#added more for fun and appreciation than say. Development. What can i say

[fairymint]

(viviskull) 🌈 *Bowser*

This is a rather interesting muse suggestion considering that I'm on the cusp of a muse comeback with him- Hubby's been playing the Thousand Year Door remake, which is of course the primary inspiration of me having bowser muse ever in my life- nothing like a meaty RPG to see a dude be so him.

But as he does, I can't say that there's much....different? about my muse from what you'd expect? Bowser is a big ol' brat, and I probably just lean more canon than anything too edgy and realistic; my guy's gonna stay goofy turtle.

So, goofily mistreating her a la cartoon villain, is very scooby doo of him. Though, I do think as appropriate of Bowser's expanded portrayal, that he could be friends with her in a similar vitrolic way as anyone else.

And, permitted or otherwise, could admire her, which comes with as big of a can of worms as you'd expect with Peach- Bowser functions in extremes, the lovable oaf.

[daily-vee]

"Question 1: Is this a waste of my. time? Probably."

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｡𖦹°‧⋆౨˚⟡˖ ☆ﾟ.*･ ｡ﾟ✮⋆˙⊹₊⟡⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆°°✩

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Welcome !

This is a Daily-Vee blog, where I basically post daily Vee art posts (Art made by me !) as much as I can !

Before interacting, I would appreciate you reading this post first.

First of all, I DO NOT SUPPORT BLUSHCRUNCH STUDIO ! I am aware of the allegations and what the developers did. Yes, I know Rox has been fired, however Qwel from what I know has also done some bad things and defended Rox. If you wanna know what they did, I recommend reading this document about the situation.

I have heard from people saying she was lied to and manipulated by Rox however, unless there is proof about that- i don't quite believe what Qwel said. It felt more of an excuse to me instead and her behaviour to me is just very iffy and suspicious- im sorry, but I don't feel comfortable supporting Qwel

[^ Many people ended up asking me this question, which is why i added it here]

I don't support them, however I still enjoy the game and the characters, which is why I made this blog. I would appreciate it though to not make requests related to the situation ! I wanna keep this blog fun, silly and peaceful as well :D

I will be doing an order on how I post- on even days (2, 4, 6, 8...), i'll be drawing a request someone sent ! However on odd days (1, 3, 5, 7...), i'll be drawing my own ideas ! It's just to keep an order on how i post so i can do your guys' requests but also be able to draw my own ideas :D however, if there are no requests i can find on a even day, i'll just instead draw an idea my own

About the requests- you can send an ask requesting what you want me to draw with Vee, which, your request can be done for one of the days I post here ! here's a couple of rules though :

- The request HAS to be related to Vee. If your request isn't related to Vee, it will be ignored.

- Keep your requests respectful ! I will not accept any request that is hateful or discriminates against someone ! (By that, I mean that I wont do requests that have something like hating on gay and/or trans people, discriminating another race, etc...)

- No NSFW requests. I am not going to draw those kinds of things. The only kind of "NSFW" i'll draw is gore/blood- more specifically, the twisteds in the game. (Im not sure if it really counts as gore/blood? I'm just saying it just in case someone gets confused) Other than that, the rest NSFW things are a huge no-no for me

- Ship requests are allowed ! Well, mostly- I'll draw any kind of ships, whether it be romantic or platonic ! However, there MAY be a chance I can get uncomfortable with the ship you send. A small one though. If I do get uncomfortable, I'll likely not do your request. If you do a ship request, please specify whether it is platonic or romantic! Or else i'll just randomly pick !

Currently, the only ships I won't do/feature due to them making me uncomfortable are these :

Toodles x Vee/anyone (Platonic is allowed, reason why I won't do romantic is because Toodles is a child.)

Pebbles x Vee/anyone (Platonic is allowed, reason why I won't do romantic is because Pebbles is a dog)

Dandy x Vee (Reason why is because Vee seems to hate Dandy which- can't blame her tbh...also, Dandy seems to dislike Vee as well)

Goob x Scraps (Platonic is allowed, reason why I won't do romantic is because they're siblings.)

(There may be more ships added here in the future, I know there can be a ton of different ships that I may not even have thought about before. Just saying this just in case!)

- Remember that I won't do every request ! I'll likely do the ones that I find interesting or ones I like.

- That's mostly all ! Just have fun requesting :D

Also, another thing- please do not repost my art without permission. Please ask me first !

And- just a little warning...I may not be able to post everyday! I will indeed try but- there will be likely I am going to miss some days due to me being busy !

This is all I have to say for now ! This introduction post will likely get updated on the future to add more information that I feel like I missed or forgot to put

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy having a daily dose of Vee ! :3

[Updated on : 10/11/2024]

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｡𖦹°‧⋆౨˚⟡˖ ☆ﾟ.*･ ｡ﾟ✮⋆˙⊹₊⟡⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆°°✩

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[cryptids-and-muses]

Post canon homestuck crew play Dungeons and Dragons

Karkat and terezi

Co dms

Unstoppable when actually working together

Terezi will get sidetracked messing with karkat

Karkat trying to write a deep and well fleshed out campaign that’s thematically resonant vs terezi’s desire for chaos and traps and trying to “trick” her players FIGHT

Terezi believes in karma and will make the world bend to this

Karkat is trying to set up romance arcs and argues about how it adds to the theming

Dave draws them fanart of their characters. Terezi loves it while karkat argues about accuracy before admitting yes he also appreciates it

Calliope also does fanart and karkat praises her skill and accuracy unlike some people

John

Arcane trickster rogue

Forest gnome

Just a goofy little guy!

Mostly just playing to have fun, starts off with a fun but simple character who develops over time

Ends up SUPER invested and taking this so so seriously

Karkat worked a dramatic reveal into the, in his words, “bare ass bones two paragraphs that a fucking wiggler could have written backstory” and John did not see it coming and loved it

Goes head to head with terezi a lot on her various traps she designs for them. She is getting more and more absurd with it. Karkat had to talk to her about breaking the world building with things she’s introducing. He is the only rogue. Send help.

Rose

Drow warlock

Tries to justify picking drow as anything other than she just thought it was cool

Nearly went old ones for patron but settled on archfey for story reasons

Has a 10 page lore document detailing her tragic past and her toxic relationship with her patron

It became 15 pages after going back and forth with karkat for a bit and adding even more

Only her and one other person are taking the romance arcs seriously and they become karkat’s favorite players

Tries playing morally ambiguous but terezi can be annoying about that and claims it’s just “the consequences of her actions”

Her and karkat both get very very into the scenes between her and her patron, the drama! The acting! Dave is uncomfortable and karkat brushes it off, it’s not like him role playing as his sister’s abusive girlfriend is weird. It’s in fact very important to the plot Dave

Has written fanfic of the campaign

Jade

Dragonborn barbarian

Path of the beast

Don’t ask me I just know

Her GLEE when she says “I’m gonna rage :D”

ANIMAL COMPANION! She nearly went ranger just for that but knew she wouldn’t have as much fun. Found a way to get one anyway.

It was harder naming her animal companion than her character

Having fun and likes the problem solving side of things, but likes breaking things with her massive strength just as much

Terezi likes to throw stuff at her, both traps and encounters, and finds it funny if she can just wreck her way through

“See John that’s how you deal with a pressure plate trap”

Takes the rp side of things very seriously

Once argued with Karkat over if her favorite npc would do that and cursed him out

Has read roses fanfic of the campaign

Dave

Plays a teifling with grey skin and orange horns

“What are you talking about karkat this is just my dude, don’t you like him?”

Hellus Jeffus

He’s a valor bard, eventually multiclasses paladin

Starts out just trying to mess with people but like John starts getting into it, though he tries to down play it

Have hellus more of himself than he realized and it’s making him face things about himself

Eventually hellus self sacrifices to save the party in this deeply intense moment. There were tears, Dave was wrecked, they went on a whole quest to revive him. It was touching and karkat is smug

Dave might have worked through some things

Jane

Halfling cleric

Her and John are small buddies!!!

Started out life but wasn’t having a lot of fun with it so with terezi’s permission switched to war or tempest with later s few levels in fighter

Her John and Jade are the biggest front liners, John’s character ends up really close with both of them as it’s easier for the rogue to bond with the person giving them sneak attack

Jade and jane’s character have an in game arm wrestling match

Took a bit to get into the rp side of things but eventually got the hang of it

Roxy

Tabaxi, easily, it’s so obvious

After much deliberation settles on glamour bard (though wizard and rogue were tempting for the joke, she wanted to branch out)

So many horny bard jokes but very little actual follow through, karkat gets frustrated by this as she’s all this talk but isn’t pursuing any of the romance options he’s giving her

She has SECRETS! She is HIDING THINGS!! Her cheery persona is a FASADE!!!

Cue complaining to karkat about how hard it is to wait to tell the others about her secrets and him threatening violence if she tells anyone before the in game reveal

She tells jake

Lots of egging on Dave and helping him with his fucking around

The BOND between her and Dave!!! They are the duo to end all duos. Team rocket type shit. There is nothing stronger than the bond between the bards of the party. My theory is it has to do with trading bardic inspiration.

Dirk

Half elf Druid circle of spores

Wildfire seemed fun to him but wasn’t as good

Wasn’t originally planning on being a Druid but after going over all the classes he liked all the customization and decisions that go into Druid like prepared spells and such

Didn’t really think about his backstory much, just improved something. He keeps improving new additions and it’s getting more and more elaborate and complicated. He has multiple hidden and long lost siblings by this point. Still doesn’t write any of this down. If he messes a detail up he justified it with more improv.

Yes his character has spiked up red hair and sunglasses. Don’t question how the Druid got sunglasses karkat.

Really likes the tactics side of things, he’s even pitched a few things to terezi she updated and later worked in

Sometimes works on plans and strategies out of game or making a million back up characters that play off the others in interesting mechanical ways

Is considering becoming a dm some time

Jake

Needed some help making his character, he just didn’t know where to start

Eventually after much discussion settles on a teifling bladesong wizard

Wanting to get away from his usual adventurer style Roxy helped with the backstory and they came up with this evil scientist raised in a cult who’s good hearted but was never taught right and wrong

He gets very into playing him and his moral struggle but can lean a little too good for his backstory, karkat points this out and Jake swears to get better at it

Dave pitched a lot of names for them and it was eventually settled on “Bernard Gunn” even though he has a sword. Jake just likes how it sounds

“Why is he blue jake?” “…..uhhh” “why is he blue?”

Calliope

SHE LOVES THIS SO MUCH

Teifling Druid with a focus on healing

Circle of shepards

Not a troll color pallet like Dave though, honestly it might get a bit trickster

Beautiful backstory that she coordinated with one of the others to make joint. The most obvious choice is Roxy but I think it was actually jade, Jane or John.

She gets so into it you guys, like so into it

Gives at least one dramatic speech completely on the fly

The other character who takes karkat’s romance arcs seriously and his other favorite player

Has also argued with terezi about world building and consistency. This may put her above rose in karkat’s eyes

Was also allowed to read rose’s fanfiction and offered full on reviews

Also considering going into doing but for the opposite reasons to Dirk

Vriska

Fairy artillerist artificer with a dip in war magic wizard

Min maxxed to hell and back

(Technically there was a better race, but fairy has its own advantages and she couldn’t resist)

An elaborate backstory too with some secrets of her own, I’m thinking full on lost princess

Yes she is That Player, you know the one

Has nearly been kicked multiple times and now won’t leave on principle

Not the best at sticking with the party and not just doing whatever she wants, but suprisingly Dirk has been able to talk her into it with his talk of tactics and playing smart

Second most effective is John who just looks at her like “vriska you’re not making this very fun :(“

Kanaya

Fire genasi ranger

Really tried to get into it but this just isn’t her thing so eventually decided to leave the group

Karkat came up with a fun story reason for her to leave and eventually brought her character back as an Npc

Did help rose make a cosplay of her character, after which John, Calliope, and Roxy wanted to make ones too

Vriska eventually tried to “manipulate” into helping her make one for her character

[gigglymarvel]

Tickly Witch vs Stubborn Widow

We’re back! Life took over so we’re so sorry for kinda abandoning this blog. But we’re back with all the fluff, enjoy this fic of Wanda bringing out Yelena’s softness. 💕

Natasha had asked Wanda to look out for her sister while she was away on a mission. The witch had no issues making sure she ate as everyone including the blonde widow loved her cooking, but when it came to emotional comfort….Yelena was often closed off.

Yelena was drained, she had agreed to train up Kate on her basic sparring skills whilst trying her best to look out for her big sister despite Natasha insisting that she was fine. A lot of changes had happened recently so she wanted to recharge, and she only knew how to do that by shutting herself in her room.

Wanda could sense the weight of her thoughts, trying not to intrude on specifics, she knocked, “Lena?”

The blonde Widow’s eyes opened the second she heard the first knock, thinking it was her big sister. “You’re back early…”

“Hey, I'm sorry, it's Wanda not Nat,” her eyes sympathetic, a soft smile on her lips.

“Wanda?” She murmured out, genuinely confused yet not moving from her position on the bed, laying down on it with her head stuffed in the pillows.

“Yes…it's me. I, uh, snuck up some cookies if you'd like? Or maybe we can just hang out?” She tried,wanting to care for the younger of the widow sisters but unsure. She and Nat had developed a camaraderie, and she and Yelena had even exchanged jokes, but she knew the blonde had yet to be truly open with anyone in the compound besides her sister.

She just shrugged. “No one is stopping you from joining me, but I am pretty burnt out right now so I may be no good for fun.” Yelena admitted, basically giving Wanda a chance to back out if she wanted to.

“I'm happy to just exist next to you,” she said, a little cheerful that Yelena would let her, as she opened the door and sat next to the blonde.

“Uh.. okay.” Yelena replied quietly, admittedly a little confused as to why Wanda wanted to spend time with her, since they don’t really hang out on a one to one basis.

“Nat did ask me to check in with you while she was away, but honestly…I've wanted to get to know you better as a whole. You appreciate my Sokovian dishes like no one besides Natasha. And you're funny, kind, and strong, but…I want to help you have more than one person you can feel safe with?” Wanda tried.

“You are a good cook.” Yelena told her. “However I do not have the energy to be entertaining enough or to even be a decent human.” She replied truthfully

“You are tired, I can massage you?” She offered gently, making Yelena briefly turn her head to look up at Wanda. “You… want to what?”

The redheaded witch bit her lip, “Massage you? I'm sorry if it was a weird suggestion…you just seem tense and…”

“I am a tense person, what can I say?” She replied quietly. “I am not used to the feeling of relaxation.”

“So…may I massage you?” Wanda asked quietly. Yelena just shrugged. “I guess.”

The witch gently sat behind Yelena, beginning by kneading her shoulders. The spy was clearly hesitant to relax, and was a little more tense when Wanda touched her, but there was something about her touch which allowed her to maybe relax a little into the sensation.

“I'm adding a little magic, is that okay?” The witch asked softly. Yelena couldn’t help but bite her lip, a little hesitant about what it was going to feel like, but nodded anyway.

She used the magic to gently heat her hands, adding a little pulsing which gently loosened the knots, “Is this still okay?”

Yelena couldn’t help but embrace the feeling a little, not expecting it to feel the way it did, she felt her knots releasing as she brought her arms up to rest her head on them.

Wanda smiled fondly, “I can feel the knots releasing,” and then massaged down, pulsing into her ribs now, but the magic ever so gently vibrated them.

Yelena couldn’t help but flinch, tensing a little again but tried to continue the conversation. “As can I…” she replied quietly.

“Oh sorry did that hurt? I saw you flinch,” Wanda checked in, afraid she'd hurt Yelena with her magic. The blonde wasn’t sure on how to respond, she was usually a direct person but she wasn’t completely sure on whether she could be open with her yet, so she just shook her head silently.

The witch nodded, working her way down, and kneaded into her back now, vibrating the gently heated magic into her lower back, but the magic was dancing through the widow too.

Yelena couldn’t help but kick a little, trying to keep her upper body still so she could try and maintain her toughness.

Wanda had no idea the way the gentle magic was exiting Yelena's body, now pulsing down through the back of her hips and kneading her thumbs there, “Nothing too painful? Your knots are going, just trying to get your lower back softened.”

She nodded, scrunching her face up and being thankful Wanda couldn’t see, she sucked in a breath and tried everything she could to remain stubborn. “You’re good-“

“Are you sure? I know you're strong Yelena, but if I'm hurting you, I promise I won't be offended or think less of you if you tell me?” The redhead said gently, softening the magic more so it was now like feathers dancing on her insides.

Yelena shook her head, biting back giggles now as she tried to maintain herself, it was absolute torture to do so.

“Oh sweetie you're so tense, are you sure I'm not hurting you?” Wanda said with the most sincere concern as she lightened the magic even more and kneaded her thumbs between her hips and spine, but gently.

“I’m sure, and I’m not a sweetie!” She replied, wiggling around a little now as she arched her back ever so slightly.

Wanda tilted her head, taking the tiniest peak into Yelena's thoughts, she softened a little, and tried to let Yelena play tough, but made the magic that started as a massage, pulse through so it would gently shake her ribs and swirl her tummy, from belly button out, “Okay, if you're sure little widow.” The witch cooed softly.

Yelena blushed at the nickname, letting out a tiny yelp when she felt her bellybutton being fluttered, she tried to push herself into the bed to squish the feeling but to no avail.

“Oh I see,” Wanda smiled, and leaned in, “Is someone….” The witch whispered mischievously, “Ticklish?” And then sent a flurry of gentle magic to poke and explore and swirl Yelena's ticklish spots.

The stubborn spy gasped at the word, now kicking out as she shook her head. “Nope, not at all…” she replied quickly before holding her breath.

“Then why are you holding your breath, giggle bug?” Wanda cooed and spidered into her sides now as two red wiggly woos circled under her armpits, warm gentle magic swirled her belly button, wiggly woos danced on her ribs, and two fluttering woos weaved between her toes.

“Because it was sore?” Yelena tried, slamming her arms against her sides whilst slapping at her hands as she smiled into the pillow discreetly.

“Why are you slapping my hands like you're ticklish?” Wanda cooed knowingly, shaking her fingers into the lower backs of her ribs gently, “Goochiegoochiegoochie goo?”

“Again, because it hurt?” She tried again, still trying to do something to stop her magic as she now grinned into the pillow.

Wanda paused then, “I hurt you?” She asked, making Yelena pause too, unsure about how to go about things now.

The redhead then just sat on Yelena's back, deciding to give Yelena back scritches and tickles. “Maybe this instead?”

“Oh… I guess.” Yelena replied awkwardly, the feeling a little cold to her since she wasn’t completely comfortable around Wanda yet.

The mood change was clear, so Wanda tried the massage magic again, “Maybe I just need to work out these knots more hm?” She pulsed the back of her ribs with the warm magic.

Yelena gasped. “You never hurt me.” She told Wanda quickly, as normally as she could.

“Then what was that gasp?” The redhead smiled fondly and pressed into the backs of her hips, letting her magic gently course through the blonde.

“You simply surprised me…” Yelena told her, biting back another gasp as she scrunched her face up.

“Mhm,” Wanda chuckled and kneaded gently down Yelena's sides and toward her hips, causing the blonde to bite her lip as she arched away from her whilst reaching back and pushing at Wanda's hands.

The witch arched her eyebrow, “Hm? Why push me away? Hurting you….or am I tickling the big bad widow?” She cooed, her voice gentle.

“Nono, not at all…” Yelena replied quietly, a small blush on her face.

“Seems to me I'm tickling you pink,” Wanda whispered and snuck her fingers into the blondes armpits, making her let out a tiny squeal and slam her arms against her sides, shaking her head in protest.

“Awww cmon Yelena, just…let go,” she sent magic into the younger widow's armpits, smirking as Yelena finally let out a few giggles, the fingers and the magic under her arms at the same time broke her.

“Goochiegoochiegoochie goo there's a giggly wittle widow?” She smiled and spidered Yelena's armpits, magic gently pulsing out of them too.

“This isn’t fair!” Yelena protested, kicking her legs out as giggles kept spilling out

Wanda gasped playfully, “It's noooot? Then how about thiiiis?” And sent her magic dancing along Yelena's ribs, thighs, feet and through her belly, “Bougiebougiebougieboo!”

Yelena shook her head, rolling over to grab her hands as her giggles escaped more freely now. “It is nohohohot!”

The redheaded witch used her magic to pin Yelena's hands to the sides, blowing her shirt up just enough to peek her tummy out, and leaned down, “PFFFFT!” And raspberried the widow’s tummy.

“OHOHOHOH FUHUHUHUCK YOHOHOHU!” Yelena laughed, pulling at her arms as she just thrashed her legs about, sucking her belly in at the same time.

Wanda grinned, letting her go, and then cuddling into her, laying gently on top of her with and “Umph.”

She pouted a little, but was thankful to take in deep breaths, unsure about whether to hug Wanda back as she wasn’t sure about affection still with anyone but her big sister.

“You can hug me back,” she smiled and spidered Yelena's armpits so she'd have to bring her arms down. The spy let out a few shy giggles and squeezed her arms against her sides instead.

The witch pouted playfully, “Huuug meeee,” and leaned down and nuzzled her tummy again, causing Yelena to pull her shirt down with a giggle, then awkwardly patted her back.

The witch bit her lip, “It's okay if you don't like hugs,” she assured her gently. Yelena bit her lip too, just not used to the affection, she felt bad for making Wanda feel awkward.

The redhead peered into the mind of the blonde, “Hm…okay,” and hugged her a little tighter, scritching her back gently.

“Huh?” Yelena asked innocently, but relaxed a little more into the feeling with a sigh. The redhead responded by adding her other hand, rolling so Yelena was on top of her now and scritched the slightly younger woman's back all over.

“Hey, I will squish you.” She murmured and went to roll off her.

The witch protested and pinned her gently within a magical hug, “If you leave I tickle you. So..admit you like the tickles or let me cuddle you and admit you like that?” Wanda teased, but her voice was sincere and loving.

Yelena’s eyes widened. “Well it is not like I can move right now…” she replied with an eye roll, but she shyly bit her lip.

She grinned and squeezed Yelena's sides and held her close, “Getchagetchagetcha!” The surprise attack made Yelena squeal as she began giggling immediately, trying to find a way to push her hands.

Wanda paused, laughing lovingly and booped her nose as she gently rocked the blonde, “You seem a bit more comfortable with me?” She asked softly.

Yelena bit her lip, but nodded. “I guess you are not too bad…”

“I'll take that as a compliment!” Wanda beamed.

The blonde just rolled her eyes, staying still and letting the witch embrace her. She may not be completely ready to give affection just yet, but the bonding did make her feel closer to her, physically and emotionally.

[stackslip]

Just wanted to say I love your fma 2003 posts. While I do think the original story is more cohesive and stuff, I think that the stuff they did with the 03 show is really interesting and provides a lot of cool angles on the character. It's a completely different story after a certain point with its own merit, and I think that it gives a lot of development to the characters in fascinating ways. I feel like seeing it added depth to my appreciation of the story. There's juicy bits in there that I wish were in the original and I'm just glad they were explored and that I'm not the only one who loves it. :))

sorry i took so late to respond lol

i think the og IS a lot more cohesive and planned out, and more consistent in quality! it's just that i don't think it's much to write home about either. it's a very solid fun shounen and as long as you don't think too deep about its implications, it's definitely a lot better written than 90% of mainstream shounen. and i can see the appeal in that, i genuinely do. i don't think 03 is to everyone's taste, even outside of people for whom og fma is comfort food, for whom even a slight deviation feels Wrong because that's their emotional support anime or whatever. like, i'm a fucking dbz fan always and forever you know? i don't have room to say "why do people enjoy mangahood better, it's so much less mature than 03" bc i still get pumped and emo from super saiyan transformations. i do wish these fans at least would understand WHY one might have frustrations with the themes of the story and what it does with very serious subjects lol

i do think that 03 is its own story but i don't think it's its own story "from a certain point". yes the early anime follows a lot of the manga's story, albeit rearranging it differently. but i'd argue that it's different in essence from the very start. its tone it starkly different from the manga, which is and remains a Cool Mystery Action Shounen. fma 03 from its very first episode leans more into brooding and psychological horror territory, even outside of the extra gore. even the subtle changes it makes early in the story aren't just to change/"improve" or adapt the manga's story, but to set up what they do when 03 REALLY departs from the manga's storyline. ed and al's characters are, i'd argue, leagues away from their og counterparts by ep 10--the flashback and making them go through all that trauma at age 12 really sets up that 15 year old ed isn't a confident shitlord like he is in the og, but a deeply insecure and guilt ridden teenager forced to grow up too fast and hiding his insecurities behind a mask of confidence. al is still kind and polite, but also a lot more ruthless and even more dependent on his brother than the og one is--the sensory deprivation and dysmorphia from the armour is cutting him off from other humans than his brother, and a lot of his own doubts and anguish at his situation begin eating at him to the point that when barry throws out the "you're an artificial person" accusation, al's brain immediately latches onto it because he's been wondering if he's even human for years.

i do think 03 has pits and valleys in terms of quality--but honestly i'm fine with it (bar a few genuinely infuriating decisions such as the transmisogynist serial killer trope in ep 8), it's a 2000s anime that was insanely ambitious and butting against the author and funding, some episodes visibly have a shoestring budget and while it remains thematically consistent you can very clearly see moments/places where the production committe threw in "hey uhhhhhh put in more kimblee he's popular" or "we're not giving you more episodes sorry. wrap it all up in three". do i wish a more consistent version of the show existed, meticulously planned out and with all the time and money in the world they needed existed? yes. would that version have been perfect? not necessarily tbh!

but really, 03 has a number of strong decisions and genuinely genius twists on the og that make it very hard for me to come back to the fma manga without feeling deeply underwhelmed. i like greedling so, so much--i just don't like him enough to not feel really bitter about how lust is treated in the manga. i genuinely love the scene where ed swears he'll get al's body's back at the gate, 10/10 shounen scene--but also, there's the scene ed happily tells al that after digging up their mom's body it turns out the transmutation they did had nothing to do with their mom, and every time i'm like "this is so stupid and i wish they'd kept the failed transmutation homonculi". the absolute heights of fma as a manga never ever manage to hit nearly as strongly to me as 03's does, because og fma will always feel just..... lacking in ambition and in depth, where imo in some aspects fma 03 still hasn't been outdone. where can i find something like the 03's homonculi? how many narratives are there that celebrate a character like scar instead of playing the trope of the Well Meaning Extremist Who Kicks A Puppy? this is a real question btw send them to me immediately i need them.

[willwillywilliam]

I'm wondering what Lilith has planned for Dislyte. It seems to be going down a path, but it remains interesting.

They take their time creating stories, plots and lore. They do it in segments and give themselves the opportunity to develop it slowly.

They are no longer adding 4*, but they add few 5*, and the 5* they add are balanced, they understand the implications and are no longer deforming meta with each update, they simply add good content.

Amir can be very strong for events, but in PvP he depends on a single mechanic where any counter gives him problems, and yet it can still be used. Sloan has a handicap that forces her to have an immunity/cleanse partner, is a strong esper that should be treated with care. Moroyamo looks like a functional DPS, but at least in theory it is a not so aggressive tool. It is designed to enter and eliminate an enemy unit. It may be stronger than it seems, but since Petros it was seen that the Shimmers do not necessarily have to be strong, they depend on the formations.

They're even revitalizing old espers, giving them new space in PvP and PvE. Many still complain that "they are not OP, they are useless", but that is what makes them good, they are mechanical espers and they make the game fun to play. The idea is that you have fun with the way the character plays, not win everything just by having it.

Furthermore, in the previous update with the reworks of Everett, Abigail and Sienna, they gave space to the Mono-Type formations, interesting and entertaining ideas, with potential. During this update they created many more espers with duo dynamics, such as Yamato and Yuuhime or Anna and Norah, in addition to offering Valeria and Liam again. And with the new buff to Yuuhime, they give rise to faction-themed formations, seeing her Twilight Order captain, gives rise to formations with much more potential and very entertaining.

They try to make the game fun, and I appreciate that. Many complain that the game is "boring", but they simply try to make records and play automatically and that's it, they don't know how to appreciate it. The fun thing about games like this, where they really give you the opportunity to have all the characters, is creating your own formations, using the espers that you like whether for plot, story, design or playable mechanics. Oneself must give value to this game.

I feel entitled to say it, being someone who forces espers just because I like them. Try everyone with Relics and set mechanics like Relief and Avatara, instead of being stuck in the monotony of Thunder and War. Build 3* and 4* for ritualistic and other game modes. Using Freddy Relief on Apep, using Leon Calamity on Cronos, even taking advantage of Zelmer on Fafnir. They are challenges, but also ways to enjoy the characters and have fun playing.

[starglitterz]

THE STARGLITTERZ GALA !

— a milestone event !

one fine day, you receive an embossed letter in the mail. on the envelope, your name is written in grand gilded letters, swooping cursive gleaming gold against the parchment. upon breaking open the teal wax seal, the contents slip out: it's an invitation?!

☆ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 : you are hereby invited to ‘ THE STARGLITTERZ GALA ’ , a monumental masquerade designed for our attendees to find love. for one night and one night only, you shall dance and make merry alongside others on our exclusive guestlist. we pride ourselves on making some of the most historic matches at our soirée, and we eagerly await more blossoming romance this year. do rsvp for a night to remember under the glittering stars – we hope to see you there ♡ 

☆ 𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 : this is a request event to celebrate reaching 5k followers! i will be taking 15 requests in total, one for each of the prompts below on a first-come first-serve basis. do send in the number of the prompt you want + the character, as well as two back-up prompts in case the first one is already claimed. you can also send in any extra details that you wish to be added into the fic, though their inclusion is up to my discretion. ( my inbox can be found here. ) requests will be closed once all the prompts are taken. all the prompts will be set within the fictional event of the starglitterz gala. the pronouns in the prompts below are interchangeable ( as in it could be either the reader or the character in either position ). this event is strictly sfw but may have suggestive content. mutual requests will be prioritised. i will fulfill the requests at my own pace. do feel free to send in an ask if you’re confused about anything. hope you have fun at our soirée ♡

☆ 𝐀 𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐆𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐒 : tis i, lady quill herself ! HAHAHA okay naur i can’t take myself seriously TT but anyways yes!! thank you all so much for 5k, i say this every time but this blog quite literally would be nowhere without my followers. i appreciate you all sm, thank you for being with me as i developed my writing and hopefully also grew a lot as a person :’) i hope you enjoy this event, i had a lot of fun putting it together :]

☆ 𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐘

#1 — meet me at midnight : your partner has to find you before the clock ticks twelve in order to kiss you at the stroke of midnight. -> WRIOTHESLEY

#2 — walk but in a garden : strolling through the lush gardens of the mansion, you bump into another attendee who also stepped out for some fresh air. -> NEUVILLETTE

#3 — drunk-dazed : someone’s had a little bit too much to drink and is a lot clingier than they were before. -> CHILDE

#4 — from the start : even with the mask amidst the sea of faces, they’d recognise you anywhere. -> NEUVILLETTE

#5 — slow dancing in the dark : though you may not be the most talented dancer, all eyes are on the two of you as you waltz through the ballroom. -> WRIOTHESLEY

#6 — one kiss : stolen kisses in the grand corridors of the mansion, hidden away from prying eyes. -> LYNEY

#7 — moonlight sunrise : the sky is beautiful tonight, but in their eyes you’ll always be prettier. -> GA MING

#8 — greedy : they want one too many dances with you, and only you, refusing to dance with anyone else. -> KAVEH

#9 — let’s skip to the wedding : love at first sight ends up with a ring on your finger by the end of the night and the promise of your dream wedding to come. -> AYATO

#10 — daydreaming : despite being in an arranged marriage, the two of you have attended this event together in the hopes that it will bring you closer. -> DILUC

#11 — something about you : you’re not really hoping for much at this dinner, but after flirting with almost everyone, it seems like you’ve caught this one person’s eye… -> XIAO

#12 — could this be love? : you’ve never had a relationship before, but you’re pretty sure the butterflies in your stomach as they whirl you across the dance floor is exactly what love is meant to be. -> GA MING

#13 — partners in crime : you and your ‘partner’ decide to crash the ball for no reason, but end up getting swept away by the festivities. -> HEIZOU

#14 — save your tears : when you bump into your ex at the gala, it spells trouble [ at least until a new partner steps in to save the day. ] -> SCARAMOUCHE

#15 — heaven sent : the soiree seems to be a blessing in disguise (not!), for you were able to bump into your greatest enemy and even share a dance. -> SCARAMOUCHE

© starglitterz 2024. do not repost or modify in any way.

[angeltannis]

So I listened to the entire Echoes from the Borderlands podcast #1 about BL1 and there wasn’t really too much of substance lore-wise, but the tidbits I appreciated were

-They wrote the entire story of BL1 in “about 40 hours”. Like, 1 work week. It shows tbh

-Angel’s name during development was VOG (pronounced like “vogue”), for “Voice of God”

-Tannis in BL1 was written by an autistic person! (Mikey Neumann) He said he drew on his own experiences as a person on the spectrum and how it would affect one’s reaction to trauma when writing her BL1 characterization.

-Lilith, Roland, Mordecai, and Tannis are all names from the Old Testament, but they didn’t really have any reason for doing that besides making it seem like there were deep meanings behind the names LOL

-They named the game “Borderlands” because they viewed it as an area in-between other areas (being the first RPG/shooter hybrid) . Randy compared it to an area of grassy concrete next to a highway but before the trees

-Randy originally wanted BL1’s gameplay to be a perfect loop, where you defeat the Destroyer and then Marcus pulls up in the bus and it’s the character select screen again. They added the Hyperion satellite and the Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap end scene literally just for shits and giggles and had no intention of following up on it. (They didn’t even plan to do DLC for BL1 at all)

-They started working on BL2 before BL1 even released

-Randy originally didn’t want a robot character, he thought it was “trite” and overdone, but once they made Claptrap into an annoying failguy he changed his mind and liked him.

-Before they got Cage the Elephant for the opening cutscene, Mikey wanted to try for some Bob Dylan song lol… and apparently Randy said No chance he’s gonna let us put one of his songs in this stupid ass game (not even kidding, that was his reasoning for picking another artist)

-Crazy Earl hiding behind a door was 100% a cost-cutting measure because they didn’t have the budget (or time) to design another character model

-the illustrated ink bits with Marcus’ storytelling at the beginning came from one of the guys just fucking around in After Effects very shortly before the game went gold

-it seems like the majority of this game was made that way lol. The title cards were Mikey fuckin around in Photoshop, the initial trailer was his very first trailer edit, and half the voices were just him and Randy because they didn’t have the budget for too many fancy VAs

-they like the art style of the series, but they also feel like it holds the series back somewhat. Randy mentions numerous instances of players rejecting the game on the basis of wanting something more realistic. (To which he says Fuck that lol and I agree)

-Related to that, they said they tend to focus more on what they want to create rather than how well they think it will or won’t do in the gaming market.

-They feel like developing the BL series is getting progressively more fun as they expand the world and see how far they can develop the setting, characters, and weapons.

[icedragonlizard]

I've made major headcanon changes!

Hello everyone. I'm unsure as to how often people in the Kirby fandom change their headcanons to be different from what they used to be, but I've decided to update some of my headcanons.

Some of them are pretty big changes! Different from what I used to think before. I suppose it's just happened as time goes on and I come up with new ideas. I've only been active in this fandom for about a year, which ends up having my mind actively develop ideas over time.

But anyways! Here are some of my major headcanon changes:

-I now headcanon Dark Meta Knight and Shadow Kirby to be friends. Back then, I had them not getting along, but it's changed now. I'm also changing the personality of my Skirby a lot, so I'm now rendering this post to be obsolete. I do however still interpret DMK to not be a good person as he's temperamental and assholish, but now he's slightly more reigned in because Skirby is a friend of his that's able to occasionally keep him in line. Skirby is one of DMK's closest friends alongside Daroach. I'll talk more about these concepts in a later post, but now let's go on to the next big changes down below.

-Shadow Kirby is now effectively added to the Wave 2 friend group. As I have him being friends with DMK, he's also now good friends with the rest of Wave 2.... Daroach, Adeleine and Ribbon. Can elaborate more on this later, but at this point my verse considers Skirby to be an "honorary wave 2er" in a similar way to how Nago, ChuChu and Pitch are "honorary wave 1ers".

-Dark Meta Knight and Flamberge are now friends in my verse. Something I hadn't really done before, but am doing it now. They're distant friends, as DMK is closer to Daroach and Skirby than he is to Flamberge, but these two sword users are sparring pals! They like to beat each other up with their weapons for fun and enrichment. DMK still doesn't do much of anything with the other two mage sisters, though. Zan in particular doesn't really even seem to be a big fan of him.

-Francisca is now the mage sister that Susie is closest to. I used to have Zan Partizanne hold that title, but now it's Francisca. In fact, Zan is actually now the mage that Susie gets along with the LEAST, hahahaha... they're still ultimately friends, but they like to butt heads a whole bunch, as they're basically firm rivals. Francisca on the other hand is a very close buddy to Susie in my headcanons now, she might be Susie's third or even second closest friend. I can elaborate more about this in a later post!

I still have Zan being the mage sister that Taranza is closest to, and Flamberge being the mage sister that Magolor is closest to. Now I've got a perfect double-trifecta with now having Francisca be the mage sister that Susie is closest to!

-King Dedede is now a big Marx hater. I suppose this one might not be as drastic of a change as some of the others, though? I say this because I already had Dedede not liking Marx, but now it's turned up a notch. Dedede is legitimately ticked off about being a top favorite prank target for Marx, as it threatens his reputation and he also clearly doesn't appreciate Marx for additionally messing with his waddle dees a lot. If you asked my verse's Dedede who is his least favorite fellow dream friend, it's absolutely Marx. But don't worry about the jester too much, because it gets better for him in the next big change down below. Consider it an exchange of haters.

-I'm now all in favor of Wave 3 + Marx being a friend group. This is a big change from what I used to headcanon, I would say. I've ALWAYS had Magolor be pals with Marx, but back then I used to talk a lot about how I interpreted both Taranza and Susie hating him. That has now changed. I'm now doing a 180 and considering them to be friends with Marx. They'll still "butt heads" with him as they both have cain instinct relationships with him, but ultimately Taranza and Susie are now friends with Marx in my verse. Congrats to my Marx for being friends with them now, congrats to my Magolor for now having his three besties get along! I'd be more than glad to elaborate on this in later posts as I can talk more about Marx's individual dynamics with Susie and Taranza, but yeah I'm now on the train of having these 4 lunatics be a friend group. I guess we can call the group the "Magogang" because I bet Magolor would want to call it that.

Even though the "Marx and Taranza ought to bite each other" and "Marx and Susie would get into arguments about clockwork stars" posts I did a while back are still very much plausible to happen in my verse. Like I said: cain instinct is what the jester has going on with those two! He's still a devious little shit even when he's friends with someone. Top kek.

It's like Dedede is simultaneously taking Taranza's and Susie's places for being a big Marx hater. Lol. Still a net positive for the jester though, he's losing 2 haters and gaining 1 hater from someone that already didn't like him before. He'll take it!

-Wave 1 + Magolor also now exists in my verse, to go along with Wave 3 + Marx. This one might not be such a huge change because I already had Magolor getting along with Gooey and the animal friends, but now he's closer friends with them than he was before. And that's in no small part thanks to Marx. I still have Marx being pals with the rest of Wave 1, and now Magolor is too! Gooey and the animal friends get to experience the fun of the chaos duo. Magolor and Marx, being the besties they are, are interactive with each other's respective dream friend waves! Magolor interacts with Marx's buds in Wave 1 while Marx interacts with Magolor's buds in Wave 3. This technically makes a connection between Wave 1 and Wave 3. Even though Taranza and Susie still aren't very interactive with Gooey and the animal friends, they're all the extended friends of Magolor and Marx.

Not to do Wave 2 dirty. At least I've given them Shadow Kirby to add to their group. And I mean, Adeleine and Ribbon are good buddies with the animal friends and Gooey, so there's some connection between those two waves there. Daroach is, additionally, decent friends with Rick, Kine, Coo, Marx and Magolor.

-I am now planning to introduce individuals of Helper species, such as a Chilly and a Vividria. This is something I need to expand on more, but I'm planning to have a Chilly individual be a friend of Magolor's to reference Magochilly. LMAO. I don't actually ship Magochilly but the idea here is to have a Chilly individual be hanging out with Magolor and Marx inside their 3 AM slumber parties in the Lor Starcutter. And I'm thinking up a Vividria individual that's a big fan of Susie as she has designed a goddess statue based on her, the one you see in Star Allies. Will converse more on these ideas later!

Those are all the big changes I've made, more or less!

And if you might be wondering, I'll update my google doc of Kirby dynamics at some point. Before the end of the month, I'll rework it to be in compliance with my updated headcanons and I'll reblog that original post to remind you all when it's updated as I'll update the google doc at the time.

That won't stop me from elaborating more on the updated concepts above in tumblr posts beforehand, though! After all, the google doc merely just summarizes dynamics, I can go into much greater detail in tumblr posts! Feel free to ask away in my inbox what you're curious about in any of these concepts.

A lot of the headcanons I've had before these updates are still the same, so this doesn't invalidate ALL my headcanon posts before this. It's not that simple. If you need more specific clarification, feel free to ask me.

[anulithots]

Am I back?

Nope. Still banned. (At home. Long story. I can access at school for a couple of minutes monday-thursday) This is a loophole, since I think the school forgot tumblr exists.

That being said, hello! Missed you all, and I love everything you all have been sending me.

(@sm-writes-chaos, thank you soooo much for the fanart)

Feel free to keep sending me things! I can see everything that I'm tagged in and asks and comments. (They get sent to my email.)

I may not be able to respond, but I always appreciate it! See me as benevolent internet being. Send me your stories, link click things, anime recs, anything and everything!

Current hyperfixations I'd love to ramble about:

Nightcord at 25 (the mizuki event I sob),

Kasane Teto (still new to vocaloid but she's my favorite),

Link Click (I have yet to rewatch the first season this month),

and silly horror things (I had a quick phase of watching video essays talk to me about horror/phycological exploration things)

and I"m always open to seeing things/talking about things in cellular biology <3

(Not so quick, sorry I ramble) Quick info:

Hello hello, my name's Noor, (they/them, fae/faer, it/its).

I have some semblance of a human-like flesh, but in reality I'm a conglomerate of stories and shadows, which I hoard like a dragon

I'm aspec and genderfluid. Where on the aroace spectrum? Yes. (Basically, I'm a queer platonic sap, hi)

Fandoms: Link Click, Kasane Teto, Nightcord at 25 and Project Sekai, Qualia the purple, Jujutsu Kaisen, Alien stage, the Girl from the Other Side, the Little Prince, Autodale/the dead sound short films.

Song artists: Eve, BaishaJAWS, Waisa Project, Marina and the Diamonds, Mitski, Yaelkore, Kasane teto, Ado, 告五天, Vaundy

I will ship queer platonically, fandoms are missing out on queer platonic ships THEY ARE SO WONDEROUS AKJDFKLSDLKFj

I favor themes and character development and overanalyze everything, to the point where my thoughts contain more of my existence than existence itself.

my responsibility avoidance has caught up to me yet I'm still here

Things I have a strange amount of information on: Biology (particularly apoptosis and caspases), the mycorrhizal system and trees, rhetorical devices and storytelling, marketing, editing, quantum physics, character analysis, random theoretical and phycological musings, spirituality but we don't talk about that, basically nothing practical whatsoever.

Least favorite things: chairs, shoes, grocery stores, the looming doom of being independent, grass lawns, the school system, apathy, being told to 'go to sleep at a reasonable time', executive dysfunction

Fun fact: My life's purpose is to turn the subjects I like (like biology) into stories (an episodic narrative about a caspase trying to find meaning in life before they destroy the cell and end it all).

Writing book recommendations: Story genius and word painting

I also make dolls

In other news, since large Anuli doll has been... ruined. I make a tiny one, I'll upload picutures on youtube at somepoint. NIce to see you all! If you wish to respond, feel free to tag me in a reblog!

@osbob-the-existent @starryeyeddarlings @sleepy-vix @sea-dwelling-wizard

Original is here <-- intro post. It's older.

Thank you to everyone who reads my ramblings and likes my stories, you all mean the world to me and I can't thank you enough. <3

The dearest, most wonderous people, otherwise known as the lotff tag list:

@waitingforthesunrise @sm-writes-chaos @holdmyteaplease @full-on-sam

@osbob-the-existent @awleeofficial

@clearcloudlesssky @gummybugg @sleepy-vix @starryeyeddarlings

@sea-dwelling-wizard @snowpoet123 @ashirisu 

lmk if you'd like to be added or removed <3 🌿

Link Click Hyperfixation

Otherwise known as Cheng Xiaoshi, his sister, and his queer platonic bf all get traumatized as they break the space time continuum.

GIF by bishonenlover

What shall I say? The subtle buildup of Cheng Xiaoshi's backstory, the way it gets more and more tragic and nuanced as it parallels with those he possesses? The way he can adapt and strategize for the given situation (despite the fact that everyone sees him as just a silly), how he continues to wait for his parents, how he loves Lu Guang so much he would lose him just to respect his wishes, how his emotional connection with those he possesses overwhelms him and it's. so. tragic.

Lu Guang's adherence to the rules to the point where he's ripping at the seams, how he teases Cheng Xiaoshi even more than Cheng XIaoshi does to him (yes even with his stoic character. He's so silly... also season two), how he has the most queer platonic coded relationship with Cheng Xiaoshi ever?

Qiao Ling and her avoidance of uncomfortable feelings, the way she canonically called Cheng Xiaoshi her brother and is the only one able to connect with Xixi, how she's actually the only levelheaded character here? (Shee'sss sooo prettyyy I lovvee herrr)

Jujutsu Kaisen Hyperfixation

GIF by heycaz

As the name suggests, I am hyperfixated. I have also written essays analyzing these characters. Be very afraid. And/or come suffer with me /pos

Also also, for those who don't want to see any JJK smut, this blog should be safe for you! <3 I ship Satosugu but in a... transcend labels, queer platonic flavor sort of way. And I flipflop on itafushi. Either way they are soul mates and labels are just extra. Found family dynamics and everlasting friendships/comfort people are peak fiction for me.

Anuli's favorite stories

Favorite writeblrs and stories from tumblr

The Land of the Fallen Fairies

A character-centric commentary on the pursuit of happiness, told by tree fairies.

zine

Which one my characters are you? Uquiz (Includes Anuli, Kamari, and two other characters not mentioned.)

This has changed a lot. I'll write something here eventually.

[acrosstobear]

Mick’s Diary: Life as an F1 Reserve Driver

Hi everyone and welcome to my diary!

Over the season, I’ll be keeping you up to date with how we’re progressing trackside and at the factory, and some insight into what I get up to away from racing. So, here’s my first entry.

Since I joined Mercedes, I’ve been settling in great. Everybody is just so open-minded towards me, and that made me feel welcome from the first moment I stepped into the factory in Brackley. I’ve spent a lot of time there in these first months. It’s a very impressive facility.

I visited it back in 2014 as a young driver and was even sneaking in the simulator then, but everything is a lot bigger now than it was then! It is a state-of-the-art facility, very impressive in how things are structured and how every detail is thoughtfully taken care of. I’m still getting used to the level of preparation that you see here, and I am trying to soak up as much information as I can. Also, there’s still a lot of people I haven’t met but it’s been fun getting to know as many colleagues as I can.

My main focus up to now has been working in the simulator. Because I have raced a car under this new set of regulations, I have a good understanding of how to drive them. That has helped me in my role so far and hopefully added value for the Team. I will look to be an extra pair of eyes and resource to help with the development programme across the year.

The simulator team have been super kind to me and great to work with. It’s impressive to drive the sim because it’s just so advanced, and I have been pushing to do more. It’s not enough for me to just sit on the side-lines, I want to be helpful wherever I can. Of course, it’s not the real thing and I would love to be driving the W14!

It's also been fascinating working with Lewis and George. It’s an interesting period for me as I get to look over and work with two fantastic drivers, which you don’t always get to do. I’ve learned a lot about what’s important in terms of approaching race weekends; I feel like I’ve already gained so much knowledge to add to my skillset. I didn’t think I would have learned and gained so much so early into my role.

As a driver, you usually do not get to hear what is going on between all the engineers while you are out on the track, so listening in during the sessions has been extremely interesting. I was quite shocked at the season opener in Bahrain, I did not expect the sheer amount of exchange that happens.

You don’t know what you’re missing until you are actually part of it. What I really appreciate in working with those engineers is that they are genuinely listening to you and your opinion matters, and what is special from an emotional side is that many people who are working for the Team now were working here when my dad was driving.

Whilst we’ve all been working hard, it’s important to keep a balance and get some downtime. I went out early to Australia and went surfing. I wouldn’t say that I’m a great surfer, but I have to say that I have come to love it and I feel it is not just for fun but also very helpful for training. Even at home in Switzerland I do a lot of surfing. Yes, this may sound strange when speaking of a country that’s not famous for its beaches, but we have a surf spot close to where I live.

It can’t beat the adrenaline rush of motorsport though and I’m excited to get back to Brackley and continue our work. We’re working through quite a lot of simulator sessions before the next race in Baku so we will do some virtual mileage and be pushing hard to bring performance to the car.

To finish my first diary entry, I wanted to speak directly to you, the fans. Thank you to everyone for the warm welcome to the Team, and for the support you’ve shown me. It’s no secret that I would, like any driver, love to be out there racing. My current role though is helping me grow and develop, which is great.

[stillness-in-green]

More and More on Mina, Machia and the MLA

For my readers other than @randomvongenerico, please have this peremptory list of this very lengthy post's contents to help gauge your interest:

Some more discussion on what is or isn’t, would or wouldn’t be blameworthy about various characters’ actions (or hypothetical actions) during the war arcs.   

More discussion about Mina, chiefly about how (and why) her acid powers are handled compared to all the male characters with fire powers, and the way her plot points are poorly set up by the narrative, with the result of shortchanging her development.   

Yet More Complaining About How The Story Is Handling Heteromorphobia, this time featuring a compare and contrast on quirk-based bias as it might affect Mina, Bakugou and Tokoyami, as well as a dissection of Shouji’s contention that the only possible way to know about the violent bigotry in the rural areas of the country is to be from them.   

Some fairly extensive spitballing in response to questions about how I would have handled the scene at Machia’s prison compound if I were writing it, as well as why I have trouble conceiving of anything Hero Society could do to Hose Face for killing Midnight that would actually feel like justice.   

A little bit of basic talk about Tumblr, its functionality and some relevant slang.   

Buried at the very bottom, I stand up in front of God and everyone and explain in brief why Kaminari is a worse character than Mineta, with some particular focus on Kaminari as emblematic of the conflict between what the series tells us versus what it shows us about the legality of quirk use in careers other than heroism.

Hi again, rvg.  Because it's been forever since our last post exchange, let me say again that I appreciate the apology and want to thank you for being such a good sport about it.  Last time I had something like your initial response, that person told me straight out that they’d been condescending and antagonistic on purpose, though they regretted having done so after my reply.  I appreciated the regret, but would have preferred they take a day or two to cool off in the first place!  That’s the experience I was bringing to your comments, but I’ll keep in mind what you said about lack of experience with initiating chats and Tumblr in general.

For what it’s worth, yeah, there is a character limit on both asks and replies, so that’s the trouble you were running into there!  You might also consider using a cut next time before a really long post, though if you’re on mobile, I recall that being a difficult-if-not-impossible feature to find, and it’s not as important as it used to be ever since Tumblr’s started adding default Expand drop-downs on long posts.  That aside, welcome (belatedly) to Tumblr!  I hope you find some good people to chat fandom with; I’m always open to some back and forth about things I know well enough to talk about, though I’m, er, decidedly unprompt with replies.  And, as noted, definitely more of a villain fan, so probably not the most fun person for discussions on the kids.

That said, to your replies!  Other readers should note that, while I wrote all this roughly in response-order to rvg’s points, I reorganized everything after the fact to group together the broad topics.  I’ve tried to provide some bare minimum context for anything that would otherwise be too much of a zero-context non-sequitur, but if anyone wants to see rvg’s comments in their intended order and context, their reblog can be found here.  Otherwise, hit the jump!

  

Would You Have Held It Against ___?

But would you hold it against Mina if she had actually done more substancial damage to Machia? Let’s say, not the face, but Machia’s fingers instead of his claws. Machia still doens’t feel any pain. Would you chastise Mina for it? Even though she’s actively saving Mt Lady by doing that?

It’s hard to say for sure, since I imagine that if Mina’s acid had hit Machia’s fingers instead of his claws, we probably would just have seen them abraded and singed, like how Dabi’s fire damage was drawn on Hawks, not with chunks of skin melting off and exposing naked bone.  Physical damage in BNHA just doesn’t work like that, at least not against named characters.  If Mina were doing realistic damage, I imagine everyone else would be too, and then I’d be criticizing all of them, because, holy shit, that is not okay to do to people, any people, and especially not when you’re acting as an agent of the state.

But hypothetically, no, I think I would be more lenient even if she did do concrete and permanent damage to Machia’s hands, and it’s because she’d be doing it to save Mount Lady.  Shinsou could have taken control of Machia and then just had him lie still while whoever was in charge of this facility redrugged him,[1] and that would have been fine by me—disappointing, sure, but only because Machia’s interesting and I’d like to get more on him than we do, not because I’d be critiquing Shinsou’s actions.

It’s specifically Shinsou and the rest choosing to weaponize Machia against AFO that I object to.  Mina harming Machia would be taking that action herself, to protect someone that’s right in front of her, risking no one’s life but her own in doing so.  Shinsou throwing Machia up against AFO—which he’d made the decision to do before hearing Machia’s angry grumbling—is risking Machia’s life, without Machia’s consent.  And it’s not even for the sake of saving anyone, at least not anyone that’s right there in that moment—AFO is fleeing.

Sure, he still presents a huge threat to lots of people, but given that we’d just seen proof that AFO did not know about Shinsou’s power,[2] they could also have used Machia to, for example, rapidly transport the heroes to some place they could set up a second ambush to trick AFO into responding to Shinsou.  I mean, good god, AFO’s the chattiest villain in the comic; Hawks lured him into at least two extended conversations even after he’d resolved that he needed to leave.  He’s a Demon Lord and thus categorically incapable of shutting up.  And that would have been that, really.  Take control and let the clock run out; end of problem.

It would have been anticlimactic as hell, so obviously that was never going to happen, but there’s no reason the heroes couldn’t try for it, you know?  Instead of the bone-headed decision to just hand AFO his most loyal soldier on a silver platter on the thin chances that they could either prevent the brainwashing from being broken at all or that Machia’s upset would translate to both the capability and willingness to attack his master.

I’ve observed this problem in a few different areas, that Horikoshi sometimes writes the heroes, particularly Hawks, as not taking actions or drawing conclusions that, from their perspective, should seem sensible, well-reasoned, and with solid chances of success; instead, they simply disregard possibilities they should logically be considering but which the reader knows are dead ends, or they benefit from things they could not have known at the time they acted.  That hurts immersion because it gives the heroes victories, both tactical and moral, that they simply haven’t earned.  Shinsou’s control of Machia is a particularly egregious example.

  

Speaking of Monoma. Since we were talking about the morality of Shinso’s Quirk. Would you say Monoma using his Quirk to copy a villain’s Quirk and use it on him and his allies, would also qualify as something that should be criticized? I’m curious.

Nah, I don’t think so.  Taking an opponent’s weapon and using it to subdue him is a perfectly valid tactic, especially since Monoma’s method doesn’t actually deprive his opponent of their weapon, just replicates it for his own use.  It really all does boil down to Shinsou’s method forcing people to fight and hurt their own allies.  Mina causing Machia physical harm, Monoma using a villain’s own weapon against them, even the heroes’ surprise attack: none of those are remotely on the same “holy shit that is a literal war crime” level as what the heroes planned in advance to have Shinsou do to Machia, and what he willingly agreed to do well before he found out that Machia was not as opposed as the heroes thought.

  

I mean, I get what you’re getting at. I’m just wondering. If the heroes hadn’t launched a suprise attack, and had left the villains do the first move and come to them, would you then be criticizing them for being irresponsible and incompetent instead? Sorry for going on a tangent, it’s just something I’ve noticed when it comes to readers criticizing the heroes. It’s either people complaining that the heroes are too ruthless, or that they’re too nice, naive or not pragmatic enough.

(This is in response to some discussion of the heroes' actions in the first war arc's raid on the villa+hospital lab, not the second war's divide and conquer plan.)

I actually don’t really have a huge problem with the surprise attack in principle—I might criticize Cementoss ripping the building in half when there could well have been people on those upper floors, but otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what else the heroes could generally have done to deal with the numbers they were dealing with.  I mean, it’s basically just a scaled-up version of the attack on the Hassaikai base, and I don’t have any moral quibbles with the way the heroes and police handled that.

Rather, my problem with the raid is that I thought the heroes were too effective given the way their forces and those of the PLF had been set up.  It’s not the tactic itself that’s the problem (though individual acts of worse violence within the attack, like Hawks killing Twice or the attempts to outright murder Shigaraki in the tube, are still an issue), it’s the finality, the totality, of how effective the attack was.

To be brief about it (because I’ve talked about this at length elsewhere), I don’t think the heroes should have known where all the PLF bases were, I don’t think they should have been as effective in disordered mass combat as the PLF, I think the advisors should have put up a better fight in all cases, and I think there should have been enough members of the PLF in significant positions of influence or power that the HPSC couldn’t uncover them all, leading to complications when those members realized their organization was under attack.

As it is, the heroes handily win every fight they have with the sole exception of Gigantomachia and Shigaraki.  The PLF is neatly swept off the table save for a few “remnants,” with no attention given to the practical difficulties of detaining tens of thousands of combatants with no motivation to let themselves be quietly arrested, much less how the justice system is going to handle trying and sentencing them all.  That has repercussions going forward, as well: heroes clearing the board of all the (named) PLF members save Skeptic leaves the bulk of villain forces in the subsequent arcs to be prison escapees, and man, if the PLF’s moral nuance has been squandered, the depiction of the prison escapees is even worse.

The raid is, of course, only the first of two big surprise attacks the heroes manage.  I have significantly more issues with the second one, but most of that boils down to the fact that the divide and conquer/Tempt and Trap plan feels crueler, meaner, and much more openly aimed at extrajudicial murder.  And like, that would all be fine and in-character for Hero Society in general and Hawks, the main planner, specifically, but with Deku, Shouto and Uraraka all starting to think Save Villains thoughts, and fresh off the traitor reveal, the kids should never have been as collectively okay with the second war’s tactics as the story has presented them as being.  To echo an older complaint, good god, what universe is Horikoshi living in that he thinks the people that converted a place of learning into an arena they call a “coffin in the sky” are the heroes?

  

I was under the impression Midnight was off to the side from where the MLA minions were passing by, and the Skull Mask guy took a detour to kill her.

I’m not sure from this if you’re explaining how you read Hose Face’s attack on Midnight at the time, or if you’re maintaining that that’s an accurate read, so just to clarify, here are the panels in question:

As you can see, the PLF guys’ path through the woods has them coming in from directly behind Midnight.  Hose Face calls out that he’ll take care of her once they get close enough for the reader to make out who they are, at which point he gets out in front of Scarecrow and hits Midnight from the same direction as their initial approach: directly behind.  He most certainly doesn’t take a detour of any kind, but rather chooses the action that is going to get his group through the obstacle with the least amount of time and effort possible—entirely his prerogative as the highest-ranked member of the Guerilla Warfare regiment on-scene.

  

But if we classify this entire conflict as a war, wouldn’t that mean that both sides are free to use whatever tacticts and methods they feel like as long as it’s not a war crime?

If we classify it as war is irrelevant if the side aligned with the current ruling authority hasn’t done so themselves.  I imagine the Japanese government is in no hurry to validate the terrorists on an international stage by acknowledging that they’re numerous and dangerous enough to declare actual, formal war against!  Calling it a war drags in a whole pile of wartime conventions Japan has signed numerous treaties about; it grants the opposing side some legitimacy as a cohesive, organized force that will need to be negotiated with down the line.  As long as you’re calling it a police action, you don’t have to negotiate shit until you get to the plea deals!  Team Hero never declared war here, so yeah, I still expect them to carry out their plans and actions accordingly.

Also, in the thematic/meta sense, I expect the heroes to either conduct themselves as heroes—admirable, upright, heroic—or face the narrative consequences when they fail to live up to that ideal.  The hyper-encapsulated version of this conundrum is the recurring idea that attacking Shigaraki never actually prevents Shigaraki from coming back worse and more dangerous next time; the heroes are never going to achieve a different result by attacking him again but harder this time, and that’s why Deku is set up to finally try something different.[3]  I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

  

General Mina Points

Regarding your analysis about Mina’s acid being underpowered because it’s harder/less believable to downplay the effects of acid than fire/explosions/etc. in Shounen Damage Logic, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I don’t see anything wrong with just showing the Nebulous Abrasion Damage that’s the ubiquitous, default mode of illustrating nonspecific injury in this comic for Mina’s acid the same way we get it for the boys.

I can see your argument, but like, just for example, when Endeavor first encounters a Noumu, he bathes it in fire under the assumption that it’s a normal villain and then says he’s surprised it’s still up because he’s never seen anyone stay conscious after that attack.  Bathing someone in flames in real life is not a “knock them out” kind of attack; it’s a “severe burn ward for months” kind of attack.  If Endeavor’s been throwing that around at random criminals for thirty years, we are plainly very far away from realistic damage, and I’d be perfectly satisfied with treating Mina’s acid the same way.

If I had to take a guess as to why Horikoshi’s so staunchly avoided letting Mina cut loose—other than regressive gender politics—I’d say it’s that acid simply feels nastier or more morally dubious than fire.  Fire has positive as well as negative connotations; acid’s a lot more, shall we say, unilateral in the collective imagination, especially given what’s going to turn up if you run a web search for “acid attacks.”

To look at it in JRPG logic (and I don’t care if AFO’s admiration stems from a comic; that comic was clearly playing with Dragon Quest tropes), acid is pretty much the same thing as poison, and poison effects are chiefly the realm of enemy characters.  It smacks of underhandedness or cowardice in anything more cognizant than roving toxic plants or venomous beasts.  Certainly you see the occasional party member specialized for status effects who can inflict poison damage on enemies, but I can’t readily think of a main character that does.[4]

Perhaps, then, because readers are somewhat conditioned to think of acid as particularly dangerous and nasty compared to fire, and because there’s a limit to how morally dubious Horikoshi is willing to (consciously) write the students, especially the girls, Mina’s sharply limited in how she’s allowed to use her acid.

That said, I got a very hearty laugh from, “Just look at Dabi.  He can’t even kill himself with fire,” so thank you very much for that.

  

It’s as if Horikoshi only ever figures out what to do with Mina retroactively instead of in the moment (e.g. there were no interactions between Kirishima and Mina until AFTER Kirishima’s backstory, we never got any hint that would connect Mina’s and Midnight’s characters until AFTER Midnight died, when Mina speaks about not giving in to vengeance she references SHOJI’S WORDS which happened in HIS FLASHBACK, and then this whole chapter is technically a flashback too when you think about it).

That’s a big oof, all right.  I know about the Midnight non-connection and the issue of Mina’s anti-vengeance words having first been delivered by Shouji and relayed to the audience by Koda (it being his flashback, rather than Shouji’s), but I didn’t know there was no indication of Kiri-Mina connection until after his flashback.  Wowzers.

  

But also, in one of my comments I had left a link to a post analizing Kirishima’s and Mina’s characters and their dynamic. I don’t know if you checked it out or not, but it was a pretty interesting read. If you did read it, let me know your thoughts on it.

Apologies for not responding to that; I hadn't clicked it because I just wasn't terribly interested in the topic. Having checked it now, I can say that I'm unlikely to read it because I've encountered this person's meta before and, even at a glance, found it to be flawed for reasons I am not comfortable gabbing about in a public space. I'm sure they make some valid points, but I will have to respectfully bow out of reading and commenting on it here.

  

But what about Mina telling Kirishima that “now they’re even” though?

(This is re: my contention that Mina saves Shinsou, not Kirishima, from the Sludge Villain, and that Kirishima was never in any danger from the Sludge Villain.)

I mean, she can say it, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe that she/Horikoshi are accurately portraying the stakes involved.

  

Just for the record, you’re not saying that Mina not giving in to revenge isn’t noble in and of itself. What she does is indeed good.  You’re saying it doesn’t have any emotional weight because Mina has always been a morally good character, so you never thought she would ever give in to revenge in the first place. Correct?

Correct!  As I’ve said, Mina has perfectly healthy emotional regulation: when she experiences negative emotions like anger, guilt, or grief, she doesn’t dwell on them; she vents them to friends and finds healthy ways to channel them into bettering herself and the world and people around her.  She’s got a great head on her shoulders!  But all of that means that her giving into anger about Midnight’s death was never a remotely convincing threat to me.  Of course she wouldn’t; there’s never been a moment that foreshadowed that she was in the slightest danger of harboring that kind of obsessive, vindictive grudge.

That being the case, it feels unfair of Horikoshi to pin a big dramatic monologue on a desire for revenge which Mina was never shown to possess to any greater degree than any of her classmates.  She’s one of the last hero-aligned characters I’d have guessed if you’d asked me who was going to get a beat like that in the endgame.

(To anticipate the obvious question, Aizawa would have been my first guess; he’s even been written for it properly in the way he and Mic have responded to Shigaraki—clearly holding a grudge for something that would have happened to their classmate when Shigaraki was all of six years old.  Conversely, while plenty of the 1-A kids could have believably carried a “struggling with vengefulness” plot if they’d been written with it from earlier on, I don’t think there’s a single one of them who feels like a good match for it in their current incarnations.  Iida’s moved on from his Stain days too smoothly to buy it from him, Bakugou’s only real obsession is Deku, and Deku already had a whole arc of being obsessively negative and driven by dark desires to find and deal with a villain.  If any student was going to show up to the fight with bloody-minded revenge on the brain, it should have been Shishikura.)

  

But What About the Heteromorphobia, Tho’?

(Warning: Incoming off-topic harping about Shouji and the inane resolution of the hospital attack.)

I have even seen someone make a post on Reddit arguing that Shinso being discriminated for his Quirk makes no sense because it’s not villanous, and that it makes more sense for characters like Bakugo, Mina and Tokoyami to be discriminated because they have more villanous looking Quirks. I don’t really agree with everything that guy said. But he did bring up a good point. How come Mina doesn’t get side eyes from people due to her Quirk like Shinso does?

I will have to disagree with Reddit User That Guy that Shinsou’s quirk should be viewed as less villainous than Bakugou’s.  It sounds like he was conflating heteromorphobia with the bias against villains/"villainous" quirks, and while there is overlap, they’re still distinct categories.  Shinsou’s quirk inherently subordinates one’s physical body, allowing him to force his targets to act against their will, or potentially take the fall for things they didn’t willingly do.  Of course people are nervous about it or think it’s more villainous than heroic!

Conversely, the Number 2 Hero has been attacking criminals with fire for decades now, so I think the BNHA general public is more than ready to accept a hero whose quirk lets him fire off explosions.  The commonly accepted idea in the fandom is that “flashy and offensive quirks” are the ones most valued in heroes.  I think that’s a bit oversimplified—Crust was the Number 6 Hero and his quirk was neither—but it’s certainly true that purely elemental quirks (fire, lightning, wind, earth-shaping), no matter how damage-dealing they are, don’t tend to get treated as villainous in nature.  The real “villainous quirks” in the series tend to be the ones that are more creepy, dark, invasive, or impure.  Even Dabi’s fire is that ethereal blue, like spirit fires, instead of everyday orange-red!

Bakugou’s quirk is much closer to the “pure elemental” category than anything very villainous and, indeed, when he got kidnapped from the training camp and that one journalist was suggesting that he might have turned to villainy already, he based that suggestion on Bakugou’s behavior, his conduct during the Sports Festival.  Nothing was said about his quirk at all, but rather his recent public demonstrations of violence and “mental instability.”  That’s perfectly consistent, I think, with the biases we see elsewhere.[5]

Tokoyami has the potential to get hit by both the villainous quirk bias and the heteromorphobia, but I think Japan seeing ravens as emblematic of wisdom rather than death and rot would mean his bird head is less ill-seen there than it would be in the West.  I don’t think it would take much more than the proverbial One Bad Day to get him to a very bad place indeed, though—there’s a reason Mr. Compress judged him a good potential recruit!  Tokoyami was rescued before it became an issue, but if he hadn’t been, I’m sure we would have seen the same journalist mentioned above making similar statements about Tokoyami and his dark quirk/mien.

Mina’s an interesting case study in not experiencing a lot of the same sorts of discrimination others in similar situations do.  She has three distinct heteromorphic traits—her skin, her eyes, her horns—as well as having a potentially extremely deadly quirk which, as I discussed above, could easily attract judgmental side-eye because of the cultural view of acid.  So why doesn’t she seem to face discrimination?

As I said in the post you’re replying to—and as you mentioned is a common headcanon—I think a lot of it boils down to her relentlessly chipper attitude.  If she had, for example, Mustard’s personality, or Muscular’s drive to violence, would people be quicker to say that her Acid is a “villain quirk”?  If she glared more, would people be more creeped out by her eyes?  It’s possible, I think, that we would actually see her facing some of this if we spent more time with her, but the narrative doesn’t make that time, at least not anywhere Kirishima can see it.

  

Well, if I had to guess, I’m sure you would say that would make her a more interesting character. You might get to be interested in her character, which then would probably mean you would be even more upset and disappointed with this chapter.

Ahaha, very fair.  Honestly, Class A would have benefited tremendously from more kids with bite to them.  A Mina whose competitiveness had some real fervor to it, or a Mina who had some heaviness in her backstory she was faking her way through dealing with, would have been a good contribution to that.

  

It really sucks that Horikoshi had to justify Shoji being the only one to experience prejudice by clarifying that heteromorph discrimination is only still prevalent in small villages. I feel like it robbed characters like Tsuyu, Mina, Tokoyami and Koda of being part of an actual narrative and get more depth and development.

Before I talk about this, let me clarify something: Shouji’s line about what his classmates know about heteromorphic discrimination is an example of very crucial nuance being wildly different between translations.

The fan scanlation suggested that Tokoyami and Koda, who grew up in cities, must feel like such violent heteromorphobia resembles something out of a textbook, with the implication that the textbook in question is a history book.  They’re presumed to think that blood-cleansing rituals and children with scars like Shouji are artifacts of a terrible past, not a modern-day concern.

The official Via release suggested that Tokoyami and Koda could know that stuff like this still happens in rural areas because they might have read about it in textbooks.  They’re presumed to know that such rituals and scarred children do exist as modern concerns, but only out in the boonies.

Those are completely different propositions!  Which one was accurate was far beyond my capability to judge, but the official translation did feel a little off to me, so, as I usually do in such situations, I brought it to my trusty Translator Sis.  For possibly the first time ever,[6] she told me that Viz had this one wrong—that Shouji’s implication, to her eye, was indeed that T&K would think such violence was limited to the past, not that it was limited to rural areas.

That established, I was actually talking about that line from Shouji with a friend the other day!  I was aggravated that the writing would portray city-born heteromorphs as so oblivious to the problems facing them in other parts of the country when that seems so counter to my (American) perception of the ways members of threatened groups communicate danger to one another.

My friend reminded me that silence is a much more common Japanese way of addressing (or attempting to address) minority discrimination: trying to make a problem go away by starving it of conversational oxygen, treating oppression like an infection that needs to be quarantined until it dies out on its own.  In that light, it’s entirely possible that Tokoyami and Koda might not know this stuff because no one around them thinks it would be helpful to tell them if it’s not a problem they’re directly dealing with.  A lot of people propose the same approach to burakumin issues in real life, for example.

Also, technically Shouji doesn’t say that Koda and Tokoyami don’t experience heteromorphobia at all, just that the idea of fear and hatred that extreme, that violent, must seem like something out of a textbook, rather than something that happens here and now in certain parts of the country.  Also too, Tokoyami and Koda are teenagers; I can forgive them not having much understanding of life outside their own circle of experience.

That all said, it still feels more than a little telling that Horikoshi thinks everyone in Shouji’s whole class, including and especially all the other heteromorphs, could never have heard in their entire lives about acts of bigotry-driven violence against heteromorphs being carried out in the here and now.

While it’s true that silence is a widely accepted way to address these sorts of issues in Japan, they’re hardly universal!  Activist groups are out there trying to raise awareness, trying to get their issues on the floor of the Diet in hopes of getting laws passed about them.  There’s not some kind of media blackout on talking about it, and, indeed, I’ve read any number of articles from Japanese publications online covering such topics.

In BNHA, however, silence does seem to be universal.[7]

No one but Shouji is from a remote enough place that they knew about violent heteromorphobia.  No one recognized it as a thing that e.g. disadvantages heteromorphic heroes in the public approval ratings.  No one tripped over a magazine article about it and got curious enough to look the topic up online.  No one’s heroic mentors or family members have talked to them about it (particularly egregious with Koda, given the fairly strong implication that his own mother suffered it).  No one had a patch of morbid interests (Tokoyami) that led them to dabble in reading about real-life horror stories of human hatred, or an interest in how their society came to be that might have led them to reading about the CRC and realizing it still exists in the modern day.

They attend a hero school, and yet Shouji seems to be the only one with an inkling that there are heteromorphs out there who need, and have been needing, heroes.

That’s all a lot to ask of the reader, but what really pushes it past plausibility to me is what happened with the Ordinary Woman.  How close to the surface must violent heteromorphobia be even in the cities if the current state of Japan brings it all right back into the open in a matter of weeks?  That none of the students other than Shouji have ever even imagined that heteromorphs can still be victimized in this way represents an over-the-top ignorance that I have to read as either a bleak condemnation of the shallow focuses of heroes or reflective of Horikoshi’s own beliefs about discrimination and the understanding of it possessed by those who aren’t immediately threatened by it.

Whichever is the case, and with Spinner’s higher brain functions out of commission, it leaves Shouji carrying the whole plot on his back and he just can’t do it, both because the audience hasn’t had enough time with him to buy it and because the answers the series uses him as a vehicle to deliver are facile, victim-blaming nonsense.

...And here’s where I admit that even if the hospital attack had climaxed with a whole bunch of heteromorphs from Class A and B and the Pro Hero ranks acknowledging the mob’s feelings while pleading with them to not give into hatred and to stand down, I would still have issues if the resolution didn’t involve concrete suggestions and promises about how the heroes would address the mob’s grievances going forward.  Which canon very much did not, and just adding more voices to Shouji’s wouldn’t have changed that.  But my whole rant about that can be found in the relevant chapter posts, so I’ll not repeat it further here.

  

How Would I Have Done It Instead?

Let’s be real here for a second. Even if Mina had been the one to stop Machia. How would she even do that? I remember back when people were talking about when Mina would get her moment to shine, and that it would involve Machia again, I had serious doubts about that idea ever becoming true because I couldn’t think of a single thing she could do against him. I thought for sure Mina’s moment was going to be relegated to fighting Midnight’s killer, since that seemed more within her capabilities. In the end her shinning moment did indeed involve Machia, and no one really had a confrontation with Midnight’s killer. I actually want to hear your thoughts, if you happen have a thing in mind that you think Mina could’ve done to be the one to stop Machia. I’d love to hear it.+ Btw, since you brought it up, in what way could she have defeated the Sludge villain that would’ve been witty, or skillful? If you don’t have any ideas you don’t need to answer. It’s not that important. I’m just curious of the posibility.

Okay, so, this is the part that hung me up for the longest, because there are a few wildly different possible answers here.

The real truth is, if I had been writing this whole shebang from the start, this confrontation would never have happened this way at all.  Just off the top of my head, I think there’s no compelling reason AFO couldn’t have sent Toga into the hospital to activate and retrieve Kurogiri weeks ago, and with Kurogiri back in play, getting Machia would obviously have gone differently.  I would also never have disposed of the MLA as comprehensively as Horikoshi did; I would have had at least one or two instances where an MLA member who didn’t get uncovered by the HPSC in time was in a position to shift the balance in the villains’ favor—maybe one would have been with the police somewhere.

Barring a top-to-bottom rewrite of the whole arc, however? Well, I'd still say that, feeling as strongly as I do about how morally dubious this whole second war has been, even if I were telling this scene with the same components, I probably wouldn’t be writing towards a hero success because I don’t think the heroes have earned it.  The baby steps the kids have taken towards Saving Villains don’t go far enough for me to want to see the villains defeated here.  The biggest changes there would have been twofold:

1) Shinsou’s voice changer play shouldn’t have worked on Machia.

Machia has a sense of smell so incredibly acute that, if I were trying to logically explain how it worked, I’d make it a psychic ability that just happened to manifest as scent-based.  We’re talking about a guy who could track down Shigaraki after a teleport of over 270 miles, who could smell AFO’s vestige stirring from almost fifty miles away.  There’s absolutely no reason he should think for even a second that AFO is standing right outside his prison.

Now, we do know replications of AFO’s voice has an effect on Machia—we saw as much as the beginning of MVA!  But I would contend that back then, he didn’t have a big loud response to the recording, just curled up around his radio and started loudly purring.  In the scene with Shinsou, he actually responds as though he thinks AFO is there, but again, I don’t buy that Machia should have fallen for that, especially since he was woken by Hose Face’s device emulating AFO’s voice, which would have given his unbelievably keen senses enough time to register that it’s only the voice, not the man, that he's hearing.

But, with Machia up and not immediately prey to Shinsou’s ploy, the other big change I’d make with him becomes apparent.  The series has proved willing and eager to shitcan everything Shigaraki gained in MVA, but not me.  Shigaraki won Machia’s loyalty at the end of MVA, and if Machia’s cranky with AFO for leaving him behind again,[8] that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still have loyalty to AFO’s successor.

Given that his loyalty to Shigs is predicated on his loyalty to AFO, it might seem logical that AFO squandering the latter would free Machia of obligation to the former.  That’s a fair take.  But if it were me, I’d capitalize on Machia’s keen senses and what he was present for in MVA—Shigaraki saying that his followers should do whatever they want.  Hell, if the endgame likes flashbacks so much, let’s have a flashback of Shigaraki and Machia actually talking in ways that would let Machia distinguish Shigaraki and AFO.

In other words, I think Machia’s loyalty should supersede his anger.  If he gets free, his first reaction should be to go to Shigaraki, not to focus on his anger.  That way, it’s not a hero win rewarding their gross sky coffin tactics, but AFO doesn’t get quite what he wanted out of it, either.  This would be one part of focusing the narrative back on Shigaraki and his allies, rather than ruining Shigaraki’s hard work by letting AFO take over and piss it all away.

Incidentally, I will concede that, just because Machia shouldn’t have responded like a dupe to Shinsou mimicking AFO’s voice, that doesn’t mean Machia might not have responded at all—he could have rebuked Shinsou for trying to emulate Master, and that would have worked for Shinsou’s purposes just as well!  So to avoid that, I would add one more element to a flashback showcasing Shigaraki and Machia’s relationship post-Deika: have Shigaraki showing Machia a picture of Shinsou and warning him to be on the lookout for this kid, and to not respond to anything he says.

Horikoshi loves to tie back plot beats to pre-established elements, and one such element is, as I footnoted earlier, that AFO and Shigaraki watched the U.A. Sports Festival together, so they should both know good and well who Shinsou is and what he can do.  Knowing Shinsou’s SF-era capabilities doesn’t predict the voice changer, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if the heroes are pushed to a point of desperation and they have access to a brainwasher, even a non-licensed one, they will try to use that brainwasher on whoever they think is their highest priority target.  Quite frankly, all of the higher-ups and key players should have known about Shinsou.

2) The kids shouldn’t have been tipped off that they were facing Midnight’s killer, or it should have come up in a different context.

Nothing interesting comes of the way the canon deploys it, thanks to Mina’s vengeful feelings having no grounding in the story, and the blunt way it’s brought up serves only to make Hose Face easy for the reader to write off.  As I said in the chapter post where he brought up “that U.A. teacher,” there’s no real reason for him to be focusing on Midnight specifically unless he has a personal reason to think she’s emblematic of the things about Hero Society he hates, or unless he was tuned in enough to U.A. personalities (knew who was teaching there, watched the Sports Festival to get a handle on its students, etc.) to realize that he was facing students he could potentially rattle by bringing up their teacher’s death.

The latter would offer a less awful read on Hose Face’s personality: He’s not bringing up the death out of pure sadism, but as a psychological tactic.  The former would give him some real characterization and motives while also giving the kids something to argue against, rather than the easiest possible reaction of, “Hay did u kno Might Makes Right iz bad?”

Alternatively, if Hose Face has nothing personal against Midnight at all, and doesn’t have an encyclopedic memory of hero wannabe high schoolers, he has no reason to specifically mention Midnight.  Even if the narrative must see her death “answered” in some fashion, it still doesn’t follow that the kids must get emotional closure for someone they lost to the undeclared war they were drafted into.  The audience can take some solace in perceived karma, but lacking a naturalistic way for Mina and the rest to connect those dots, the kids should just have to deal with him as they would any other opponent they come up against, because, surprise surprise, when you’re fighting in a war, you’re not guaranteed to see and know who’s on the opposite side of the gun that just shot down your best friend.

As another alternative, if we go with the idea that Mina was struggling with dark desires for revenge, maybe she should have brought it up!  Not as an accusation—again, she has no way of knowing she’s facing Midnight’s killer without him saying it—but just out of generalized fury with her opponents as a group, the same way Aizawa and Gran Torino hold the pain of their loved ones against Shigaraki when Shigaraki is not the one responsible for causing that pain.[9]  Maybe a more openly vengeful Mina could just freely state that her aim is to take down the PLF to avenge Midnight, only for the enemy in front of her to answer, “Midnight?  You mean that woman I killed in the woods on the day of Liberation?  Here’s your chance, then, girl.”  (Or whatever.)

Of course, Shonen Jump is not in the habit of validating heroes craving revenge, so Mina in that scenario would fail because rage would make her sloppy, same as with Deku, Iida, and so on.

So, in a scenario where Machia is up and not falling prey to Shinsou, but rather prioritizing getting to New Master Shigaraki, and the PLF is likewise loyal to Shigaraki and not AFO, I’d just let it work, because I’d be slanting this whole combat towards an overall heroic loss.  Give Mina a face to obsess over until next time but also let Kirishima get a good eyeful of it so he at least knows there’s a serious problem with his best friend and one of his hero inspirations.

Mineta would have a chance to weigh in, too, as he's a good middle ground: he's got his own anger about Midnight, who he adored, but he's also worried about how that anger looks on Mina. Mineta always worries about his classmates, but he's shared a pretty fair amount of incidental screentime with Mina specifically over the course of the series, ranging from her sweetly offering to put a harem moment into the band performance just for him to stuff like the Clockwork Orange gag, as well as more serious stuff like Mineta being the first one to ask aloud if Midnight's dead, with Mina warmly, and with a confidence it turns out she doesn't truly feel, reassuring him that Midnight's fine.

(I've said before that Mineta should have had more to do in the confrontation with Midnight's killer, but that's not just about his fondness for her. It's also about him being the first to question if the heroes didn't just make the whole situation worse, and, if Mina really took Midnight's death so hard it had her thinking about revenge, it should also have been about Mina and Mineta's shared experience surrounding that death.)

That all said, I suspect that what you really meant is, how would I have handled this scene if I had to use all the same pieces and be writing towards a heroic victory?  So let me at least touch on that.

As far as Hose Face goes, I actually think Kirishima might have been better suited to talking to him?  Like, Mina’s been friendly with people, sure, but I don’t really buy her most pivotal, “shining moment” scene being a bunch of talk about the strength of the weak coming together.  As best I recall—though do correct me if I’m wrong—it's never been shown that Mina regularly struggles with feelings of weakness or inadequacy.  It would be perfectly natural for her to do so after flubbing against Gigantomachia, to be sure, but the series doesn’t make the time to show it, so her lines about forming packs with others does not feel like a natural evolution for her arc.

Likewise, while she’s obviously been depicted as friendly and sociable from the beginning, her lines in 383 suggest that her sociableness has, and always has had, an ulterior motive: covering for her perceived weakness.  The lack of focus on her relationships from her own perspective makes that impossible to verify or even predict, so it just feels like it comes out of thin air, grabbed almost at random by the author in his attempt to find something, anything, Mina could say that would give Hose Face even a moment's pause.

Kirishima, on the other hand, has had a focus on his relationships, places where they’ve been pivotal to his own arc and the greater plot.  (I’m sure I don’t need to harp on this to you, rvg, but I’ll go over it to lay out my perception of these things.)  His relationship with Mina—the ways he’s trying to live up to her example, as well as his desire to support her when she falters—is a profound motivator for him, something we see much more explicitly and from his own perspective than we do Mina's feelings about him.  Meanwhile, while his relationship with Bakugou isn’t given that level of psychological exploration, it’s a critical factor in Bakugou’s rescue at Kamino, and we also get that bit of Bakugou specifically giving Kirishima some advice that leads to the latter’s Unbreakable mode.[10]

So like, we do get an angle on Kirishima and his sense of his own relationships with others.  That awareness allows him to demonstrate what is, I believe, the first unabashed moment of empathy for villains that a hero demonstrates in the entire series!  Specifically, I’m talking about that low-level gang mook he comes up against during his internship with Fat Gum.  That guy does a bunch of yelling about things that speak to Kirishima—fears of weakness, desire to be stronger, a need to help his “bros”—and Kirishima tries multiple times, even after being attacked, to express his understanding and sympathy for the man.

That being the case, if anyone were going to be able to make an impression on Hose Face via appealing to his sense of camaraderie and desire for strength, it seems to me that Kirishima has the better groundwork in place to sell the moment, regardless of whether he could successfully “reach” Hose Face in the way that’s being attempted with Shigaraki/Toga/Dabi.

As to the Sludge Villain, I’d probably either not have him there at all, given how much he claims he just wants to pretend to fight for a minute before getting the hell out of there.  He very much seems like he didn’t want to be here to begin with, so I can only assume that, despite AFO claiming the jailbreakers didn’t need to do anything for him but rampage, he very much did summon a bunch of them back anyway[11] for his final dramatic attack on Deku and Hero Society.

Assuming we’re stuck dealing with him, I’d probably let the Class B kids do it.   Have Mount Lady—who was there for the Sludge Villain’s rampage using Bakugou, and therefore knows what Sludgey looks like and that he can possess people—yell for people to stay away from him.  Let there be a moment of panic and confusion, where it looks for a moment like a repeat of the mess in Chapter 1 where no one had the exact right answer to deal with him, so no one’s willing to step up.

Then, in a 1-2-3 combo move that reminds everyone why Class B is said to have advanced more quickly than Class A, and just as Sludgey lunges for someone, have Yamagi use Poltergeist to manipulate him into a steel drum barrel being held by Yui, let her shrink it down to a good tight fit before dropping it, then have Juuzo soften the ground to half-sink it, top down, then resolidify the earth, trapping Sludgey for later removal.  Ta da, a neat demonstration of the next generation outperforming the old generation when it comes to on-the-fly teamwork and decisive action even when no one individual has the perfect quirk for solving a problem.

…This, of course, is assuming there’s no good way to actually get the Sludge Villain to talk in more depth about why he didn’t want to be here from the beginning and had to be threatened into doing it at all.  It would be nice if someone could broach that topic!  Maybe a quick not-too-serious handful of lines from Mineta, who has his own history of running in terror from fights he doesn’t think he can win.  But even with some sympathy, I imagine Sludge Villain would try to run away regardless, on the (well-grounded) suspicion that heroes are going to want him to go back to prison and finish his sentence, and that’s when B-tachi could step in.

So that just leaves Machia, Mina, and Shinsou.  And honestly, rather than having to power through it, I’d rather see Mina, in particular, talk her way out of it.  This draws on two things.  First, there’s the fact that she’s one of the kids who failed her Final Exams, with her and Kaminari being unable to figure out how to utilize their strengths to get out of Nedzu’s rat maze.   I’d love to see her demonstrate that she’s grown from having no plans but to brute force her way through obstacles!  Second, there’s this sequence:

This is a bit exaggerated, obviously, but the quick demonstration of how quickly and smoothly Mina is able to approach, scold, bond with, then deescalate people in tense situations is rightly portrayed as remarkable.  But where is that facility in real confrontations with villains?  Nowhere, really, save that airless stab at remarking on common ground with Hose Face and the PLF.

I obviously don’t expect her and Machia to wind up breakdancing together when the stakes are as high as they are, but Mina would have at least a bit of an opening—her encounter with Machia in middle school wherein she lied to him about where the Springer Agency is.  I don’t for a moment think that Machia’s forgotten her smell—I doubt he forgets anyone’s, though he may or may not care about them otherwise.

For this version of the scene, I’d probably play Machia as more ambivalent—tired of being abandoned over and over again by the people he’s tried so hard to be loyal for, so not immediately inclined to run off after them, open to a bit more dialogue.  He doesn’t fall for Shinsou for the same reasons I outlined above, so Shinsou and Mina have to talk Machia into acting—or at least stop him from just rumbling off to bury himself under a mountain for the next decade or two.

I don’t know how they’d go about making that argument.  Honestly, I don’t really think there’s anything in the story for Mina or Shinsou to fall back on (by which I mean earlier panels Horikoshi’s assistants can look up and copy/paste into the storyboard to accent a dramatic speech).  Maybe they could ask him why he’s so loyal to All For One and find some commonality, either through heteromorph discrimination or bias against villains.

Maybe Machia is torn on his loyalty, betrayed by AFO one too many times to want to help him but not sure where that leaves him on supporting Shigaraki.  Hearing this, Mina brings up that AFO is threatening Shigaraki right now, but also that a friend of Mina’s is trying to stop AFO/help Shigaraki,[12] so maybe Machia could help them with that and then decide?  Machia doesn’t trust her due to the Springer Agency thing, but that same experience does lead him to believe her when she says she just wants to help people, not hurt them.

That last bit has the benefit of providing an explicit reason for why Mina uses her quirk nigh-exclusively as a watery defense barrier or to take out inanimate objects: She long ago made an active choice not to use her acid against sentient people.  This would give her some room for a little motivation-establishing flashback of her own—maybe canonize that theory about her chipperness being at least in part a front!—and provide a nice alternative to the current state of Mina’s narrative, which has spent nearly 400 chapters refusing to allow her the same free hand people like Bakugou and Kaminari take with their quirks for no established reason.

This doesn’t give Shinsou much to do, but that’s okay: his moment comes against AFO instead.

I realize that Mina's fans want her to have a big badass moment, and simply talking down a confrontation is not the kind of thing that tends to get viewed as "badass" in a shounen battle manga. Sorry about that. She can still jump around and dodge a lot while giving her pitch? Maybe she could get a big badass moment later on? I dunno; that's just what I would do, and obviously my priorities for what it would be cool for the kids to do are not the same as the broader readership's.

I'm also not sure where that leaves the confrontation with Midnight's killer; I suppose that depends on how things go between him and Kirishima in this scenario. Maybe they leave without him when he tries to protest Machia accepting the temporary alliance, or maybe he's soldier enough to take the help where he can get it and worry about later conflict later. Obviously, at any rate, this is happening in a scenario where he hasn't immediately blabbed that he killed Midnight; that can come up as a nasty surprise later on.

  

But does that mean you think Midnight’s killer should totally get away with it scott free and suffer no consequences?

Hnnnngghh that’s a tricky one because I am an unabashed MLA stan and villain supporter and therefore deeply biased about this.  Like, I don’t think soldiers should be put on trial for killing enemy soldiers, no, even high-ranking officer-types.  Obviously it’s different if they attack civilians or are otherwise breaking the codes surrounding conduct during warfare, but I do think Hose Face killing Midnight was basically a soldier killing someone he perceived as another soldier, with no undue cruelty or misconduct.

However, obviously the series itself—and the state authority the PLF is openly trying to tear down in-universe—would disagree with me!  In that context, I can’t even really call the guy “a high-ranking officer” because that would, as mentioned earlier, convey more authenticity to his position than his government wants to grant him.  As far as they’re concerned, he’s probably more like “a key figure in the recent anti-government actions carried out by the terrorist group calling themselves The Paranormal Liberation Front.”  People like that tend to get executed in prison a few years after their short, perfunctory trials.

I suppose the problem for me is that the series wants me to believe that the MLA is Very Bad and they all deserve to be Locked Up Forever, whereas I want more nuance from them than that?  Even setting aside the probable cult upbringing, I have significant trouble unabashedly blaming the PLF for their actions because the series has done nothing to convince me that less drastic avenues for change are available or even survivable for them.

This was a huge issue with the hospital attack sequence, but it applies to all sorts of the setting’s problems: Other than, “Insist that victims of oppression should focus on providing a good example to future generations,” what methods for addressing inequality does Hero Society have?  I want to know what the villains should have done, what they could have done, about systemic inequalities and repression that would have been effective against a government that employs agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks.

The picture Nagant paints is of a society waging a war against anyone who sought to change the Hero System, a war that many people who sought change never even knew they were already in.  The examples she provides of her targets are, of course, corrupt heroes and would-be terrorists, but what her HPSC President said was even farther reaching: that the purpose of her killing was to “preserve hope and faith” in heroes.

The HPSC legitimately does not seem to believe that any system other than the current one is feasible for maintaining stability, and that any attempt to shake or besmirch that system is no different than throwing the country back into the chaos of the advent of quirks.  What’s a few missing activists or tragic accidents compared to that?

Horikoshi seems desperate to have us pretend he never told us that the government his protagonists are defending actively grooms assassins to enforce the status quo, but that’s not a genie he can put back in the bottle.  I see the current events of the series as, in some form or another, basically inevitable because of Hero Society’s active, even violent resistance to change.  Midnight’s death for that cause is thus something I have tremendous difficulty thinking of as a crime that needs to be punished.

Does that mean I think Hose Face should get off scot-free?  Eeehhhhhhhhnnnngh I hate to say it this plainly, but…

Maybe it does?

The thing is, I know that Hose Face is, canonically, a quirk supremacist trying to violently overthrow the rule of law.  In real life, I have no sympathy for people trying to institute fascism, regardless of whether they’re using legal mechanisms or armed force.  But in the fictional world of BNHA, I have nothing but disdain for the way the MLA has been turned into a caricature of themselves in this final arc.  In that sense, my dissatisfaction with Hose Face’s treatment is really based on the ideal version of him and all the rest of the MLA I have in my head—the MLA that’s allowed to have nuance behind their extremism, the one overflowing with members motivated by their lived experience with the flaws in Hero Society, with a generous helping of radicalization from the fact that they’re a cult as much as they are an army.

BNHA has scrapped all that potential and left us with nothing but naked quirk supremacy to fill the void.  In an endgame that’s trying so, so hard to sell the readers on Saving Villains, that’s just poison to the story’s themes, and my villain stanning comes directly from that issue: demanding consistent treatment for the characters whose tragic backstories we haven’t been permitted to see.

Hose Face is clearly a bad person—heck, I was headcanoning him as a hard-edged, ruthless killer even when all we had to go on was him killing Midnight, long before he showed up to espouse open quirk supremacy and gloat about killing a schoolteacher, so it’s not like I ever thought he was a super nice dude or anything!  But I guess I just have trouble with the idea that the current system deserves to be the one to decide his fate, when it has, to all appearances, gone to extreme lengths to stamp out any perceived threats to itself, to the point that the narrative itself is now openly delegitimizing everyone who might otherwise offer cogent critique.

It would be different if we had never seen the dark side of the status quo and the villains really were all just shallow, two-dimensional monsters.  It would be different if the narrative had shown us legal, nonviolent and effective avenues for protest and change.[13]  It would be different if Hose Face had killed some rando uninvolved civilian.

As it is, though, Midnight was a combatant for a terrible, terrible status quo.  She might not have been using lethal means herself, but she was defending a demonstrably lethal, openly acknowledged as repressive, system.  I just can’t find it in myself to demand justice for the fact that she died for it.

But with all that being said, I also don’t think Midnight is a bad person.  She never knew about the government assassins, after all; she’s a member of the system she grew up in, the same way the kids are.  She presumably never saw the extent of the system’s flaws because she was never victimized by them.  At the end of the day, she still deserved to be properly mourned and remembered and it is a crock and a crime that we never got to see her funeral.

If anything, I think Midnight’s funeral would have been an excellent setting for a scene where the protagonists start asking questions about how things came to this, what went wrong and where, that their teacher had to die.  What is it about Hero Society that’s led to tens of thousands of dissidents, and why haven’t they ever heard of this discontent before now That would have given us considerably better set-up for a nuanced PLF, an opening to talk about Shouji’s experience of heteromorphobia, foreshadowing for Lady Nagant, and, to bring this back on-topic, the opportunity to really show Mina struggling with everything that happened as set-up for her later confrontation with Midnight’s killer.

  

Tumblr, How Does That Work?

Honestly I was expecting some sort of notification about your answers if and when you replied to me. Is that not a thing?

Making my reply a fresh post, or just posting replies in the comments section of the post you originally commented on, would not have notified you without me specifically tagging you, which at the time Tumblr wasn’t letting me do.  This problem seems to have cleared up, so you should have gotten a notification about this post going up because of your name being tagged at the very beginning!

What you see for people answering asks depends on a few things. If you send asks anonymously, you won't get a notification if/when the person answers them; you'll just have to keep an eye on their blog. If you send them with your name attached, as you did originally for me, I could choose to answer those asks privately, sending my replies back to your Inbox, or answer publically, posting my replies to my blog. Either way, you'd be notified!

For this round of responses, if I'd just replied to your reblog in comments as you did with my original post, or reblogged your reply with a reply of own instead of staring a new post, you’d have gotten notifications about either!  But I don’t want to put this much wall ‘o text on my followers’ dashboards without a cut, so I haven’t been responding directly, for which I apologize.

(Disclaimer: Notifications can be configured in your Settings menu; you can toggle them on and off for loads of stuff! You might wish to check what you currently have them set for rather than just taking my word for it.)

On the topic of cuts, I mentioned at the beginning that the cut option is hard to find on mobile, but just for reference, it looks like this in the post editor on desktop:

It's the same icon on the mobile post editor, it's just on the far right of the bar of icons along the bottom of the app. My screen cuts it off, so I have to scroll the bar over to find it.

Like I said, the Expand dropdown button Tumblr instituted a little while back has reduced the need for this somewhat, and you can certainly do whatever you prefer, but as I believe having the Expand dropdown automatically clip long posts is still an optional configuration in Settings, I'd feel better about reblogging from you directly if you put the bulk of your reply under a cut.

  

Don’t know what “blorbo” means. Kinda sounds like a demeaning term, but I’m going to assume it’s not.

Sorry, it’s not intended to be demeaning!  It’s just a slangy affectionate term for “character you really like.”  In my experience, I’d say it also has a connotation of protectiveness or self-identification, though I can’t speak for the whole of the internet.  I like plenty of characters, but I wouldn’t call them all my blorbos, just the ones that I really and truly love and want to explore/share/defend their honor to the death.

  

Thanks...? Is, is that a compliment?

(Re: my telling rvg that we seemed to have similar issues with the way Mina was being handled, but they were more willing to do the mental legwork on her than me.)

It’s mostly just an observation, but not a critical one!  As someone who’s very ready to read into the canon every little drip of information the canon will give me And So Much More, I have a tremendous amount of fellow-feeling for people of like minds, even if our taste in characters is different.

    

Buried At The Bottom, Why Kaminari Is A Worse Character Than Mineta, Yes I Said It And I’ll Say It Again

>>I have observably positive feelings for about a third of Class 1-A and only particularly negative feelings about Deku and Kaminari. What’s up with Kaminari?

My irritation with Kaminari boils down to two main things—and forgive me, I know you didn’t ask about Mineta, but Mineta’s pretty important to my feelings on Kaminari being what they are, so he’s a part of this answer.  This is all going to be pretty openly dismissive of Kaminari, as a fair warning, on top of being based on not-exactly-rigorous familiarity with the student material, so apologies to anyone who likes him and finds him an enriching, valuable character. But man alive, that is not me.  And but so:

1) Kaminari is a watered-down Mineta, with watered-down versions of all of Mineta’s flaws, but because he’s watered down, the growth he experiences stands out less than Mineta’s.  More on this in a second.

2) Despite Kaminari being a redundant character who brings virtually nothing to the table that other characters don’t do better—with the only things that are unique to him going underdeveloped in canon—fandom loves Kaminari.  (Disclaimer: I obviously don’t spend much time in the hero-fan circles of the fandom, so this is just my perception.  I’d be curious to get your perspective of Kaminari’s relative popularity, rvg!)

To hit the second point first, Kaminari has a more conventionally attractive cute anime boy face than Mineta, so Kaminari’s pushing of his female classmates’ boundaries gets mostly ignored, while Mineta gets so many fics written about him dying that there’s a dedicated Dead Mineta Minoru tag on AO3 with almost 350 hits. 

Fandom built a whole tottering edifice of fanon about Traitor Kaminari despite the howling absence of compelling evidence in the manga[14] for, so far as I can tell, the sole reason that people wanted the cute anime boy to have crunchy angst.  Then, when the actual traitor reveals landed (first the fake-out and then the real one), fandom deemed Hagakure an ungrateful bitch and Aoyama a whining coward.

So like, the fandom discrepancy is what pushes me over the edge from the bottom end of neutral into active dislike.  But I would be awfully close to it anyway for the whole “redundant-ass character who contributes nothing to this story we couldn’t get better from someone else” thing.

Kaminari being kind of leery and unpleasant about his female classmates would be a lot more glaring if it weren’t stacked up against Mineta’s actual sexual harassment, even though Kaminari is a frequent co-conspirator!   

Kaminari has a brief tussle with fear at the beginning of the war arc, but it’s neither as sustained nor as convincing as Mineta’s frequent wrestling with cowardice, present from USJ all the way up through his terrified confrontation with All For One.   

Mineta is frequently, openly envious of his classmates, a whole extra flaw that Kaminari never demonstrates in more than fleeting glimpses.   

Kaminari’s quirk is redundant next to the other high offense types in the class.   

Kaminari’s personality is not distinct enough to add anything irreplaceable to the classroom dynamic.  That’s not to say he brings nothing to the web of relationships amongst the students or the ways the class as a whole reacts to the events of the series, just that what comes to mind for me is mostly extra layering to existing dynamics, not anything truly original and unique to him.  Which would be fine—I love extra layers!—if he were contributing more as a character on literally any other fronts.

I can think of only two things that Kaminari uniquely brings to the table, but both of them are mentioned once and then never come up again.  Firstly, he’s the only one in the class to voice open admiration for Stain, a willingness to admire cool traits in Villains that never leads him to any interesting conflicts with people (classmates or otherwise) who hew to the more standard flat refusal to consider that a Villain might have or express positive aspects.

The other thing is less about Kaminari himself and more about how he’s one of three places where the story brings up the idea of people using their quirks for non-hero jobs and then refuses to develop that premise.[15]  It’s interesting worldbuilding, but as far as I’m aware, it’s never directly shown—everyone we see using their quirks (legally) in the series is doing it as a hero.  We never get much sense of what other options there are for quirk use because heroism and villainy are the only contexts we ever see it in!  This would be a little annoying on its own, but I also find it undermines a lot of other established facts and characterizations.

(Bear with me and I promise I’ll loop this back around to Kaminari.)

My interests being where they are, the biggest problem for me with the fuzziness about the legality of quirk use is that it leaves Destro and the MLA with no coherent cause.  They want free quirk use, but are they really so incredibly averse to just getting a license that they’re willing to become terrorists over it??

You could argue that naked quirk supremacy is what the MLA is currently after, and that’s obviously incompatible with the laws as they stand, but Destro Classic is never really framed as a quirk supremacist, so why did he so virulently despise the quirk use prohibitions if all they really did was require people to get a license to use quirks in public, no different than a driver’s license or a permit to serve alcohol?  Sure, you get small clutches of people sometimes with that kind of “any government oversight is bad government oversight” black-and-white thinking, but the original MLA was a powerful enough force to stand against the government for years, which doesn’t exactly scream “a handful of malcontents” to me.

Rendering the MLA’s cause mindbogglingly asinine is my biggest problem with the “other jobs can get quirk-use licenses too” tidbit, but there are also things like how totally invisible the entertainment or sports industry is.  That would make perfect sense if quirk use is illegal in those fields—people want to see cool superpowers getting used, so industries that bank on public attention dollars but can’t have their celebrities use their quirks are going to decline when they can’t compete with industries/celebrities that can.

If quirk licenses can be gotten for all sorts of jobs, though, then why have sports and entertainment become so invisible?  If “frivolous” fields like those are not aren’t seen as “contributing to society” enough for quirk use permits, then which fields do?  Why does HeroAca!Japan still mostly look and behave like IRL!Japan if quirks are in use in “all manner” of industries?  And if it isn’t the case that heroism—a dangerous job which sometimes gets people killed and which generally requires cultivating a socially demanding public brand/identity—is the only path to being able to use the special power you were born with to earn a livelihood, why does every single middle-schooler in Deku’s class and countless other classes across the country want to become a hero?

I just feel like the way the world looks and operates, the kinds of repressiveness described by even the heroes, the structures that drive people into heroism and villainy alike—the former because they don’t see any other viable way to achieve the happiness they’re looking for, the latter because they can’t become heroes but still have desires that their quirks could help them achieve—all of that makes much more sense in a world that has super powers but has tightly restricted their use to a single job class of person.

So, tying back, obviously that’s not a fault of Kaminari’s, but he is the character where that gap is most apparent.  If there aren’t many lightning heroes because lightning is in high demand in other industries, it would shed significant light on who Kaminari is as a person if the manga would tell us what those other industries are. 

What other paths could Kaminari have chosen?  What’s so much better about those other industries that people with quirks tailor-made for heroism,[16] in a society that worships popular and powerful heroes, are so willing to choose those other industries instead?  Why did Kaminari not make that same decision?  What does heroism mean to him personally that he chose it when so many others in his situation did not?

Kaminari could present a huge in on that angle of the worldbuilding, but instead he’s a complete dead-end.  Mineta’s motivations are base as hell, but at least we know what they are!  Further, it tells us interesting (uncomplimentary, but interesting!) things that people like Recovery Girl and Deku hear said motivations from Mineta’s own mouth, and shrug and accept them as perfectly valid.

And that’s just his professed motivations!  His final exam scene actually drops an early hint about the admiration for Deku he’ll later wholeheartedly declare in the 1-A vs Deku fight!  I don’t remember Kaminari ever getting anything a fraction so revealing; he just coasts through the story contributing nothing unique or meaningful.  He’s hardly the only 1-A character with that particular lack of depth—Sato, Sero, Hagakure and Ojiro are all similar blank slates in terms of their motivations or histories—but then, none of them are a fraction as popular as Kaminari is in the fandom as I experience it, either.

So to sum up, I dislike Kaminari because he’s a wishy-washy nothing of a character, a generically Inoffensive Anime Cutie Boy adored out of all reasonable proportion compared to more compelling and equally underdeveloped classmates alike.  Mineta is, by any measure, more problematic, and it's even worse that U.A./Aizawa are so blasé about him, but, at least from where I’m standing, he’s still more layered, more compelling, more dynamic, and speaks in more interesting ways to the world around him than Kaminari ever comes close to matching.

(…Kaminari’s thing with Jirou is fine.  Perfectly reasonable character relationship building material.  I just don’t count it one way or the other because it’s a self-contained relationship dynamic that has no bearing on the way either character engages with the broader world/system the series’ overarching narrative is challenging.  They motivate each other in small ways, but that motivation doesn’t lead them to truly grow or change as people, only to overcome modest internal confidence hurdles blocking them from things they already wanted to do anyway.)

--

And that's it! Thanks for forging through, good lord, over twenty pages of this, rvg and anyone else who did! I hope you were at least moderately entertained, give or take my blatant Kaminari slander. See you next time, and enjoy the Footnotes.

---------------- FOOTNOTES ----------------

[1] We’re not shown any personnel or drugs or anything, but I assume they’ve been keeping Machia drugged since Jakku, same as Kurogiri in between interviews.  It’s the only thing that worked on Machia before, so why wouldn’t they have more on-hand?

[2] Despite watching the Sports Festival with Shigaraki, natch.

[3] I would like it if he would do that with a lot less insufferable power scaling bullshit, you understand, but I’m spotting the comic its plot arc here.

[4] Outside of, say, the Persona games, where the MCs can change ability sets by swapping out what companion spirit they’re packing, but even that doesn’t make them specialized for status effects, merely capable of using them.

[5] Interestingly, while Bakugou fought off the villainous sales pitch with as much verve as he brings to all his fights, if he had fallen off the righteous path there, we might have observed that his pridefulness was explicitly fostered by the people around him giving him excessive praise for his powerful quirk and ignoring his resulting violent arrogance.  That is to say, Bakugou would have fallen under the same, “Villains are created by the failures in their society,” pattern that BNHA applies to all of its sympathetic villains.

[6] There was one other instance, but iirc it was an error in the translation C.Cook had done for the BNHA databook.  It would not surprise me that he was being less careful or was more pressed for time when translating the reams upon reams of text in one of those.

[7] At least until the fifteen-thousand-strong mob shows up.

[8] Which frankly should be all he’s sore about.  As others have pointed out, Machia’s anger about being abandoned is kind of incoherent.  Yes, AFO left him on the battlefield, but he didn’t exactly leave him to rot in prison forever.  The moment AFO made his big push, he sent people to spring Machia, so in what sense exactly does Machia think AFO abandoned him?  If it was just the last straw after a string of abandonments from both AFO and Shigaraki, the manga could have stood to make that much clearer.

[9] AFO and Ujiko created Kurogiri out of Shirakumo—as a babysitter for Tomura, yes, but Tomura didn’t choose that.  And as to Shigaraki’s very existence trampling on Nana’s memory and causing All Might pain, well, Shigaraki didn’t ask to be brought into the world, abused by his father, neglected by his family, and then raised by a supervillain, did he?

[10] And speaking of Unbreakable, compare how explicitly we’re shown Kirishima’s growth and the foundations of it with how the inspirations for Mina’s attacks are relegated to passing mentions, not direct depictions.  She just casually tells Kirishima that his Unbreakable inspired her Acidman, and likewise only internally reflects on asking Bakugou and Todoroki to teach her their training method, which let her develop her Max Power Acidman Alma move, without so much as a single scrubbed in doodle depicting said training assistance.

[11] Somehow.  The story is unclear on whether he disseminated threats, contacted them directly, or just used the combination of Search+Warping to drag them all back into his presence, and that last option in particular runs into complications given the limitations of both quirks.

[12] In this AU, we would have gotten to see the class have an actual discussion about Saving Villains, prompted by the way the reveal about Aoyama solidified Deku, Shouto and Uraraka’s desires to help their respective villain foils.  The class would carry that resolve forward not only for those three villains alone, but also Shouji for Spinner, Kirishima when talking to Hose Face, Mina, here, with Gigantomachia, etc.

[13] None of the things I can think of that might be considered evidence of protest meet all the criteria.  The original MLA became violent, Harima Oji was a lawbreaker and also ineffective in the long term, the small group that yells at Endeavor and the rest in Chapter 311 is not portrayed as linked to any broader efforts to unseat “fake heroes,” and the group that “condemned” the newscaster Miyagi Daikaku was ineffective and didn’t even seem to rise to the level of open protest.

[14] "His grades are poor but he namedrops a Hemingway novel! He must be concealing the fact that he's actually super-smart!" "He's doing a Liberation salute! He must be the traitor, even though the Liberation salute uses the other hand, and Kaminari has been using finger-gun gestures to fire off his lightning attacks since at least the License Exam if not earlier, and the League had no connection to the MLA at the time when the traitor was most active!"

[15] A blurb about Kaminari in, iirc, one of the volume extras, Suneater’s flashback to a teacher telling his class that they can “make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs,” and Uraraka’s early mention that she’d considered “getting permission” to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.

[16] See the previous discussion about the kinds of quirks that are popularly accepted as “good hero quirks.”

[capricioussun]

"what is their favorite meal like?? you can answer anyone but I'm in particular asking about papyrus and ht papyrus"

So tbth I tend to be pretty bad at favorite food hc bc I pretty much love all food and struggle to really determine what kind of food prefs characters would have, so I'll usually just completely make stuff up, which is nyot how I usually do things!! Of course w/ some of the UT characters thankfully we do have SOME input of their canon preferences...

However. As is the way w/ most things Papyrus I have thought abt the implications of the QnA waaay too much. As we know Flowey states Papyrus' favorite food to be dinosaur egg oatmeal, whereas nobody else knew and Papyrus himself stated not remembering. We also know, despite fandom portrayal, Papyrus has never actually eaten his own spaghetti, so we don't really know his thoughts on it.

The trick with Papyrus is that he lies all the time. He lies all the time! So does Flowey actually know his favorite? Or does he just think he does? Maybe he just made it up to sound knowledgeable. Flowey also lies (but possibly less so, or at least less smoothly than Papyrus, since usually Flowey will eventually state if he'd lied).

As a big fan of oatmeal myself, I do like to believe this is true, though, and it's fun to imagine that, while his favorite remains the dinosaur egg kind, that he gets very excited about the variety of other flavors once surfacing.

^ longest winded way possible to say that I like to hc Papyrus' fave food is oatmeal, BUT. I also like to imagine he likes fruity flavors, too! Like blueberry pecan or strawberries and crème <3

As for ht Papyrus, my interp Dove, I generally imagine having lived through a famine, amongst other things lol, it really changes the way you perceive food. While I definitely can't relate on that front, I do have experience having an incredibly limited diet bc of health reasons for several years. And now, I've always been a little bit of a """foodie""" (I really wanted to be a chef for most of my childhood), but coming out of that, I can say the way I perceive and appreciate food is undoubtedly different.

So with all of that completely unnecessary context, I imagine the types of foods and flavors Dove tends towards are very rich and rounded flavors, as opposed to how I'd imagine UT Papyrus seeks out brighter, sharper flavors. Not necessarily heavy, as I do still believe he'd be opposed to particularly greasy foods, but hearty stews, casserole type dishes, slow cooked oatmeal, rice pudding, you know what I mean? Probably mostly things that cook for a long time, things that thicken and develop complex flavors.

And, body willing when the chronic pain isn't too bad, I think he'd really enjoy making things as much from scratch as possible. I definitely think he’s more of a chef than a baker or patissier, so he tends toward savory more often than not, and avoids meats usually (not always an issue, but sometimes a strong aversion), so he'd probably cook a lot with rice and potatoes, all sorts of them and other root vegetables or squash.

I can't say I think he'd have any singular favorite food, but he would probably say all sorts of dishes are his favorites if he can smell them or is making it atm lol

I knooow you said I could add Papyri but I'm still going to apologize for this lmao, but I'm sorry, I have to add him or I'll Die / j but the aforementioned stuff I added abt my own experiences has really influenced how I write UF Papyrus post surfacing.

I've always been fond of the idea of things being worse in UF's underground in technical aspects too, like the CORE not functioning as well amongst other things that can cause complications in supply chains and production of necessary things, including food. Growing up with food scarcity constantly waxing and waning and never really ever being definably good wound up stunting most monsters knowledge of food.

So, suffice to say, once surfaced, there's a whole world of new things to discover and try and learn about. It's such a different experience than with HT, where they did have a reliable source of food and access to information about it, lost it, and then got it back (though I'm sure there still was plenty new stuff all the same).

Like, could you imagine having only ever seeing two colours for most of your life, and then seeing everything in full spectrum? So that's a driving force in what gets Edge so invested in cooking and baking. More than anything he wants to learn. It's exciting! And he can finally provide the ones he cares about with a surplus of high quality, well prepared nourishment. It's wild!

So similarly, he wouldn't really be able to choose one singular dish (might even say smth silly abt having to try every dish in the world before knowing for sure)...though I do love to hc that he has and always will have a soft spot for oatmeal made with a little honey and cinnamon <3

[13eyond13]

L For the Headcanon ask meme 7 Travel: What do you think are his favorite places to travel 24: Orientation: I liked how you wrote about Light not being oblivious about being Gay. What do you think was L's relationship with his sexual orientation? 26: Beauty: This is not something that gets associated with L often, so I threw it is as a curveball. Interpret it as you see fit!

L + Favourite places to travel:

I don't really have anything like specific countries in mind for this, but my main thought was that he is sort of a more indoorsy/man-made entertainment kind of tourist rather than a natural beauty tourist whenever he's travelling for fun. I could see him liking going to major cities with lots of interesting museums, theaters, concerts, and exciting thrill-seeking things to do, like skydiving and riding rollercoasters... very much like that one-shot that shows him doing all of those things on a day off by himself, haha:

L + Orientation:

I feel like L is not straight and also has long been aware of that and is casually accepting of it about himself, but in a way where he probably would not announce it outright to anybody unless it blatantly comes up and he has a good reason to mention it. Possibly in a way where he's never even discussed it with anybody else before (if you think of him as somebody who's never been sexually/romantically involved with anybody, which I can see about as readily as I can see him as somebody who's had a bit of experience). I could see him as bi, but gay also works okay for me as well, considering in the manga he never actually really showed sincere attraction to a female character (the anime sort of made him seem more attracted to Misa with a couple added-in little moments than the manga ever did, imo). My main reason for this comes from how suggestive and teasing L can be with his behaviours toward Light at times without ever outright saying anything about himself or his preferences in canon.

This scene is probably the most helpful one to me for deciding how I'd characterize him in a fic about it:

He's getting outright accused of not being straight in a homophobic way because of his suggestive behaviours there, but he doesn't say anything like "I'm not into guys that way" or try to change anybody's mind about thinking of him as possibly not-straight. He kinda just avoids the subject altogether, even when saying he's not doing it because he wants to. I feel like L would also tell people he wasn't straight if he had a reason to do so, but that most of the time he doesn't really see the point in even bringing it up or want to divulge that kind of personal information, and he also just kinda likes to be withholding of information that he feels like people are fishing for from him as well.

L + Beauty:

I think he's somebody who would say he doesn't particularly value physical beauty as much as he does stuff like intelligence and hard work and moral fiber, and would say it's only skin deep or something along those lines, which is part of the reason he puts so little thought or effort into his own appearance. HOWEVER he also is a bit of a prideful stubborn sour grapes character to me too, and I think he likely sometimes avoids focusing on or trying to learn things that he feels he is just not naturally really very good at or would easily be the winner of, and would secretly be a bit embarrassed to be forced to try. Though it might never become a huge priority for him to focus on his own appearance more or anything, I could see him learning to really admire and appreciate different types of beauty more in general if somebody else introduced him to it in a way that interested him and made it seem more important to him. And then I could see him finding ways to surround himself with it more often once he develops more of an eye for it (like, say, has a partner with a good aesthetic sense who can help him decorate his room with a bit more pizzazz).

[headcanon asks]

[chrisairgames]

Time to Play Curios: Albrecht Manor

When it's Halloween, I like to play creepy Halloweenie games. Ok, well I might like spooky games all year-round, but for the horror season it's time to pull out all stops. When I received this package in the mail last month, I knew it'd be perfect for the weekend before Halloween:

Curios: Albrecht Manor is "an epistolary horror mystery experience" by Seb Pines, the first in the new Curios series from Good Luck Press. There is no single person who runs the game. No one knows what they're about to open, other than what you see on the blurb.

The notion of the game is that the players are "Researchers" of "The Archive" who receive evidence and ephemera leftover after the appearance of supernatural phenomena. The details on the Archive is sparse, but you an unbothered dayjob vibe oozes from the tone. This manila envelope is all you're going to get, and your job is to make some declarative statements by the end of the research.

It's a fun space to play. I could see the experience of play spanning the spectrum between a total LARP and completely player-facing. For our game, we were closer to the player-facing end of that spectrum, and had a fabulous evening.

What's inside?

The Albrecht Manor manila envelope contains 11 letters and two postcards, along with a short mailing notice and the "Archive" report card. Like any good horror story, the letters start off tame with bits of weird, yet quickly start including photos, newspaper snippets, blueprints and administrative papers.

From tearing open the letters to the difference in paper textures, styles and handwritten bits were thrilling to handle. We were surprised how each piece, and sometimes innocuous details at first, came back to have us rifling back through what we'd read before.

Play Experience

With the stack of letters in the center of the table, without prior discussion, we naturally began to play by each picking up a letter/postcard, and circling, writing notes, and sharing weird details. This created a fun, anachronistic revelation of details, as sometimes one bit would go unremarked earlier would pop up in someone else's letters.

When an important detail came to the forefront of this developing narrative, I appreciated how the spotlight would pass around each of us adding more context or details or asking questions we weren't sure how to answer. But it's extremely difficult to discuss direct details without spoiling the contents of the letters. The discovery of certain documents and finding the inter-connectivity is the fun of this game.

The game comes with a single paragraph of instruction, which can seem daunting, but I was in awe of how the physical presentation made space for our own curiosity to define the bounds of how we approached the mystery. We examined photos under different types of lamplight, tried using the zoom on our smartphones as impromptu magnifying lenses, and folded paper in all sorts of ways. Most importantly, we were enraptured by this game for nearly three hours and were astonished at how fast the time passed.

We all appreciated how there is no direct, singular answer, and that we the players were the ones to define the story from our collective interpretation. It's not a good mystery, especially a ghost story mystery, if you're not left with more questions by the end.

Spoilers at the next heading!

Three specific moments literally gave me chills. I don't want to spoil those here. After the photo and line break is the report that was sent to the Archivist at curiosarchive.net. I realize now that we didn't "even "formally" discuss how we would classify the Albrecht Manor phenomena, but the classification is hinted at.

While I don't intend to spoil specific details in the letters, the submitted report has major spoilers. So if you haven't played this game, don't read any further!

Submitted Report to the Archivist

29/10/2023

Dear Archivist,

The first sentence on the first postcard, unwittingly, says it all, "the house is a dream."

This group of Archive researchers have deemed this household, built by one Damian Albrecht, to be a spiritual machine. This trap inhabits the mind of its occupants, and grows and shifts according to its creator's and past occupants' hopes and dreams of a warm household. The researchers are even hesitant to call this a haunting, but agree the house appears to be a spatio-temporal machination propelled by the spirits it is required to consume to keep operating. The fire, in this interpretation, is a convenient excuse for the house to re-enter its slumbering stasis. The researchers' consensus is that there must be only one true fire, but could not access WHEN that may be.

The researchers agreed, though without substantial evidence, the purpose of this machine is to sustain not only long life to its creator, Damian Albrecht, but also to impose HIS dream onto others, and subsume their dreams to feed his own. Again, the fire is a convenient cover-up for the displaced spirits Albrecht has trapped.

The researchers were divided on several facets, foremost questioning the actual existence of the principal figures: Alex Dunn and Anne Wilson. Could it be that Alex Dunn is in fact Albrecht? Has the persona of Alex Dunn created the character of Anne Wilson to represent the inhabitants of St. Ann? Will there be an all-consuming fire that destroys the town, and this house (and letters) are calling the community to action, as a sort of warning? Does Albrecht Manor's machinery twist and channel the powers of the Catholic Saint Ann, whose emblem is a Door, to imbue itself with supernatural power? If Alex Dunn is/was a real person, were they drawn to the house due to past trauma involving Anne and the implied kitchen fire that took place in the past? Did this oft-alluded-to fire kill Anne?

Many loose ends remain, but these Archive Researchers remain confident that the initial readings of the Albrecht Manor as deviating from the traditional haunting are correct. The "ghosts" are most likely Albrecht himself, and the temporal echoes of the Manor's past occupants. We put forth that through mechano-spiritual insights, "Damian Albrecht" built Albrecht Manor to trap people into its/his dreams of a perfect home. As a single household can never be "perfect" in his madness, the Manor and its master yearn to consume more ideals to feed this imperfect spiritual machine.

Thank you for reading, dear Archivist.

All best, Chris Air & Friends.

[starry-miki]

⭐️ Get to know the artist! ⭐️

(+Obey Me! Questionnaire)

Here we are again… back again with another year down. Wow time really does fly by doesn’t it? My Anniversary for my tumblr was back in August but I was not really active until near the end of the year, (sorta) So I’ve decided to welcome the new year, with a ‘get to know artist’ post. I should’ve done this a while ago but I didn’t think of it till now. 😘

I will warn that this is much longer then intended, so maybe a 10 or 15 minute read, also warn of some profanity but mostly for phrases.

I will be answering basic art related questions and Obey Me! Questions near the bottom. (Which is the part that is much longer than I intended it to be)

Basic questions

Hello everyone, you may call me Miki, I’m a Obey Me! (Mostly a side characters) and OC artist. I don’t have a preferred pronounce so you may refer to be however you like!

Age: old enough to commit tax evasion. (Adult) 😘

Favorite color: good question I don’t actually have one I think lots of colors are pretty. 🥰

Birthday: April 5th (Aries?)

How long have I been drawing?

I’ve been drawing for about 3ish years, however the first year and half was on and off.

Would I be a good art moot?

If I’m being honest I’m more shy and people scary me, so if you would like to be friends you might need to approach first…. But I do have small surges of courage to message first sometimes! How my friends would describe my personality…

“The one with no care in the world that just tags along for the ride and accepts their fate” -Questionable TikTok post sent by my by friend.

To be honest I’m all over the place with my art….

Commission?

I have been thinking about open commissions and I think I will some time this year, but I’m a bit of a noob with rendering so I will practice before then!

A Fun fact: I’m a cat in a human’s body and need at least 10 to 12 hours of sleep to feel full rested, this also causes my sleeping schedule to get messed up. :P

What type of crime would I get arrested for?

Arson, honestly fire is so pretty when it burns things…. Has a weird magical feeling when you watch it….

An art advice?

I’m honestly still an artist noob so take what I say with a grain of salt. But for those starting out drawing, don’t worry about finding your art style it will develop in time while you learn and improve as well when you discover your likes and dislikes. I know one of the common advices usually given to find an art style is to reference off your favorite artists, it can work for some but for many others this advice doesn’t work, sometimes it can create a perfection of wanting to copy someone else art style or getting frustrated that it doesn’t look similar to your favorite artist style. But I promise patience and practice will pay off, don’t be afraid to indulge a bit out of your comfort zone and explore different styles, besides you may find yourself surprised with what you discovered.

Obey Me! related questions!

What and when did you play obey me?

I start back in early April, I kept getting ads for it on my Instagram and at some point I got tired of seeing it (and thought somebody in the universe really want me to play the game) and decided to play it, I didn’t think much about it and it was mostly something to kill time and I could have deleted it later when I got bored.

Did I mention that would be almost 4 years ago? (April 3, 2020)

Which of the brothers and side characters would I get along the best?

If I’m being honest I feel like I would get along with the majority of the cast, there always seems to be something I have in common or could do with the characters, I’ll start with the brothers first and also keep it short.

Lucifer: listening to classical music together or attending classical music concerts.

Mammon: ??? (actually the least brother I have common with)

Levi: video games, discussion of franchises and theories, etc.

Satan: appreciate cats and learning new things and intake of knowledge.

Asmo: I’m a rat so I love me some gossip while also doing self care. 😘

Beel: late night food runs or sneaking in the kitchen late a night to eat something (I do that in RL anyway)

Belphie: honestly sleeping buddies and anti lucifer club but I luv luci but still would like to occasionally join in the pranks. 😘

Diavolo: I honestly wouldn’t hang around with Diavolo if I’m being honest… just not much in common and other factors but I’m not going to elaborate.

Barbatos: I love me some good tea, some delicious food, pastries and barbatos company. 🥰

Simeon: honestly reminds me of some type of nice coworker and would just see him occasionally. (Still a pretty boy tho)

Luke: I’m the second or first sweets tester, I’m eat up those pastries and protect the bby. 🥹

Solomon: It works and I won’t elaborate. But I will say I will be with Solomon and Barbatos on a hot summer day with the AC on full blast cause we can’t stand the heat. (I heat up so quickly and are much more prone to a heat exhaustion, so you probably guessed that summer isn’t my favorite season.) 😘

First character crush?

If I’m being honest I didn’t really had one? But I had a very light crush on mammon. If that counts for anything.

Current crushes?

This should be a no brainer but old man and surprisingly barbs. Which i feel like many wouldn’t know since I rarely draw him (exact a few times) or ever mention me having a little crush about him. 😗

Favorite obey me outfits or event?

I would say the chief/apron from the brothers and for event I think the vampire event is my favorite. 🤔

(I’ve already started running out of questions so I went to the B LOV questions to rizz you up lmao.)

B’s log question. From (2022) Devildom Homework

(I also skip some of the questions cause they have already been answered or I got no answer)

Link for the OM! Cast B’s Log (I recommend reading it, but not necessarily):

Things I like:

making sure I try to end conversations or interactions with people feeling happy or feeling positive. (Which definitely has drawn bad people but I have been more careful and selective) 😘

Favorite item: (like food???)

Homemade banana milkshake, fruits and pastries. 🥰

What you secretly think about the person you love:

how did that happen??? 😀

Your motto?

1. Sleep it off.

2. fuck around and find out until you find the solution (or create a new problem or make it worse). 😘

3. Everything is going to be okay, eat some sweets and try again. ☺️

Love Questionnaire.

Be the first one to confess love is what you will… do.

Be possessive is what you will?

“Won’t do, and don’t want to be possessive over either” -Solomon

Tbh same. 💀

Be jealous is what you will?

Do not. I find jealousy to be such an ugly emotion to feel and would like to avoid or completely eliminate the feeling when it rarely occurs.

A love with obstacles is….

honestly a pain in the ass but it honestly depends on the type of obstacle and if I love that person enough.

Days that you think about the person you love so much that you can’t fall asleep… do not exist.

Times when you can’t be honestly convey your feelings. Does not exist

—-

Devildom borderline:

Devildom charm distribution chart (self assessment ver.)

Dead set in the middle just a little bit to the reliable.

Please explain your choice on the chart!

If I’m being honest I don’t really find myself cool, cute, spoiled nor reliable. I’m more neutral? I mean if group projects count I guess I would be a little reliable? I’ll do my part of the project but I don’t really ask others if they need help with their work load but I do with friends though.

Tell me! Your borderline!

Border line of “Horror”- which on is more scary?

(1) 24hr long lecture from lucifer

(2) bungee jump form the highest mountain in the Devildom without a cord.

(3) other. “When you are thinking about eating a certain food in the fridge and when you get to it, it’s already been eaten. My day is ruined” 😔

Borderline of "Don't wanna do" - Which one would you avoid?

1. Asmo's 1-day photograph assistant

2. Beel's 1-day cook

3. Others. “Hurting people’s feelings and stomping their happy mood, I prefer someone to discuss about rocket science if that’s what they are passionate about and not understanding what they are talking about. It’s rare to see people have pure passion in something and talk about it excitedly, I never wish for that passion or excitedness to die out.

Borderline of "Wanna try" - Which one would you prefer experiencing?

1. 1-day Demon King

2. 1-day Devildom Spy

3. Others. “I honestly want to walk around nature solo and in different landscapes, maybe walk in a flowery meadow in the evening with pretty pink and purple evening sky or walk through a dark cloudy evening forest with light snow gently falling.”

Borderline of "Blessed" - Which one makes you happier?

1. People surrounding are smiling.

2. Enjoying yourself from the bottom of your heart.

3. Others. “I would say all of above and possibly more, happiness is a fleeting feeling and can sometimes be difficult to feel in everyday life, any way to achieve even the smallest of happiness even if it’s from the most simplest things is good in my book.”

Borderline of "Cheating" - Absolutely, not allowed!

1. Holding hands

2. Meeting eyes

3. Others. “Depends on the circumstances” :P

-End

What would you do once Obey Me! Reaches to the end?

Cry, that would be my thirteen reason why, I wouldn’t be able to handle it, AND ILL KEEP THE ANSWER SHORT TO NOT THINK ABOUT IT. 😔😭

Well I think that’s enough questions to answer! I hope the questionnaires give you a little insight about me. This year I do hope to be more active and post just a bit more the i have from last year. And for those who made this far let me know what your responses are for the B’s Log questionnaire! Happy New Year to everyone, and may you be blessed to a wonderful year! ☺️💕