkhardt's favorite sunglasses?") And the you ask THEM A QUESTION AGAIN! And they ask YOU! And you ask THEM!! And they ask YOU!!!! So that it's a great big patty-cake of QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS!!!
Step 4: Repeat ad infinitum until we break the motherfucking internet

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Comments

[earnedmystripes]

How does Edgeworth feel about being essentially an ordinary person amongst a sea of superpowered fighters?

[glassinine]

Uncomfortable, naturally, but not as uncomfortable as he would be if he had big flashy superpowers. Edgeworth is used to depending on the police for support and protection; he doesn't fight at home, has never held a gun (that wasn't in evidence or being used to frame him for murder ha ha ha), and just relies on the people around him to deal with any violence. So it's essentially the same here - just that no one is really designated to help him, and there's a hell of a lot more violence than what he faces at home.

What's Kotetsu's attitude towards his powers?

i'm so sorry about this btw this question is like literally his life story

[earnedmystripes]

ooooh that's really interesting!! 'u'

OKAY KOTETSU AND POWERS

oh man this is legit one of the most loaded questions that can possibly be asked of Kotetsu.

so this tale of far too many emotions begins 45 years ago, when the first NEXTs appeared. Kotetsu is 35 at the beginning of the series and his powers first manifested when he was about nine. Which means that NEXTs have literally only existed for about twenty years when Kotetsu discovers he is one.

And as you can imagine, their existence is not received well by the world at large. It's terrifying, and humanity tends to lash out against what it does not understand. There's a great deal of hatred and discrimination and from what we're told in canon, all of Kotetsu's friends turned their back on him when his powers emerge. He was extensively bullied and cried every day. (This is a character that cries about twice in the whole series) We're told he even tried to hide his powers from his family, which I headcanon is because a.) he was afraid of being rejected (which is actually the backstory of one of the villains, who is kidnapped by a known homicidal terrorist and her parents leave her for dead rather than pay the ransom) and b.) because he was afraid that people would reject his family and ruin THEIR lives just because he's the freak.

So young Kotetsu is in really bad shape at this point, emotionally speaking. His self-worth is practically negative, he's isolated from every person in his entire life, and he's really resentful and afraid and desperately wants to be normal again and have his life back, because he never asked for these powers, and now he's this freak, this monster by no fault of his own.

And then a very pivotal event in his life happens that is the source of every single one of his actions and motivations from that point forward. He just so happens to be in a bank one day when it's held up by thugs. Hero TV is still sort of in its infancy at this point, but it's known enough that there is one particular hero that is famous: Mr. Legend. Legend arrives to arrest the criminals, and something very interesting happens here: they put a gun to bb!Kotetsu's head, and at this point Legend's hands are tied. But Kotetsu's powers (which are not yet under control bc obviously he's had no one to teach him) activate on their own and the thug is blasted into the opposite wall, unconscious. Kotetsu is unharmed, the other hostages are unharmed, and Legend can make the arrest with impunity. ...But Kotetsu isn't relieved at all about this; he's actually really upset. He tells Legend not to approach him while he's glowing because "he hurts people". Even though someone literally just held a gun to his head he can't think about the harm that was done him. He's been made to believe he is nothing but a monster and a freak that is only capable of destruction. And then Legend does something miraculous: he tells him he's wrong, that his powers were meant to save people.

It is honestly not an exaggeration to say that these words literally saved his life. They gave him a dream and a calling, but most importantly gave him hope. If someone like Legend thought he was worth something, that he had something to offer the world, maybe it was really possible. There is a deeply unfortunate unintended side effect here, too, but I'll get back to that later. The main point is, this was the moment he knew he wanted to be a Hero, and that one statement ("your powers are meant to save people") has been the driving force of his entire life thereafter.

SO LET'S FAST FORWARD A BIT to high school. Kotetsu's got his dream, and he's more comfortable in the idea that he has something to offer the world. But he's still more or less alone socially, partly because he's still a little afraid of his own capabilities, and because others haven't exactly shed their prejudices overnight. And then there's this girl, Tomoe Amamiya--straight A student, top of her year, class president, non-NEXT and massive Hero TV fangirl. So all at once, Kotetsu has someone who is not only not afraid of him, but actively encourages his dream and helps him come up with a hero name for someday. They fall in love and get married and Kotetsu actually becomes a Hero and they have a baby together, and for somewhere between three and four years, Kotetsu has literally everything he's ever wanted in his entire life and he is completely happy.

Then Tomoe gets sick. It's never stated specifically what illness she had, but it's heavily implied that it was somewhat long-running and terminal. As you can imagine, this is a really crushing blow to Kotetsu, because here he is with all this power, the strength and speed of ten men, the capability to shrug off bullets, and none of it can do anything for his wife. She's going to die, and there's nothing he can do about it. And that's really hard for him? Because what's the point of being a hero at all, of all that power, if he can't even save one of the people he loves the most in the world?

He's doing his job at the same time as dealing with her illness, too, and then one day he gets a hero dispatch, and he's reluctant to go. From what I can tell, it's probably because they knew she didn't have that much time left. But she tells him he ought to go, reminds him that a hero's duty is to the people first. And on his way out, she asks him to make a promise: No matter what happens, please be a Hero. Promise me that.

As you might be able to guess, that's the very last thing she ever says to him; she dies while he's off saving someone else's life. Fuck you very much, Sunrise.

SO that takes us to the beginning of the series proper, five years later. At this point we need to stop for an aside on the state of his life and the society at large because it's actually relevant to the question and I'm so fucking sorry about this goddamn term paper on a fictional character's emotions about his supernatural powers. But okay:

1) At this point, NEXTs have finally reached a state where they are more or less accepted by the world at large. There's still plenty of anti-NEXT sentiment, but it's no longer the mainstream opinion.

2) The price of that acceptance, however, is the fact that Heroism is an industry, and Heroes are seen as commodities. Entertainment, basically. The equivalent of our society's movie stars. Society does not really have a proper appreciation or respect for the fact that these people are literally risking their lives day in and day out for the safety of the city. And they are in fact in life-threatening danger this often, due to the fact that Maverick has done pretty shady and terrible things to get NEXTs to this point of acceptance; he made a deal with a crime syndicate to perform flashy crimes regularly for Heroes to fight on TV in exchange for supplying them with weapons.

3) There's also a prevailing attitude, among both society and NEXTs themselves, that a NEXT is worthless if they are not or do not become a Hero. So often, NEXTs do not learn to value themselves as individuals with intrinsic worth so much as their capability to provide something of value to the world. Remember this point, it will become relevant again soon.

4) Kotetsu's life has gone completely to shit at this point. He's living alone in the house he shared with Tomoe and Kaede, his relationship with his daughter has become terribly strained at best (because he is a dumbshit who never told her about his Heroing career because he didn't want her to worry about him) and he hasn't physically seen her in five years, he is no longer popular or profitable as a Hero. He's actually somewhat of a liability because he doesn't really care about property damage in the defense of people's lives, so a lot of money goes down the drain that way. In fact, his boss can't keep their company solvent and gets bought out by one of the seven large corporations, and his new boss makes it very clear to him that he's basically a marketing device for Barnaby. And he's exhausted. It's hard to keep going when there's no real support from any corner.

So why does he keep going? Because of those two crucial moments in his life: Legend telling him his powers were meant to save people, and Tomoe making him promise he'd always be a Hero. So yeah, he keeps going, and lots of character development unrelated to this question happens, but eventually...eventually, by his sheer force of heart and determination, he gets himself back into a pretty good place. He becomes close to his partner, gains the respect of his employer, starts rising in popularity again.

...Only to start losing his powers. It's an extremely cruel irony, because when he was a child that was his most fervent wish, and now that he's finally accepted who and what he is, now that he's built a life and a career around it, and made many sacrifices along the way (his relationship with his daughter, his last moments with Tomoe), he's going to become a normal fucking person again?????

This is where that unfortunate side effect of what Legend told him and the attitude toward NEXTs in Sternbild now comes in, because being told his powers were meant to save people? That's great and all, but Kotetsu was never really taught to value himself. So it led to a kind of warped thinking wherein he believed that saving people was all he was good for. The bottom started to drop out of his world, because if he lost his powers, he couldn't be Wild Tiger anymore, and who would he be then? On top of that, he gets to find out that Legend, that guy who inspired him and set him on the path to becoming a Hero, who gave him reason to believe in himself for the first time in his life? He lost his powers too. Not only that, but Hero TV started staging his arrests to preserve his public image! He was also so troubled by this that became an alcoholic and an abusive husband and father too, for added horrible, but luckily Kotetsu doesn't know about that

Kotetsu goes hardcore denial, and tries to just deal with it for months, hiding it from everyone. He goes on an impromptu trip back home for the first time in six years, but he's really just running away from his problems. PLOT THINGS happen after that, and they work out pretty well, leading to things getting better with his daughter but that's mostly irrelevant here. What is relevant is that after everything resolves, Kotetsu does decide to retire and live out his life with his family rather than continue on as his powers progressively fade.

This is the point he's at when he comes to Heropa (and I'll get to Heropa in a minute, crying), but it's significant to mention that after a year, it's actually his daughter herself that encourages him to go back to Hero TV, and this is really important because Kotetsu would never have been satisfied remaining retired? Because unhealthy thought patterns aside, Kotetsu lives and breathes being a Hero; it's part of who he is down to his very bones. Helping and protecting people will always be important to him, no matter whether or not he has powers, and it's this realization that he comes to by the end of the epilogue--though, as the Rising does a good job of showing us, those thirty-year-deep insecurities haven't magically vanished, even if he's in a better place about it.

But Kotetsu hasn't experienced that realization yet, as I said. His power loss is frozen by the Porter at three minutes and forty-five seconds, and to spare you any further misery, let's just say he has a lot of fucking feelings about it. He's deeply grateful to the Porter for it because it means he can keep saving people, but at the same time, he's not sure what it means for his decision to retire back home, and it makes him question if he made the right decision and what he's going to do when he returns. I imagine down the line it'll also lead to uncomfortable questions of whether he wants to leave, but right now the answer to that question is a resounding yes and probably will be for awhile.

question for you, finally: How does Edgeworth feel about the registration system, and his current place within it? If he could do it over again knowing what he knows now, would he register?