Okay. So most people know what physical abuse is - that’s pretty straightforward. And most people have a vague idea of what emotional abuse is. But what about financial abuse? Financial abuse is a common type of abuse - much more common than you’d think - and it can make it almost impossible to get away from a toxic relationship. So what the hell is it?
Simply put, financial abuse is when an abuser controls or limits your money in order to keep you in the relationship or make you do what they want. Financial abuse can come in many forms, some more subtle than others, but all forms can be extremely difficult to escape from.
Most of my followers are in their late teens or early twenties, which means at this stage in your lives, financial abuse is most likely to come from your parents. This often comes in the form of threatening to take away financial support if you don’t do exactly what they want. “We’ll stop paying for your tuition if you start dating/change your major/join that club/leave our religion/etc.” is a common threat made by financially abusive parents. Note that this is NOT the same as parents who want to teach their children financial independence - financially abusive parents do not want their children to work, take out loans or provide for themselves. They do everything in their power to keep their adult children financially dependent on them, so they can keep making these threats.
In a relationship, financial abuse often means that your partner will try to prevent you from having any money of your own. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of ways to achieve this. That could mean that they try to discourage you from going to school or having a job, or that they actively sabotage your career. They could try to limit your career choices, or insist that you only work low-paying, part-time jobs. They might intentionally move you to new city to force you to quit your job. They might also force you to turn over all your paycheques, or insist that you don’t need your own bank account and credit cards. All of these tactics force you to rely 100% on your partner for basic necessities, and they can threaten to take away finances or humiliate you by forcing you to beg for money.
Financial abuse can also mean carefully tracking any money you do spend. Your partner might carefully look over every credit card statement or debit transaction, demanding that you justify every penny spent. Not only is this incredibly degrading, it’s a method of control - if you displease your partner, they can get revenge on you by yelling at you or making fun of you for “wasting” money on things you enjoy. This is also a tool to keep you from leaving the relationship - your partner will know right away if you’re buying things like suitcases, bus tickets, hotel bookings or down payments on a new apartment, and they can shut down your escape plan right away.
And finally, financial abuse can also come in the form of a “deadbeat” partner. This is a partner who refuses to work or contribute financially to the household, although they are fully capable of it. They’ll control all aspects of household finances, even if you are the only one working, and will freely spend your money on luxuries for themselves, like alcohol or video games, leaving you with nothing for yourself. They will insist that all household bills be put in your name, to make sure that you continually have to work harder to avoid ruining your credit. Both men and women are equally capable of being “deadbeat” partners, and usually a healthy amount of guilt and emotional abuse are used to convince you to keep this parasite in your life.
The best way to escape from a financially abusive relationship is to get outside help. Tell your family and friends what’s going on. Reach out to organizations that help victims of domestic abuse. If you live in a small town without many resources, ask your local church, temple, synagogue or mosque for help - they will almost always help you, even if you are not a member of the congregation. There are a lot of resources and organizations out there who are more than willing to help you find housing, acquire furniture or household items, find a job, or go back to school.
I really hate having to ask, but I’m desperate. My first post lost traction so I’m starting anew. I have a job but it pays minimum wage and my stepdad has been stealing 50% of each of my paycheck since I was 16, for “rent.” He is physically and verbally abusive and makes my mental illnesses a million times worse. I cannot transition at all while in this house. If I put on makeup or fem clothes he screams how I’m a p*ssy or a f*ggot and threatens to kick me out on the streets. He slaps me around when he gets drunk, which is happening more and more often. I know it’s the holidays, but if someone could help me fund a safe living situation, it would be the best present I ever received. If you cannot donate, please share this post so it can reach people who can.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but please, please,pleasedo not use the term “gaslighting” in political debates or discussion. It doesn’t belong there, and using it in that context is doing real harm to abuse survivors.
Gaslighting is when an abuser attempts to make their victim question their own sense of reality through denial or fabrication. A parent telling their child, “No, I never sat you down and yelled at you for an hour because you didn’t take out the trash. Why would you even accuse me of something like that?” That’s gaslighting. One partner using emotional manipulation and vague claims to convince another that having a single beer after dinner is evidence of a drinking problem? That’s gaslighting. Someone countering your political opinions? A politician saying something you disagree with? Not gaslighting.
I get that things are contentious right now. I understand a lot of people are angry about a lot of things. But the word “gaslighting” is important to abuse survivors. It’s a powerful term, and the only one that adequately describes the mental agony of having someone try and rewrite your reality, of having them attack your own sense of self to try and make you depend on them to define what you remember and what you don’t, of wondering if the horrible things you remember even happened. When you take the word “gaslighting” and fling it around your political arguments, you cheapen it. You water it down. You turn it into just another buzzword used to shut people down on Twitter, to win a debate that is utterly meaningless by any estimation. (Hate to break it to you, but it’s true. Social media debates don’t change anyone’s mind and, according to most counts, have only ever succeeded in making everyone angry.)
When survivors, still in that fragile questioning phase where they don’t know if they deserve to use the word abusejust yet, see gaslighting used so casually, they’ll assume that what happened to them was no more horrific than one person disagreeing with another on social media. What’s worse, their abusers can now accuse them of gaslighting for something as simple as challenging their false version of events.
I won’t be hearing arguments on this. No “but it IS gaslighting because….” No “but when my parents argue with me, it feels like gaslighting.” Your feelings do not define a word. That word does not belong to you. Leave it alone.
The number of people in the notes defending hitting their children is fucking horrifying, along with a bunch of people saying shit like “I still flinch when my parents raise their hands”
Don’t fuckin hit your kids, jesus fucking christ
To this day (and probably for the rest of my life) I flinch if someone raises their hand/voice at me unexpectedly. Or touches my hair or neck without lots of warning first. Inflicting violence on your children as discipline leaves a scar, even if you think they “turned out fine.”
No but the level of hatred I see for Amber Heard is terrifying. Johnny Depp is a rich white man with a history of preying on minors as an adult. He’s not an underdog, he’s not marginalized in any way, shape, or form. For what reason his fans seem to think he is, I don’t know. You are protecting the person with power. Johnny Depp was known to be homo/biphobic to Amber Heard, an openly bisexual woman. Bi women face a significant rate of intimate partner violence, particularly in relationships with straight men, who weaponize their biphobic misogyny to be abusive. When you protect Johnny Depp you are protecting biphobic violence when you defend Johnny Depp you are protecting homophobically-motivated intimate partner violence. Please get a reality check.
Triggers for serious parental abuse, but if you can, please take time out of your day to help Claudia Conway escape her hell of a ‘mother’. For anyone who doesn’t know, Kellyanne Conway is the former adviser to T****, and has leaked nudes of her own 15 year old daughter onto the internet. Which is, sadly, just the tip of the iceberg. Please help send this monster straight into prison for the rest of her disgusting life. CPS has refused Claudia any help, because Kellyanne is white, and has government friends. Let’s keep pushing till we get people who don’t care about those things to file a case against her, and actually get her daughter away from her.
the scariest thing about having an unreliable memory is like?? was it really as bad as i remember it being ?? what if i deserved it??? what if it was my fault the whole time?? i don’t know!! i can’t remember!!!!!
This is your gentle reminder that people on the Internetcan be toxic and abusive—and sometimes those people can be the ones who present themselves as friends and people to be trusted, who don’t hide behind false identities, who are your own age and genuinely share your interests.
So if someone, no matter who they are or how much you’ve been talking, is making you feel:
Uncomfortable
Unsafe
Guilty
Like there’s something inherently wrong with you
Like your interests make you stupid/cringy/a bad person
Like your boundaries are selfish/laughable/unhealthy/not worth their respect
Like disagreeing with them makes you a bad person
Like not engaging with content of any kind you’d rather avoid makes you a bad person
Like you need to do things you don’t want to do, or else they will shun you
Anxious, on edge, nervous
Doubting what’s real
Alienated from your other friends/family/the people around you
… It is completely justified for you to stop engaging with them, block them, and take any other steps you deem necessary to protect yourself.
You’re not a horrible person, and protecting yourself definitely doesn’t make you one.
Your boundaries are not selfish.
Other people’s expectations of you are not your problem; they’re theirs.
@writerig then that is a blatant overstepping of your boundaries, and a red flag. It’s proof that you’re doing the right thing setting those boundaries. You have every right not to reply and to block them if it’s safe for you to do so
pairing + wc: parental erasermic + reader, midoriya izuku x reader in future chapters just not in prologue; 3.7k
specific tw: discussions of human trafficking + child abuse by villains, mention of foster system, mentions of death, mentions of chronic pain, collapsing buildings. see masterpost for genre + general tw.
notes: i’m rlly happy to be re-releasing this w gender neutral reader + some minor tweaks to the style! <3 pls enjoy!
your chamber is cold, dimly lit, and soundproofed. there’s very little for you to draw energy from, but there’s no worry of you getting too cold – the faint lights, far above, are enough for you to generate heat using your quirk. just not enough for you to get out, and just enough to make you strain as you force your quirk to keep running.
sensei stops outside your chamber – you can feel the buzz of electricity in his cells, and you press your tiny hand to the wall, trying to figure out exactly where he is on the other side of the one-way mirror. the warmth of your hand drags against its cold surface, a blur of barely-there fingerprints, the lines of your palm smeared with the motion.
pairing + wc: parental erasermic + reader, midoriya izuku x reader in future chapters just not in prologue; 3.7k
specific tw: discussions of human trafficking + child abuse by villains, mention of foster system, mentions of death, mentions of chronic pain, collapsing buildings. see masterpost for genre + general tw.
notes: i’m rlly happy to be re-releasing this w gender neutral reader + some minor tweaks to the style! <3 pls enjoy!
your chamber is cold, dimly lit, and soundproofed. there’s very little for you to draw energy from, but there’s no worry of you getting too cold – the faint lights, far above, are enough for you to generate heat using your quirk. just not enough for you to get out, and just enough to make you strain as you force your quirk to keep running.
sensei stops outside your chamber – you can feel the buzz of electricity in his cells, and you press your tiny hand to the wall, trying to figure out exactly where he is on the other side of the one-way mirror. the warmth of your hand drags against its cold surface, a blur of barely-there fingerprints, the lines of your palm smeared with the motion.
you stop when sensei is directly in front of you. the buzzing in his cells sings to you. you press closer to the mirror. there’s another pocket of electricity, but it feels odd, shifting; sensei is probably talking to that man with purple fog over his face. but you’ll never be able to hear them, not with the way your chamber is insulated, so you walk back to your bed, in the back corner of the room.
it’s starting to get warmer in the chamber, so training will be soon. you’re only allowed large quantities of energy when they know you’re going to use them up.
but hours pass, and the chamber is too hot, your whole body buzzing as the energy tries to jump out from under your skin. maybe it’s a new training exercise, a new way to push the limits of how much energy you can absorb. either way, you have to keep drawing it in, or it’ll get too hot.
you fall asleep and wake up sweating, skin crackling, and the air smells humid and warm and full of ozone. it’s hard to breathe, it’s so heavy – your lungs keep trying to hold it in, extract every last drop of energy from it. you have to force yourself to exhale, hard, like sensei taught you.
there’s light cracking through your skin, but you register it only faintly, too focused on grappling with the twisting, writhing mass of energy and trying to force it to stay in the center of your body.
but it’s not staying still – every time you push down on a wave of energy trying to escape in one direction, it just pulses out in the other. maybe, if you just let a little bit of it go, you’ll be able to hold on to the rest of it?
you hold your arm out, intent on discharging a small sound wave – but the cracks on your arm, the light energy seeping out of them in wisps, it scares you, and suddenly that ball of energy is tumbling out of control.
the wave of kinetic energy ripples out of you and slams into the walls of your chamber – they splinter with a deafeningly loud sound, folding and tearing like wet paper into the chambers next to yours, and the one-way mirror shatters into millions of tiny shards. but it doesn’t stop there – the entire building is shaking, and you can hear the other mirrors shattering and see the other walls crumbling throughout the warehouse. and then the ceiling comes down on top of you.
–
shota gets the call at six in the morning. or rather, he gets the call, but hizashi picks it up, because there’s no way in hell that anything is waking him from the dead of sleep on his day off.
except hizashi, who just shakes him awake and hands him the phone, saying, “it’s for you, babe. something about an explosion.”
“eraserhead speaking.” he wants to complain, but he knows it’s not the operator’s fault, and he knows there’s a reason they called him in on his day off.
“we need you to suppress some kind of explosion quirk in the warehouse district. there’s a collapsed, sorry, still collapsing building, and some fire and electricity issues. the fire department is dealing with the parts of the building that are burning, but there are people trapped inside, and the heat signatures indicate that one of them – a child, judging by size – is causing uncontrollable explosions, which are making it difficult to get anyone out. cementoss is currently stabilizing the building.”
“i’ll be there as fast as i can.” he can’t find it in himself to complain anymore.
as shota swings himself across the city on his capture weapon, rapidly approaching the warehouse district, he can see a plume of smoke billowing against the orange of the sunrise. he stops on top of a building and uses a nearby lamppost to lower himself to the ground.
the collapsed warehouse is smoking, and steam is rising off of it in the early morning light, but it is thankfully no longer on fire. cementoss is fusing cement slabs together in an effort to keep it from caving in further, and infrared hero, aptly named infra (hizashi calls her “heat seeker”) is intently watching the building. shota approaches her for debriefing.
“it was hard to see, earlier, with all of the fire interfering, and it’s blurry because of the heat retention of the concrete, but there are at least twenty people inside, half or more of which are children. there’s someone close to the center of the structure who is periodically letting out bursts of heat, and who we assume is also producing some kind of kinetic shockwave.”
“and cementoss has constructed a pathway so i can extract the person without disturbing the rubble and crushing other victims?”
“yes–” infra starts, and is abruptly cut off when the building rumbles, the ground shuddering along with it, the pavement near its base fracturing. “yes,” she pauses, eyes narrowing, “but you might want to wait while cementoss deals with whatever might’ve come loose just now.” she hands him an earpiece so she can direct him to the source of the explosions.
shota stands there, watching the wood and cement and metal smoke and steam, until cementoss gives him the go ahead.
he picks his way through the rubble, listening carefully to infra’s directions. sirens wail in the background, and broken glass crunches under his feet, but he can hear children crying through all of it. shota moves faster, pulls his goggles over his eyes.
infra tells him to stop and look down and to the right. all there is is a pile of debris, and it makes his heart leap into his throat. he starts digging through the chunks of cement, using his capture weapon to pull away particularly heavy or sharp pieces and to keep any large ones from falling. he has to work quickly, or risk getting hit by whatever quirk is hiding under there.
it only takes a few seconds, and then he’s looking down at a child – maybe seven years old, a little kid, curled up in a ball with their arms around their knees. there’s fissures in their skin with light pouring out of them, ashes in their hair. their eyes are glowing a terrifying, brilliant white – shota activates his quirk, hair floating up, and all the light evaporates from that tiny little body, they just look like a normal, scared kid.
it hits him that they really should’ve sent someone who was better with children. maybe gang orca. well, he might as well bite the bullet.
“i’m eraserhead. what’s your name?”
“[surname].” the kid looks up at him, face blank except for a slight frown. “what did you do to me? where did it go?”
shota offers his hand, and they take it, standing up. “where did what go?”
shota doesn’t have an answer.
he leads them out of the rubble, and thank god for the fact that they’re following – he really does not want to deal with a kicking, screaming kid in the middle of an unstable structure. the sunlight glints off of warped rebar, sharp and threatening. he tugs the kid slightly behind him.
“the energy. your hair went up and it went away.”
he has no fucking idea. “you’re right, it went away.” sometimes, telling kids that they’re right is the fastest way to get them to be quiet. surprisingly, it works.
they follow silently, gripping his hand with their tiny, slightly chubby fingers, until they finally get out of the rubble maze. now that the exploding kid is out, it’s safe to extract the other victims.
he crouches down in front of them, still holding their hand. “i’m going to leave you with the medical team, okay? they’re gonna check you over and take you to the hospital, if needed. i have to go get the other people out of there.”
except when shota stands up and tries to move away, they aren’t letting go. he tries stepping away again. it doesn’t work. it’s not just that they’re not letting go, it’s that he can’t break their grip – which is ridiculous, they’re a child, and their hand doesn’t even encompass his, meaning there’s a point where it should, in theory, be easy to break their hold.
theory isn’t holding up.
“you need to let go, or else i can’t get the other people out.” maybe he can guilt them into letting go? thankfully the other heroes on the scene are already digging through the rubble for the other victims.
they shake their head furiously, making some of the ash in their hair fly off. “no, sensei said i have to stay here. i can’t leave.”
shota resists the urge to drag a hand down his face. he really wishes tsukauchi was already here. “this is a school?”
“yes.” they nod solemnly.
“but this is the warehouse district.”
they stare at him. he tries breaking their grip again. they squeeze his hand tighter, and shota hears one of his joints crack.
“you can tell the police about the school and sensei when they get here, but you need to let go. i have to do my job. besides, your sensei is still in there, and i need to go rescue them.”
they cock their head, but loosen their grip a tiny bit. “no, sensei isn’t here. he left with the man who makes purple mist doorways. i think all the teachers left. i felt it, when they disappeared.”
felt it? grip strength? explosions? he can think about whatever the hell is going on with this child’s dangerous, wack ass quirk later. “okay, but the other students are still in there.”
“no,” they scrunch their eyes shut, grip tightening. “i can’t feel them. except amanatsu-chan. no one else is there.”
shota has a horrifying thought about heat signatures and dead bodies. he motions infra and one of cementoss’ sidekicks over.
“where is amanatsu-chan?” he asks, making eye contact with the sidekick, who is paying very close attention to the kid.
“she’s right next to where i was. in the room to the right, ‘cause she’s a month older than me.”
he turns his back to the kid and looks at infra. “that is the only person we need to rescue right now. everyone else is probably dead, according to them.”
infra looks toward the building, scanning. “the heat was probably trapped by the collapsed structure, and the fire made it difficult to see, but now that some of the rubble has been moved and the fire has been put out… there is only one heat signature that could possibly belong to someone who is alive. everything else… not even hypothermic bodies get that low.”
the sidekick rushes off with infra to guide them.
shota drags the kid along with him to the ambulance, which is now useless, with the exception of the two kids, and sits with them while the medical team looks them over. they still won’t let go of his hand, but he could break their hold now, if he needed to. if he wanted to.
he doesn’t.
—
they get the kid to the hospital, only with shota riding in the ambulance next to them, but they’re fine, and so is the other kid – a little girl. the only reason they decide to take the two kids to the hospital in the first place is because there’s nowhere else to take them, and they really, really need to see a quirk specialist. the other kid had some kind of odd, controlling speech effect, and he cannot, for the life of him, figure the first kid’s quirk out.
he leaves them with the quirk specialist, whom both kids use the sensei honorific for – they do that for every nurse and other adult, too – and goes back home to sleep. it’s almost the afternoon, but he doesn’t care. it’s his day off, damn it.
—
fuck that quirk specialist. he and hizashi are going to have to help the kid manage their quirk, according to his medical advice. thankfully, cementoss and tiger are more suited to the second kid.
he picks the problem child up from the train station in civilian clothes, hizashi next to him, cap pulled down to hide his face, hair half-down and not in that ridiculous cockatoo style. the kid’s brand new foster parents give them their phone numbers.
hizashi smiles at the kid and takes their hand, obviously completely forgetting that he’s not dressed as present mic. he does that around kids. “what’s your name, little listener?”
“[surname].” they turn to shota and blink accusingly, like he was supposed to tell hizashi.
“your first name, though?” hizashi prods, and shota laughs quietly through his nose.
“six.”
he stops laughing.
hizashi laughs awkwardly, his complete opposite, and definitely trying to smooth the situation over. “well, do you want to be called something different?”
their eyebrows furrow, and they reach for shota’s hand; he lets them. fine, they can hold both of their hands, dammit.
“is that allowed?”
hizashi gives him a look, one that means what the fuck. “yeah, yeah that’s allowed.”
“i think [first name] would be fine then.” they nod, like it’s an important decision.
“okay, [first name] it is, then. can i call you [first name]-chan, little listener?” hizashi says, starting to walk in the direction of their home. honestly, shota forgot that people use that honorific for children. he tries to avoid them in rescue missions; they’re uncomfortable around him, find him unnerving.
[first name] nods again. “mhm.”
“great! you can call me yamada-sen–” shota activates his quirk to tell him to shut up without actually telling him to shut up in front of the kid.
“no sensei honorific,” he mutters, thinking of the warehouse.
“you can call me yamada. that’s aizawa, kay?”
they nod again.
great, he’s training a child.
—
turns out they don’t need much training. the email from the quirk specialist explained that they could absorb energy and then manipulate its form, but it did not explain the frankly worrying level of precision they had.
they’re standing in the park, across the street from their hero-specialized apartment complex.
“i’m going to scream, kay? and you’re going to try to absorb it, and then we’ll see what you can do.” hizashi is still holding the kid’s hand, fifteen minutes after they’ve gotten back from the train station. shota is starting to worry that he’s getting attached. who is he kidding – of course hizashi is attached.
“aizawa will shut your quirk off if it’s too scary.”
they nod, already frowning in concentration. hizashi steps back and screams “HELLO!” at the lowest level possible. it still makes the grass ripple and the leaves on the trees shimmer. the kid just giggles, unphased, eyes glowing, and the grass and trees behind them are completely still, undisturbed. their control is disturbingly tight.
“again!” they shriek, relaying every bit of hizashi’s volume, and shota has a sickening thought about the types of bonding activities this kid had in that warehouse. training is playtime, to them.
all the pieces fall into place; the blacked out, confidential police reports, the inability to locate biological parents, the overpowered quirk, the ridiculous level of control for a child, sensei, the other children, the number six. quirk trafficking. all for one. collecting successors. his stomach turns.
he jerks back to the present as hizashi laughs and complies, yelling “HELLO!” again. shota can see the worry and caution seeping into his stance, though. they’ve been together long enough that he knows they’re both having the same thought, because hizashi isn’t stupid, and he’s seen every ugly little thing the world has to offer.
this time the kid doesn’t yell back, just holds out their hand. “wanna see what i can do?”
shota gets ready to activate his quirk, and hizashi nods.
their hand bursts into flame. shota’s hair flies up on reflex, a familiar burn in his eyes. the fire goes out, and a blast of light spirals off of their skin and dissipates into the air.
they all try several times more. [name] sends electricity crackling across their arms, drills a hole in the ground with a push of kinetic energy, makes their whole body glow with light, lifts a rock that no child should be able to lift. not once do they seem scared, not once do they hurt hizashi or break anything they don’t mean to.
they don’t need help managing their quirk. they need an outlet. (they need parents).
—
the years pass quickly; he and hizashi get teaching positions at UA, he expels and re-enrolls hundreds of students, works the streets at night. hizashi runs his radio show and works as a daylight hero and teaches english. they train [first name] every weekend, until the kid occupies the spare room at their house and the cats almost like them better than shota. [name] stays with their foster family during the week, and hizashi says he misses them, and shota wishes he could say different. (he doesn’t).
they watch the way they avoid going to their teachers when they need help, avoid going to their parents, and only ever come to them, shota and hizashi. shota thinks they have issues with trust, hizashi says they have issues with authority. shota worries about what that means they see their mentors as – authority figures they can trust. (it doesn’t worry him at all).
they crush exams and don’t talk to other kids, and hizashi and shota only know this because hizashi tries to make dinner table conversation about the kid’s classes and friends, and [name]’s answers are noncommittal, “i’m near the top of the class, okay?” and “i don’t really have any.” they proudly tell them that they punched someone in the face for bullying another kid. they ricochet wildly from sullen and silent to laughing obnoxiously loud. hizashi worries for their social development, shota tells him that they can’t go to parent teacher conferences, because they’re not the damn kid’s parents. (they are. [name]’s foster parents don’t go.)
they get sick after training some days, staying an extra day instead of traveling by train, just lying in bed while their quirk makes their whole body hurt,because it was cultivated for power, not for compatibility with the human body. hizashi calls their parents, who call the school, and he makes them tea with honey and lemon. shota sits in their room with them and the cats. the next day, after they leave, hizashi will say, “it’s just the weekends, but it feels like we’re raising them,” and shota will say, “we’re not.” (they are).
he teaches them how to use a capture weapon after they beg for months. they’re terrible at it. they keep trying. they get better, and they like heroes in black costumes and they listen to english music, and they want to be just like them, and they’re loud and sharp and sarcastic and competitive and sometimes quiet and kind, and it doesn’t make him cry into hizashi’s shoulder at night, it doesn’t. they don’t have a kid. they don’t. (they do).
—
they want to take the UA entrance exam, and shota wants to throw himself in front of a bus. he tells hizashi as much.
“shota, you can’t just expect them to be a civilian. they want to be a hero.” he’s doing his hair, yelling from the bathroom so shota can hear him from where he’s laying in bed, wondering how much longer he can stay there until he has to get up and go teach the brats.
“it’s dangerous, and they’re a kid, hizashi. kids always want to be heroes, it doesn’t mean they have to be.”
“first of all, they’re almost an adult, UA is a college. and even if you still think of them as a little kid, they have training, two mentors, and a burning desire to save the entire world. good luck stopping them. and it’s not like we haven’t been encouraging them for their entire life by giving them said training!”
“but it’s dangerous!” he sits up and slaps the quilt.
he hears hizashi sigh and sees him stick his head back into the bedroom. “they’re in too deep to stop unless they suddenly hate heroes. plus, we literally teach kids how to be heroes. you literally are a hero. you have no room to talk. none.”
“but those kids are–”
“less well-trained? not our kid?” hizashi raises an eyebrow as he cuts him off.
shota shuts his eyes and lays back down. “fuck.” he wants to go back to sleep. “they’re not our kid,” he adds, as an afterthought. it makes his stomach twist.
“sure,” says hizashi, and goes back to doing his hair.
—
“kid,” you hear aizawa say, and you look up from your homework. it’s a saturday.
“yeah?” he’s standing in the doorway, holding a flat, white box, like the kind fancy clothes come in.
aizawa shuffles in and sits on your bed. he pats the space next to him, “sit.”
you set down your pen and sit next to him, cross legged, in your pajamas, eyeing the box. he puts it on your lap and you lift the lid off; inside is a pile of black fabric, one long, thin strip, with threads of metal glinting in it.
“you’ll need it for the exam,” he says, and stands to leave.
you clutch the cool, heavy fabric to your chest, knowing it’s the ticket to your dream, your chance to prove yourself. “thank you.” thank you for believing in me.
“don’t mention it.” of course, kid.
reblogs and comments are very much appreciated!! ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* main taglist here,series taglisthere. back to gt&h masterpost.
reminder to the people who need reminding: joking about abuse is not funny. i had a friend recently tell me a long story about how his girlfriend abused him only for me to find out it was an elaborate joke to him that did not happen. that really upset me, because it takes away from valid experiences and domestic abuse is extremely serious.
to men who have or are facing abuse: your experiences are real and valid. you should never have to just take it to be a man. domestic abuse affects all genders. don’t feel like speaking up is weakness.
(A post by someone who is currently going through this.)
note: this is just from my experience. These tips may not help everyone, as privacy-invading abusive parents have so many different tactics and i probably won’t be able to cover all of them.
Here are some tips and tricks.
never fucking do anything in a public browser. You don’t know how many times I’ve gotten in trouble and they’ve found out shit bc they installed a tracker I didn’t know about. Private browsers block most trackers and make me feel more secure in what I’m doing.
If youre forbidden to use apps but can still download them, make sure to hide your tracks. Redownloading apps at night to use is a lifesaver.
If you can’t download apps without your parents’ permission (through some sort of parental controls on your device), most social medias can be accessed through a web browser. You can use Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter and Instagram through browsers. If you can’t download the app, it’ll work just as well.
Turn notifications for forbidden apps off. This will make sure you won’t get random pings from your phone, because if you do, it’s likely these types of parents will ask where that’s from/who’s texting you/etc.
If you’re on social media that they don’t follow/alt accounts/etc, never use your real/legal name on them, ESPECIALLY not your last name. They can search you online by searching your name, and they can find you. This is one of the easiest ways that they can get access to your accounts that you cant have them see.
If you’re texting people you shouldn’t, like online friends or people your parents don’t know you know, change their contact name to someone “safe”. I don’t have many irl friends now, so I change most of my contacts, which are online friends, to people I used to be friends with. This helps because its a foolproof way to tell your parents “no, I’m really texting [insert known friend here]”, and they can’t question you because you can literally show them the contact name. They have no way to prove it’s a lie.
Delete all messages that could make them suspicious. Even if you think your parents don’t go as far as reading your texts, they might without telling you. Delete anything that they could deem “bad” or “suspicious” ESPECIALLY messages about their abuse or your mental illness you may suffer because of their abuse.
Adding on to that, if youre talking to online friends and have set their contact name as something else, make sure to add ”filler messages”. For example, I made one of my close online friend’s contact name someone who I go to a DnD club at school with, so I added a filler message of “Hey are you coming to Dungeons and Dragons?” and told him to respond with “Yeah”. This way, you’ll have covered your tracks even more, and they’ll have every reason to think youre just talking to this guy from DnD, or an old friend, or someone you’ve met at school.
If you have irl friends who follow your social media, never post anything concerning. This includes venting, details of past trauma, mental illness things, anything that would make them go “Oh wow, I need to tell an adult.” Because guess what they’ll do? They’ll tell their parents, who will tell yours. That means: you get hurt.
Never fucking leave your device out in the open!!!I added the exclamation points because this is something that can very much fuck you up so easily. Make sure your device is on you at all times, or you have view of it. As much as you’re being sneaky to get around your parents, abusive parents, especially this type, can get very sneaky as well. Privacy invasion is usually something done without you knowing. They could even quickly grab your device and look at it while you’re in the bathroom or taking a shower! I promise this tip is one of the most important. Unless they have a tracker on your device that they can use without seeing your device/having it close by, this is how you avoid them searching your device without you knowing.
Lastly, don’t ever believe you are safe here. You’re looking at this post for a reason. Privacy-invading parents are often very fucking sneaky and snake-like about what they do. You may not even know it’s happening. They create an illusion of a safe, trusting environment with no invasion, but there could be so much more they are doing behind your back. Always have your guard up. Always be ready for a search.
These are my tips, as someone whose blog is a whole secret from my parents. I’m so sorry if this doesn’t work… this situation of no privacy is incredibly hard to be in, and I’m proud of you for making it this far.
at the end of the day that man’s defenders have gone full qanon like it doesn’t matter what she says or how many photos of her bruises or the insane amount of property damage she has. it doesn’t matter that there are audio recordings of him screaming at her “you don’t exist” and telling her nobody will believe her or or admitting to head butting her or threatening to hurt himself while she begs him to stop. everyone jumped at the first chance to take their foot off this man’s neck so they wouldn’t have to face the reality that he’s a piece of shit and now they won’t see anything else. even the dumbass “mutual abuse” crowd refuses to acknowledge the way only one of them is being smeared and mocked relentlessly across the internet (and now on snl, apparently.) it doesn’t matter to them that her allegations against him were made in 2016, well before there was a mainstream metoo movement to “take advantage of”. it doesn’t matter! does anyone else feel like dying
actually the worst part is how many young people pride themselves on being “too smart” to fall for propaganda are the ones leading the online charge against this woman because they watched a tiktok “debunking” her claims
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