#I'm just so frustrated and also sad

[buttercupshands]

MHA didn't create some miracle way of helping others. It was never promised to be this way. And when it came to villains...

Spoilers for manga all the way to chapter 423.

The only way to get anything in life in MHA was to be born "normal" like everyone else and that way of thinking never left Izuku with Toga getting the same treatment she did before from everyone from her family to her "normal" classmates. It was Ochako who helped Toga even if just a little by lifting the weight of all the feelings that Toga had.

She couldn't save Toga the way one could save a civilian by saving them from harm. If it worked that way Dabi would've saved Toga even before Ochako could apologize for failing to notice Toga. She was so lazer focused on saving everyone else, that she was just another villain to stop, not a human.

Even if by the end of it Ochako helped Toga to deal with her grief, acceptance as it was wasn't something possible when a quirk makes you want to drink someone's blood from jealousy.

We got a bittersweet ending with Toga, in which she probably died from blood loss just like her double did in MVA. If it wasn't for Twice she would've died back then.

Giving away her blood for Ochako wasn't a redemption or a way to save Toga in the end, more as it was her being true to herself until the very end.

Just like Twice chose to stay with the League even if Hawks offered him a way to survive that battle. He refused and died protecting his friends who accepted him instead of choosing to betray them and accept Hawks' offer.

After Twice's death... It was a matter of time that more 'active' LoV members would join him as well. As sad as it is, we now can return to Izuku.

Who, after his time OFA-AFO quirk space, now wanted to help a "crying boy" he saw in Tenko just as before with Katsuki in chapter 1. He didn't forgive Tomura and didn't excuse the way he chose to solve his problems.

It didn't mean that Tomura would survive in their battle, even if Izuku didn't see killing others as a way to solve problems. He didn't understand Tomura, but he still wanted to try, and try he did.

The rest of this post was nothing more than a contextual prologue to understand that it's not the first time a hero failed to save a villain and in Twice's case we know that he died and his death was the reason Toga started thinking about her own possible death and Dabi finally revealed himself as Toya.

The goal of saving a "crying boy" never was an end-goal for Izuku in the Final arc, since helping Tomura deal with his feelings just left him hollow with a goal that clashed with Izuku's. As being a hero for villains meant destroying the world for them to help them live freely.

But that was before AFO resurfaced.

Sadly after that Tomura who was talking about making his own choices for a while now stopped doing that. Even if he still had a goal of helping villains and only villains, Tomura was almost gone. And his goals were now unreachable.

Izuku helped Nana who in turn kept Tomura from fading away entirely. In MHA there were countless situations where Izuku's help affected people by helping a different person to keep hope, All-Might being the first one and Nana being the last one at the moment.

Hollow after Izuku helped him to get rid of his hatred Tomura could do the only thing he did - accept the situation as it was.

Accepting AFO as his Sensei, accepting Stain's ideals and Overhaul's deal was the way he solved his problems. Just like Izuku had a problem of understanding something outside of his norm, Tomura was accepting too many things, which lead to his downfall after accepting AFO's quirk.

Just like Twice could've given up everything that he had for his friends so did Tomura.

With Izuku helping as much as he could let Tomura to finally rest as he wasn't really living ever since waking up in the hospital. With his body now affected by AFO's wishes instead of his own until the end.

In a way Izuku didn't succeed in his wish for Tomura to stop ever since PLF war arc. As he "kept fighting to destroy" no matter how hard Izuku tried to stop him.

The only thing he succeeded in was changing Tomura's mind about himself, instead of viewing himself as a monster he accepted that he was a human just like Izuku said. A "crying boy" who couldn't really destroy Izuku's hands in the end.

For a group of Villains who weren't supposed to get profiles of their own at the start of the series, League is slowly fading as the most memorable group that there was in MHA, getting backstories, their own Villain themed arc all the while being as human as anyone else.

As sad as their story is they were not "unlucky", they didn't need a happy false ending where they would need to change to be normal - they chose to live this way and they lived it to it's fullest.

[manasurge]

Just a bit of lore relevant vent art (with terrible proportions bc apparently I mess that up horribly when I'm tired ugh. Watch me regret posting this tomorrow. The head size is already driving me mad bc it's too big, and I can feel myself wanting to abort this mission already) of Mourynn just, lying down on top of one of those large elevated Pale Tree roots far above the Grove (and far away from everyone else), and during the time between the early years and before the Personal story. Caithe is gone (Destiny's Edge), Wynne is gone (bc well, y'know...), even Faolain is gone (bc of Caithe in DE), and she's just feeling miserable, lost, and alone. (Her hair is in between her sapling hair and the Zhaitan hair, so it's grown out a bit bc she's depressed, and she's meant to be in the new outfit she designed, but I'm in the process of redesigning it a bit, so I've made a few tentative changes for now. Her collar is now just an extension of her clavicle leaves which can be put up like a collar, or can be draped down over her shoulders or back)

[a-lonely-dunedain]

ok question! related to this post by @gwynbleiddyn that I see resonated with the folks here on lotro tumblr:

the devs have given you permission to add 1 (one) quest of your design into the game, specifically doing something fun/low-stakes with one or more Rangers post-war. What are you doing and with which Ranger(s)?

I'll go first: (under the cut bc it got longer than intended)

Corunir has been enlisted to help do repairs in the lower circles of Minas Tirith. And by "enlisted" I mean "Corunir Does Not Know How to Take A Break and needs to be constantly helping people, so he showed up wouldn't leave until the foreman gave him something to do"

Now, as this quest would have to be located in Minas Tirith Midsummer, the foreman is not particularly comfortable saddling this war-hero with busywork when he should be celebrating the end of the war he helped bring about! nevermind that that's what literally every other quest in midsummer is making the PC do shh don't worry about it

ANYWAY, he's got a plan, but he needs your help with it. Around dusk, he wants you to tell Corunir that there's some repairs that need done on the top of the wall at east side of the 2rd circle, which coincidentally just so happens to be where the best view of the fireworks they're setting off at the gates is. Also be sure to bring along this plate of snacks and some comfy pillows to sit on.

so when Corunir gets up there he's like "that's weird, I don't see any damage up here-" and then he sees the fireworks starting to go off, that you brought snacks, and puts two and two together and is like "oh darn, it looks like I've been tricked into watching a fireworks show, you devious trickster you (affectionate)"

so you guys get to hang out and watch the fireworks for a bit, and afterwards Corunir laughs at the fact that you literally had to trick him into relaxing and having a good time. Perhaps you have a point, he should allow himself some time to actually enjoy the peace they fought so hard for. He recalls Radanir had proposed the Rangers should do a pub-crawl later, and now thinks he should take him up on the offer. (and, of course, the PC should be allowed to join in, but alas I'm only allowed to add One quest as per my own rules lol)

[deoidesign]

.

[stars-n-spice]

Here the thing is-

Episode 15 better fucking be 3 hours long or some shit because what the FUCK!

And if it's not, it better end with like the fucking "The Bad Batch will return" title card shit they have at the end of Marvel movies with there being an announcement for a new series that is a continuation of the Bad Batch but it maybe called something else because it doesn't only relate to the Bad Batch.

I see people saying let's get a "Tales of the Clones" and that would be great, amazing even, but seeing as the last two "Tales of the [thing]" were series comprised of two stories focused on two characters (and backstories at that) I don't really see it working out well in tying things up in Bad Batch.

If anything, maybe it'll work, but if they do a "Tales of the Clones" I do hope it follows Rex leading some kind of clone rebellion or something and then also Cody and seeing him go to Tatooine to find Obi-Wan.

Even better? We get "Tales of the Clones" AND an additional other clone show that ties up everything in the Bad Batch.

Hahaha....right? Not like Star Wars would let us down, right? They totally would give the fans what they want instead of what they think they want, right? Right?

I say all of this as I put on my clown wig, nose, and shoes.

[share-the-damn-bed]

So, I figure that you and Jonathan are still going strong 'cause you guys are going to college together and you're like one of those unstoppable power couples...

[winepresswrath]

i am absolutely a nicki girl by the way it's just that much like show!lestat my love for him is so pure he doesn't even have to be hot. he can be an ugly crier with a floppy lil wig it only inspires tenderness.

[smile-files]

i think the main issue in arguing with zionists is that, well, they believe in zionism! if israel did deserve to exist, then the genocide and injustice in palestine could be argued for (not like it should be, but it certainly could) -- and zionists believe israel deserves to exist.

i, unfortunately, have a large amount of experience interacting (personally) with zionism and zionists. most of those i've talked to feel for the palestinians, and the violence they are facing, but they fail to realize (or they staunchly deny) the very, very active part israel and the IDF have had in that -- and how it's representative of what the nation has always done.

at the same time, they focus more on israeli hostages than palestinian ones -- and i know, of course, that these zionist jews i've interacted with are either israeli or have loved ones in israel, and so have a very personal stake in the safety of israeli hostages (which may very well be friends or family members), but i find it strange how much emphasis they put on hamas' cruelty in taking hostages while the IDF is doing the same thing (in essence; the exact details of who's doing it worse are important to note, but not relevant right now, because folks should realize that their side is being at least as cruel as the enemy's).

recently i was drawn into an argument with an israeli zionist (who, unfortunately, is very close to the action and tragedy by being israeli), and she was incredibly offended by my anti-zionism and my opposition to israel's abject cruelty to palestinian citizens, as it seemed (to her) like i was bypassing the cruelty hamas has enacted on israeli citizens -- which is very telling. i've noticed that we as jews have the tendency, whatever the situation may be, of focusing more on our pain than the pain of others, even if we are the ones hurting them. that person has every reason to be scared and hurt, and i'd be lying if i said her response wasn't at least somewhat sympathetic, but her pain in this horrible, violent conflict does not invalidate the pain on the other side. jews, throughout this recent crisis, have consistently not talked in depth about the constant losses in palestine -- am i suddenly being callous by focusing on those losses, and not our own? (YOUR PAIN AND THEIRS AREN'T MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, YOU DOLT! sorry...)

because it all comes down to believing in israel! my mom has always told me about how beautiful it is there, about her time living on a kibbutz... and sure, it might be nice. i can't argue with that. but why is it that our nationalism for israel is so strong, so virulent? i have not seen patriots as loyal for any other country. and when you criticize israel, israelis feel like you're criticizing their entire existence -- and many non-israeli jews do, as well. because zionism has been built so deep into the modern religion! it's made to be a necessary piece! belief in it is the default!

and, from the inside looking in, i can't be surprised that many jews take anti-zionism as being antisemitic -- because, to them, israel and zionism stand as the pinnacle of safety and support for the jewish people. it is impossible to argue with them about anything above that base layer, as the base layer itself serves as a foundation: so long as a jew thinks that israel is right, deserved, and necessary, no proof will sway them into hating israel. it's just impossible, and that's very frustrating.

for me in particular, i find it very frustrating, as this single idea has turned so many people i know to support a genocidal entity. they believe in and support israel, so they stand with it now -- even if they condemn its current actions, they neglect how those actions are just an extension of its inherent existence -- whether they think israel's doing the right thing or wrong thing right now, they don't really care at the end of the day, because israel, to them, is necessary in keeping the jewish people alive. they stand with it, thinking that jews can only stand at all if they do.

but a genocidal crutch is no crutch at all: it only breaks us more. zionist jews make me so mad, and the worst part is that i could never express that to them in a way they'll understand.

[coquelicoq]

.

[uncanny-tranny]

"The world isn't a safe place, so get used to it!"

Man, as somebody who's survived multiple, long-lasting instances of abuse from a very young age, I was under the impression that the world was, indeed, so safe and conforming to my desires. I'm practically stunned to learn that this is not the case, and I have been severely humbled

(Sarcasm fully intended)

[b4kuch1n]

Your swsh art always makes me want to replay the game because i love it and its my favorite pokemon game and every time i play another pokemon game i think of it how i miss certain elements from swsh. Then i boot up the game and im once again caught in the 1 hour 40 minutes hand held intro and im like ah- now i remember why i have been playing other pokemon games instead of this one. Happy (late?) birthday!

you don't want to listen to hop? you don't want to hear him teach you about type matchups? you don't wanna let him cheer u on...? 🥺 waa....?

[savage-rhi]

Magenta 😟

[ilovecoffeeandchemistry]

ooooh i woke up in a bad mood and it's so hard not to be a bitch about it

[marypsue]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on S1 of ST being a tragedy! No main character dies, so I never thought of it that way before

I mean, nobody has to die for a story to be a tragedy (at least, in the modern definition. I'm pretty sure '(almost) everybody dies' is a requirement of Greek tragedies and Renaissance revenge tragedies). But also, no main character dies in season one...if you take season one as part of a series. Which it wasn't originally conceived as.

I am not going looking for copies of the original pitch bible, because I am lazy, and also I only saw them floating around this webbed site. But the show changed a lot from the initial pitch (Joyce had a Long Island accent! Lucas' parents were divorcing! Murray was there and named Terry Ives! Most of what ended up in Hopper's character originally belonged to Mr. Clarke! The original pitch bible is fascinating). And part of the original pitch was a proposal for possible sequels.

The Duffers' proposal for a possible sequel was "It's ten years later, and Eleven is dead".

So that's the setup. Everything that came after season one was made up wholecloth after season one was a hit and people wanted more, but also people loved the adorable little psychic murder child (cue the Duffers shockedpikachu.jpg) and Netflix obviously recognised it would be a bad call to make a new season without her in it. So it makes sense to take season one as a unit, as a self-contained story on its own. You can also take it as part of a whole, but it makes sense to read it first as a complete story. Especially given the thematic drift of later seasons and the way they are...I'm just going to say it, each new season is very much added-on to what came before rather than being built on foundation that the earlier season(s) laid. It is very clear there was never a planned five-season story arc from the beginning. (This isn't necessarily always a bad thing, when it comes to sequels, but it does mean it makes sense to 'read' each season as its own thing.)

Okay, now that we've established all of that. Season one has one very clear goal, one very clear stake for the characters: save Will Byers from the Upside Down. (I like this. It makes the stakes both extremely high and extremely personal, it makes it very easy to understand each character's motivation, it also keeps the stakes grounded in reality. I like this a lot.) And by the end of the season, that goal is accomplished. So at first blush, you're right, season one doesn't look like a tragedy.

But when you start to unpack it a little, you start to see just how many important things were lost along the way. It's most glaringly obvious with Mike and El, with Nancy and Barb. The whole Wheeler family is fractured down the middle, with Mike and Nancy on one side and Ted, Karen, and Holly on the other, and Karen, who's been trying so hard the whole time to be part of her children's lives and understand what's going on with them, is aware of the ever-expanding gulf between them but will never be able to cross it, and will never fully know why. Hopper's finally managed to snatch a kid out of the jaws of death, save a woman he obviously cares about from the pain of losing a child, and Joyce has finally had someone believe her, support her, trust her. But it became blindingly obvious to me on my fourth rewatch that Hopper's plan, from the moment he went to leave the middle school gym, was always to trade El for Will. And that decision (and the fact that Joyce obviously understands that he did something to get the lab to let them go after Will, but she obviously doesn't dare press him on what) has broken her trust in him, and left him with what looks like an equally heavy burden of guilt as what he was carrying before. The lab stays open. The government gets away with everything. No one will ever know the true extent of the hurt they've caused.

And in the end, none of it even saved Will. He's back. He's alive. But he's spitting slugs in the sink. He's permanently marked by the Upside Down, and by trying to hide it from his family, he's putting a crack down the centre of them, as well. They're losing Will, just as surely as they had when they thought he was dead, just without him going anywhere.

And there's still a hole in the world.

The fragile bonds of community, the things that people share in common, the way catastrophe can bring people together and bring out the very best in them, are the major thematic threads woven through season one. Human connection is the only thing that can change what seems inevitable, the only thing that can bring back what's seemingly lost forever.

And it's still not enough to protect anyone from the random tragedy of the world.

The love was there. The love mattered. The love bent the entire course of the world around itself.

And it still wasn't quite enough.

If that's not a tragedy, then I don't know what is.

[moe-broey]

More extremely specific rules in my PokeFEH AU world building:

> To have a shiny Mimikyu would defeat the ENTIRE PURPOSE of Mimikyu itself. ALL of the storytelling of it. Of being something cast aside, thrown away, abandoned, and regarded with fear and scorn. To make something so completely undesirable Desirable, especially through "This One Factor Makes It Special (and therefore "redeems" it of all previous perceptions)" is like, the ANTHESIS of The Purpose of Mimikyu. AND only serves to fuel the deep self-hatred, the feelings of resentment and spite at Being Unwanted when all it ever has longed for ALL it has Made Itself To Be IS to be Wanted. What about all the other Mimikyus? The completely average Mimikyus with Nothing special about them? Who will NOT be Chosen Over the special, sparkly one? The Best One? The most Desirable One?

So Moe has a completely average non-shiny Mimikyu. Okay! 👍 One idea I played with though, is having Moe's handmade custom Mimikyu hoodie be the shiny version. LIKE THIS LITTEN CARD

You can SEE. Whoever lives here, ADORES LITTEN. They have two pet Littens. Neither of them shiny. Like beyond what I was saying previously, shinyness is SO RARE that it would take insane luck or Purpose to find one. This person seems to be an avid Litten enjoyer, but an otherwise completely normal person. So they have merch!!!! They have a little picture OF a shiny Litten!!! They even have an Incinaroar plush, which makes me imagine if they are an average person (not a serious trainer!) -- maybe they don't have the space or resources to care for a whole ass Incinaroar. But they still like it! So they have a plush of it!

So back to Moe, the Mimikyu it has, and its hoodie, the story goes: Moe loves the SHIT out of that fucking thang. Extremely fucking passionate about that thang, both the (un)living (un)breathing(?) Mimikyu that rides on its shoulder and The Concept of Mimikyu, the Pokemon. Fanboy behavior. Okay!!!!! NEXT!

> IF anyone is going to have a shiny of ANYTHING, that shiny Pokemon needs to be completely random. ESPECIALLY a Pokemon that person would not think to have in their party. A Pokemon they have never thought twice about. ENTER

GOAT MOTIF. In a world where I very quickly discovered ohhhhhhh Moe's whole religious angel/devil theming just does not translate At All in a world without Christianity*. Like, if it was born and raised In The World of Pokemon, NOT isekai'd. There is nothing to blaspheme. Okay 👍 So for Moe, who seems to have a proclivity for Ghost types, what business does it have with some fucking grass goat. A chance encounter! And an excuse to match Moe's outfit to shiny Gogoat's color pallette. In my mind, it fit better.... although, like I said earlier, I definitely hit a wall trying to figure out color pallettes........ 🥲💔

*LIKE YEAH we have Arceus as a creator god Pokemon who's even goat-like in design... but there's like. Not at all the same connotations I don't think... and Moe's whole deal is less about the religion itself, and more about how it was hurt by the flavor of it that it was brought up with. I DON'T WANNA INVENT RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY IN POKEMON WORLD............... this DOES beg the question of how the hell did Moe get here as it is today BUT. IT'S FINE I CAN WORK WITH THIS...... it's a creative exercise. And tbh given some of the evil teams we've had maybe there's something in there I could work with. Pokemon has planey off options for oddly specific doomsday cults... it's Fine.... and shitty family situations exist in Any universe ☺️💖

All that said, I may end up making the hoodie the regular pallette, who knows. I hit a wall. I overthunk it. I died. Badly. I still like the Gogoat idea though.

[piplupod]

idk if it's like this for other ppl or if i'm just a freak, but i used to HATE doing anatomy studies and avoided it for years bc i despised the task of it so much. and now i fucking love it and i'm actually feeling a little upset this morning that i have to go do a family thing in a few minutes because i just really want to go do more anatomy art studies 😭😭 i have no clue what changed, but i think it's just partially that i cultivated an appreciation for the human body and human form and also that i reached a point in my art where i was repeatedly hitting a wall bc i was refusing to do studies