#I'm asking like. thematically

[trans-xianxian]

[golyadkin]

Something something living with your mistakes Something something period of adjustment

[superfallingstars]

Don’t be shy, drop the hp web weaves…

trust me when i say it's not shyness that's holding me back, i'm just busy. anyway here is my snape (snily? snape's guilt complex?) web weave. i put a lot of thought into the order of these images, i hope it comes through lol

hermann warm, concept drawing for the cabinet of dr. caligari / andrew wyeth, the attic / andrew wyeth, her room / louise glück, "october" / klara kristalova, the catastrophe / jenny holzer, the living series / orchestral manoeuvers in the dark, "the new stone age" / leon spilliaert, alone / fritz eichenberg, illustration from wuthering heights / leonard cohen, "dress rehearsal rag" / tumblr user @/filmnoirsbian / ellen thesleff, the echo / louise glück, "matins" / simon and garfunkel, "kathy's song" / hsieh tong-liang, cannot let go / bob dylan, "simple twist of fate" / andrew wyeth, wind from the sea / andrew wyeth, the witching hour / pj harvey, "silence" / remedios varo, insomnio i / daniel rossen, "the last one" / gwen raverat, the princess in the churchyard / diane di prima, revolutionary letters / sad lovers and giants, "a map of my world" / marina abramovic, ladder / kim daehyun, i want and i don't want / daniel rossen, "the last one" (again) / ghost quartet, "usher pt. 3" / emily lacour, as high as the sky / anne sexton, a self-portrait in letters

[eri-pl]

@edennill and others, asking for your help, because I just realized I don't really have any human fave (actual human, not a half-elf) I mean I do like Amandil, but I'm not that interested in him, and I do have a ton of elf faves and that's kinda biased.

I don't think it's healthy to have faves only in the most powerful groups, I need some balance.

Recommend me some Men, with an explanation why they're cool? (Preferably from Slim, may be LotR, but Aragorn is too mainstream 🤣 and Faramir idk, I know they're both awesome but they're not my jam)

Thank you.

[bitternace]

WHY ARE YOU SO EVIL!!! /POS. ATTACKING YOU.

Xemnas and Xigbar for 37 if that number hasn't been done? If it has, how about 74?

no puedo pedirle lo eterno a un simple mortal // ay, todo lo que he hecho por ti.

[ID: a mostly black and white drawing with a purple overlay of xigbar and xemnas shown from the hip up on the left side of the image. the background is black and has some diagonal lines with a bit of transparency on the right side. the shadows are harsh, with only a bit of light falling on their faces.

they stand before each other turned to the audience. xigbar, holds the handle and the middle of No Name before him, head tilted down as he looks to the audience. xemnas stands a full head taller behind xigbar, his left hand held some distance below the bladed tip of No Name, his left eye is covered by his fringe.

xemnas visible eye is painted ochre with a white pupil, while xigbar's eye is white and gold. The eyes on no name's handle and the gazing eye on the blade are a vibrant cyan. the caption reads the spanish lyrics "i can't ask a simple mortal for a forever" and "oh, everything i've done for you." /End ID.]

close-up under keep reading.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I'm sorry, but why don't we talk about Witch Hunt more? Seriously, I think it might be my favorite DAO DLC. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the hell out of Awakening. Leliana's Song is good. The Golems of Amgarrak is... eh, bad. I didn't really like that one. The Warden's Keep, The Stone Prisoner, and Return to Ostagar are all amazing and I love them.

But Witch Hunt??? Y'all. I can't. I'm too emotional right now.

I have at least one dynamic from each game that I'm obsessed with. For DAO, it's the dynamic between romanced!Alistair, Tabris, and Morrigan. I've talked before about the dark ritual and stuff in this post, so let's just say that my Tabris, Rose, very much has unfinished business and a score to settle with Morrigan.

Tabris and Morrigan grew so close throughout the entire journey of DAO, y'know? Close enough that Morrigan claimed she thought of her as a sister, and Tabris felt the same way... and then in one single moment, it's just shattered.

There were signs that Tabris ignored, like the way Morrigan dismissed all the circle mages and claimed they should be left to their fates since they "allow themselves to be caged like cattle." Or how she disapproved every time Tabris wanted to help those down on their luck. Or, worst of all, when Morrigan disapproved when Tabris chose to kill the Tevinter slaver instead of making a deal with him to use the lives of the remaining elves to grant her more power... one of those caged elves being Tabris' father.

But she gave Morrigan the benefit of the doubt; she's sheltered and only had Flemeth as an influence and teacher, of course she's unempathetic and selfish, but there is good in Morrigan's heart. She can learn to be more empathetic and to care for others.

At least, Tabris believed that until Morrigan confessed that she's known about the ultimate sacrifice and the dark ritual from the beginning, that Flemeth sent her with the wardens with a purpose that Morrigan intends to follow through with. It's devastating and it broke Tabris' heart.

She just learned that a warden has to die to stop the blight, and that warden could be her or Alistair. Not only are they romantically involved, but they've been through all of this shit together, they're the only ones who fully understand what being a grey warden is like. They carry the burden on their shoulders, and they're probably going to lose each other to the archdemon.

And Morrigan waits until she's at her most vulnerable to ask that of her.

Again, I've gone into more detail about that before, but at this point Rose is done with people deceiving her. She's done with Morrigan... except she's not. It's the betrayal and knowing Morrigan got what she wanted that causes Rose to go searching for her.

To Morrigan's credit, she does give some answers. She claims she didn't thing the archdemon would show itself so soon, and she did what she had to because she didn't wish to see Tabris hurt or die. I believe her, and to an extent, Tabris believes her... but Morrigan still doesn't get WHY it's a betrayal.

Morrigan's right: She will never understand Tabris, and Tabris will never understand her. She can insist it's not a betrayal all she wants, but it absolutely is, and Tabris has never allowed anyone who crossed her to just walk away... except for Morrigan.

Until now.

Hearing that Morrigan manipulated her way into the trust of this Dalish clan so she could steal their book and run is just further evidence in Tabris' eye that she hasn't changed. Maybe it was always foolish to believe she could.

So... she stabbed Morrigan.

She didn't do it to kill her; Morrigan is the daughter of Flemeth and a powerful mage with healing magic, a mere stab isn't going to kill her.

No, it's about what the stab represents: "I am done with you."

And how the scene plays out? It's so dramatic and good, just the way everything slows down, the music, how they make eye contact as the stabbing happens just....

I know it sounds really bad, and this is the part where I remind everyone that I ADORE Morrigan, but the stabbing ending is so satisfying from a story-telling standpoint for my playthrough.

It's so tragic and it hurts and I hate it.... but I love it, y'know?

I love Witch Hunt, like I haven't even talked about Ariane and Finn, or how the circle just has all these books on Dalish artifacts and translations of elvhen, or how other eluvians can be found with a shard from the broken one in the dalish origin.... like you're telling me that Merrill had a piece of the puzzle? If she had the knowledge, she could've found a working eluvian to study?? I'm going to gnaw my own leg off--

Listen, I could gush about this all day.

But now that I've completely finished DAO, it's time to replay DA2.

[greenerteacups]

do you have any thoughts on luna and harry as a potential couple post-canon? i was reading your post on harry/ginny and i really loved your perspective on it, especially when you said your vision for harry post war was basically just lots and lots of big dogs (i LOVE that mental image and i agree it would be SO good for him!!) but i was wondering if you'd consider luna and harry to be a good match for each other? personally i have a sort of soft spot for the pairing because of how fond harry is of her in canon, and i think if anyone was going to understand and be unfazed by all the difficult trauma responses and long healing process he's going to be dealing with for years after the war, luna seems like a good fit :)

My love for Harry as a character is kind of unusual to me, considering I go pearl-diving for ships when I read things, and I fall in love with dynamics as a conduit to falling in love with characters. That said, I don't really ship him with anybody. I just genuinely adore That Weird Little Dude. Same with Ron; I'm just as pleased to see them with a range of people, because (A) I believe they're good partners and can have great relationships with many people (Ron Weasley get behind me they could never make me hate you Ron Weasley), but also (B) I don't see either of their canon relationships as Definitive. Some characters I ship together because I sincerely believe they are (non-deterministic) soulmates, in that they bring out parts of each other that make them the freshest, happiest, most interesting versions of themselves. With other characters, I'll look at a couple and go: "Huh. Could work!" and smack my giant rubber [APPROVED] stamp on it, then get back to work on my blorbos.

Luna and Harry are one of those couples for me. As I mentioned in that other post, I think Harry's primary requirement in a partner is someone who can treat him normally, i.e. will be generally chill about the Became Wizard Jesus Twice situation. Which is a big ask. Luna is uniquely capable of doing that because Luna is not normal at all, and so treats all things, extraordinary and ordinary both, as uniformly dazzling and delightful. I believe this is why Harry enjoys her so much in their friendship, because he gets to feel valued and treasured without feeling unusual or othered — a hard line to toe, and one even Ron and Hermione occasionally trip up on. He seems to like hanging out with her a great deal, and I think it says something sweet that he asks her to the Slug Club party instead of any of the girls in Gryffindor from his year, whom he'd ostensibly know better.

Luna is a bit of a cipher to me, I admit. We know she's the daughter of an eccentric and probably traumatized single father, raised without a mother; deeply lonely, because of how she's been ostracized for her beliefs and hobbies, and the victim of some degree of bullying for it; and yet full of a passionate, almost effortless wonder and joie de vivre. She's also intensely loving (cf. painting her friends' faces on her bedroom ceiling) and very hard to embarrass. She likes Harry for understandable reasons; they share most of those qualities (Harry's more sensitive to others' opinions, understandably so), and the only point where they diverge is their actual hobbies and interests. Harry seems pretty fond of her nonsense, and I bet she could sell him on crumple-horned snorkacks given some time — maybe if Hermione took a vacation to Switzerland and left them alone together.

In general, what I find sweet about the idea of these two is they're so chill. These are two people whose chief ambition is to hang out, enjoy their hobbies, and see some cool magical shit. Date night is so fucking easy for these two. Plus, Harry is a hothead a lot of the time, and Luna just... vibes. Literally never bothered. Insane levels of not fussed at all times. Very helpful for Harry, who has a bad tendency to bottle up his feelings and then blow up at the first person to sneeze at him. Conversely, I'd hope that Harry would age into the kind of genial, confident dude who would be able to rock up with a function where people were talking shit about Luna and be like :) My wife? You mean my wise and beautiful wife? Surely you are not talking about my wise and beautiful wife. :) instead of doing what he'd do from age 15-17, which is get mad and stomp around sulking. Which, again: teenager. Orphan. Non-stop trauma gauntlet from age 2-18. Excuses are made. But still. Would think it best if Luna's husband were not perhaps so keenly sensitive to gossip, for Luna's sake.

Anyway, these are just some dissembled thoughts. There's also something in there about Harry, boy under the staircase, falling in love with the magical world and ending up the Most Magical person, i.e., the person who took believing in magic to such an extreme that she imagines magic that doesn't exist yet. And Luna ends up with the one person who's inarguably stranger than she is.

[macadam]

Now that I’ve seen your tree post, I have to ask:

Assuming you at least know your tree species better than I do, which trees would you assign to which characters?

(No one in particular��just the ones that come to mind.)

That post has resolidified two universal constants of this blog.

One: everything is canon.

And two: you all think there are way more thoughts going on in my head than there really are.

I confess that I haven’t actually considered what trees would belong to what character/alt modes. This is much more of an aesthetic au grown from my love of Irish folklore and nature in general.

But, now that a few of you have asked what trees I would assign, I'm thinking about it

Right off the bat I think I would make Optimus a weeping willow, for no reason other than I think it's very poetic and I've always pictured a willow tree as a very protective, sheltering tree that hides secrets. And I also think that Optimus is a little bit of a sorrow-felt character (read: a lot. a lot of sorrow actually).

Megatron immediately feels like he'd be some sort of choking vine. Ivy, perhaps. Because while I did say trees in the original post I'm not going to limit myself to it. And frankly, trees aren't even a real thing. They're just a word/category we've assigned to tall, wooded plants. Palm trees, for example, are more closely related to grass than like,, an oak tree or pine tree lol.

I like the idea of all the medics being different types of medicinal plants. Cedar, birch, or oak would be a good fit.

This isn't a character per se (though more and more it feels like one to me) but I like the idea of the allspark/matrix being the mycelium network. The idea of a parasitic mushroom colony giving Optimus commanding thoughts and wicked nightmares is really compelling, and you know I'm already a sucker for the parasitic matrix head canons.

[familyabolisher]

not kubrick's lolita having a scene of him reading poe to her

[branwinged]

What do you think about the Amethyst Empress theory?

well, i wasn't familiar with this and i don't know if you're referring to rhaenyra or dany, the former is not as much of a theory as a little connection martin might've drawn, since history as a variation of the same theme (a reflection, not quite repetition) is a thing within asoiaf, bran too is every version of brandon in a figurative sense.

the dany one is a bit more complicated, she's the narrative incarnation of the amethyst empress? yeah i don't know about that, i don't care about a connection between her and the great empire of the dawn (it sounds like a creation myth drawing from real world chinese mythology, i don't think anyone's descended from them) and i doubt details from a lorebook are about to become plot-relevant in the main series. there is some deliberate mirroring happening here, but it's probably an easter egg type of thing for the more dedicated readers interested in the minutiae of asoiaf's worldbuilding.

[slashthrashandcrash]

Second one goes hard (for ripdesigns)

Okay we have a vote for 2 and 3 but then I started looking at some "masks with veils" ref pics and would it fuck even harder with his artistic theme if it was modeled after a Venetian style (minus the headdress)

[pynkhues]

first of all, thank you so much for sharing your take on the rebecca/iwtv parallel. rebecca is one of my fave books growing up and the metas i've seen so far have always rubbed me the wrong way. and i totally agree that there's a strong tendency in the fandom to water down the loustat dynamic into a gender binary (as evidenced by that anon with the accusatory tone even tho they explicitly headlined their msg as a race issue lol). anyway, i mainly wanted to say that I love your take on the agency vs autonomy question, bc i've always thought that one of the biggest and perhaps most controversial adaptive changes in the show, lestat dropping louis in s1, was precisely hannah/rolin's attempt to address lestat's lack of autonomy in the books, which to me was a brilliant move. but it also led some of the lestat-critical (or straight-up hating tbh) part of the audience to accuse the s2 writing of 'defanging' him, aka having things happen to him and being powerless to fight back, which, as you perfectly summarized, is exactly what happened in the books. and i think it can easily be read as one of the weaknesses of anne's storytelling (i did when I first read the books years ago). and for me, the drop (and lestat's subsequent guilt) reinjected some autonomy into lestat's arc, and was also very onbrand of him to commit such a horrific act stemming from rage, heartbreak, (and fundamentally) love that will forever impact his dynamic with louis. so i'm very happy with how the writers have balanced this issue so far, and very excited to see what they'll do in s3, and of course would always love to hear more of your thoughts on it.

(x)

You're very welcome, and thank you! Really interesting that you read Lestat dropping Louis as reinjecting some autonomy into Lestat's arc! I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you could be right particularly now with the shifting context of their fight and the violence that preceded Lestat's act of brutality.

It's been interesting re-reading TVL lately and getting to the scene where Lestat badly beats Armand after getting triggered with memories of Magnus after Armand forcibly drinks from him. It made me wonder how much that scene informed the way Rolin and Hannah wrote the drop? It's of course not the same - Armand and Lestat have a very different power dynamic, especially at that point, to Lestat and Louis - but I wonder if it was also a way to both depict Lestat's very masculine and powerful temper, but also his knee jerk trigger point as a traumatised character? Both are so central to TVL and QOTD in particular, so to depict that in an intimate relationship early on in hte series' run is interesting to think about!

[wallbeatjournal]

if you had to base a new riverdale season off three movies, which would you choose and why? they could be tonal choices or you can pluck entire elements of the movies and work them in.

ok i broke the rules bc i didn't stick to movies, i went novels and pop culture with it too. and i also kind of embroidered a few references together around each main riff in a way that i think COULD be riverdalian, but these are my 3 selections:

jt leroy (2018). trashy iffy-hot-take kristen stewart/laura dern movie about a very 2000s literary scandal/internet drama run Too Far into irl drama that i think riverdale would know better what to do with. two ideas (this is a jughead plot btw):

put jughead in the dissociated trauma-projecting controlling persona-having laura albert/jt leroy role and rope veronica and reggie and their monetary-business motivations into the scam angle. monica posh savannah knoop stuff and rattling veronica and jughead around in a jar together intensely in a campy way

or step lightly outside the bounds of this script into the real livejournal and myspace based drama of it all and jughead's sometimes-characterization as a guy who needs help unpacking metaphor even though he's swimming in it. make him into one of the many emo band boys (ryan ross?? ryan ross????) who related so so so so sosososo much to the writing of jeremiah terminator and then had a whole crisis when j.t. was unmasked as a middle-aged woman with a metaphorical literary persona.

permissible bonus web-weaves: james frey a million little pieces and oprah, augusten burroughs and running with scissors. we're doing the 2000s obsession with author authenticity is-this-really-autobiographical-if-it's-not-literally-true-or-are-you-shaming-your-family-for-NOTHING questions and scandals. but we're especially doing the emo community freaking the fuck out about blorbo from their novels doing a catfish online to extend the persona just that much further.

the avril lavigne replacement conspiracy theory (linking the wiki even though what i'm REALLY thinking of here is this moving pandemic essay alexander chee my beloved posted that i can't locate now, riffing on themes of feeling like a ghost inhabiting your own life after a major trauma). they can work in some other famous body double / replacement and assassination conspiracies (paul is dead, jfk) too but avril is the main reference and this is a betty plot.

pull in some actual alexander chee images and motifs too maybe, his novels about csa grooming trauma and having complicated feelings about your intimate abusers via like grandiose opera/paris siege metaphors (the queen of the night) and fox demons (edinburgh) betty would eat, i fear, even if they're a step off her normal serial killer media mix. dark betty has the range <3

stephen king's the long walk / suzanne collins' the hunger games / battle royale / state-sponsored brutal murderous game show authority abuse dystopia media homage in general!! especially when it's homoerotic and full of ptsd and institutional abuse, because clearly this is a plot primarily for archie and the lads. imo the long walk ("how bad do you have to hate yourself to join the military" but it's game show horror) and the hunger games ("child stardom is traumatic institutional abuse especially in the era of social media and society simply pretends not to see it" but make it a ya game show adventure) should be the main references, but we could work the academic/art-competition angle of battle royale for kevin. as a treat. ok yeah and maybe work in that arnold schwarzenneger movie the running man too while we're here picking up interwoven motifs at the store. why not!

[mayybirds]

Important question, do more of the RE8 villagers survive in this version?

Yes, very much yes. I can't, at this time, guarantee any specific characters other than Elena (definitely) and Luiza (probably), and an undetermined number of unnamed villagers, but I definitely plan for some of the villagers to survive.

While the total wipe-out of the Village in RE8 is a lot more believable than other "total wipes" like Raccoon City or the Pueblo in RE4, as it seems significantly smaller than both RC or the Pueblo, and has a more intelligent breed of bioweapon under specific instruction to exterminate the Village, Resident Evil has a weird and kind of uncomfortable history with complete massacres over its long history that I'm always inclined to push against. It's lazy, uninteresting writing to me when it's a trope recycled so frequently... especially given it's very clearly mostly used to provide clean narrative "closure" between each game by eliminating any other survivors other than the main protagonists (and Wesker lol). Like... RE4, for example, functions as a contained narrative because the Pueblo dies at its end. Its function is over in the continued story of "Resident Evil"... it only matters going forth in the context of Leon, Ashley, and Ada as characters. But as a writer, I'm much more intrigued by a version of that story that involves other survivors. What would it mean to live through something like that, not as the hero outsider protagonist, but as a civilian? How do you even recover? Who would you be after?

The weight of the horror of the complete destruction of a place that's isolated to a single game becomes faded when it's the same shit in every game. I'm sick of it, and bored of it. It would hit harder if it wasn't every damn game... better to take it apart and try something new with its empty box.

[haleigh-sloth]

Hi! I was curious why you flipped toward tenko being born with his quirk? And why you’ve flip flopped before? Like what are the pros and cons for the AFO giving him a quirk theory? Thank you shigaraki expert!

Shigaraki expert a;kshg;kasng you're very kind lolol

OKAY SO

This theory I was always 50/50 on since I got into the manga.

Because:

It doesn't change a whole lot either way, AFO is still big bad and Tomura is still the one who needs saving--regardless of whichever option ended up being canon

However, after we got Touya's backstory and saw the panel of AFO in the hat and shit, everybody (myself included) jumped on the bandwagon that it's the same guy we saw dropping Tenko off at home at the beginning of his backstory (this is probably still the case but I'll get to that)--and then it led to believing he gave Tenko decay. Honestly, it's not a bad theory--it's super believable and makes sense. The parallels with the MC work, the devastation behind it works.

But there's a thematic issue with it.

The whole thing about Tomura is that he hates himself because:

He's been told he was only born to destroy

He's been told by multiple people that his quirk is proof of this

He's been told that because he was only born to destroy, he "obviously" killed his family on purpose

Now, there are clearly some issues with those statements. Tomura believes every single one of them. The entire reason he can't break free from AFO is because his hatred (for himself) keeps his willpower/agency/independence to take back his identity (an identity that he hates, just gonna keep reminding ppl of that) at an all time low.

Now I had a discussion the other night with some moots about this and this is when I officially flip flopped, and I intend to stay on this side of the fence until the end or until canon says otherwise.

The closer we get to the end, the more prevalent it is that Tomura has to be shown that he wasn't born to destroy, he didn't want his family to die, and his quirk isn't proof of those things---while having his quirk be naturally his. This is necessary in order to fight the "your quirk defines your purpose" allegations AFO and ReDestro and everyone else in the manga imposes. If the quirk wasn't his to begin with, it kinda starts picking away at the whole "your quirk doesn't define you" message, because it's like an easy way out of the guilt Tomura feels for his family dying.

Tomura has to really fight to reconcile that he did NOT want his family to die, which is going to be accompanied by a lot of pain and grief all over again, because it goes from being a reason to hate himself, BACK to being a major, devastating loss--which is what it always was, but he believed the lies that he wanted it all to happen. And realizing that is going to fuck him up, bad. (I'm so excited, I love when my favs have emotional breakdowns)

Having it to where AFO gave him decay would really only add devastation to the situation, but not anything thematically.

I do think there are good reasons for believing the theory that AFO gave him decay. Seriously. But my moots pointed out that it could be a red herring of sorts. And I'll be honest, if it ends up being one, it's a fucking fantastically done one.

I'm also on board with it because tbh, I've written on it before but Izuku and Tomura aren't super solid parallels or even foils. At times they are, in ways they definitely are, but their arcs are more about filling in gaps in each other's worlds than anything.

All that to say, I'm okay with letting go of the quirkless Tenko parallel. I don't think the idea came out of nowhere either. Tenko being quirkless isn't like, a bad theory at all. But I feel more strongly about him being born with decay than without.