#and just an incapability of establishing any decisive action or strong convictions in the characters

[shellem15]

So I mentioned in another post that I had issues with Bells Hells' conversation with the Matron, and I thought I'd expand on that here:

Aside from the obvious "Bells Hells took the completely wrong conclusion from what the Matron was saying", I have some… gripes…with how that convo went.

To preface, I fucking CALLED the "Matron and Old God of Death (OGOD) had a thing" SO long ago!!! As soon as I heard fucking Purvan Suul say "none of the primes have felt challenges to their domains" I was like oop-- HOLD ON A MINUTE! The brainworms were COOKING can I say.

The only thing I didn't expect was that the Matron and OGOD worked on the rituals of ascension TOGETHER. I figured that they had a close (possibly romantic) relationship, I figured that he knew she was gonna replace him ahead of time and ultimately okayed it, I figured it was terribly tragic. I just didn't expect that he was an active participant in the process.

(If you want to see the full extent of my original Matron-OGOD theory/headcanon, you can find that post here.)

Anyways, I have mixed feelings about this reveal. I like most of it, for sure, and nothing about it is specifically problematic, but it just feels *off* to me for some reason. (Maybe because I had a whole ass headcanon laid out already lmao).

I think it's the part that he actively helped her create the ritual that bothers me. I remember another post discussing this more than me, about how it almost devalues her accomplishment, y'know? Almost implies that she *couldn't* have done it without his help.

I'm sure that wasn't the intent, of course, but it still rubbed me the wrong way. It's just not a necessary detail to have, I feel like. She could have her own ambitions for godhood, and could have loved him and wished to give him peace, and could do all of that without him *actively helping* her.

Now, we don't know what her ambitions for godhood were before they met, so we don't have all the context surrounding the situation. But that in itself is a problem: Why *don't* we know those ambitions? That feels important to mention, even briefly, so why was this part of the conversation *solely* focused on her relationship with the OGOD? BELLS HELLS DON’T CARE ABOUT THE GODS, this didn't really sway them either way.

Actually, I do know why there was so much focus on their relationship, which leads into my major issue with this conversation: The Raven Queen survived her ascension because of her love for the OGOD, and Bells Hells can do the impossible (contain Predathos as a vessel) through the power of ~love~.

*Big Sigh* Okay, here's the thing: I would be perfectly fine with this plot point if we HADN'T JUST COME BACK FROM DOWNFALL. AKA "LOVE WAS THERE, IT DIDN'T SAVE THEM" THE SERIES. WHAT DO YOU MEAN "You can do the impossible through the power of love"??? (The spirit of Arthur Aguefort possesses me) WE LITERALLY JUST SAW THAT NOT BE THE CASE!! Unless what we saw in Downfall was WRONG, apparently!? I guess the gods just DIDN'T LOVE EACH OTHER ENOUGH to reconcile huh? Pack it up, folks! We've solved the riddle! The gods just need to LOVE EACH OTHER MORE to fix all their problems!

(If I was one of the gods, and I overheard this shit, I would SMACK HER. The AUDACITY of this b1tch)

*Ahem* Anyways, now that I've calmed down, let me reiterate: Normally, I would be perfectly fine with this plot point. I quite enjoy a good "the power of love" story. But here's the thing: You cannot do this "power of love" thing immediately after you've *already disproven it* in a whole ass flashback-miniseries. Not only have you undermined the tragedy of the previous storyline, you're also setting yourself up for future plot holes and inconsistencies! Why bother playing out Downfall in the first place if it's major themes are just going to be immediately undermined?

It's just, the gods are beings of pure conviction. They are defined by their domains, and cannot act outside of them. The tragic thing is, when they fled Tengar so long ago, it WASN’T love that saved them, that made them real. The ACTIONS they took are what made them real, and they are bound to be ONLY those actions FOREVER. Whether they were motivated by love or not is ultimately irrelevant, because love didn’t define them, their convictions did, and still do.

They were doomed from the start, the actions that made them real are what damned them in the end. Because as beings of pure conviction, compromise is impossible. The Dawnfather HAS to be a guiding light and the Ruiner HAS to destroy and the Lord of Hells HAS to burn and the Everlight HAS to reach out to him and he HAS to lie and burn her in return because that’s *all they are*. And if their convictions are fundamentally at odds with each other, there is no room for reconciliation; it’s as unattainable to them as suddenly sprouting wings and flying is to us. That’s just not something we can do; no amount of love will make wings sprout from our backs. No amount of love between the gods will change their natures.

(And this logic applies to the gods and mortals as well! Aeor didn't fall because the Prime deities don't love mortals! It fell because the Gods' natures apply BOTH WAYS: The Dawnfather HAS to be a guiding light so Ayden HAD to try to save both Aeor and his siblings, he can't just selectively choose his nature when it's most convenient. And that ultimately doomed Aeor, because saving mortals and saving the Betrayers are inherently at odds with each other. Conversely, Asmodeus HAS to lie and lies hurt people so he will ALWAYS hurt both his siblings and mortals, so he was ALWAYS going to drop Aeor out of the sky. There was no other course of action. Love or hate was never going to change anything.)

The love was there, and it didn’t save them. In many ways, it just made things worse, desperately clinging to each other and hurting each other and the world in the process because the thought of separation is too painful to even consider. They love each other deeply but the love they have cannot outweigh their convictions, so the conflict of this inherent contradiction ends up destroying themselves and the world. Isn’t that what Downfall was trying to convey?

Bells Hells are seemingly the exact opposite of the gods. What conviction do they have, really? Except Orym and maybe Ashton, they all seem to just be along for the ride. No strong opinions either way. Which makes me question why Downfall was even included, because (ignoring the obvious in-text reasoning), a flashback sequence like that is, narratively, supposed to parallel your main story. It should highlight flaws within your main characters and show them what NOT to do. It should serve as a cautionary tale that motivates them and encourages character growth and self-reflection, not draw them into more indecision. Downfall didn't really change anything about Bells Hells, it didn't really influence their decisions much at all.

(This sucks, because I fucking LOVE Downfall! Why didn't it have more impact??? Why was it seemingly just forgotten about except to be used in cyclical debates that ultimately didn't go anywhere anyways???)

As Downfall established, love isn't a saving grace. Love is a motivator at best, a hindrance at worst. Love is second to conviction, to tangible action, which is what Bells Hells has been severely lacking. The gods failed Exandria and each other because their natures make them incapable of compromise, not because they didn't love each other enough. What should have been taken from this (in my opinion), is that Bells Hells MUST have strong convictions when taking any sort of tangible action, but they must ALSO have the flexibility to cooperate with others and compromise on certain issues for any actual positive change to occur.

The conversation with the Matron should have supported Downfall and helped guide Bells Hells towards this conclusion. It didn't actually have this effect, however, because although she did call out Bells Hells' indecisiveness (good) and encouraged them to decide for themselves (also good), this effect was immediately undermined by the whole "power of love" thing. Which only served to exacerbate Bells Hells' indecisiveness, which has ultimately culminated in the disappointed responses to the Big Button Push which just happened.

So yeah.

[linkspooky]

I agree with the parallels between tenko and eri but I remain resolute that Tenko is long gone and can't be saved at this point. If he was taken in by someone whom did properly teach him right from wrong as a child yes but Shigaraki is an adult that was raised to seek nothing but destruction and has committed many many murders at this point. People seem to ignore the fact that person might not want to be saved. 1/2

Eri is a child with very little agency of her own, but Shigaraki is an adult who can make conscious decisions of his own. I think either deku will save shigaraki by putting him out of his misery or shigaraki will show deku that he cant save everyone 2/2

Thank you for sending me this ask anon! Once again you’re free to have your own opinions, I just hope you’ll join me for a discusssion of ideas. 

Let’s choose to focus on this idea you have that Shigaraki is “Someone who is long gone”, because I believe the story establishes the opposite. I agree in fiction there are villains that need to be defeated rather than saved. The reason I am arguing that Shigaraki can be saved is not because I peresonally want him to be, or I believe he’s owed it, but because those ideas are present in the text itself. 

Shigaraki is a Villain who Fights other Villains

The reason Shigaraki is constantly facing off against other villains, is to make the comparison between them. To show that there are villains who unlike Shigaraki, are set in their ways and not capable of learning from their actions. These villains are past the point of no return in a way that Shigaraki isn’t because his arc is structured differently. Shigaraki is a character that experiences positive growths, whereas these villains are characters that experience negative growth and spiral out of control. 

The reason Shigaraki is constantly compared to other villains is to show that he is not the same as them, because he can do better. 

1. Shigaraki and Stain

Shigaraki and Stain are foils mostly in what direct opposites they are. Shigaraki was raised to become a villain, Stain is someone who was on the hero path who decided to become a villain. They both try to destroy heroes but for different means, Stain is someone who believes in hero society and wants heroes to improve, whereas Shigaraki wants the destruction of heroes.

Shigaraki believes heroes are incapable of saving anyone and they provide a false peace. Stain believes that heroes are an ideal, and they should save everyone. Stain considers himself to be righteous, while Shigaraki’s entire identity is built around him being a villain who wants to destroy for no reason. 

Stain is driven by a grand cause, Shigaraki works in antithesis of a cause. Their only similaritiy is that both of them are sick of the world the way it is and want to disrupt it. They are total opposites that have one thing in common, and Stain pretending to be a hero even while acting as a villain is the exact thing that Shigaraki hates. He even laughs at the fact that Stain believes his actions have a positive effect of the world. Shigaraki being someone fundamentally at his core someone who rejects everything.

At first it seems that Stain is the superior villain because he at least has morals he follows, and a code of honor. As opposed to Shigaraki who seems like a child throwing a tantrum who just wants to rampage, and destroy and get away with it. 

However, important to the comparison between the two characters. Shigaraki hates righteousness and does not want anything positive to come out of his actions so why does Shigaraki turn out to be more sympathetic of a character in the end. Simple, stain’s flaws cause his ruin, whereas Shigaraki’s flaws are something he grows from. Stain’s main flaw is his pride. 

Despite saying that he wants to improve the world with his actions, Stain decides everything on what he personally thinks is best. Due to the fact that he’s doing this entirely alone, his views have become warped. Stain can justify almost everything for his supposed good cause. He goes from wanting to purge heroes that are genuine problems like Endeavor, to trying to kill Children because they were witnesses to his crime.

The main flaw in Stain is that he fights alone, and because of that he thinks he’s absolutely in the right and can justify anything to himself for the sake of ideals. When he is like this, he cannot grow or change. Stain loses a battle that is simply a matter of numbers, he easily disables Iida, but then loses when Todoroki and Deku come to back him up. Stain had conviction, but it turned into stubborness and pride when he decided he had to save the world entirely by himself. 

Not only that but Stain’s overreliance on his idenpdence and physical strength shows that he is repeating the abuses of the hero system he himself thinks is rotted. The reason the system is wrong is because people rely too much on individuals with strong and flashy quirks like Endeavor. Individual strength is something that has come to matter far more than saving people. Yet, here is the way Stain wages his war, he picks out weak heroes and kills them, and does so by using superior strength to cull them. In trying to destroy Endeavor’s ideas, due to his methodology stain ends up reinforcing him and turning into the exact kind of hero, one who preeches survival of the fittest.

Just like Endeavor he stops caring about the victims caught in the crossfire of his actions. He gets far less choosy as he goes on, and starts killing people who are not the corrupt heroes he claims to be weeding out. 

What does Shigaraki do immediately after losing to Stain. He starts making allies, and using them in smarter ways rather than trying to handle everything by himself with the use of the Nomu AFO provides him. Shigaraki, unlike Stain, is able to make and keep allies.

Shigaraki cannot find a cause that people believe in, so he starts bonding with his allies as a person and gets them to believe in him as a person. Shigaraki is capable of genuinely connecting to people in a way that Stain is not, which supports his grown as a person. 

2. Shigaraki and Chisaki

Unlike Shigaraki and stain, Chisaki and Shigaraki actually have several similarities in common. They are both heirs to the crimminal underworlds who have ambitions to rule over the underworld. They are both also abandoned children who were taken in and raised by a crimminal to ultimately be a tool of that person. They both have in their possession, allies that would die for them. They both act out of a central desire to please their father figure who in the end regards them as only a tool. They are both intellectual cold thinker types who lead a gang of eccentric. 

Yet, the difference between the two of them becomes as clear as night and day in the way they treat their allies. Once again, with their conflict it’s established why Shigaraki is someone capable of changing his ways, whereas Chisaki is someone doomed to fail due to his own flaws. 

Chisaki is someone who sees allies as completely expendable. That they exist as pawns to be used and nothing else. His criticism of Shigaraki is not how he mistreated allies in the past, but that he did not make proper use of them. He only sees people as how they can best be used.

Shigaraki’s response is not to make better use of his allies. He does the opposite of Chisaki, and starts to value the lives of the allies around him more. He learns to see worth in life when Shigaraki had absolutely no regard for human life before this. 

Not only that, but he opens up to his allies as a person. This is even said to be the main difference between Chisaki’s precepts and the League of Villains.

Shigaraki takes off his mask and becomes far more of a person in front of his allies. We are supposed to notice his change he is even drawn differently. We’re meant to compare this to the face he showed to Deku the last time he took his mask off, and realize that the face he presents to his allies is now much different. 

Chisaki is unable to see any value in life, especially in the people underneath him because ultimately he himself is a tool. He is never able to earn the recognition from the leader of the Yakuza he wants, because he can never be that man’s son, at best he is a good tool. Which is why he himself spirals into tragic failure at the end of his arc.

Shigaraki and Chisaki are both victims in the same sense. At their heart both of them are trying to pay back the man who took them in. However, I do not go out of my way to say that Chisaki is going to be saved because that is not what his arc was leading to. 

Chisaki showed nothing but negative growth. He just spiraled towards the end. The plot goes out of its way to show that Chisaki is fixated and stuck in his ways, while at the same time Shigaraki is capable of change. The plot even gives a reason for this, Chisaki is closed off to the others around them and only sees them as tools. Shigaraki starts to see his allies as people, and because he takes their thoughts and feelings into consideration changes in his interactions with them.

Even Chisaki’s own childhood friend is considered one of the expendable ones. Not only that, but we have that same friend directly say that Chisaki is so incredibly focused and set in his ways that it’s almost distrubing. 

Chisaki gives people worth by using them. Shigaraki gives outcasts a place to belong, the comparison between the two of them shows Shigaraki as growing and Chisaki is not. 

3. Meta Liberation Army

Shigaraki and Re-destro are also characters with several similarities. They are both raised to be the heir of a villain because of who they happened to be born to, Shigaraki because he is Nana’s grandson, and Re-Destro is a bastard son who inherits the burdens of a father he never met.

They were both raised in an extremely cult-like environment, and groomed to be villains by people who did not care about their development as people but rather how they could best be used as symbols for a cause. Rikiya was there to inspire the followers of Destro and carry on his will, Shigaraki was raised to cling only to negative emotions and be a symbol of fear. 

In that regard, Re-Destro is every bit the victim that Shigaraki is. They are both child soldiers of a sort, raised for a cause that was not theirs. Of course they see no value in life, because the both of them have been kept from the outside world for so long and have had their perspectives entirely manipulated by people who pretty much dictated their entire childhoods. 

Yet, once again we see in the comparison, Shigaraki is someone who is capable of changing in a positive way, whereas Re-Destro only experiences negative character development. A major difference is how they treat their allies.

Rikiya raises people to be completely expendable and die for a cause, and clearly values ideas far more than he does individual lives. He plans an attack and ends up sacrificing hundreds of people against the league of villains because he does not like their reputation. As opposed to Shigaraki who gets the entire league to agree to a plan to save one of its members because every member of the league is equally valuable to him. 

Shigaraki is capable of reaching his people and connecting them on a personal level, because unlike Rikiya who just does exactly what the cult that raised him tells him to do and only accepts other people’s values, Shigaraki is starting to create an identity of his own away from All for One. Rikiya believes that it’s an honor and a burden to follow the destiny that was thrown on his shoulders as a child, where Shigaraki knows ultimately that growing into what All for One wants to be is something that will never satisfy him.

Shigaraki differentiates himself from Re-Destro because instead of trying to chain himself to it, Shigaraki is someone desperately trying to free himself from the history that burdens him.

Shigaraki wants to escape his past and develop into his own person, and he also wants the same for his allies around them. That is why he unlike Re-Destro has a character arc.

Shigaraki’s arc is about growing into his own person outside of AFO’s influence, and because of that it makes no sense for him to just die as the villain that AFO wanted him to be. The best resolution for his arc is for him to grow into his own desires and realize what he wants. In order to do that, just like when he needed to accept and value his allies in order to start his development after the Stain Arc, Shigaraki needs an outside perspective on his life like Deku to show him that things could be different, that there’s another way even for someone like him. 

If Shigaraki were past the point of no return he would not be shown to be capable of changing. There are villains in the story that are already past the point of no return, but they are not Shigaraki, and not only that but the story always compares them to Shigaraki to show that he’s learning to be better than them.