#I AM ALL THE FUCKING SALT!

[holyfreaks]

sorry but the "trying to get rid of us" part.... like we were here from literally day one. you came into OUR house and decided the show was about something that it's not. also, even if we weren't here from the beginning, we deserve to be here every bit as you do. why are you trying to gatekeep fandom, when it's always been for the freaks. especially on the incest family horror show

[merrinpippy]

on masks

so shockingly miracle mask has huge mask theming in like every aspect. basically every significant character is 'wearing' a mask literally or metaphorically, except for luke who remarks in ludmilla's costume shop that he doesn't think any of the masks suit him (since the events of the previous game luke can be authentically himself now.) this is fun to notice on its own, but there's more to be discussed than just the presence of masks.

every mask in miracle mask backfires on its wearer to some degree! the most obvious case of this is descole and the masked gentleman straight up underestimating their own mask/s and failing to see their plans to the end, and the resulting consequences. dalston and henry's masks of stoicism turn out to have kept them from years of friendship they could have enjoyed, and paint them both as suspects in the masked gentleman case. angela's aloof facade and distance from everyone around her allows her to be kidnapped for a significant portion of the game without anyone but the professor noticing (and even then, he notices that something's up with her, but chalks it up initially as not knowing her anymore). less obviously, emmy's mask only means she'll end up hurting the people she has come to care for even more when the time comes.

most interesting to me, though, is hershel! even as a teen he's remarkably reserved, though clearly passionate. he keeps himself very controlled, and seems to care very much about coming across to others as helpful, grounded, and 'normal'. the interests that we know he has he keeps locked up, literally hidden away in cupboards, not to be acknowledged aloud to himself or others. he never gets angry or ever really displays any stereotypical teen behaviours apart from awkwardness.

now what this means is he is treated as the reliable one who will nonetheless go along with whatever randall wants him to do. he's never particularly assertive (something he will learn to be as an adult) so his willingness is taken for granted. he's put in mortal danger in akbadain because it never occurs to randall that hershel's protests are anything more than for appearance's sake.

and when randall falls and hershel is alone, he yells! he falls to his knees, completely overcome. he cries. he pushes through. and when he reaches angela and henry, alone, covered in dirt, looking completely haunted... they don't even ask him if he's okay. angela bodily shakes him. in the past and present, nobody treats hershel as if he's been through something traumatic - to everyone else, he was either a bystander to or complicit in randall's death, but controlled, mild-mannered and rational hershel is never considered a victim in his own right even after years have passed for everyone to think on it. years after the fact angela apologises to hershel... when she realises she needs his help. and henry immediately accuses him of betraying randall's memory and abandoning him.

and to be clear this isn't me saying oh they're evil or whatever but it's significant that they acknowledge how the trauma affected them and their behaviour from that point forward but it doesn't occur to them that hershel's behaviour and life trajectory was also altered forever! because hershel has for his whole life masked so well that to everyone else he does not have an interior life that isn't puzzle solving.

and the absolute funniest thing about it is that when hershel confesses this all to emmy and luke.... it's immediately back to the investigation, "where do we go now professor!" i'm sure there's no reason to ask if hershel's okay, he's probably unaffected by all that, let's go! readers i laughed out loud. tfw you mask so well everyone forgets you're a person

[salt-baby]

I just don't understand people who don't do a COVID test when they get sick

[bachirasbodyguard]

blue lock as gordon ramsay moments (shoutout to one of the most legendary haters of all time🙏)

[their-name-is-fake]

Hey y’all! Just to give some insight into what we are seeing in the states. This is going to be close, like reaaaaallly close. Kamala would need to win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin from the looks of it. So, where does that leave us? Who’s to say all three of these states are very volatile. There’s a high chance she loses Michigan ( I mena she fully fumbled it there so it depends on if the people choose to over look that), so that’s already bad news. Georgia would have been a good alternative but gerrymandering needed any chance of that.

There is an ever increasing chance that Trump is able to pull what he did in 2016 so y’all need to be prepared for that.

And even if he doesn’t win there is a high chance there will be riots so

[unsiredtribrid]

.

[inquisitor-apologist]

Yo Star Wars. How come the only Black man on the show had his neck snapped in full view of the camera while all the nonblack characters got bloodless lightsaber stabs? How come Black characters always die violently?

[krispenelopebacon]

*learns about the Dave theory*

makes total sense. Still don't like it though.

[jacksmusesdrv3]

ngl folks

if it ever comes out that Kokichi was - very much Doylistly along with my ''Watsonian nonsense'' - a whole 'New World Order' conspiracy-scapegoat allegory baked into the fabric of V3 itself?

I don't know what I'm gonna feel first: relieved at the vindication, or totally fucking enraged at being denied vindication all these years

[haine-kleine]

My thoughts on the ending

The new chapter gave me some food for thought and some hope. Also, I'm writing this post from the perspective of the mysterious man wandering the city being Shigaraki.

One thing that never made much sense to me is Shigaraki Tomura being his preferred name. He was used, manipulated, brainwashed, went through body modifications and even mind-control all by the man who gave him his new name, and shared his own surname with Tenko, essentially adopting him. Shigaraki once his character development kicks in, doesn't exhibit much attachment to AFO, and his trauma bond to him is all but gone in the last arc, where they actively fight for control and are determined to destroy each other. He also doesn't express or ruminate on the regret associated with his happy childhood taken away from him by AFO, the way Dabi ruminates about his own constantly.

It started making sense to me once the story established narrative parallels between Midoriya and the first user of AFO and Shigaraki to OFA, and the Shigaraki twins' past was revealed to us.

Despite the horrible world-destroying actions and manipulations of AFO, his driving motivation, the essence of his character was revealed to be love for his brother. It was rejection by Yoichi that kickstarted his downfall, and in his quest of getting Yoichi back all for himself, he ended up destroying both himself and his brother.

Shigaraki is the same way, but in reverse. He started as a wild force of chaotical destruction going against the current of the hero's society and terrifying Izuku and all of his friends. Their first one-on-one interaction happened with Shigaraki purposefully isolating Deku from his friends and threatening him. He is a brat who throws a fit when the plans don't go his way, he needs Kurogiri to baby him, he attacks Toga and Dabi as soon as they don't immediately accept him as their new leader. This is the Shigaraki we get introduced to, and that's his starting point for growth. And wow, does his character develop beautifully. He takes responsibility, repeatedly and actively chooses to take responsibility simply because he wants to take care of the people by his side. He takes the power he is given, and he develops it into more power, constatly evolving. Both of his stated objectives: to destroy everything that stands against him and to support his teammates' wishes are fullfilled to a degree by the end of this story: he shaked the society to the core, and all remaining teams of LOV are hinted at to be alive, with both Dabi and Toga getting their wishes fullfilled by the end of their respective arcs: to be accepted as she is by the person she loves, and to be heard and aknowledged by his family.

Both of the aforementioned objectives connect Shigaraki and AFO: the desire to be close and protect another and the desire to destroy. The latter leads to both of them being destroyed, and the final moments of AFO show how his decision to commit to destruction took the chance of getting his other objective fulfilled away forever.

But what about Yoichi? He is a hero, a kind, noble and responsible weilder of the All For One ability, that stood up against his villain brother and protected society. How come the narrative leads both of them towards the same end? Unlike AFO, Yoichi doesn't even get to make his feelings known one last time. He's is just gone after the last battle.

Unlike both Shigaraki and AFO, Yoichi doesn't get a chance to exhibit love for another. He is all about responsibility, about the duty, protection, being a hero, and all of that only leads him to his ultimate destruction.

Being a hero is not about love, or sympathy, or helping others. Protection is the duty, but heroes' sympathy demands the victim to fulfill their conditions - to be a perfect victim, otherwise it all boils down to destruction. It's a two-way destruction: the villains get killed, harmed, abandoned, but the heroes also suffer the damage. Almost every single character we've seen in the war arc sustained serious and long-lasting, or permanent damage. That's pretty much the job description: you get to be as violent as you want, but you will get the same violence thrown back at you. You are supposed to give, give and keep on giving pieces of yourself until not even the embers of the memory of you are left. The perfect example of this is All Might - a living husk of a man giving out nothing but empty platitudes, only remembered by his hero name and the hero he used to be. He doesn't get to have an identity outside of his short past as a hero and all he gets for this is a life-long health problems that won't allow him to live for much longer.

To be a hero, you need to inspire hope, to appear to be kind, but being a hero doesn't allow you kidness, just a little amount of it. Everything is stricly controlled so that the civillians remain ignorant of just how wrong the picture-perfect image of the heroes truly is. To be a hero, you need to have the capacity to be cruel. Whether to promise something you can never fulfill, or to leave a teammate behind.

This is why Izuku Midoriya became the greatest hero. He is everything the hero system wants: an enthusiastic and willing bright-eyed hero who will destroy himself to make his quirk as useful to the chosen objective as possible, but is unable to look at anything past his perfect little circle of friends and mentors. He appears to be kind, and will give out motivating speeches for sure, but his words are empty and have nothing but the sinsere incapability to understand anything but his own privileged perspective behind them. He would never be able to save anyone but a perfect harmless victim, and obviously, to him saving Shigaraki Tomura equated to letting him die. He saw a crying little boy inside of the creepy villain he had first met, and decided to save him, except for Midoriya, saving that little boy meant forgetting and ignoring all the bad things he had done as an adult, and keeping the memory of his pure perfect victim child self alive.

He does not even spare the good, or 'better' victims! Aoyama, whom he had come to know as a friend, his classmate, whose parents were held hostage by AFO, who was forced against his will to be AFO's spy and expresses clear regret about it, is not given the slightest bit of empathy by Deku. Just looking at him is the greatest kidness he has to offer, and he does nothing to protect Aoyama afterwards. He is fully fine with Aoyama leaving his class, doesn't think to reach out, even moreso, all of the classmates barely care about Aoyama leaving, and don't take any action to convince him they don't hold what happened to him against his will against him.

This is also why Izuku is so lost and dissatisfied in the epilogue chapters. He didn't suceed in his goal of saving Shigaraki and whatever he tells himself or whatever his friends tell him to make him feel better, will not change that. All Izuku did was punch really hard, and the narrative rewarded him for it by taking his arms away for a chapter, and then taking his quirk, his greatest treasure, the tool that allowed him to become the focal point of this story, away for good. That's the end of the story for him, and to get a new beginning, he needs to learn and change, but the story doesn't have much time to fit that in. Either way, it's a dissatisfying conclusion, but one that makes sense. The first user of OFA loses himself for good, the last user of OFA loses the quirk for good. Both fail to connect with the people the narrative puts them against, and the ultimate choice they have is to connect and empathize or to destroy.

For the LOV it's another story though. All three of the main LOV characters succeed in their stated objectives. Their characters's arcs end in success, not a failure. Toga is finally not rejected by someone she loves, but embraced, and gets verbal confirmation of her affection being reciprocated. Touya is not avoided, ignored or shunned by his parents who feel guilt about what they did to him, and his siblings, who don't understand him. The entire family unites and makes the decision to take responsibility for what they did to him. They aknowledge his pain and his trauma, and they take whatever he throws at them, no matter how hot the flames, because they want to have him back. Even Enji doesn't run away anymore, and takes resposibility for everything he did to Touya, cries and apologizes for not coming to Sekoto peak and preventing everything that followed. Finally, he realizes that being a hero prevents him from having the relationship he desires to have with his family, and for the first time in his life, he chooses family over heroism.

Using these two points for reference, it makes no sense for Shigaraki's arc to end the way Horikoshi is trying to convince us it ended. He can't die because neither his goal to destroy the hero society completely or to protect and take care of his friends in the League was completed sucessfully. If you twist the angle a bit, though, it all starts making perfect sense. The butterfly imagery has been associated with Shigaraki for quite a while, and with Horikoshi being a superb user of visual storytelling, it is there for a reason. Butterflies are reborn from caterpillars and so far, Shigaraki's evolution has not been completed. The body modifications and quirk mutations might have tried to convince us otherwise, but if you look at Shigaraki as a human and not the final boss, all of that was pain, hurt and suffering he stood through and survived. The entire hero society uniting to defeat him alone, the brainwashing and manipulations he had been living in since he was a child, the loss of identity, he had stood through it all and survived. Now that Shigaraki-AFO-the villain had been killed, the rebirth follows. And his remaining objective - to be with the people he treasures, will be fulfilled, granting him peace and contentment.

That's the narrative reward for the villains - getting acceptance, comfort and content, while the heroes struggle to rebuild the remains of the society those same villains destroyed.

[raayllum]

me, remembering my old "amaya and viren have a lot of similarities, specifically in being both fiercely independent and willing to prioritize the world over their family" parallels post (circa august 2021), a latter facet that 5x08 goes out of its way to show callum being Not That

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Finished Reckoning of Roku. Not a lot of good to say about it, even ignoring the Kyoshi factors.

Anyway lots of thoughts. Need to organize. And I'm about to be completely and totally normal about Kyoshi. *eye twitch of a totally sane person*

Did you know she was mentioned about 34 times in the novel? :'D

[xhanisai]

every time i (a mixed race girl) come across a post that’s basically saying that Marinette, a mixed race girl, isn’t Chinese enough, my urge to set hellfire on this world increases by 100000000%.

[aquared]

i Don’t know how much this fits but i am a big fan of this outfit i’ve got here and i wanted to share it i think it’s neat

[s0fter-sin]

is there an actual medical reason why my body just doesn’t respond to medication and if there is please tell me it can be fixed bc this some bullshit

[villruu]

me and my husband is a brim song, and i will NOT be taking criticism on this