#and also inherently tied so that the character isn't able to be with anyone else other than the ship

[pansexualhousecat]

i hate when i vehemently disagree with a headcanon that the majority of the fandom agrees with because then when i go to search for my headcanon of it there's barely anything there and i get mad every time i see said headcanon but if i don't force myself to look past it then i basically can't consume content of the thing i love

[somethinginworl]

🤍💔🖤 for kirby

Huzzah! Why thank you anon for letting me ramble about them!

🤍 "what are three of your oc's neutral/questionable traits?"

They don't have much empathy if any at all (No this does not inherently make him someone dangerous thankyouverymuch-), but they do try their best at understanding people, and getting in their shoes but this also means that sometimes they come across as very uncaring when in reality they just don't really understand how to react to the situation.

He might also prioritize playing and fooling around before his own responsibility. While this is okay for being able to cheering up people, this means that he can just neglect everything else that doesn't bring them joy/isn't hurting his friends.

Also, his innocent and childlike nature can sometimes make him susceptible to manipulation or deception. He may trust others too easily or fail to recognize ulterior motives, putting everyone at risk (Looking at you, Marx and Magolor…). He most of the time just assumes that everyone has good intentions, even if it's obvious that it's otherwise.

💔 "what are three of your oc's negative traits?"

Can you really have a superiority complex if you're a god among people? Either way, Kirby kinda sees most people as below him, not necessarily as people he doesn't care about, but more like pets that need his help and protection to survive, in exchange for their companionship and being fun to play with. This kinda ties in with his naivety he just doesn't assume people would genuinely want to hurt him, I mean do you expect your pet to manipulate you beyond making you feel sad for treats?

Also, for all their playful personality and their need for entertainment, they're a very sore loser. Kirby is a strong guy, and being a loser is no fun, so you're a cheater! Oh, you surely must be cheating, or at least that's what Kirby assumes every time. They did not take Dream Course very well I'll tell you that.

He can also have problems with boundaries and impatience, at first he just saw most people as toys (In his defense there's not much else to assume when you just pop out in the sky as an Eldritch God of Fun) and thus thought they'd all just be available 24/7 to play and such, but that is not the case and he grows frustrated when people don't pay attention to him (He also thinks that people can be just fixed like toys if they take any damage), kinda like your average child but he's all-powerful.

Now take in mind that all of this is mostly at the beginning of the whole story, and they learn more and more after ye good old character development.

🖤 "has your oc killed or seriously wounded anyone before? have they broken someone's heart and/or broken someone's trust?"

Beyond their enemies? Mmmmh... Well, I can't quite spill the beans just yet, but let's just say that thinking that people can be easily fixed and being all-powerful with the sole purpose to have as much fun as you can for survival purposes is not a good combination...

[racke7]

Me vs Disgaea

So, a while back I finally beat D5 Carnage Baal (0*), and so a while after that I finally caved and picked up Disgaea 4.

The story was... mostly pretty interesting? Actually? I liked it. The various personalities and disjointed goals of the main protagonists was entertaining.

Then I hit post-game and started paging through how I was supposed to do things, and... I got very frustrated very quickly?

The Character-World works on Reincarnation, which is fine (it's actually a neat way to force players to actually use the Reincarnation-feature, which isn't really as much of a thing in D5).

The Character-World is also basically just an extension of the Item-World, with some added features to make it even more obnoxious. This is very much NOT fine.

The Item-World is... not something I'm looking forward to at all, because I miss my Sage and Comet-Asagi very blatantly, and it seems like it operates somehow differently to D5, and I feel like I'm staring at a learning-curve that I really don't want to touch.

EXP feels... hindered? I guess this is what happens when you can't simply have a character chug potions from lvl 1 to 9,999. But it's a bit annoying, and I'm not super-thrilled about it.

There are magic-skills going all the way up to Peta, instead of ending at Tera (like in D5), but outside of very specific Classes (as in, not even "Skull", but "Fire Skull" vs "Wind Skull") they can't learn anything higher than Omega? What the fuck? That's so obnoxious.

Upgrading the Skill also ties into its range and AOE? Which is a little bit annoying? Not the worst system, but I prefer D5's where range was "trained", and AOE and Power were separate.

The weird Cam-Pain map was... very frustrating? I'm very much missing the ease-of-use of the D5's Squads.

The Character-World and Cam-Pain being required for teaching others Skills, instead of just putting them in the Skill-Squad, or grabbing a Scroll from the Character-World to teach it to anyone at all? Also not great, in comparison.

Weapon-Mastery not being a thing that you can train, but instead an inherent trait in a character? Cursed. So fucking cursed. But okay, whatever, it's just going to make the Item-World so much worse (because I'd have to max-out more weapons), and that already sounds hellish.

But the Evilities man. Where are they? Why do I have this single slot for picking hundreds of fucking Evilities? How am I supposed to create incredible and interesting synergies with two fucking slots?

Which is why I picked up my D5-excel-sheet again, just to be able to min-max something.

And like... I'm kind of really annoyed at myself? Because for some reason my "15x Shamans"-build doesn't actually hold up? I don't know what the hell I had active at the time, but I can't get the numbers to be even vaguely competitive with Skull/Valkyrie/Pirate/Magic-Knight.

See, according to my damage-calculations, Shamans clock-in at around 48B dmg. The other generic build mentioned clocks-in at 54B dmg, and Zetta with an updated build clocks-in at 55B.

(Adell in Revenge-Mode blows literally everything else out of the water with 77B dmg, but that's because +200% ATK is bullshit.)

Somewhat disappointingly, I played around with some other unique-characters and:

Red Magnus + Goldion (Revenge-Mode): 52B

Rozalin (Revenge-Mode): 49B

Zeroken: 49B

Seraphina (with Killia, and attacking a male): 49B

Asagi (original, and attacking an "Overlord"): 48B

Etna: 44B

NISA: 43B

Girl Laharl: 42B

Fuka: 41B

Flonne (Revenge-Mode) + Salvatore (with gun): 40B

Interestingly? Bodyguards is required in only a few of these builds, which means that for a lot of them, they only care about the stat-boost from the Foot-Soldier Squad (they need 70% stat-boost, and can get 50% through Evilities).

Which of course made me rethink the whole set-up I've had with the Squads so far, as well as reconsider Salvatore and Goldion as surprisingly useful if you've clogged the Foot-Soldier Squad with better units. (Though why the fuck you'd need more than 20 dmg-dealers, when only 15 can fit on a map, I couldn't tell you.)

However, all of that thinking made me start looking at how I've built my Comet-Asagi, and... I feel like it kind of depends?

Like, Generic-Asagi gets +30% stats from the Asagi-Squad being filled, but that doesn't really matter long-term (aka, when they're already geared to max) because they'd still need an Evility to get up to 70% (the Squads only give 20%/25% respectively), and wouldn't get better stats if higher than that.

Also, there's the matter of Star-resistance in the enemies.

With 0% resistance, the builds shake out to:

Asagi-Generic: 33B (without Elemental-Force), 30B (with Elemental-Force), and 35B (with Elemental-Force and Star-resistance Curry)

Sage/Magic-Knight: 36B, and 41B (with Star-resistance Curry)

Which is... blatantly in favor of the Sage and Magic-Knight, holy shit.

And those same builds but with 25% Star-resistance in enemies:

Asagi-Generic: 33B -> 25B

Sage: 36B -> 27B

So, using the anti-resist Evility:

Asagi-Generic: 25B (without Elemental-Force), 24B (with Elemental-Force), 28B (with Elemental-Force + Curry)

Sage: 28B, and 33B (with Curry)

So... Sage (or Magic-Knight) wins basically every single time. As long as you have the stats/gear for it.

But obviously, you need the Asagi in order to get the gear that you want, so that's a bit... hmm...

(A Sage using Land-Decimator clocked in at 12B/atk and 3x attacks without extra-aid from Sage+Maid.)

And none of those stats are really truthful if you start using Angel-Leadership and other Support-Evilities on the map.

But, all-in-all, I can say that I'm honestly kind of disappointed in a lot of the things that I thought would be a lot stronger than they turned out to be.

(Like, who cares if a Unique-Character can almost match the Best-Generic-Build? Why do I need one of those, when I can have 15 of the generics?)

So, I went from "I finished D5, let's play D4" to "I finished the story of D4 and fuck these game-mechanics" to "let's see if we can min-max even more stuff in D5" to "I should rethink my entire collection of characters in D5".

As for Disgaea 6? Not touching that one. And Disgaea 7? Hmm... I'll wait for a sale, for now.

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts: 359, Place of Learning

Sorry for the lateness on this one, gang; was tied up with other writings. Look for next week's to be more timely, and in the meantime, hit the jump!

"The messenger-bodyguard said he'll be going up top too!"

I hadn't caught this in just the scanlation, but comparing the official here to the leaks for Chapter 360, I guess that'd be Mirio, huh?  I suppose he or whoever put down his game piece in the planning session figured he wouldn't be much use against Shigaraki—his phasing is great, and his fighting style even better, but a normal human punch is not going to do anybody much good against Noumu-style toughness.

Comparatively, his phasing probably allows him to get around the interior of the structure much faster, which is an advantage when supplies need to get from one point to another ASAP.  But then when ShigAFO turns into an enormous barricade of hands, well, being able to phase suddenly looks a little more useful top-side, huh?  I had been wondering as of the end of this chapter why he hadn't been with his Big Three compatriots from the start, so I'm glad to see this little nod.

The business course stuff:

I have somewhat mixed thoughts, but on the whole, I rather like it.  On the one hand, I think "promoting heroes" has a tang of propaganda to it, which is rather at odds with the (nominal) objectivity of something like news footage or documentary filmmaking.  Of course, any kind of information can be skewed by its presentation, but it seems to me that talking of hero promotion, of image and presentation to the masses, is inherently embracing a certain narrative you're trying to put across.  Spiral Stack Hair Boy there even says it outright: He and his classmates are preserving a record of Heroes Victorious.  They are not there to preserve a record of e.g. The Tragic Death of Shimura Tenko or what-have-you.

On the other hand, I like Spiral Stack firing back—against an uncommonly young parroter of the "you kids and your cellphones" complaint!—that having records of events is valid and extremely important work.  He remains vague about "past wars",(1) but given how recently and repeatedly Skeptic and Dabi have demonstrated the impact of being able to choose how to frame a story,(2) the heroes would be wise to stop letting villains control the narrative!

In short, I'm dubious of the narrative that the Business Course kids are presenting, but I like that the story is engaging with the idea of how the events it's portraying look within the world.  It's good follow-through from earlier iterations of the topic, from aforementioned villain meddling to all the eyes on Endeavor, and even the whole discussion about heroes-as-entertainment versus heroes-with-human-needs.

Bakugou Stuff:

I like the jolt of panic in Bakugou's eye when ShigAFO breaks his arm; it feels like a relatively rare expression for him.

I had jotted down in my notes, "Bakugou thinking about the gap is good Endeavor paralleling," but I gotta say I liked it better before it got localized with baseball metaphors.  I already know there's a baseball OVA coming out, Caleb!  You don't need to remind me of all the inane tripe meant to move keychains and vinyl standees we're getting instead of anything remotely interesting!

I don't have anything in particular to say about the whole "Bakugou is, in AFO's opinion, closer to Deku than anyone else."  Frankly, as frustrating as it is being a villain fan at times, I'm extremely glad that I have barely any investment in Bakugou and negative investment in Deku, because I can't even imagine how much it must suck to be an even-keeled fan of either character trying to find any content that isn't vapidly OOC or vindictively mean-spirited.  Good Christ, the spoiler tags were still a shitshow two full weeks after the initial leaks for this chapter.

Aizawa (and Mandalay):

The electromagnetic interference could be legit, but also feels a bit retconned, particularly the handwave of Aizawa protesting that she got Midoriya a bit ago, so why can't she now?  Is the erratic communication going to serve a dramatic purpose at all?  Is it just to keep Hori from needing to update the reader on what Deku ran into last time we saw him when he isn't ready to transition scenes yet?

Also, Aizawa, exactly how fast do you think Deku is going to get here from halfway across the country?  Japan is seriously not that small.  Honestly, the American jets picking him up really is your best bet.

I enjoy his desperation, though.  S'good crunch.

On UA and the Big Three:

Man.  They really did just take the whole school up, huh?  Somehow I'd been under the impression that it was a fake, that Troy Fortress, not UA itself, but nope, that's absolutely UA.  What happened to all the refugees?  Are they still in the building, or hiding out underground?  Were they evacuated out to the refugee housing on the campus before the school took off?  But then why didn't one of AFO's spies contact him to let him know?  What was the point of the whole thing where the facility connects to Shiketsu if the school was just going to fly off into the sky alone?

It's—a shame, I guess.  I feel like there ought to be a lot of power in seeing the school trashed like this—it's been the main setting of the series for three hundred and fifty chapters!  It's the place where a bunch of friendships have been made, powers forged, little day-to-day victories and losses accumulated, all things a student would remember upon seeing their high school demolished. 

Also too, the symbol that UA represents is in ruins, the Number One Hero School that produces the very best heroes, the ivory tower the students were kept in that controlled what knowledge they gained and, for a very long time, cut them off from the world and the people they were training to protect.

UA needed to go down, I think, as so many other structures in this society do, but I wish the one toppling its towers could be Shigaraki Tomura, who once wanted to be a hero, for whom the whole building has been converted into a deathtrap rather than—per the title—a place of learning.  Instead, we get the AFO Vestige, whose only attachment to hero schools has been plucking promising quirks out of them like grapes from the vine.

Further, the students we get reacting to the destruction aren't the students I'd expect—the students of 1-A, the ones whose schooling we've spent the entire series watching.  Sure, the Big Three, as seniors, spent three times as long there as the main cast, so I'm sure they have a lot of regrets seeing those thrashed classrooms.  But the audience has never been privy to Mirio and the rest's school lives, so what they're remembering and mourning here is entirely opaque.

The only emotion I feel looking at the three of them is sympathy pangs for Suneater, because Suneater's one of my favorite students, and he gives me moe aggression.  That's entirely down to my being predisposed to empathy for Suneater when he's faltering, however, not because the story's given me any reason whatsoever to care about his feelings about seeing his school trashed.

Also, to come full circle back to the messenger/bodyguard, it's kind of eyeroll-inducing that Lemillion is now parroting the talk about holding out until Midoriya shows up.  Maybe it's just to make Bakugou look more singular next week, maybe it's the streak of pragmatism Mirio learned from Nighteye, but it does feel kind of a shame that the young hero who ran ahead to fight Overhaul solo is now also trapped in that mentality that only One For All can strike the necessary decisive blow.

I critique him now, but Mirio will have a much better showing in the next chapter, and I'm looking forward to writing quite a bit about it.

Odds & Ends:

Hori's dedication to Ame-comi-style sound effect lettering continues to impress.

Oh my god, Nejire's girlfriend complaining about her hair.  XD  I did laugh.

Shigaraki's hair not even getting solid black outlines anymore, even in closeups.  Good stuff.  Wish I wasn't so soured on the anime so I could more genuinely anticipate seeing it in color.

That heavy black silhouette of Shigaraki against the shattered outline of UA fuckin' rules.  Wish it was more "him."

---

1: But talking about concrete records of wars at all is a possibly interesting choice, given Japan's noted tendency towards historical revisionism re: Japanese warcrimes.

2: Not just Dabi's video, but also Skeptic's doctoring of the Deika footage.

[filthyjanuary]

1,3,5,7,9,20,36,77,91 take ur pick i lveo. numbers also sendinggood vibes hope u feel better soon!!!!!!!

wehhhh thank u <3

1. Are you bothered by your cosmic insignificance?

yes absolutely yes, i have existential crises over the meaning of life and existence and my own impact literally every day and it manifests most strongly into my crippling fear of death

3. Do you really think there is somebody for everybody?

like yes and no? i think if you put the effort in and want that type of relationship i think you can find it, but i don't think everyone wants that and thus will put the effort into it. i don't think anyone is like inherently unloveable or whatever though. like if serial killers get sent love letters anything is possible.

5. Do you have to be related to be family?

again yes and no. i think the abstract mushy idealized positive associations of "family" aren't necessarily tied to like... blood/legal relations and your actual family can and often won't give you those feelings, but i'm also annoying as fuck about semantics so even though i love and support the concept of "found family" as envisioned on the internet, you'll never hear me referring to a loving and supportive group of friends/outsiders/misfits who are bonded together as family. bc i think family for better or for worse refers to that exact circumstance of being tied together forever, like it or not. but yes i do think strong friend groups can take the place in your life that your family unit isn't stepping up to the plate for.

7. Are you in love? Do you want to be?

no and yes..... wehhhhh but i'm also like awkward and introverted and never leave my house but also get sick and tired of dating apps very quickly so it's not going to happen. i have feelings for men who are either fictional or will never know i exist and it's very annoying and frankly i blame this dysfunction on being in an all girls school from ages 13-18 it warped me forever.

9. Would you be happy with a life without romance?

i don't knooooow how to answer this one, i'll be real with you buddy. like i want to say yes but i've also literally never HAD a romance so i do have this very idealized version in my head that i know isn't realistic at all. like i know a romance wouldn't fix me but also the movie that plays in my head says YES it would fix me. so like i think as long as i DONT know what it's like and am always wondering.... i'll want to know and thus not be happy.

20. Do you want a grand adventure?

yes but i am also as previously established chickenshit so i don't take risks or initiative so while in THEORY i would like adventure, i would need to be the secondary character following someone else's lead for it to be even plausible.

36. Have you ever met someone who had a very similar personality to your own? Did you get along?

i don't think so? but i also have no idea what kind of person i am like i struggle really hard to conceptualize what other people see or associate with me and so i feel like i would not be able to recognize myself in others.

77. Is there comedy in all tragedy and tragedy in all comedy?

no i don't think so. i think some people can maybe find comedy in tragedy or even tragedy in comedy but i don't think they're concepts that can't be separated from one another.

91. Is hate as strong as love? Who do you hate?

yes i think so and i don't know i think hate requires a certain level of like... emotional investment and i don't think about anyone particular enough to say definitively i hate them. like i guess i hate abstract concepts of types people but i don't actively put any emotional vigour into thinking about them all that much unless they're brought to my attention. all that being said fuck nazis and fuck terfs.

send me numbers

[supertransural]

My Bloody Valentine, what the hell

Okay. I know I'm probably not writing a hot take with this one, but I just needed to get all my tangled up thoughts out in the form of coherent strings of words ("coherent" is debatable as you'll probably find out if you read this entire thing).

So here I was, watching a random commentary video, and this scene from 5x14 My Bloody Valentine was included in it:

Now that. That's a bi flag. We know how much care set designers put into the details of the scenes we see. This is an episode centered around love. The cupid here talks about "Love", as in, the broad term. The "all-encompassing" term, if you will. He also says he "loves love", which I personally interpret as "in all its shapes and forms", and I don't believe that interpretation of what the cupid is saying is that far-fetched, after all, he kind of is Love (with a capital L). So what does that scene mean?

Let's find out.

First of all, I just feel like I should mention that I think pansexuality would be a better way to "represent" that sort of sentiment around what Love is, but if I'm not mistaken, the pansexual flag was created after this episode aired, and even if the word "pansexual" has existed for a pretty long time in various studies and areas (usually in psychology, if I understand correctly?), and has been used in LGBTQ+ spaces for a while too, it's still not as "commonly known" in the day-to-day life of cishet people, at least not in the same way that being bi is.

That being said, here's one more little nugget before I do a quick analysis of the scene. The idea of being bi is probably the closest thing that any not-very-informed-but-supportive-ish cishet person could think of if they wanted to relate the concept of "love for the sheer sake of love, having love for anyone, love of the masses" to actual characters and how they're able to love their peers (or more accurately, which peers). It's not so surprising to me that this would be the flag chosen by set designers when trying to pass on the message of "this interaction is about love as a general concept, this cupid is love, this cupid loves everyone, and will bless any couple, and yeah in that scene two out of the three characters (other than the cupid himself) stand in front of that light, no reason haha". It makes sense.

Now, onto the actual substance of this.

First of all, because it's funny, Dean why are you literally staring at this cupid's dick, honestly, what the fuck, Sam is averting his eyes (good call), Cas looks like he's only interested in analyzing the cupid's face (more on that later) and nothing else, why are you staring downwards why why why and why (hello, jacting choices). Second of all, because it's funny too, why do you look slightly flustered, in an oh-god-this-is-not-a-drill-shit-oh-god-fuck-embarrassed way? I mean Sam looks like he's been to hell and back, but not flustered.

It's also specifically interesting to see both Cas and Dean being the ones standing together in front of that light. It happens just a little while before, right here:

They're. Staring at a cupid, whose job it is to bless couples, who's Love incarnate, he hugged these two idiots first before getting to Sam, which means something and I'm not exactly sure what but, if you still have braincells (unlike me) please tell me what you conclude of those facts compiled together.

In this particular scene, I don't think the flag is actually a pointer to specific characters being bi, I think it's more of a broad "yeah these guys love a little different" kind of thing. For example, we see Cas in front of that light a lot.

This is season 5, he's barely starting to understand what emotions are, but he's already faithful to Dean and his cause, he's beginning to get what liking things, what caring means. He doesn't figure it all out until way later (in my personal opinion, that is. And I mean... 15x18 anyone?) no, at that point he's driven by things like want, need, yeah, I'll say it, lust, or simple candid curiosity. But that ties into the idea that right now, in that episode, Cas' understanding of "Love" is very broad. He doesn't understand details yet, the only detail he knows is Dean vs the World, and all he gets about that is "the world matters to Dean, there's probably a reason for that, if I follow him around enough I'll probably discover it, and I trust him enough to lead me there". He's still an angel, fairly through and through. He's curious, though.

Refer back to that previous gif, Cas is watching with acute interest what that cupid is doing. Prior to this scene, he's known the "mission" that cupids uphold for thousands of years, but I doubt he's ever really looked at it with the help of the lens of actual humans (read: Dean). He's interested, this cupid's job is to create love, and that seems to be something inherently tied to what makes his charge... himself. That much he knows. Again, probably not in detail, probably not that precisely, but he's got a sense that this cupid represents something he doesn't know and hasn't felt before, yet something Dean and Sam are accustomed to, and driven by. So yeah, he's curious.

Now here's the thing. We see Dean standing in front of that light, both alone, with the cupid, and with Cas. On several occasions.

(something something something bi flag in the background something something something character centered around love something something something the word "dick" something something something what the fuck CW)

We see the cupid standing in front of the light (scroll back up), and we see Cas in front of the light, with the cupid, alone, and with Dean. What about Sam?

...Yeah, no. I replayed that scene several times and I didn't find one instance where we see Sam even remotely lighted by that flag. And when I say remotely, I mean like this:

The light being somewhat noticeable in the background. Even when we see Sam after he moves a bit, like so:

The light is nowhere to be seen. That's after the cupid's left too, so it makes sense the flag wouldn't be relevant anymore: the entity that it represents isn't there to give it meaning anymore. I mean, during that entire scene Sam's a bit (gross understatement, I know) of a background character, but that's simply because he's not the main focus of what the cupid and the flag mean.

Dean though. Dean's a focus alright. No one can ever convince me otherwise, he's bi. That's just a fact at this point. But that's not all the flag and the cupid mean when relating to him here. He's beginning to form a type of bond with Cas, albeit small. He's starting to open up a door that he's never really noticed before: the one that lets people other than blood relatives (or close runner-ups like Bobby) in. And he's facing that head on, like how he's facing the cupid. Both he and Cas do that actually, in their own way. They're looking straight into the eyes of the unknown (Cas literally looks into the eyes of the cupid): for Cas it's this strange foreign thing called emotion, and for Dean it's letting a known emotion be directed at someone new. They're the ones that talk to the cupid, not Sam, because they have things to be curious or apprehensive about, in the context of love (or different love).

They stand in the highlight of that flag, because they're the ones discovering new things (hello, 10x16 speech, yes I'm relating a random scene with a funny light to a speech 5 seasons later, leave me be, I'm insane) and not Sam, who's for one: human, so he already knows what love is, and two: way more in touch with his feelings than his brother. Basically, the concept of Love being something strange, unknown, new, different, scary, worth punching it in the face for, deserving of focused study, take your pick, doesn't really apply to him.

How could I relate this to destiel you ask? Very easily, I say. This, theydies and gentlethems, is a representation of the first step both Cas and Dean take towards each other. A toe in the waters of a frightening and captivating new thing. And again, they face it in a really direct manner.

That is... Right up until the cupid mentions John and Mary. That's when it goes downhill and we understand that whatever Dean and Cas have going on is about to take years of work and a million steps still need to be taken.

Exhibit a:

Look at Cas' face, when the cupid mentions the Big Plan. He starts by studying the cupid (again, curiosity), then looks at Dean, then Dean briefly looks back (perhaps back at Cas but that's debatable), and that's when Cas looks down, embarrassed. I read that as: "Ah yes, as interesting of a concept this cupid is, as fascinating as these two humans' perspective on his mission is, it's still dictated by Heaven, and they're not going to like that. I'm still dictated by Heaven (as I should (???)) and... He's not going to like that. (???)".

Annnnd then Dean punches the cupid in the face, which... Good point, Cas, he indeed doesn't "like that".

So what are those steps highlighted by the ending of that scene? Well, Cas is an angel. Dean is clueless about so many things. He doesn't have faith. Cas isn't exactly free. It's just always about the plan and the mission, whatever comes up in their tumultuous adventures together, it always brings them right back to the core of why there's still such a long way to go: who they are.

All in all, that scene is just. Imagery there, imagery here, reference after reference, big red arrows (yes, I'm using "arrows" in the context of a cupid episode, I fully intend this sentence to have a double meaning) pointing at Dean and at Cas and at them both together. It's not necessarily a direct reference at either of them being bi, although for obvious reasons that's not exactly off the table either, it's sort of a piece of foreshadowing for what's to come, both in that season itself, and the rest of their relationship (here I use "relationship" as a term meaning something like "friendship-that-evolves-into-something-more-later-on").

In short, I'd like to conclude (you can use that as a TL;DR) by quoting my brain when I first saw that flag and connected a couple dots:

"lol bi".

[superdweebs]

Noticed someone citing that Kirby vs. Fascist Phone-Trollers anecdote on your other page, and I think they missed a crucial bit: Jack was not *initiating* violence. He wasn't trawling the block with a crowbar, intent on clubbing the next blue-eyed kid who sorta seemed to fit the bill. He was *responding* to a mealy-mouthed calling-out, and while I'm sure he would've thrown down if said shitheads had stuck around, that still isn't the Righteous Pre-emptive Aggro(C) being flogged by this pundit.

I generally try to avoid politics on this blog, but since this current situation is tied into comics as well as politics, I give to you a comic history lesson:

Back during World War II, the majority of the American public was in fact initially opposed to punching Nazis.

Seriously! The fighting over in Europe was viewed as “those silly Europeans are at it again the way they have been for the past several centuries really”. It was Somebody Else’s Problem Certainly Not America’s Problem.

Meanwhile, the Holocaust was at the time not something widely known outside of the populations being affected, and even those who did know often didn’t believe it was true or as bad/extensive as it was claimed to be. Plenty of countries, including America, were resistant to taking in Jewish or other Holocaust refugees.

It was not until Pearl Harbor got attacked that the Americans switched to approving of punching Nazis, because at that point it was a matter of literally self-defense. That is when punching Nazis became seen as OK: not because Nazis were horrible people, but because they punched us first.

So when the folks at Marvel created that iconic picture of Captain America punching Nazis? That was a radical statement back then. That was a very, very ballsy, controversial thing to do. That was Jewish creators saying before Pearl Harbor, “This should be America’s problem to address, dammit!” at a time when they were the only Americans being affected and so the majority of Americans didn’t care. It was not something taken as granted to cheer on, and if the Jewish folks had gone around back punching Nazis just for being jerks they would have been viewed unfavorably and arrested for assault and battery.

And as you say, even that iconic moment people talk about wasn’t Kirby going around punching Nazis just for saying rotten things, that was Kirby threatening to engage in self-defense towards someone who made a threat of violence against him first.

Plus ironically that threat was made in response to the statement of a Captain America punching Hitler, because, again, the majority of the American public didn’t see that as a thing we should be doing, though only a minority were as big jerks about their disapproval as that guy who threatened Kirby.

Because you see, the thing is: Superhero comics are a fantasy. They are a fantasy where generally the bad guys are obviously bad guys you have a moral license to punch and the good guys are the people with the moral license to do the punching. ***

But the real world doesn’t work that way, especially in this era. Social, political, and economic power often matter more than physical power. And too many the people with social, political, and economic power are morally terrible people. And those terrible people can and will wield that social, political, and economic power against you, successfully, if you ever punch them in a way that doesn’t look good to the general public that fuels their power.

Because, I mean, Nick Spencer is left-wing! Like, the guy has constantly showed left-wing sensibilities and politics. A large part of his Sam Wilson run has involved sticking it to the right and promoting leftist ideas, to the point where he even pissed off Fox News for a time, and Nick Spencer has frequently expressed left-wing sentiments on his own time. Making Cap a Nazi was even borne in part from the classic far-left belief that all patriotic white people must be white supremacists. So this sudden idea that Nick Spencer is right-wing is totally and utterly bizarre when compared to the facts of what Spencer has historically stated and promoted.

No, the fact that Nick Spencer is saying punching people for talking is bad should tell you “the majority of the American public will view you as morally bad for engaging in violence for reasons other than self-defense”, not “Spencer somehow got a magic brain transplant and did an instant 180 to become right-wing”. ****

People like to complain about respectability politics, but the cold hard truth and reality is that politics is in the end a PR game. It’s a PR game where the people who get the best PR among people who go out and actually vote are the people who get into office and become able to pass policies. And it’s a PR game where the politicians choose to pass or veto policies based in large part on what will curry favor with the people who get them into office.

So the cold hard truth and reality is that being morally and/or factually right does not always mean anything. No matter how morally and factually right it might be to punch Nazis, if it’s not seen as socially right (and therefore usually also politically and/or economically right), you will lose and be punished.

So you then have to ask yourself whether the consequences of your group losing and being punished are worth the satisfaction of “morally justified” violence. And since the consequences for this round of the left losing socially was putting into power Republicans who fully intend to do things that will badly harm lots of people, I feel the answer is no, losing socially is not a fair trade for being morally right.

Then add onto all of that the problem that the group of people calling for violence against terrible people are often the same group of people notoriously terrible at discerning who is and isn’t really a terrible person. This is a group of people which has a historical record of continually strawmanning and twisting things people say, of profiling people based solely on their headgear and clothing and facial hair, of doing things like hypocritically saying that your skin color or sex or orientation alone automatically makes you inherently bigoted or other negative assessments. So on top of going around punching people for reasons other than self-defense being generally not a good idea, these people who want to punch Nazis these people may not even necessarily correctly discern who should be punched.

So all in all, please don’t invoke the ghost of Kirby to go around saying you should punch people for speech alone, especially since one more point: That iconic Kirby moment people talk about is Kirby having to respond to someone wanting to punch him for speech alone.

No, the real, successful way to fight the Nazis and other scum right now is to build your own social, economic, and political power high enough to fight them on their own battlefield unless they degenerate things into physical violence. Because only then will you get to punch awful people and still come out of it on top in the ways that ultimately matter logistically.

I won’t respond to any replies on this account to this specific post, FYI, partly because I don’t want political discourse to take over this blog, and partly because quite frankly most of what I’ve said here is simply reporting fact and the rest I feel logically follows from that fact, so there’s very little of this I view as up for debate anyway.

And anyone who would want to make any response about my being right-wing, a Nazi, a Trump supporter, justifying violence, victim-blaming, or so on, would do nothing but prove my point above about a certain group of people being prone to strawmanning/twisting and generally being bad judges of character, since I would hope it would be obvious from how often I post about minority characters, have lamented about comic titles promoting diversity not doing well, and was despondent after Trump got voted in, that none of those things are the case.

*** To address the people using the specific argument: “Nick Spencer writes comics about people punching bad guys, how can he say we should use polite discourse instead of punching“: Well, you see, Nick Spencer is this thing we call “an adult of sound enough mind to tell the difference between reality and fantasy” which is a concept the people who are asking that question should really look into.

**** And yes I am aware of Spencer’s “SJW Brigade”, which should, again, tell you how even left-wing people view stereotypical SJW behavior, not, again, that Spencer somehow magically became right-wing out of nowhere. It should be an informational lesson about some of the negative ways average people perceive leftist causes, not as a reason to knee-jerk classify people who are on your side as “the enemy” just because they criticized you, even if you feel it was unfair criticism.