#I was kind of vague with the manga spoilers but I could write an essay on That Particular Scene of Tsukasa in the manga forever

[szfiction]

What are your favorite ships in Dr. Stone? I love Tsukasen!💖💖💖

Tsukasen is my big favourite as well! I have a couple other more lowkey ships, but Tsukasen is the one that has absolutely corrupted my brain ever since I finished watching the second season.

It's because of how utterly star-crossed they are. Admiring each other from the start, but their ideals keeping them on separate sides of a war, even as they lament that in another life, they could surely have been friends. It's because when they finally do get the chance to be on the same side, it is ripped away from them so soon after it happens, making everything all the more tragic. It's because of how they are in-tune with each other's actions, able to predict what the other might be doing or thinking. It's because Senku was able to deduce what it was that truly motivated Tsukasa for all his life and use that to bring him over to his side, restoring what Tsukasa needed most back to him. Mirai, yes, but also hope for the future, belief that things can get better and there is some good to come from a civilization that looks forward using science. It's because when they fight side by side their strengths compliment each other, and they form the ultimate tag team. Because Tsukasa struggled to stay alive just so he can cherish his alliance with Senku for a little longer. Because they both say how much fun they're having and it becomes apparent they always belonged at each other's side and not opposing one another. It's because Senku promises Tsukasa he'll do anything to bring him back, and Tsukasa trusts him with his life (and is at peace even with the idea of dying as long as it's Senku who kills him). Because Senku's voice is so quiet and sad when he asks what's wrong with making small talk. And they talk afterwards about utter nonsense, because Senku can't bear to actually face the reality of this moment, and for the first time, they get a chance to be normal together. Because Senku breaks down into tears as Tsukasa breathes his last breath, and because he truly does do everything he can to bring the Medusa back for Tsukasa. The second he got his hand on that device, he knew exactly what the last of its energy would be going toward, and it had nothing to do with Tsukasa being an asset for their future moon mission. It's also because Tsukasa, when facing his worst fears coming to life in the America arc, did not revert back to his old mindset. Instead of feeling anger or sorrow, he instead found his mind lingering to how he could still be saved. He chose to have hope, believing in science and in Senku, and when he faced death he did so with a smile. I think they're like soulmates. I think they balance each other out and challenge each other and I think they're meant to be by each other's side even if it takes them a while to get there. I have rambled about them for several paragraphs now and I could keep doing it for even longer because this is how strong I feel about this ship, alright? I could go on forever, please @ everyone talk to me about Tsukasen.

[mad-serotonin]

who are your top ten favorite black clover and ships? talk about them! (welcome back to the fandom, always loved your art)

I’m thinking you meant top 10 CHARACTERS and top 10 ships. Here’s the characters for now! I have another ask for ships and since that’s gonna take me a bit more time to really think about you’ll get those soon with that ask I promise!

My top 10:

1. Finral

Already talked about him in depth so I’ll let everyone else shine here lol

2. Magna

The manliest man. The actual best underdog character in Shonen. Like Tabata knew what he was doing during the Heart kingdom training arc. (Vague manga spoilers for spade arc) Having to work insanely hard to catch up to everyone when they can do something you can’t and finding a way to accomplish something no one else can do????? That’s such a real experience and he’s so admirable.

The literal best friend you could have in this world. He’s so silly and supportive and awesome. Design wise one of my fav character designs ever he’s so sick. I should probably make a solo post about him too cuz I could go deep into his character.

3. Rill

THE ARTIST’S BEST FRIEND!!!! I heart him so much and the approach to his upbringing was so beautiful. His destruction circling around a lack of direction and inspiration for his work is so insanely relatable. And just seeing him be so carefree and happy in battle creating art 😭 I wanna be him.

Winner for the Clover Kingdom’s best laugh. Cutest character design he is so fluffy and pastel. I want to see more of his magic it’s made some of the best battle scenes in the show with just how much freedom there is with its imagery.

He’s so baby I just love him. Also shout out to him for changing the squad name for azure deer from gray deer. I can’t remember if it was explicitly stated but I KNOW that he did that.

4. Asta

The boy of the hour. Honorary spot at #1 because he is the one of the most successfully written Shonen protagonists of his archetype. Really love taking the going for the top motivation and giving a depth to it outside of personal ambition and having the concentration be on changing the world for the better. The purest soul.

Asta is so important. He not only motivates and inspires EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. within the story. But also inspires so many people irl. Like i literally think “would this make Asta proud” when I do stuff sometimes JSJDHDDHHD and it motivates me to get through rough times.

He’s a cutie patootie and he breaks all expectations for what characters would typically do when faced with conflicts like he is. He truly is one of a kind and brings out the best in everyone.

I absolutely love the aspect of his character where he’s literally everyone’s lil brother. He just cares and trusts everyone on his team and fights for them SIMPLY because they are teammates no questions asked. Every time I rewatch the series I just admire the effect he has on their world and how it spreads one step at a time with each adventure. So many things wouldn’t have been possible without him being himself in situations and setting people straight in understanding their world. (This fact stands true even if not considering the anti magic as a factor. It’s all him baby.)

5. Langris

UGHHHHH I could write another essay but I shan’t. He is such a wonderfully complex character who has been so forcefully shaped into a figurehead of a group that represents strength, giving him such a terrible egotistical, yet self loathing view of himself. And despite all of it he genuinely wants to love and be loved outside of those factors. He’s just a very confused kid who needs genuine support instead of ego-feeding elitist parents HDHDHDH.

I’m very passionate about him. And I am SO PROUD of his character development through the story. Especially with his relationship with Finral. (I will for sure write a whole separate essay discussing them sometime soon). He was written so well both in his antagonistic position which in my eyes was very much mostly out of his control (not completely he’s not totally excused ✋🏻). Seeing him make genuine effort to change his outlook and behavior to rebuild a healthy sibling relationship, to support his brother and motivate him to improve himself as well, AND to remove himself from a position of high status when he knows he’s no longer the one suited for it really just proves how much he has grown. His complexity in his character just makes him so interesting and I want to see him and Finral team up more please I beg there was not enough. HAHSHSHS

6. Luck

I always loved Luck’s story and the exploration on his ability to express his emotions as time goes on is so good. Like the elf battle always makes me SOB he’s so good. I genuinely am obsessed with his friendship with Magna they are the best duo ever. He’s such a lil weirdo and his antics are just so perfectly lil brother energy to the rest of the squad. I will say Tabata had PEAK WRITING with his unwavering fear in battle that made the perfect set up for the seriousness of the Spade arc when they show him not wanting to fight ABSOLUTELY beautiful setup and reward right there. He’s a baby boy who doesn’t need to be protected but I want to anyways.

7. Klaus

OUR 👏🏻 KING 👏🏻 OF 👏🏻 CHARACTER 👏🏻 GROWTH👏🏻! Literally perfection how this man goes from prickly noble to Asta and Yuno’s number 1 fan. He has the perfect older brother energy and really became just an absolute sweetheart. I adore his support for Asta so much it always makes me laugh when they pan to him doing some weird stuff in hopes that it helps him out.

His magic is also so cool and damn I wish Tabata would give him some more badass spells because he could do SO MUCH. Give him a suit of magic armor mayhaps idk but it’s such a fun magic for him. Also design wise I love his hair and his features are just so pleasing. ESPECIALLY during the elf arc my god he looked like a model. I just think he’s very pretty HDHXHDHD. BUT YES an absolute king and deserves all the love.

8. Mars

Oooooo we need more of him in the manga. I swear the coolest dudes are underutilized this man is so sick. I love Mars’ story and I’m so glad that he reocurred in the story the way he did. He was really the perfect set up for the diamond kingdom being in the plot at all. But he himself. AN ABSOLUTE SWEETHEART he’s so good. He and Fana are precious together and I really admire his strength and commitment to his goals throughout his whole story. He had some of the coolest magic and I desperately need a Mars and Asta team up with their massive swords.

One of the best character designs from silhouette, outfit, colors and all. He is very handsome and just a cool dude overall. Y’all need to make more fan art of him I don’t see enough. I’ll make some too I promise.

9. Leopold

The king of not being in the story enough. For REAL he is so powerful and cool and he’s one of Asta’s rivals too I NEED a triple team up of him asta and yuno it would be FIRE absolute pun intended hehe

I love how straightforward he is, he’s so motivated and such a strong mage. I hope he gets to lead the crimson lions one day he absolutely deserves the position. He is the best friend of best friends. Being supportive of Asta from the start and being one of the least “noble” of all the other squads immediately solidified him as a favorite to me. And he just continued to kick butt and be a cool lad. His power is fun and I desperately wanna see him make full blown fire tornadoes NSHXHDH it would be SICK. but yeAH he is such an awesome character and a perfect rival and I think he deserves more screen time. I will for sure be drawing him again soon.

10. Yami

That’s our DAD 🫵🏻

God I will say this with all the confidence in the world he is the BEST WRITTEN DANG TEAM LEADER in Shonen. Like Tabata really said let this silly goofy man rescue all of these outcasts and be their dad and help them grow and I cannot handle any moment from any character without thinking about Yami’s influence. HE HAS DONE SO MUCH FOR EVERYONE.

The smartest idea ever translated from brain to paper was making this man a walking poop joke. LIKE INGENIOUS. I always find it funny and I always will. Make this absolute badass a true dad. He poop and he make bad joke. Honestly the funniest character.

His story from what I’ve gotten to is so interesting. It was so worth the wait to get to see more about him but even so his story just in the clover kingdom is so wonderful. I love how he really sets up the themes Asta stands for before he even gets to the squad. Where all of the change in the kingdom that happens wouldn’t have been done without him (a foreigner) and his whole team of unloved and unwanted individuals who were seen as worthless. Literally showing the world how wrong they are. Yami is best dad and he always will be.

Special shout out to William, Vanessa, and Gordon they deserve to be up here. Also David cuz I think he’s pretty and I love his magic but he is SO background character it hurts.

In the end I would have loved to talk about more of them but It’s hard picking favorites with this show. Literally everyone is written so well and I love them.

Thank you for the ask sorry if i went on a tangent a couple times LOL

[floatingcatacombs]

Clear Card Crit

12 Days of Aniblogging 2024, Day 9

I've been waiting to go hater mode on this manga for years, but they just kept pushing back when it would end again and again. Only now that it's over can I properly lay it to rest. Full spoilers, of course.

Veteran Floating Catacombs readers should be well aware that Cardcaptor Sakura is my favorite CLAMP series, with a truly classic anime adaptation to boot. A couple of years ago I underwent a chronological readthrough of their works, and collected my takes in a series of essays titled "Why Is CLAMP Like This". My big takeaway was that they’re shoujo libertines, but it's also true that on some level, CLAMP defies categorization entirely. Unfortunately, their post-TsubasaHolic output has largely consisted of retreading old ground, with an endless progression of rehashes, sequels, and callbacks. Sure, there have been crossovers since the days of the CLAMP School, but it’s felt extra blatant this past decade and a half. We’ve gotten 2010s sequels to Wish, Legal Drug, xxxHolic, Tsubasa, and, of course, Cardcaptor Sakura.

How could they resist? Cardcaptor Sakura is CLAMP's most famous work by far, and its 20th anniversary was coming up in 2017. With promises of an anime adaptation and plenty of merchandising in tow, CLAMP got to work on the Clear Card Arc.

First things first: that anime is a terrible way to experience the Clear Card Arc, and Cardcaptor Sakura in general. A surprisingly weak effort from Studio Madhouse, the anime adaptation of Clear Card Arc has middling production values, a washed-out aesthetic with far too much bloom, and bland designs. Something's wrong with all of the eyes. I do appreciate the continuity changes to reflect the original's anime-only arcs – Meiling is back! However, this adaptation suffers from a staggering amount of filler. Even the manga-adapted parts play out at a dreadfully slow pace, as if they’re just stalling for time and padding out a dearth of chapters. I like even the most aimless parts of the 1998 anime, but here it just doesn’t sit right. Also, the new soundtrack is so bad that they start recycling the original OST halfway through the production.

The Clear Card Arc anime ends in a truly terrible fashion. By the final episode, we still know nothing about the main conflict, just that a handful of characters, including Syaoran, are deliberately keeping Sakura in the dark. We're left with only Sakura’s cryptic nightmares and a friend's ominous butler as clues. Ten minutes before the show ends, we’re still fucking around and baking sweets, until finally Sakura has an encounter with the presumed main villain that results in a timeline reset. The first few minutes of the first episode play out again, except everything feels a little wrong now.

Writing this out, this sounds almost kind of cool. Surreal, even. But for such a mediocre show, it's not that in the slightest! No resolution, no foreshadowing, just all of the plodding events from the past 21 episodes fully undone, as if the show is mocking and taunting the viewer. “How’s that for wasting your time?”

The Clear Card manga at least knows what it wants to be – a plot-driven mystery doubling down on the series lore. The first few volumes of the manga act as something of a smokescreen for the eventual plot developments, much like how xxxHolic Rei began as a continuation of the original before revealing itself to be an alternate timeline and getting plotty. Of course, this being the only stuff that the anime adapts explains exactly why it felt so vague and formless – it’s supposed to be an aimless rehash! You see, Sakura’s powers are now growing at such an unchecked pace that she’s able to create new cards unconsciously. Through recalling old memories she’s been unknowingly manifesting remixes of old CCS scenarios into reality, capturing cards that are largely simulacra of the originals.

I’ve gone back and forth on the merits of this plot twist, but having now read the whole thing, it’s one of the better tricks in this manga’s repertoire. It’s a bit of a meta jab at nostalgia – Sakura is simply going through the emotions because that’s what’s expected of her, to the point where the past is literally being summoned into the present, preventing any character growth or development on her part. I wish it had been the main narrative conflict, to be honest.

Of course, I can’t give them too much credit, because a lot of Clear Card’s problems can be blamed on CLAMP simply playing it safe with their characters. I went into it expecting to see cute moments of Sakura and Syaoran early on in their relationship, having confessed at the end of the original manga and again in the second movie. But it often feels as if they’re right back where they were before, fully unable to convey their emotions to one another and relying on friends and circumstances to mediate. Characters like Yukito and Toya don’t get any meaningful or sweet moments, instead showing up only to move the plot forward when their abilities or connections are necessary. And don’t even get me started on Tomoyo. Sure, she’s around plenty. But when plot comes to shove, she’s narratively set aside every single time, hardly even getting to dress Sakura in cute outfits. You can’t keep that from her!!! She needs her dressup time to live!!! Though in the end, I’m almost willing to forgive it all for Frogcaptor Sakura. Almost.

Anyways, as I said earlier the initial episodic format gives way to mysterious plot development after mysterious plot development. A lot of the card capturing is from here on out is largely incidental. Of course, the in-universe explanation is that Sakura is just manifesting cards left and right at this point in ways that don’t really require card abilities to be used, since she’s not being tested like in the original. But also, if we’re tapering down the fun card usage and the cute slice of life scenes, how much is really left?

Well, there’s a powerful sorcerer named Yuna D. Kaito who’s manipulating events behind the scenes. His goal, it seems, is to try and put pressure on Sakura in such a specific way that she manifests the exact card that he needs. What card is that? Why? What should be a straightforward scheme is drip-fed so slowly that it’s easy to lose the narrative thread. At least he has a cunty little rabbit who acts as his Kero-chan type guardian. She’s fun, although her role in the plot ends up oddly convoluted.

Kaito is the butler and sole guardian of a young girl named Akiho, who is Sakura’s age and gradually becomes more and more similar to her in both personality and demeanor as the series goes on. Unfortunately, neither of these new characters are a particularly exciting addition to this world. A more introverted Sakura without her existing social ties is fairly uninteresting, and it’s obvious from the very first appearance that the butler is scheming and going to be our Eriol-style villain.

Except Eriol wasn’t really that bad of a guy, was he? So one gets the feeling that Kaito’s villainy will give way to sympathetic motivations and a bittersweet resolution. This process somehow takes the entire manga. Sixteen volumes is an unbearably long length for the story actually being told here. For reference, the original Cardcaptor Sakura is only twelve volumes, and Eriol doesn’t even show up until halfway through. In the meantime, new characters are steadily introduced, and secret aspects of existing characters are gradually revealed, so it never feels stale. In comparison, Clear Card Arc has an incredibly small pool of new characters and concepts to work with, and it has to stretch them out soooooo much further than the original ever did. This means that Sakura as well as reader are constantly kept in the dark, and plot payoff happens so infrequently and is so carefully measured out that it just never feels good. The result is a truly meandering plot instead of anything resembling “narrative arcs”. 

It’s maddening. It’s lunacy. This is all pretty similar to the rest of CLAMP’s modern sequels – take the existing setting and add a few new characters, layer on the intrigue, provide some additional backstory, and see what happens. Drug & Drop and xxxHolic Rei are both like this, but they’re only a few volumes long apiece! Once again, sixteen volumes of drastically less substance than the original, is ridiculous. After the initial fakeout (which, to repeat, encompasses the entire Clear Card anime), the manga has a noticeable aversion to returning to the original’s vibes, except there’s nothing to replace it.

CLAMP’s modern artstyle, developed in the Tsubasa shounen mines, has noticeably thicker lines than their spindly compositions of old. It comes off as a bit simplistic in the early chapters, but as CLAMP drops all of their other series and begins to work at a slower pace, the drawings reach an impressive fidelity. Card Arc is a timeloop narrative with a lot of fairytale elements, so they went with steampunk and Alice in Wonderland as the primary motifs, neither of which are aesthetics that I'm particularly a fan of. At least they do go hard on them.

I’ve been putting it off, but I’m going have to actually summarize the later plot beats. Kaito keeps rewinding time for the sake of his Schemes, and curses Syaoran so that he can’t talk to Sakura about it. Great! He straight-up cast a spell of Narrative Contrivance. This will surely make things fun to read. Anyways, all of the time magic is taking a toll on Kaito, and he starts dying about it before we even know what’s going on or why. Sakura continues to get impossibly powerful, but it kind of stops being of concern to the plot? It’s is a shame because I was hoping they’d do a thing where someone dear to her has to try and put her down to keep the world from breaking.

CLAMP does finally detonate the setting in the last few volumes. We go full clockwork calamity, with every aspect of the narrative colliding such that the entire Tomoeda school puts on a steampunk fair revolving around a play titled “Alice in Clockland”, which was originally a magical book that nobody but Akiho read because she's the one who manifested it. Still on track? Okay, by putting on the play, Sakura and Akhio get sucked into the world of this book, but Syaoran (dressed as a steampunk catboy, for reasons) is able to dash in to help at the last second thanks to… Touya gaining the ability to stop time for a few seconds out of nowhere? Why are we stealing classic Jojo asspulls for Cardcaptor Sakura, of all things?

From here on out the manga aims to speedrun Tsubasa levels of Plot Bullshit. Syaoran has to fight his NPC doppelganger (also a catboy) because he wasn’t expected to make it into the narrative that Sakura and Akiho got sucked into. That whole mess ends with Kaito swapping Sakura and Akiho’s roles in the play, setting of a cascading chain of events that resets the timeline one last time and recasts Akiho as Sakura’s twin sister. That was Kaito’s plan all along. He needed to remove the magic from within her and place her under the protection of the Kinomoto family, so that evil British wizards wouldn’t seek her out and do fucked-up experiments to try and draw out her magical potential. That’s it! Why did this scheme need to be slow-rolled over the entirety of the manga? It’d be fine if it showed up late like Eriol in the original, but as a grand overarching justification for Clear Card Arc existing, it’s so shallow.

This timeline reset means that the opening of the manga rolls AGAIN, this time with Sakura and Akiho as bestie sisters. At least it explains why Kaito and the plot in general were so invested in making Sakura and Akiho converge on having nearly the same personality. Also, three or four separate characters take the time to call Sakura a siscon, including Tomoyo, who must be eating her own organs while saying that. I cannot fathom why they would take the time to brand her as such. I had to guess, it’s because stepsiblings are the one kind of ~scandalous relationship~ missing from the original CCS, and they wanted to finally get around to it decades later. But why is this coming up eight chapters before the end, only to be fully undone alongside the rest of this particular timeline in the finale? What did you mean by that, CLAMP?

Since everyone’s clued in on the time-loop bullshit at this point, Sakura and company are able to use the Clow Cards to record messages that can persist through loops, allowing them to break the cycle once and for all and travel to space in order to rescue the dying Kaito, who has… turned into a dragon and been imprisoned inside an illusory moon?

Look, nothing makes sense at this point, but at least this is compatible with my take on Touhou that any plot revolving around the moon is destined to become incredibly convoluted. Sometimes you gotta pull a quick Imperishable Night! The closest thing we have to a final boss at this point is an automated meteor spell set up by those damn offscreen British magicians, which Sakura does manage to disarm using her nascent demiurge powers. With one last reset, everyone gets their happy ending. Akiho can hang out with Sakura and friends and take care of Kaito as they figure out how to cure his time dragon illness, and she never has to worry about wizards hunting her down ever again. End manga.

Who is this for? Demographic crossovers have always been a strong point for CLAMP. They’ve got plenty of shoujo that can just as easily be appreciated by boys, and shounen and seinen that draw in all kinds. Combined with their unique aesthetics and atmosphere, CLAMP's best manga has something for everyone.

But Clear Card Arc is, comparatively, a funnel. You have to be a diehard fan of Cardcaptor Sakura to understand it in the first place, and you also have to be deeply invested in its lore and magic system. I don’t know about you, but those are just not what I come to this series for. Groups who will be disappointed include: Sakura x Syaoran shippers, slice of life enjoyers, acolytes of Tomoyo (patron saint of pining lesbians), people who like the nonmagical extended cast, and fans of the original anime who appreciate quality adaptations.

Clear Card Arc is a curious, yet ultimately meaningless, exercise in nostalgia. It mostly fails as a throwback, and decidedly fails as a soft reboot for pulling new fans in. Its priorities would interest almost no one except for CLAMP themselves, and its few novel ideas are stretched so thin that the whole thing feels like a well-drawn exercise in meaninglessness. CLAMP’s clearly been running out of steam these past fifteen years, shelving most of their projects in favor of ever-safer investments. Cardcaptor Sakura was the logical endpoint for this endeavor. And while they did enough obligate rehashing in the first few volumes to script the anime and stock the gashapon machines, one wonders who the rest is for. Were these sixteen volumes a passion project, borne out of total creative freedom, or was it stretched the way it was out of contractual and financial obligation? Both answers are dire.

Now that Clear Card is over, CLAMP plans to resume xxxHolic Rei, and while I liked that one, I hope more than anything that they’re able to take a good, long, break. CLAMP’s members are starting to grow old, and they've been working near-nonstop since early adulthood. Hopefully the royalties are good enough that they can take a break and get those creative juices flowing again, or even retire for good! I wouldn’t begrudge them one bit. They’re fascinating and accomplished mangaka, even if they also did Chobits.

One more rating, for old time’s sake.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 4/5

OVERALL RATING: 2/5

[balaroo]

Why did Bakugou see Deku as worthless?

Short answer: He didn’t.

“But doesn’t ‘Deku’ literally mean useless?! Of course Bakugou thought he was a quirkless loser!” I hear you cry but please give my rushed analysis a chance and see if I can convince you of something real quick.

This is mainly focusing on their relationship in the earlier manga but there will be references to newer chapters so spoilers if you’re not caught up!

I’m going to go in a vaguely chronological order and remind you of these panels:

So the first part of this with Bakugou already starting to pick on Deku happens before his quirk manifested and even longer before he finds out Deku is quirkless. It makes me think of when Deku said Bakugou only 'started down a bad path' once he got his quirk but it looks like he was being a little shit before even that.

Why does this fit into it at all, doesn’t this just confirm Bakugou has always seen him as a loser? Well, yes and no. With Bakugou having a squadron of children he thought were lower himself that followed him around everywhere, why did he only ever pick on Deku?

That’s something I’ll come back to soon but a few more moments I wanted to remind you of along these same lines are:

When he learns Deku is applying to UA

In middle school, Deku’s classmates finding out that the quirkless kid applying to the prestigious hero school is hilarious and they think that there’s no way he can get in. But the one person who does take is seriously is Bakugou.

He claims it’s because he wants to be the only person from their school to make it to UA but by saying this isn’t he admitting that on some level he thinks Deku has a chance to get in, even without a quirk?

When he sees Deku has a quirk

Now, up until this point, Bakugou has apparently accepted Deku actually is in UA, even without a quirk. In fact, he’s more shocked to learn that Deku does have one but lied to him about it (which only reinforced the belief Deku was intentionally trying to undermine him) and leads me right back to the point that Bakugou absolutely believed Deku made it to UA with no quirk.

He never saw Deku as worthless because he didn't have a quirk, there was something else at play, hence the meta.

Just to hammer that in further, something interesting I remember from the earlier chapters is Bakugou constantly referring to Deku as ‘a pebble in my path’

That specifically made me wonder why would someone who’s always seen everyone else as ‘extras’ and even went out of his way to remind his teacher ‘don’t lump me in with these losers’ refer to a kid he’s deemed to be useless as having any effect on his path to becoming a hero? It just doesn’t add up.

Though we get a lot of closer looks at Bakugou's pride and it's downfall after All Might loses his power, the reason as to why Bakugou was always so quick to hate on Deku is pretty ambiguous until we get to the newer chapters (spoilers for 285+ beyond this point) and we get this amazing piece of insight into Bakugou’s character:

‘I ignored my own weaknesses so I ended up bullying him.' Not only is he speaking candidly about how messed up his relationship with Deku used to be but he's admitting that he cares about him.

It’s by no means a rousing declaration of guilt but it does put the blame entirely on Bakugou himself which was honestly very refreshing to see. People aren’t black and white, not every mean character has a tragic backstory to explain their actions.

Bakugou may have just been a kid with way too many expectations put on him but that gives no excuse for what he did and he knows that and then he decides to make it right which is why his character is so interesting.

So why would Bakugou pick on Deku in the first place? It’s because he was scared of him.

Deku didn't believe that just because someone has a strong quirk means they should be treated like they're invincible (hence the famous river scene) and he treated Bakugou as he would anyone else which terrified Bakugou.

Bakugou is meant to be a strong hero with a powerful quirk but here's this kid who's quirkless, and so by society's standards should be weak and feeble, showing much more strength and tenacity than he should. It goes against the narrative of the world they live in and Bakugou is worried it'll effect how he's meant to be a hero.

Deku excels in every way that Bakugou hasn’t been able to. He’s kind but never hesitates to stand up for what he believes in, he has the uncanny ability to analyse villains and heroes alike in a way that allowed him to beat Bakugou in their training exercise, and to top it all off he has a strength of will that is honestly just scary.

Poetically, it’s only once Bakugou accepts that Deku has always been stronger than him in this way and they start their ‘Save to win, win to save’ dynamic does he manage to overcome those obstacles and start on the path to becoming a more rounded and stronger hero, as well as atoning for what he’s done.

He’s never going to stop being foul-mouthed or aggressive because that’s part of who he is, but he is a much better person than he was at the beginning of the manga. Saying he isn’t is blatantly disregarding so much of the story and just very, very incorrect.

Whether or not he'll outright say “I’m Sorry.” To Deku has yet to be seen but this route feels a lot more genuine to be quite honest. Not to mention, if he did confront Deku with it the most likely outcome would be Deku saying he’s already forgiven because it’s true but Bakugou wants to earn that forgiveness which is so much better.

Seeing how far their relationship has come since that realisation has been amazing and I can only hope we get to see even more development between the two of them.

This was just meant to focus on how Bakugou never saw Deku as worthless but I’ve already gone off topic. I could write essays on this pair’s dynamic but it’s already long enough so I think I’ll leave it here.

I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on it and thank you very much if you read this far!

[alittlesimp]

kierkegaard and bsd fyodor

!! there may be manga spoilers ahead (i have NOT proofread) !!

small warning beforehand – i am in no way a professional philosopher or even good at writing essays. i took two years of philosophy in high school and kind of ran with it haha. i just thought this would be a fun analysis for me to make because fyodor is portrayed as a religious character – yet he murders, like, a lot. he immediately reminded me of kierkegaard, my favourite religious weirdo (lovingly). i grew up catholic so i do have a bit of knowledge on christianity and all, but i havent been to church in like 5 years so the parts about the bible and all might be a bit rusty, but i will obviously check to get the biggest stories etc right. english also isn’t my first language, so there might be a few mistakes here and there.

i do honestly believe there is more value in analyzing his behaviour with the irl fyodor’s books but 1) i am not as familiar with those as i am with kierkegaard and 2) that has been done before!! here and here. please do check these out, they’re incredibly well done. also, this is just a really vague comparison that i have been thinking about for days now so she’s gonna be a bit messy (no capital letters and not proofread, sorry i wrote this in a adhd-fueled Rage) and Maybe even complete bullshit, who knows! okkkk whooo lets get into this!!

Intro

first off, there’s not going to be a real justification for his actions. i’m just trying to explain his actions, i would never justify genocide (:

so i’ve seen a lot of people state that fyodor sees himself as god, and while i do think there is some truth in that, i don’t think that fyodor thinks he is god humanified, more that he sees himself as god’s righthand man? i’m not going to go very deep into this because i’m honestly not too sure what i think about this exactly, i might delve into this in the future after familiarizing myself a bit more with the irl author!

i also don’t think fyodor is a psychopath who doesn’t understand the severity of his actions. i really do think he completely understands he’s literally murdering people left and right, but that it’s a necessary evil to rid the world of ability users (he also mentions ‘the freedom of death’ shit a couple of times which is not really relevant here but… scary). this might be a bit confusing to most, why do something if you know it’s a shitty thing to do? to fully understand his standpoint, we’ll have to first discuss the philosophy of kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard

søren kierkegaard was a danish philosopher who is often seen as the guy who kickstarted the whole existentialism thing. although i definitely don’t agree with him, he is one of my favorite philosophers because his theories are just so fucking weird but like, still well-constructed.

kierkegaard’s main idea that we touched on in philosophy class was that other people’s judgement does not matter if god has given you a task. no matter how immoral it is by society’s standards, be it murder, extortion, fraud or sundry other crimes, if god himself has ordered you to do it, there is no need to justify this by anyone else’s moral or ethical standards. now, the actual theory’s a little more nuanced than this, but you do see where i’m going with this, right?

a quick example: the story of abraham. abraham was ordered by god to kill his son to prove his faith, which is considered a massive yikes like, everywhere in the world. however, abraham brought his son up to where he was going to sacrifice him and at the last moment, an angel told him that god was satisfied and that he didn’t have to actually do it. god created horrible youtube pranks y’all!

in his book fear and trembling, kierkegaard describes the anguish/anxiety (translations differ, but honestly i think i’d feel EVERYTHING if god told me to kill my hypothetical child) that abraham must have felt and why he ‘thinks’ (kierkegaard wrote this under a penname, and because he’s a bit of a funny guy it’s often unclear what he really believes) abraham isn’t just a triggerhappy guy, but just a devout christian. abraham must have believed that god would never let him do something as abhorrent as killing your son, and trusted that god would have had him do the right thing. kierkegaard states that, in faith, your individual relationship with god is more important than the church and even society’s general ethical and moral ideas.

ofcourse, this perfectly aligns with religious extremism and terrorism – which is exactly why people usually take kierkegaard’s words with a good handful of salt. but in our case, with our favourite smelly rat man, it might help us explain his mindset a bit better.

Fyodor

now, how does this link back to fyodor?

fyodor takes up abraham’s place in this story. he knows that what he’s doing is in no way explainable by moral or ethical reasons, but because he believes that it is god’s wish, he will have to do the dirty work. think about it: abraham would have really murdered his son if god hadn’t stopped him, so maybe fyodor’s killing really would be necessary to please god. in abraham’s case, it was to test his obedience and faith, so it’s not 100% the same as directly being given the task to create a new perfect world without ability users or whatever. but just like abraham thought that god would have him do the right thing, fyodor trusts completely that god is guiding him in his actions and that therefor, he is doing the right thing.

he knows it won’t make sense to others, he knows he can’t justify it by society’s standards, but he feels like he’s justified in doing it anyway because god gave him permission somehow. he most likely also thinks all his crimes are for the greater good, or that the sin of the general ability using population heavily outweighs his own.

in the end, i think him believing he has to do this will link back to his backstory somehow (which i’m INCREDIBLY curious about). i could probably write some more about this but I need to get this out of my system so that’s it. i might redo this in the future but who knows! maybe after i familiarize myself with the irl fyodor a bit more <3.

if you have any comments, spot any mistakes or have a question: don’t be shy, drop an ask so i can give you an in-depth answer (if i’m feeling it, it might take a while, i’m a bit tired n all) don't bully me i will cry <3 (: love u!

[stereden]

I don't know if you're still doing the Fun Author Ask thing...but the scene in "We still stand proud" where you tell how Shanks (and Buggy) got the claim on Shiki, the proper way in front of Davy Jones, that was a great piracy scene. And I just know their feelings in that moment are a whripool I would love to explore. (I also might have left an essay-long comment on your ao3? Which I intended to be a friendly praise and just got carried away? Sorry 'bout that, I just truly adore your writing.)

First of all, never appologise for essay-length comments, because I love them and they always make my day - if I haven’t replied yet, expect an essay-lenght reply shortly before the next chapter is posted!

I am indeed still doing the Fun Author Ask thing, and will probably be doing it until this weekend, so anyone reading this, feel free to send an ask!

Now onto the Shiki claiming scene. As some people in my Discord will be able to tell you, while I do have a general direction and plan for my stories, some of the things are just... spur of the moment things, a sudden burst of inspiration that needs to be written right now. That was the case with the Shiki thing.

The entire Shiki thing.

As in, while I may have had the whole ‘would you rather drown or be burned alive’ thing as a reccurring motive since nearly the very beginning, I only decided who exactly was behind that a lot later into the story. As in, shortly before Shiki is first mentioned. Until then, I just had this vague idea of one of Rogers enemies capturing Buggy, but I didn’t exactly know who, especially as I hadn’t watched Strong World yet and my entire knowledge of Shiki came from the Edd War chapters of the manga. Then the awesome fic This bites! by Xomniac and the Crossbrain reached the Strong World arc and I finally got around watching the movie and I decided there and then that a. I hated Shiki and b. that he was therefore going to be the asshole that captured Buggy and would consequently, at some point, die a horrible and painful death at Shanks’ hand. Combined with the fact that he attacked Luffy as well, it just fit perfectly.

Now, as anyone who has read any of my one piece stories knows, I absolutely adore worldbuilding, and I’m having a lot of fun coming up with pirate traditions and a pirate code, so I really wanted to do something kind of ceremonial and official for Shanks declaring revenge on Shiki. 

This particular ritual was brainstormed with help from the awesome people on my discord as well: the message in blood put in a bottle and the black spot on the hand of the claimed person came from one person; the black seagull cawing to announce that the claim had taken came from another; Davy Jones’ involvment and the ritual words itself are stuff I came up with specifically for that scene. We also theorised a lot about what would happen if multiple people tried to claim the same life, what you would do if you decided to give up on your claim (another complicated ceremony) and what actually happens once the life is claimed (which I won’t reveal here as it would be a spoiler for the sequel ;) )

Here’s an excerpt of something I wrote from that particular discord conversation:

And yes, as the person wronged Buggy does have first dibs

But back then he was in no state to claim it and, honestly, at the time the very mention of Shiki was enough to send him into a panic attack it still is 

And Shanks, Shanks was so fucking furious that he decided to call onto Davy Jones to hear his claim 

And it's a risk, always a risk, to claim a life like that: doing it without a valid reason will see Davy Jones taking your own soul right there and then, but Shanks doesn't care, doesn't care that he's just an apprentice without a master, a boy without a father, a pirate without a captain. 

He is the storm the tempest the rage of the sea and of the wind and when he hurls his bottle into the sea the blood on the paper is his own, but it's Buggy's as well, because he's just spent hours tending to his best friend injuries as best as he could and Buggy's blood is still on his hands. Shanks is the one who makes the claim but he does it for Buggy and with Buggy's blood mixed with his own, and Davy Jones takes notices

Because they are children of the seas, children of Davy Jones, apprentices without masters and pirates without captain. They are not yet captain's of their own crews, and only captains and first mates usually dare to state their claim, but they have potential, so much potential that Davy Jones does not doubt that they will be sooner rather than later 

 And more than that, they have cause Because Shiki broke the code, because he attacked an injured and unarmed and unmastered apprentice that had not attacked him first 

 Because Shiki had tormented and tortured a child because his true target had already boarded the Flying Dutchman Because Shanks and Buggy are children of the seas, children of Davy Jones and they have sworn to the code and believe in it and in each other, and Davy Jones smiles as he nudges the black seagull in the right direction 

 Your claim is granted, young one, he thinks. And I look forward to the day you bring me his soul