#I would say choke

[shadebloopnik]

Radioapple twitter goin thru a thing rn

LIKE AMIR????

AMIR???? CHAT???? AMIR WHAT IS THIS BEHAVIOR?????

[m-inntii]

[BEWARE!! SPOILERS FOR AMPHOREUS AND GAY MEN!!!,!,

MYDEI AND PHAINON YOU GAY LIL SHITS YOU AIN’ FUCKIN SLICK I SEE YA.

Phainon hesitating when leaving Mydei, wanting to help him before leaving anyway, and then being an anxious mess outside, being shown worrying about him every moment, like 😭

(also ignoring the fact iT’S FUCKING IMPLIED HE WAS GONG TO SACRIFICE HERSELF I THINK?? IDK TAKE MY WORDS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT CUZ I DIDNT UNDERSTAND SHIT ABT WHAT HE WAS GONNA DO BUT LIKE BRO SXPECT AN ENTIRE RANT TO HIM AT SOME POINT.)

Phainon SPECIFCALLY told Mydei NOT to come to his ceremony because he should heal up, and he still did ANYWAY cause he was WORRIED. LIKE- Self-deprecating and all that Mydei is sure but HE CAME TO HIS CEREMONY WHILE INJURED BECAUSE HE WAS WRORRIED FOR HIM LIKE…bruv you ain’ beating no allegations

Phainon beign the only person Mydei can truly spar without holding back, and eveN SPARRING FOR 10 FUCKING DAYS STRAIGHT ONCE??? WHAT???

ALSO THIS

LIKE OH MY GOD THEY CARE SM FOR EACH OTHEER KIKE BRO I’M CRYINg

also you cannot tell me that Phainon is depressed in some way. He lost his entire hometown apparently, his entire mission is fueled purely out of a want for revenge, and the only reason he took up the role of the chye so heirs is because it gave him a purpose like…lol he’s so depressed. Mydei please help your boy

ALSO APPARENT THERE’S A MEMORY CORE OF PHAINON BASICALLY CALLING MYDEI HOT??? LIKE??

[homelanderpilled]

dating homelander headcanons

(homelander x gn!reader)

he kills you

[maximura]

[viivenn]

have you ever wondered what captain phasma looks like without her helm? perhaps i have an answer to your burning curiosity…

in this i’d like to also discuss some headcannons for miss phasma because cappie phazzie is just so… 🥰😍🙏✨✨

- the scar on her eye is both a cut and a burn. when she fell in all that fire the only spot unprotected by her armor was the break in her helm, and now it's a patch of burned skin. the harsher scar pictured here is present as well because that scar comes from the initial blow from finn.

- i'm also willing to bet phasma doesn't wear makeup either. "there's no time for it nor is there a need". however she would, on free time/when she's training, wear industrial/cargo pants, thick military/combat boots, and a gray tee tucked in neatly with a simple black belt. the logo to accompany that shirt is a small first order sigil near the collarbone and on her pants she would wear patches with her name, rank, and perhaps home flag on it as well as the first order's sigil as a patch.

- she's not offended by the assumption of masculinity, because she takes on the role of forceful and brutal commander whilst maintaining a strong reputation amongst the ranks of the first order. secretly, though she sees him as freakish and only tolerates him for his status, she's quite amused by kylo ren and wouldn't have it any other way. “the first order is not the same without him." she would also quietly tease him for his inability to find the map to skywalker.

- she would also probably take great pride in how shiny her armor is and routinely keep it clean on her free time, desperate to keep scuffs and marks out of it. she doesn't like deformalities, especially when it comes to her personal items.

- in terms of where her loyalties lie , she is ultimately loyal to herself despite her position and rank amongst her fellows. she would never admit it out loud though, and keep to herself about that opinion, but if it came down to her or a few members of her troops, she'd be fine with the sacrifice.

- phasma would probably pretend her baton is a lightsaber on occasion, side training with saber combat on either opponents or training dummies. if she is caught doing so, she would most certainly threaten the life of whoever caught her playing pretend. "you won't tell a soul if you value your life. now get back to work.”

- she probably secretly drinks tea in her quarters as well because she's british and it's natural.

in my humble opinion , she is most certainly , “gaslight , gatekeep , girlboss”.

[casualavocados]

The Fan family has tried to harm Bai Zongyi many times. I gotta be on guard to protect myself.

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 10

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

while i will always love and appreciate the bisexual dean winchester agenda, i truly believe that if he was raised differently—or maybe if he grew up today instead—that boy would have been gay. like his love for women in a romantic/sexual context was always such a caricature and was continuously used as a symbol of masculinity that played against the roles assigned to him by his father growing up for the sake of suppressing any queerness he might exhibit. now whether that suppression was purposely written into his character or was a reaction to the character they had created, i’m not sure, but it’s there regardless.

i don’t mean to dismiss the love he felt for cassie or lisa, but particularly with lisa, i’m not sure he was ever in love with her, despite the fact that he did care for both her and ben. i get so frustrated watching the end of s5 because him going to her house and his perfect “apple pie life” being with her in suburbia genuinely came out of nowhere and i’ve never understood a) why it had to happen, and b) why it had to be lisa. but thinking about it in this sense, she was the closest thing he had in his life to everything he was raised to believe he should want by one john winchester, who lost his perfect wife, perfect family, perfect apple pie life and sent all of them down this path in the first place. so of course to dean, his happy ending would be with someone like lisa. but that’s the important part. someone like lisa, not lisa herself. he may have had love for her and he may have been able to picture a life with her, but it wasn’t necessarily because she was everything he wanted; she was a symbol of the things that tore his family apart and so to be with her felt like he was finally able to put some of it back together. and that makes me so sad for him because all of that is a result of the sense of responsibility ingrained in him growing up by john, not something he wanted for himself.

but back to his general attitude towards women, there was an excellent post that said he only acts like the typical womanizer he has a reputation for being around women deemed “stereotypical” by the misogynistic perspective. otherwise, he tends to take on a fairly brotherly role; he doesn’t tend to pursue any women he can “take seriously,” and is more intimidated or impressed by them than anything else. with the exception of cassie (which was pre-series and we never got full context for in the first place), he only ever pursued women with whom he would have a definitive ending—by that i mean women who he knows he’ll never see again or who would have a clearly defined role during the time they’re together that wouldn’t threaten the status quo. and yes these could also be the traits of a commitment-phobe or someone chronically on the move, but for one, sam doesn’t tend to do the same thing (see ruby, amelia, and eileen), and for two, given the things i mentioned already, it makes me consider it more of a result of him not actually being interested in women romantically.

his reaction to women when not purposely used as the butt of a joke or to perpetuate the “womanizer dean winchester” agenda is often so innately fraternal, caring in a way that doesn’t have any expectations behind it. and when there is a romantic context, so much of the relationship can be attributed to the way john raised him and the beliefs he has as a direct result; it’s never simply been built on the foundation of love.

every time he is dismissed as this macho het guy, it also dismisses so much of what makes him a wonderful character, and yes a lot of that is his queerness. so in a world where he didn’t grow up with roles and responsibilities that shaped him into someone he knew his dad hated and forced him to create this character for himself in order to survive? i think he would have been gay and he would have been okay with that.

[sirjacobthomaskiszka]

(his fucking arm dude what do I have to do to be put in a head lock like im begging him)

[covertleathers]

Rookanis getting physically intimate -

Lucanis: I could kill you like this.

Rook (Gomez Addams Coded): A beautiful death it would be. The only death I would have ever asked for.

Lucanis: (taken aback blushing so hard, has to stop)

[fraternum-momentum]

ok so my room is p dark except for a shitty sconce light and a lamp near my bed and im currently working on a project but i didnt want to work at such low lighting. so what i did is i put my phone's flashlight on and then tied a belt around my neck to keep it steady. it was going good until my little brother suddenly barged in my room and i looked like this

[eldritchenthusiast]

Waow

[deviousfatestudio]

I did make that sketchbook

[iamsigningmylifeaway]

am I the only one who’s insane about how in 12 final days when roger is at his anxious peak about the beginning of the laver cup, apprehensively approaching and greeting the group of players in the event center, djokovic is the one to let him know impartially that he is wearing a tux shirt and not a suit shirt, wherein roger still has the time to go change which he does, and this is right after the movie frames the still remaining tense dynamic between the two and djokovic’s vaguely inexplicable and ambiguous reason for showing up today

​… …. like it’s the fact that is showing up for roger and being friendly and sympathetic and in moments like these, roger visibly awkward and not knowing where they stand, he is almost tender and all signs point to positive relationship, but he also somehow holds a relaxed almost pleased air throughout the flurry of everyone crying and mourning …

[radiokbox]

I doodled this based off @rrawrrxd 's Buzz being mistaken as Cookie

idk it felt funny for me to do this

[dootznbootz]

I went on tiktok to just watch some silly Odysseus videos but then I mostly saw people going like "Yeah, maybe Odysseus cried on Calypso' island every day but honestly he had that coming after what he did Achilles and Patroclous/Circe!!!" and "Everything that happens in Odyssey is deserved cuz he took Patrochilles to war!!!" and "I feel so bad for Circe and Calypso and Penelope, they deserved better!!!"

For fucks sake I beg you, read anything different from Millers bs and like educate yourself- And please stop goddamn saying that rape victim. deserved it.

Circe probably didn't give a flying fuck, Calypso is a rapist and abuser and Penelope deserved everything she wanted and SHE WANTED ODYSSEUS

I think I've had enough internet for today, imma go wash my eyes with bleach. Anyways sorry for ranting here, i hope you don't mind it lmao

It's alright. I absolutely understand the vents about the whole thing. :'D No one deserves to be a victim of such a thing no matter WHAT they've done. I hope your eyes are okay after the bleach

Like Odysseus does so many fucked up things but Calypso and Circe? He is the victim. Period. It's very clear that Odysseus is in extreme distress on Ogygia. And Circe wasn't some sort of FwB situation. There's fear and numbness in the language he uses when talking about it. There's so much victim blaming and it SUCKS.

Even then, Odysseus' journey was kind of about "temptation" or just straight up "Die or get out of my sea." From Poseidon. "I don't want you in my waters so I'm gonna try and give you things that will keep you on land or just kill you."

Immortal goddesses wanting you would be many people's dream come true but not for Odysseus. And I think that's the point. His determination, how he clawed his way back into the arms he never wanted to leave in the first place, is incredible. Many people would've given up and just started a new life but he never would because no life he could ever create would compare to the life he had before. Even if it's different, it's what he's always wanted.

He literally tells Calypso "I'm not stopping until I'm home. I don't care if I suffer more until I do. I'm going home."

“Mighty goddess, do not be angry with me over this. I myself know very well Penelope, although intelligent, is not your match                                          to look at, not in stature or in beauty. But she’s a human being and you’re a god. You’ll never die or age. But still I wish, every moment to get back to my home,                                                       to see the day of my return. And so, even if out there on the wine-dark sea some god breaks me apart, I will go on— the heart here in my chest is quite prepared to bear affliction. I’ve already had so many troubles, and I’ve worked so hard                        ��         through waves and warfare. Let what’s yet to come be added in with those.”

(Book 5, Johnston)

Circe's a goddess and what happened is nothing like Dionysus and Ariadne and Apollo and Hyacinthus for example. Circe never gave Odysseus a crown of stars and he would never go out of his way to kill 120 people for bothering her. They did not love each other and he can't refuse as she's a goddess.

If you interpret them sleeping together the entire year,(It's only explicitly said that they had sex once so that's what I go with personally.) that doesn't mean he was happy with it! Even then, the whole situation is not what a healthy FwB should look like! I'm asexual and even I know that no one in a FwB situation should have to BEG in any way that basically says "Please let me go or kill me" with supplication!!! The fact that he leaves so quickly he forgets one of his men? The fact that during Elpenor's funeral, he doesn't greet Circe himself? He was avoiding her. Wouldn't he want to get "one last night together" during Book 12 if they were fwb? 🙄

It's bonkers to me that people hate him for being a "cheater" when A.) having multiple lovers wasn't uncommon in Ancient Greece, and B.) the two people he is explicitly said to have "cheated" with, weren't his choice. He wasn't actively searching for pretty women either!!!

As mentioned, while it was common for men to have many lovers, Odysseus never had any listed unlike some of the other men. (not bashing any of them. I'm just making a point in comparison.) He also has no other children besides Telemachus in Homer's works. There's no evidence of him having other lovers other than speculation. (funny enough, I once read somewhere that the reason why Odysseus is so mean is because he doesn't "bond" enough with the other soldiers. 😂)

Does that mean he didn't have other lovers? Technically, Nope! It's just never explicitly stated either way. He has slaves but none were ever said to be concubines or that he sleeps with them. He has deep bonds with his fellow soldiers but that doesn't mean he sleeps with them. That doesn't mean people can't write or talk about him doing so even though it's not mentioned! Just like it also means that someone can write him not doing so as there's nothing that says it either way in Homer's Works! :D

It's fucked up when people say "He didn't try to leave Calypso enough" or something of the like. It just tells you how A.) they didn't read the Odyssey or have piss on the poor reading comprehension or B.) ...you should probably stay away from that person...

With Circe though??? I can understand the confusion but digging deeper and looking at the text, he wasn't having a good time. Or at the very least was walking on Eggshells the whole time. I hate bringing up that essay over and over again but like...I literally wrote everything there.

I also don't like how people take Circe's morally gray-ness away from her. Let her do something fucked up to be fucked up!!! Let her traumatize Odysseus!

Idk, I kind of hate that I'm "known" for this but I relate to this idiot asshole a lot and it means a lot to me that his story, despite what happens to him, has a happy ending :'D

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.