#and the thing is is that him doing things that might seem contrived like this are actually VERY in character for him so 💀

[mad-hunts]

i'm afraid barton-core is jump-scaring someone who's investigating him by laying across a couch in their house like 'one of your french girls' and staying like that until they get home + pulling a gun on them the instant they turn on the light (barton thinks he's funny by doing shit like this, y'all, and wellll... i think it might be if he wasn't threatening their life ☠️ like WTF LMAO)

[audliminal]

It's Just a Game, Right? Pt 8

Masterpost

"So I think they're using other languages," Tim says, the moment Bernard opens the door.

"Well hello to you too my beloved boyfriend," Bernard responds, kissing Tim on the cheek and pulling him into the apartment.

"Shut up," Tim says, following Bernard to the table. This is hardly the first time Tim has skipped past pleasantries like that, and Bernard seems to find it more amusing every time.

"Aw, I dunno if I can do that. I really like to talk to you," Bernard grins conspiratorially. "Plus, then I wouldn't get to tell you that you're half right."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, obviously other people noticed the comment, right?" Bernard, gestures towards the computer, where Tim can see the cryptic comment. It already has dozens of responses. "Mostly people are just freaking out about it, because this is like, our first instance of direct communication from them, but one of the people who saw it actually recognized what language it is."

"Just one?" Tim frowns.

"Yeah. It's called esperanto. I googled it and apparently it's a conlang from the late 1800s which is pretty cool. It was, like, invented to be kind of a universal language, I guess? It pulls from a lot of different languages, so that's why it looks like multiple languages."

"Huh."

"But! There's still the encoded portions to figure out, because the translation as-is doesn't really make any sense." Bernard scrolls and points to the translation that a commenter had offered. It reads To be fqzuhsx-ayccas is to be qtdkv-avnwkwkb; the veil afph-gqkduik but it is meant to igpmtwi-ocdq. Determination in the face of doubt.

"Huh," Tim studies the text, then notices something. "They've specifically encoded the verbs."

"Yep," Bernard shrugs. "I haven't tried anything for the encrypted stuff yet; figured i might as well wait for you."

"Okay, well I guess we start with the simplest? We know they've used caesar ciphers before, plus this is in response to what we did with the first caesar ciphers before, so we might as well try one of your decoder websites for that first."

"Seems reasonable," Bernard says, pulling up the website from before. He quickly copies the first word over and hits the button. "Well shit, that was quick."

"Only the first half, though." Tim mutters. "Do it to the rest of them." Bernard copies and decodes the rest. In short order, they have a the first half of each encryption decoded.

"To be gravity is to be orbit, the veil disk but it is meant to eclipse?" Bernard frowns. "That... doesn't make much more sense."

"What's up with the focus on astronomy, too."

"Oh, right, we haven't gotten that far yet. They keep referencing space stuff. There's like, a running theory about these messages being supposed to have come through a black hole?"

"Is that even possible? i thought black holes ate stuff forever."

"I dunno, I'm not really into space stuff. Besides it's like, sure there's evidence for it, and space seems to be narratively important? But the premise seems kind of contrived to me."

"You think they're doing something bigger than what everybody is seeing." Tim stares at the forum thread. If anything was going to give Bernard's theory some credence, it would be what literally just happened.

"Exactly." Bernard posted on a forum arguing that he thought the game ran deeper than people realized. And the creators, who so far hadn't interacted directly, had responded to that post, with a triple-encrypted message.

"Each shift was one further away than the last," Tim thinks rapidly. "It started with language, which could be either a part of the effort to encrypt it, or a part of the intended meaning. Possibly both. Then, they used caesar ciphers for the first layer of encryption, the same thing they used in their first post. How did they encrypt things in the second post?"

"I think I kind of mentioned it before, but the second post used a vigenere cipher. The names of the people in the first video were the keys, if I remember right."

"The first is the key to the second."

"What-"

"Take the second part and decode it with the first."

"Dude your mind is scary sometimes," Bernard laughs, but moves to do as Tim says, revealing the first encrypted word. "To be seen. That works..."

Tim starts writing down the full message, as Bernard decodes the rest. Finally, they have the full text of the message the creators intended to send.

"To be seen is to be remembered; the veil distracts but it is meant to hide. Determination in the face of doubt." Tim reads.

"Huh," Bernard says, leaning over to read it for himself. "Well, now we know what it says. Now we just need to figure out what that means."

[calp0sa]

what do you like and dislike about airy?

CRAZY MESSY INFODUMP INCOMING OH LORD

well there’s nothing i truly dislike about airy, because everything about him just makes him who he is. i just wish we got more insight to him as an Actual person rather than his host facade, even though that was sort of the point of one 17-18, i feel like the fact that he’s pretty much a regular ass dude went over most people’s heads (Not mine though because im really smart and could beat albert einstein in a rap battle) i know the mystique is the most prominently interesting aspect of the whole show… but yknowwww it’d be nice to know a little more about him personally considering how we now know he’s far from a one-dimensional character and shouldn’t be taken at face value (i am side eyeing a huge chunk of the one fandom as i say this) now okay if i were to talk about everything i like about airy we’d be here til the next solar eclipse but i’ll try to jot down everything i can. airy, to me, is the most fascinating object show character there is. i swear every time i observe something about him it’s like i’m opening a matryoshka doll as i dissect his character further and further… every rewatch of one i notice something, whether it be minuscule or glaring, there’s always something for me to brutally analyze. see, and here’s where i contradict myself, because while it’s frustrating not having much official trivia on him, i actually quite love how mysterious he is. i love how he seems like he knows a lot more than he lets on. i love how his caginess only sparks more questions. and i love how FESTERED he is. how you can tell there was so much that led up to him being so numb and stagnant… it does nothing but pique my interest. and i love how this festered-ness parallels with the contestants. i can’t help but feel as if the true extent of airy’s suffering was reflected through those on the plane, how the contestants went through so many fluctuant stages of sadness, denial, hopelessness, anger… all in the midst of isolation akin to airy’s forest. it makes me wonder if ONE served as catharsis to airy. not just a purpose or a distraction, but something to spark resonance within a desolate soul. speaking of distraction, it’s really interesting to me how reliant airy is on escapism, and this is most evident in how he literally takes on such a gilded and contrived host persona to the point where it’s difficult for the viewer to discern who he is OUTSIDE of “airy”. big fan of how the show basically tricks us into thinking he’s this ruthless malevolent all powerful entity until it takes us by surprise and reveals that he’s Just Some Guy, and it could’ve been anyone in his place. but this isn’t to defend him… no… airy was definitely a selfish and inconsiderate asshole (sorry yall) he just isn’t as awful as everyone makes him out to be. airy is not evil, nor is he good, he just kind of sucks LOL. and i love him for that honestly! the thing about this is he should’ve stopped and asked himself “what am i going to gain from this” yet he was so absorbed in trying to hoist himself out of that inevitable pit of dread that he did not care if he destroyed everything else in the process (Might i add that this is a huge parallel to liam’s impulsive vengefulness… i swear i could go on and on about how those two are brothers from another mother) another interesting thing about the hosting stage of airy is the chance that he probably did feel some sort of regret. especially after the shock of breaking his face, being confronted by harsh genuine emotions after such a long time… an iota of the pain and fear he assumed was long gone… as well as the crushing reminder that he basically threw himself and all his senses away just for a stupid game. What a loser amirite. even if he had some semblance of a wish to end ONE, he knew he couldn’t. i’d imagine he told himself mockingly “yeaaaa you basically dug yourself into this, you’re not backing out any time soon” (even though he could’ve easily backed out he was just a loser ass COWARD!)

i didn’t know the paragraphs had character limits! interesting. anyway i can’t help but wonder if airy made that effort to take care of liam in an attempt to break the cycle, the cycle of destroying everything else, including your very self, for the purpose of One thing. maybe airy thinks violence and spite is just a huge waste of time yes of course, but i think he understood liam to some extent (remember what i said about resonance 😁😁😁) i just love how everything about airy is so subtle, yet so major, so jarring and confusing yet when you piece it all together it makes such a scary amount of sense. i love making sense of how nonsensical he is. (of course i do. i am possibly the biggest fan of nonsense there is) now i will add a funny little thing i like about him. i like how he’s all impatient and snarky. and i know you’re probably thinking “franklin how in the abraham lincoln’s bootycheek do you think he’s snarky” Listen, it’s really funny once you actually notice it. there were so many instances where he sounded exasperated with the contestants. my personal favorite being

“yes, as long as you are here, you can’t die”

>”WE CANT DIE?”

“Yes… that’s… what i just said 😐”

he has this barely noticeable “oh my god can you let me do what i need to do” attitude and it’s SO funny. i like to imagine he rolled his eyes a lot while he was hosting. its really funny to imagine. and its also funny to imagine him smiling like an idiot like he did hosting in one 17. that scene was really cute it makes me want to run into ongoing traffic and get continuously ran over by 12 different semi-trucks. if you ignore how miserable the contestants were (sorry contestants) it’s actually really endearing how excited and eager airy was when he got ideas for challenges. i bet he felt so proud of himself it’s honestly kind of sad. he’s sad. what the hell. he really thought he was the SHIT when he said “riches… immortality… whatever your heart desires 😌” Oh my god he’s so pathetic don’t even get me started MY ONLINE CLASSES ARE STARTING I GOTS TO GO BUT ANYWAY FEEL FREE TO ASK FOR AN ANALYSIS ABOUT LITERALLY ANYTHING AIRY RELATED I HAVE MORE THAN A HUNDRED BIBLES’ WORTH OF SHIT TO SAY ABOUT HIM BYEBYE THANK YOU FOR ASKING THIS

[aihoshiino]

chapter 164 thoughts

This post discusses suicide and suicidal ideation in the context of Oshi no Ko.

Chapters Until The Story Ends Without The 143 Kiss Being Addressed Or Acknowledged: 2

Bizarrely, I feel like I don't have a ton to say about this chapter. Not because stuff doesn't happen in it but because… fuck, man. What do I even say. I can't quite 100% shake my suspicion that Akasaka has some asspull up his sleeve and that Aqua might come back in style form, even if altered to the point that he isn't the Aqua we know anymore, but this chapter is clearly set up for us to think he's dead and for us to see other character's reactions to this news, so I'll talk about the text with that assumption in mind. This one will probably be kind of all over the place so bear with me ig

That being said… this is all kind of dumb as fuck, huh

Like. There's just so many insane contrivances with this setup that it's impossible for me to take it seriously. Putting aside that there's no way on planet earth Aqua's plan should have fooled anybody, why in God's name are his family and friends finding out about this from a news broadcast and not, like… Being contacted by the police?? Or at least hearing about it beforehand??

I also really don't like that we're setting up to have a whole chapter focusing on Ruby's response to all this while Aqua's Literal Mother and all his friends get like. Two panels to be shocked at the news. If the series ends without giving them all the space to grieve I think I will be legitimately really pissed off lmao

The presence of 15 Year Lie in this chapter also makes me agonizingly aware that we know basically nothing about it to this day, even though the contents of the movie are what this final arc revolves around. Aqua's plan relies on Kamiki's crimes as exposed by the movie being heinous enough that Kamiki would kill Aqua to silence them but…

WHAT FUCKING CRIMES???

The Kamiki we saw in the movie was only ever portrayed as a victim in the scenes we see. Unless the story is trying to imply that Kamiki is somehow responsible for Uehara and Airi's deaths or that 15YL makes him directly responsible for Gorou's death or - literally I have no idea what this could be referring to.

I dunno, man. It's hard for me to really want to buckle down and analyse this because so much of it feels entirely contrary to the story that came before. I've always insisted that the one thing that we could guarantee was that Aqua and Ruby would survive the series and be happy because so much emotional weight is put on Ai's wish for Aqua and Ruby to grow into adults and be happy, and it really seemed like we were building up to an ending of Aqua deciding for himself that he wants to finally live for himself, so this sudden swerve into Aqua being told by God "actually your purpose in life is to nobly commit suicide for your sister" is uh, jarring to say the least.

Part of the issue with this is that I think Akasaka doesn't think of Aqua's sacrifice as being a suicide, narratively speaking, even though Akane literally acknowledges it as such. But the thing is, Aqua's "sacrifice" is emergent from all the same things as his suicidal ideation - his belief that his life is intrinsically less valuable than everyone else's and his continued guilt and self loathing as a result of his trauma. Aqua literally says to Ruby's face in 143 that he feels guilty just for being alive and it's literally never addressed again.

So it's very difficult not to read this ending as the story approving of Aqua killing himself, but only if it's for the right reasons. Not only is that an insanely irresponsible message to put into a story as widespread and visible as OnK is right now, it's also just fucking ghoulish.

Idk. Even if Aqua lived here, I just really dislike this idea of his whole life's purpose being Narratively Affirmed as being to uplift Ruby at his own expense. Aqua is very much like Ai in that he's a person who has spent basically all of both his lives in service to other people, unable to pursue the things that he wants and that make him genuinely fulfilled - an ending that parallels Ai, where he is denied this to the extent that it kills him, is not a bad idea on paper but the execution here makes it fall apart. Like, if the framing was that Aqua and Kamiki were both unable to move on from the past to the point that it kills them, I'd vibe with that or something like it. But as is, this shit is just baffling.

It doesn't help that Aqua's death is just completely unmoored from anything the series has been setting up all this time. I've seen people defending this as being what Aqua's revenge was building up to, but this very explicitly isn't about Aqua's revenge. It's about "protecting Ruby's future", but the idea that Kamiki was a threat to Ruby specifically is something that was introduced all of four chapters ago. Even then, it's deeply undercooked. Like, what it is about Kamiki that makes him SUCH a threat to Ruby that Aqua has no choice but to take the nuclear option and kill them both? Why is this the one and only way to stop him? We don't know - we basically know nothing about Kamiki besides "he's Ai's crazy ex" which is such a massive letdown for an antagonist who's been built up for this long.

Speaking of Ai…. where the fuck is she!!!

I know this is predictable background noise from the Ai Wife Guy, but it really is baffling to me that she's such a nonfactor when the climax happening right now is her son confronting the man who killed her. At best, we get mild lipservice as to her existence but the series is so all-in on this "protecting Ruby's future" framing that Ai's absence here feels jarring. It's not just that Ai should be relevant because I like her (but I DO and she SHOULD) but because it makes for a bizarrely deflated finale. Instead of the tragedy we've been building up to avenging for over 140 chapters, Aqua's death comes as the result of a plan he came up with on the spot to deal with an ill-defined threat that only came into existence 4-6 chapters ago.

It just doesn't really feel satisfying, especially when the series has been so wishy washy when it comes to focusing on Aqua and Ruby's relationship. If the series was going to make that connection The central axis on which this climax revolves, then it needed more fleshing out than it got, regardless of if the series went the AquRuby route or not.

Two chapters left………..

[quill-and-whetstone]

“The Sniper Problem”

I have a favorite litmus test that I apply to just about everything I write: “Could this entire plotline be resolved by one sufficiently trained sniper?” The hypothetical sniper is there to evaluate the quality of the conflict I’ve set up. If they can resolve the whole thing by taking out their target then I… probably have some rethinking to do, because the test succinctly highlights a few key issues with any story that fails it.

First, the obvious: if the problem your protagonists are facing can be solved this way it’s probably just not as interesting as it could be. A conflict of “big bad evil dude does a big bad evil thing and our hero goes and mercs him about it” can make for a fun blockbuster action film, but the plot of those films are rarely–if ever–the point. Stories with a central villain stand to gain a lot of narrative depth from asking yourself what issues would linger if they were suddenly removed from the picture. What internal struggles might remain in your protagonists? How might the world around them still need to be changed or healed? Which elements or areas of the story just seem empty without the big bad to fill the narrative space, and how can we develop them?

The second facet of the sniper problem is an inverted Occam’s Razor, a call to ensure that there’s a good reason the protagonists aren’t just using a simple and direct route to solve their problems. It’s like how modern horror movies have to cripple the victims’ cell phones to justify everything else that happens, though ideally less contrived. When revising a story through this lens, it’s almost difficult not to improve it. It aids suspension of disbelief, lets your protagonists present as more competent, and gives them more to do outside of biffing people they don’t like which in turn showcases more of their personality.

A great example of all of this is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Throughout the show the bottom line is that our heroes are out to defeat the Firelord to stop the atrocities he’s committing against the rest of the world. So it stands to reason to ask, why not camp outside his house early on with an assassin good enough to score a quick or lucky kill? But the show answers this amply with just its concept, mostly without having to draw direct attention to it. If Firelord Ozai dropped dead in the pilot there would still be a whole Fire Nation pursuing his goals complete with other emotionally unstable royals and military officers. It wouldn’t actually… solve anything. “Defeat the Firelord” is just the mission that sets our heroes on the path they need to take to stop a war that’s destroying the world. The real solution is cultivating friendships across cultures, healing and maturing together, growing spiritually, protecting and empowering victims of generational violence, dismantling fascistic power structures, and ultimately even finding a relatively peaceful / humane solution to the problem of the Firelord. While they do call this out directly in one episode, they didn’t have to, because with the way they structured the narrative it was already evident. As a result of that good planning the characters got to do a lot of interesting, character driven, thematically resonant things and the show isn’t just one long and kind of dry martial arts training montage until they show up at the finale.

So keep the sniper problem in mind as you write! Or even as you read, watch, and analyze other media for what worked and what didn’t. I can’t promise it’ll be relevant to every story, but I can promise that it’s a quick and easy standard that’ll help you layer in a lot of nuance and flavor into your narrative.

[phantomchick]

Naruto and being the Underdog

Okay so recently I was discussing naruto's characterisation in the comments section of a fanfic and the author was explaining that they don't like/never vibed with Naruto's character (which is totally fair). But then they explained how they felt the supposed underdog setup was contrived and didn't really work because Naruto never actually starts at zero thanks to his jinchuriki powers and being the yondaime's son. (And so here I am, on my soapbox to discuss how Naruto and the concept of being an underdog relate.)

On a physical level perhaps this applies, but Naruto places an equal (if not larger) amount of focus on the emotional action as it does on its plot action.

On an emotional level he has to work for each and every one of his personal relationships.

He wants to be hokage a role he can only take if he is both respected by his village and powerful enough to protect it. It''s a twofold goal. And in terms of the social aspect this is clearly stacked against him due to the hatred and exploitation of jinchuriki as well as shinobi in general, achieving emotional connection and dialogue between people who are used to might makes right or who are pre-disposed to look down on him or want to kill him puts him firmly at a disadvantage narratively.

With the notable exception of Hinata whose love is unconditional, whether it's Tsunade, Neji, Sasuke or Gaara or even Kurama the respect and attention that naruto craves are things he actively pursues in both good and bad ways and he earns them through his own effort.

He does this both by striving to understand these very different people and where they're coming from as well as surviving all the shit the world throws at him. Emotional and physical tasks.

In terms of being a jinchuriki and getting the rasengan easily thanks to his shadow clone bullshit / birthright connections to the yondaime It must first be acknowledged that the jinchuriki power is more of a disadvantage than a boon to him at first. First, because of kurama actively going out of his way to mess with his chakra control as a kid while doing the leaf exercise he was unable to learn the regular clone jutsu; it also results in him experiencing the trauma of discrimination and isolation from a young age which could easily have led to festering self-hatred and alienation if not for Iruka's intervention, it results in multiple S ranks who are fully capable of killing even shippuden level Naruto targetting him, and while the trade-off of boundless energy and survive-ability is immense those same boundless resources have the potential to burn him alive if he loses emotional control/gives into his most negative emotions - that's basically making the subtext text at that point, the story is about his emotional development and growth, something his "OP buffs" don't earn for him. Let's talk about boundless chakra resources for a moment. At the end of the original series, he only knows the rasengan; the rasenshuriken, the shadow clone justu and sage mode/yinyang mode by the end of the series and that's like 5 justu tops if we're counting yin/yang/bijuu mode and sage mode as jutsu. The majority of what he learned from jiraiya for three years seemed to be taijutsu only with a side of failed bijuu control. Naruto has his jinchuriki chakra from the start but that doesn't translate to an ability to use it, he has to spend hours working out how to do the shadow clone, he did not figure out how to do the jutsu because of his chakra even if that was the reason he was able to use it at all, and when it comes to the rasengan I will cite [someone who deleted their reddit account] here:

Naruto completed the first stage in three days and one night. He figured out how his chakra needed to move to burst the water balloon (thanks to a cat) but because he didn't have the necessary chakra control, he improvised by using another hand. He completed the second stage in three weeks or so. The next day(?), Jiraiya gave him a hint to improve his focus which allowed him to finally complete it. And the third stage was completed seven days later to win his bet with Tsunade. Once again, Naruto didn't have the control to focus his chakra the correct way despite his continuous efforts. It wasn't until he came up with another improvised method by using a shadow clone to focus the chakra that he was able to complete the final stage.

Meaning he is the one who comes up with unorthodox methods, such as also using his other hand, or using a shadow clone to focus the chakra, to learn it in four and a half weeks but he still had to figure out how to do it all himself. The shadow clone would've been useless without his understanding of the jutsu or his ability to do the individual parts of the jutsu. He earns the jutsu and could conceivably have learned it the old fashioned way were he not under an artificial time limit as both Jiraiya and Kakashi, both without jinchuriki power, know it and can use it.

Now I'll talk about his supposed privilege as the yondaime's child: Sasuke gets chidori and later kirin thanks to HIS connections but that's never remarked on in the same way. And in fact most people in the naruto-verse learn a big jutsu from their clan or parent; see Might Gai, the genius of hard work, learning the eight gates thanks to his father. The rasenshuriken is something he's only capable of learning thanks to his chakra and shadow clones I hear you quote Kakashi, but it's again, something he couldn't do without actually putting the work in to learn the jutsu. Naruto is on a time crunch because of Akatsuki, the fact he is capable of learning the jutsu once he has advice on wind chakra from Asuma and has practiced forming the rasengan and doing windblades enough means he didn't need the extra chakra to do it, having the chakra didn't automatically make him capable of the rasenshuriken all it did was speed up his chakra control practice exponentially, it would have taken him more time practicing but he could have learned the jutsu eventually even if he wasn't a jinchuriki. Now summons. Being the Yondaime's child might get him an in with Jiraiya to let him have the toad contract, but Sakura and Sasuke also get summoning contracts thanks to personal connections with Tsunade and Orochimaru and Jiraiya only gets him the opportunity. It's Naruto who has to use his willpower to stay on Gamabunta's back and it's Naruto who has to form relationships with his summons like Gamakichi, (a bond that becomes instrumental toward the end of the 4th war). Additionally learning Sage mode wasn't just a result of Naruto getting the contract because neither Sasuke nor Sakura achieved it despite both having contracts (and despite Kabuto managing it where Sasuke didn't) Sasuke with the Hawks as well as the Snakes. And importantly Naruto was unable to use clones or his extra chakra to speed up his training in this. In fact the clones only come into it after he has successfully mastered sage mode and function as a limited extra resource that's can't go beyond three shadow clones meditating and this doesn't function as more sage powah but as a means of extending his sage modes duration, a workaround that's only needed because his being a jinchuriki gets in the way of him gathering sage mode in real-time with the toads on him. In conclusion while his chakra lets him practice jutsu to learn them faster, this is not the case in either his sage mode or the yin yang release and only applies to the shadow clone, rasengan and rasenshuriken - all of which he had to actually learn and understand the mechanics of otherwise the jutsu wouldn't have worked no matter how many shadow clones he had try it and that with the exception of shadow clone he demonstrably could've learned them without being a jinchuriki. And in the case of rasengan and rasenshuriken he is under artificial time-limits imposed by Orochimaru and the Akatsuki.

So that's shadow clone, rasengan, rasenshuriken and sage mode covered but what about bijuu mode. An overpowered special mode he only gets for being a jinchuriki, that B only bothers to teach him because he's a jinchuriki, surely that's LEGIT op bullshit. No? No. At least not in comparison to the Sakura's forehead seal from Tsunade, Sasuke's Mangekyou abilities like izanagi, giant purple warrior and amaterasu, Obito's mokuton, Madara's sage of six paths abilities or the rinnegan's everything, anyway. Not to mention what the edo tensei are capable of.

The only reason bijuu mode works is that he earns Kurama's regard on an emotional level, it's not something which being a kage's kid or having jinchuriki chakra levels actually does fuck all to contribute to. He was that all along but Kurama still hated him and tried to take over his body. It's Naruto himself who has to reach out and make that effort to understand this person who he's always seen as a burden or a curse or an annoying tenant who doesn't pay rent, a monster who tries to kill him and take his body. It's Naruto who has to put in the emotional labour and see Kurama as a person, no matter the harm he's done.

Naruto is the underdog in spite of being "the chosen one" and having the strongest bijuu and a kage father because emotional labour is never easy and in a world like his it seems insane to even try. It's why everyone except him was prepared to give up on Sasuke, Naruto recognises his anger at Itachi and desire to avenge his family as valid, Naruto when he finds out the truth about Itachi from Danzo tells Sasuke he gets it, why he wants to destroy the village, why he's so angry, when Sasuke changes his mind and decides to become hokage instead of destroying it so he can change it, Naruto understands WHY even if he still wants to be kage himself. The problem with Sasuke is that his anger is self-destructive and self-isolating, not that it exists, it's when Naruto fights him one last time and makes Sasuke realise that he's only hurting himself and his loved ones at this point, that "talk no jutsu" finally works and Sasuke is able to listen to Naruto and come home.

It's also why Naruto earns being hokage; in a world full of killers, someone who is capable of acknowledging the harm done and not ignoring or forgetting it (like how he tells pain he can't forgive him), but who is also capable of looking past that and understanding the motivations and feelings of the person he's dealing with and talking to them on that level as equals hits so hard. It just felt like a fantastic set up for a diplomatic hokage capable of dealing with other kages and achieving a peace in spite of the fact they're all to the last, untrustworthy ninja mercenaries who are generally very ends justify the means. In a world of kill or be killed Naruto is still willing to kill, but he's also willing to understand and to talk. And he wasn't born with that, he worked for it and failed often, especially with Sasuke, it was never easy, it often appeared hopeless but he kept trying.

And we rooted for him because of it.

[bibibbon]

Chap 429 made me realize I can't stand Class 1A anymore, I like individual students like Tokoyami but as a whole I can't stand them. Their bond is so artificial especially when none of them gave any concern about Izuku's well-being throughout the first year and took Bakuhoe's word immediately. Plus, they are mostly flakes riding off of Izuku's heroism and hard work during the Villain Hunt arc. None of them doing were jackshit about the criminals including "Symbol of Victory" Bakuturd until they remember that Izuku exists. The fact that Hori never lets the students addresses or think about Izuku's quirkless nature after the OFA reveal is something I will never forgive Hori for.

Hori tries so hard to glaze them as this unbreakable team of heroes, but he cheats using plot armor and plot contrivances to make his point seem valid but most of these kids would be dead if the villains were allowed to kill them instead of Hori holding them back with puppet strings. I hate to sound deranged but if some of the students had actually died during the first battle then I could see 1-A actually building a bond and realizing how precious life is and the dangers of being a hero then their concern for Izuku's well-being would seem more valid after all of the other crap they were ignoring about.

Lastly, I hate that damn poem that Hori claims was the inspiration for Deku because it feels like an excuse to justify his narrative abuse of Izuku and deny him any moment of confidence or pride in his achievements. This was supposed to be the story of the Greatest Hero not Class 1-A nobodies. Meanwhile he is too busy celebrating Bakuhoe's moments for during the bare minimum and fans on reddit and elsewhere eat up like its pure cinema or something.

Fair enough it's not that I actually hate class 1A but for some reason I can't simply believe that their dynamic is one of a little happy found family. I just can't and its probably because there's too many characters and we don't get the screentime needed for them to develop such a dynamic.

That is to say I don't hate class 1A like I love the individual characters like tokoyami, iida, jiro and I even love the little groups they have or at least the potential that was in those groups and dynamics.

It doesn't help that it's class 1A that gets the whole we are all heroes thing and the whole we will be there for you Izuku in the vigilante arc. I don't know it falls flat and becomes underwhelming simply because their dynamic isn't well built neither is it well developed. Also them saying they care for izuku seems like it's quite difficult to believe considering that we haven't seen them voice concerns over Izuku's injuries or even visit him during the first war arc when he was in a coma but maybe that's me saying too much because they were in a war and everyone was busy with stuff and trauma.

When it comes to the whole thing with bakugo I personally think that he was supposed to be a minor character for izuku to surpass but him being Izuku's symbol of victory and all of that shows us exactly that izuku hasn't DEVELOPED AT ALL IN THE SERIES!! izuku has continually been an incredibly static character and the ending shows that. Izuku still thought of OFA as a gift from all might instead of his own quirk, he literally never understood the wrongs of the hero system and he never stops viewing all might as this big hero who does so much. Like ugh this could of been things that izuku develops from and becomes a better person but I guess not.

Realistically many 1A members should either be

1) expelled (how is mineta and bakugo still there)

2) dropped out (Iam sorry you're telling me all of these kids parents let them contribute in this bs like are your parents that bad)

3) dead (you're telling me in a field of naive and not properly trained first years none of them have died really?!?!)

These factors would definitely make 1A closer to eachother and would show that they would care a lot more because of what they experienced and what they might blame themselves for what happend previously and it would be realistic/make sense within the series.

Also less 1A members would show just how competitive and tiring the hero course can be (proving aizawas words right) and it would also make the characters big moments that hori gave them have more actual suspense and impact within the narrative and plot.

I have mixed feelings about the poem and the post "the uselessness of izuku midoriya" while I do think it's a good post that shines a different perspective onto things Iam also just not a fan of the concept. I suppose it's because I don't think MHA was built in a way where it's story is a tragedy, like I don't believe tragedy suits the plot of MHA especially when it's not being treated as one.

However, I do think that it could be used as something that izuku starts with at the beginning and then develops into something much more. I think that having izuku choose the name deku and then developing into the name deriku would be fitting just how I would of liked for him to develop from someone whose acknowledgements and influence aren't recognised to someone whose achievements are recognised but not overly praised or anything of the sort something like having him be somewhat of a myth someone whose influence is known but works in the shadows (not literally) but he isn't directly known and isn't like all might. Ugh I don't know how to word it but I hope you understand. I suppose the closest example I can think of is Kim dojka (minus the angst)

(for context this is the poem I assume you're talking about)

Edit

I suppose this maybe better phrasing to what I was trying to say last paragraph.👇

[mythserene]

A BEATLE DIDN’T SAY THAT! Lewisohn’s lab-created quotes

“One of the things about this book that is a strength is it’s not me saying anything, it’s them or other people. I shape the text, I plot where it goes, I weave it, but the quotes are theirs. And so when I’ve got Paul McCartney behaving in a way some readers might think, ‘Whatever, oh dear,’ it’s actually him saying it. So you end up thinking that to his own credit he said that. It’s not me saying it.” (Mark Lewisohn, ‘Noted,’ (October 7, 2013) Somerset, Guy.)

This is hella long, and that's because it's actually a full blog post. (In case you want it in a less monstrous form.)

A lot of people for a long time have put a lot of trust in Mark Lewisohn’s footnotes. Or at least in the fact of those footnotes. Because once you dig through them for any length of time you quickly discover that Mark Lewisohn’s footnotes hold secrets that would get him expelled from any undergraduate program. They reveal a “history” often contrived through a mass of Frankenquotes, ala carte creations, Lewisohn rephrased ‘paraphrases,’ and worse. For some parts of the narrative things aren’t too bad, yet in others monsters lurk around every corner. But this is not the sort of thing that’s graded on a curve, and it is past time to have a conversation about what standards should be accepted in Beatles’ scholarship.

Lewisohn lists his sources unlike most others. And his footnotes alone are more insightful than some other writers’ books. (Reddit, r/beatles)

I do not judge footnotes based on their insightfulness, nor do I want to single out a redditor, but I grabbed the comment because it’s an opinion that is widely shared and even accepted as canon. At least by people who have not combed those freakish footnotes. And while the pages of piled up sources do look fearsome en masse, a closer inspection reveals an offense to the truth, a threat to the record, and a blight on Beatles’ historiography.

“The rules for writing history are obvious. Who does not perceive that its chief law is never to dare say anything false, and never dare withhold anything true? The slightest suspicion of hatred or favor must be avoided. That such should be the foundations is known to all; the materials with which the building will be raised consist of facts and words.” –Cicero

A Look at Lewisohn’s Lab-created Frankenquotes

FIRST, WHAT ARE QUOTES? AND WHY ARE QUOTES?

Quotes are the soul and center of recorded—and recording— history.

And the rules around quotes and quotation marks are pretty simple. Most people, even if they’ve never written anything beyond a term paper, understand what quotation marks represent.

A set of quotation marks means, “This person said or wrote ‘these exact words’ at some given time.” You can smash a quote from two hours before or two years before right up against a separate quote to make your point—although it might get your grade lowered—but what you cannot do is take two different statements from two different times and make them seem like they are one statement.

When you put words inside one set of quotation marks you are stating, in black and white, that the identified person made this statement. That they said all those words together—or if you want to excise a reasonable part and use ellipses to represent that— as part of the same statement.

Look, combining two separate quotes that are not part of the same thought or topic is not a subjective issue. It is not an issue of controversy. Quotes are the bone marrow of written history. Quotes are the alpha and omega. In academic work or journalism they have to be, which makes sense as soon as you think about it. If it was cool for me to take a transcript and grab half a sentence from page 2 and half a sentence from page 17, push them together as if those words were spoken one after the other in a single thought, I bet I can manage to get those words to say almost anything I want.

Separate thoughts must be in two separate quotation marks. Separate. Somewhere between four sentences and a paragraph is widely accepted as the “two separate quotes” line, and there can be some ethical and technical wiggle room in a long rant by a person, but what makes all that subjective nonsense go out the window is if the quotes come from two separate questions. Or two separate days. That’s two quotes. Not hard.

Which again, makes sense if the point is conveying information to the reader and lessening the chance of a writer manipulating someone else’s words to express something that the person didn’t mean.

This is the contract inherent in a quote. These are the rules we all agree to and understand, and these are the reasons why. And there’s no reason to break them.

Why do you want me to believe that John said these two things at one time? What was wrong with what he did say?

THE FOUR MOST COMMON WAYS MARK LEWISOHN MAULS THE MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

The Basic Lewisohn Frankenquote 🧟‍♂️

(“CONCLUDING FIVE WORDS FROM—” – I cannot even see the point of this THREE PART monster. Full footnote reads: 9) Author interview with Tony Meehan, September 6, 1995. (“I met George again in 1968 and for some reason he was harboring a grudge against me. He was very, very uptight about it—’You blocked us getting a recording contract …’ ”) First part of George quote from interview by Terry David Mulligan, The Great Canadian Gold Rush, CBC radio, May 30 and June 6, 1977; concluding five words from interview for The Beatles Anthology)

This three-headed monster attributed to George Harrison is a very dull little guy. Not particularly venomous. Just convenient, I guess. For whatever reason, Mark Lewisohn decided it was worth rummaging through the quote buffet until he collected enough pieces for George Harrison to say this thing. “…concluding five words from…” What are we even doing here? No, really. Please tell me.

And like a lot of the footnotes for these bespoke quotations, there are further problems. “[F]rom interview for Beatles Anthology”? An interview that aired? In one of the episodes? Can you narrow it down? I guess I’ll just have to listen very closely to them all and hope I don’t miss the five words.

But if we got bogged down in the sorts of trivial details that would immediately lose a college student a letter grade off a History 101 paper we would never get anywhere. We have to stick to the violent felonies.

*Love the "George would say——" Uh, would he? Well, I guess after all that trouble you went to, he would now. It's really incredible how cavalier Lewisohn is about a Beatle's words.

These sorts of reconstituted, lab-engineered, made up “quotes” are shot throughout Tune In. “Quotes” made up of words from two, three, and even four sources, spoken months or often years apart.

Ala Carte Creations 🍱

It really is a buffet, and these ala carte creations come in all shapes and sizes. They might just be words that have been plucked up and glued back together to make something more useful to a particular narrative. (Ellipses or dash optional.)

TUNE IN: “John saw a bigger picture, and it would be surprising if it wasn’t equally obvious, or made obvious, to Brian and George. He likened Paul’s enduring snag with Brian to his other long-standing difficulty: ‘[Brian] and Paul didn’t get along—it was a bit like [Stuart and Paul] between the two of them.’” (Footnote 37: Interview by Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, September 1971)

Bonus 🍒 Phoebe's dramatic reading of John's original quote:

The Donut 🍩

Then there are a seemingly uncountable number of “quotes” with a sentence or three ripped out from the middle, but with zero representation that more words were ever there. (And in most of these particular deceptions, the simple representation of something excised (. . .) would make the quote fine. There are a lot of these, but they are also the easiest to fix.)

Chapter 10: “I was in a sort of blind rage for two years. [I was e]ither drunk or fighting. **It had been the same with other girlfriends I’d had.** There was something the matter with me.”

And then there are the true buffet bonanzas, words lifted and twisted beyond recognition until they say something brand spanking new. 

However, John remembered Paul’s attitude to Brian being very different. John was always emphatic that Paul didn’t want Brian as the Beatles’ manager and presented obstacles to destabilize him, to make his job difficult … like turning up late for meetings. “Three of us chose Epstein. Paul used to sulk and God knows what … [Paul] wasn’t that keen [on Brian]—he’s more conservative, the way he approaches things. He even says that: it’s nothing he denies.”

The Lewisohn Remixes 🍸

And then there are the “paraphrases.” I couldn’t even begin to guess how many of these there are, and often they aren’t even paraphrases, but whole new Mark Lewisohn re-interpretations with quotation marks slapped around them. But if you don’t check, you probably won’t know, because like this Lewisohn rewrite of a well-known Mrs. Harrison quote, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize the bulk of it, making it less likely that you’ll catch the scalpel work excising Paul. And while I don’t want to get caught in the nooks and crannies of intent in an example like this one I have to say, just this once, that what has to be a purposeful excising of Paul to create a slightly new quote on one side, combined with a badly acted, bad faith—(or bad scholar)—“Where was Paul when John’s mom died?” on the other, is par for the course. 

George Harrison’s mom’s made up Lewisohn rephrase which coincidentally removes Paul from the imagery.]  ❦  LEWISOHN:“ Asked some years later to describe how he’d been able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, Paul could remember nothing of the period at all. It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958. John was working at the airport, and Paul and George went on holiday together—adventurous for boys of 16 and 15. But Louise Harrison would recall how she encouraged George to visit John at Mendips, “so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts.”  ❦  DAVIES: “They were still practicing a lot at George’s house, the only house where they got endless hospitality and encouragement. . . . I forced George to go round and see him, to make sure he still went off playing in their group and just didn’t sit and brood. They all went through a lot together, even in those early days, and they always helped each other.”

Why do you have to slice and dice and reconstitute people’s words? No writer, and certainly no historian, should ever feel empowered to take words from a historical figure from two or three different places and topics and times, splice them together, and tell us, “Winston Churchill said this.” No he didn’t! Why are you so intent on changing the words of the people you’re writing about? What’s wrong with just using two different quotes? 

You cannot take two or three quotes from two or three or even four separate statements, stick them between one set of quotation marks and say John or Paul or George or Joe Smith said this. 

No they didn’t. They never said that. Why do you want me to think they did?? 

All these words are Abraham Lincoln’s, but this is not a Lincoln quote:

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of — making a most discreditable exhibition of myself.” 

(I kept it ridiculous, although I didn’t have to.)

But I want you, the reader, to be saying to yourself, “Okay, enough already. I get it!” Because in the last few days I have wandered too far into the weeds too many times and written far too many words detailing the multiplicity of ways Mr. Lewisohn does violence to each and every law of reporting historical facts, and could write many more. And I will post a more detailed list of the crimes against the quote that I am charging Mark Lewisohn with as we go forward, but I don’t think we need that now. The fact is that every fair-minded person knows what quotation marks represent, and there is no more fair-minded group of people than serious Beatles fans and scholars. And it is those fair-minded scholars who I want most to hear me. Whether you’ve written books or host a podcast or just know that you know a whole lot of stuff and take seriously your part of the trust in preserving the truth about The Beatles for us and future generations, it is you I am really talking to. My Cicero quoting-freaks. The ones who care about getting it right.

“The chief, the only, aim of style is to put facts in a clear light, with no concealment.” - Lucian of Samosata

⁠What footnotes can do, and what footnotes can’t.

You can list multiple sources in a single footnote. That’s not only fine, it’s correct. If I want to tell part of a story based on several sources, that often means several sources in a footnote. But not for one, single quote. 

The problem isn’t the footnote, it’s the bioengineered quote on the page that you swept under a footnote hoping I wouldn’t notice. 

Which leads us to what a footnote is not. A footnote is not a post-hoc fixative for your textual sins. You cannot do whatever you want as long as you confess it in a footnote. A footnote is not a magic spell. A footnote is not the universally understood symbol for “I have my fingers crossed behind my back.” You cannot fix lies and misrepresentations in the footnotes. Footnotes aren’t for trying to chase down three different sources to match up which part of a manufactured “quote” someone said on which date. Footnotes are not the picture on the front of a puzzle box. I should not need to find corner pieces to figure out which of these George Harrison words were actually spoken together. 

Footnotes are a truthful and independently verifiable record of primary sources. It’s that simple.

And taking Mark Lewisohn completely out of the picture for a moment, I feel sure we can all agree that neither John Lennon nor Paul McCartney nor George Harrison nor Ritchie Starkey would want anyone rearranging their words as if they were guitar chords. You wouldn’t take three-quarters of Penny Lane and one-quarter of Across the Universe, put them together and call it a Beatles‘ song. So don’t take three quarters of John to Jann Wenner and one-quarter of John to Lisa Robinson, put them together and call it a Beatle’s quote.

MY PERSONAL STANDARD IS THAT IF SOMEONE REPRESENTS, “A BEATLE SAID THIS,” IT BETTER DAMN WELL BE SOMETHING A BEATLE SAID.

None of the Beatles, dead or alive, would be cool with their words being taken out of context at all, let alone two or three different statements on god knows what being combined into one. This isn’t hard, though. Use two or three separate quotation marks, and don’t take statements out of context. Don’t mix and match their words, but don’t twist them, either. If a person said something, it is the historian’s duty to represent those words to the best of your ability, and then use them to tell a factual story focused on what you feel is important. Staying true to the original words and true to their meaning. If you can’t use those words without twisting them, then change your story to fit their words, not the other way around. If their statement helps tell the story your way, use it! For goodness sake, John Lennon said at least two opposing things about almost every topic on earth, so there should be enough to choose from without being deceptive. I actually want the truth. Don’t you?

Biography is story based around accurately represented, trustworthy and verifiable facts. And look, Beatles fans, whoever your favorite is: we are not going to get the truth about his history if we don’t learn to take these things seriously. Let’s have—if not high standards—at least the lowest generally accepted standards. In the mid-term we need a lot more Beatles scholars with a lot more points of view, and now—right now—we need experienced Beatles scholars to prioritize searching out and finding smart, interested people to mentor. And we simply must ensure that we aren’t allowing to solidify into stone “facts” that are not facts and statements no one ever made. I don’t think any honest Beatles fan—(which rounds up to all of them)—wants any question around that issue.

The record is the most important thing. Now, and always. This is not about John versus Paul. John versus Paul may live on always in our hearts, but for Beatles history, it’s the wrong question. I’d rather someone be up front about their loves, but in the end the focus should be on representing the primary facts in their most pristine form. Love who you love most, but place truth above all. Pristine facts. Pristine quotes. Nothing hidden. Nothing misrepresented. 

Let the historical actors speak for themselves. That is their right.

And the historian’s duty.

NEXT, WE DISSECT A MONSTER.

Final note: I became frustrated and (maybe strangely) offended by Lewisohn's obscene pretenses in 2020, but my frustrations were nebulous and unfocused until this incredible AKOM series. I feel much better now. Angrier. But better. They worked their asses off. 🥂

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 423: One For All vs. All For One

At the request of a few asks, have some chapter thoughts. I will warn everyone in advance that some portions of this post are extremely bitter. This is less salty than it is bile-flavored. It's also not quite as thorough as other posts have been, as my disillusionment with the material limits my willingness to comb the chapter for details to muse about beyond the ones that jump out at me.

None of which is to say that this post is short.

CONTENT WARNING: Confrontational rhetoric about irl prisons and the hypothetical of committing suicide to avoid them. I have strong personal feelings about some of the language I've been seeing from defenders of this chapter and I'm in no mood to prevaricate around them.

o Danger Sense continues to be some real bullshit.  My initial response to the leaks was that it was yet another dumb contrivance to make things arbitrarily harder for the villains than equivalent things would be for the Heroes, but reading the official release, I actually just think it's dumb that AFO thinks Danger Sense would have alerted him to his/Shigaraki's failing body at all.  Why would it?  Danger Sense nominally (nominally) activates based on hostility, and where's the hostility in super-regeneration failing?  If it were the remnants of Shigaraki/OFA attacking him from within his own body, that'd be one thing, but that doesn't seem to be what the first few pages are getting at. 

Rather, it's just that the power of OFA is being too much for his body, in the same way it was for Deku at the beginning.  As if, you know, Shigaraki hasn't already been surgically modified to handle both AFO and, presumably, OFA the whole time.  Ujiko only mentioned the former specifically, but given that the plan was always for AFO's new vessel to be able to steal OFA, why wouldn't that also be accounted for?  The best I can think is that AFO and Ujiko didn't know that OFA would put such strain on the body, but it's not like AFO couldn't have observed that the quirk's been growing stronger over the generations.  If he and Ujiko just failed to calibrate the body correctly, it's a failure of Ujiko's warped genius as a mad biologist and quirk scientist—which again takes us back to dumb contrivances that make things harder for the villains than they would be for the heroes.

    

o The Kurogiri scene would be very touching if it, you know, actually amounted to something.  If it didn't apparently end with Bakugou coming in to murder him.  Except we don't even quite get that level of commitment because Kurogiri was falling apart already, so you get the impression that he would have collapsed with or without Bakugou's intervention.

    

o This in turn makes Bakugou's intervention really silly and pointless.  My god, I don't care.  I do not care!  I do not care about Bakugou pushing Deku two steps forward past a barrier that was already failing.  I do not care about Bakugou getting one last stupid victory lap when he's already dramatically endured a severe beating and emotional assault, stood back up from the stupidest heart surgery in the history of fiction, and faced down everything AFO could unleash on him, far outstripping that same villain's climactic efforts fighting All Might in Kamino in what remains AFO's only semi-emotionally resonant battle in the whole manga.  As it is, this is just one more ludicrous handwaved magical cross-country teleport like every other one the Heroes have been enjoying through this whole fight.

    

o Yoichi paying attention to AFO now?  Man, imagine if we could have just skipped a bunch of bullshit and gotten this way back in Chapter 368, when Yoichi first told AFO that it was over.  Imagine if Vestige Yoichi had something like this when his actual for-real flesh-and-blood brother died, rather than having zero reaction to it whatsoever, not even looking over Deku's psychic shoulder and making a sad face about it.

o It actually kind of offends me that Horikoshi thinks he can get away with taking a stab in the direction of making AFO "sympathetic" now.  Now, after he's spent the entire endgame portraying AFO as a two-dimensional Demon Lord who was literally Evil In Utero.  And, you know, I'd buy AFO as being Evil In Utero but also capable of loneliness, sure. And I'm even more than on board with interpreting AFO as a man who's spent the last century working 24:7 to convince himself that he's heartlessly evil to deal with the loss of the only family he ever had. But the fact that this statement has been put in the mouth of Deku, who has never indicated the faintest trace of sympathy or understanding, much less compassion for AFO?  Fuck off.

    

o All that Yoichi hyping up Deku's incredible finesse in attacking Shigaraki with the stored-up OFA quirks makes me think is, "Welcome to My Hero Academia, where the stakes are made up and the past doesn't matter!"  I am so abominably weary of the endgame's—and the series in general's—willing to just baldly lie to the audience's face about what is actually happening at any given point in the story.

That was the moment when we should have had a response from Yoichi, what with Shigaraki having apparently torn AFO's vestige limb from psychic limb and Bakugou overseeing as the real man rewound out of existence.  That Yoichi didn't respond back then just made him seem like he'd written off his brother generations ago; it makes his sorrowful-yet-grateful act in this chapter incredibly unearned.  Of course, the actual reason we didn't get a beat like this back then wasn't for any reason consistent with Yoichi's feelings about his brother, nor because Yoichi was too far away to know that the brother he has a psychic bond with was dying.  No, it was because Horikoshi was already writing towards this beat instead, so he didn't need to bother.  The last time Yoichi looks the real AFO’s way was the chapter-ending Bakugou blast of 409, when it takes the first eight pages of 410 for AFO’s Rewinding death to finalize itself.  The Hawks vestige talked more to All For One in his last moments than AFO’s own brother did.

    

Internal monologue is placed where internal monologue cannot possibly exist.  Characters' plans are backdated to points in the story which are completely irreconcilable with how those characters were behaving at the time.  Surprise and dismay are pantomimed from characters who are revealed to have anticipated and planned for the very eventuality they're acting so shocked about.

The main character, a kid who was once characterized by his tendency to mutter his thoughts out loud, who had a running gag of tightly packed, densely worded speech/thought balloons, has been reduced to an empty marionette, devoid of internal monologue, scoured of thoughts more complex than the multiplication tables of his quirk combinations.  The story can retroactively say that Deku did—intentionally and willfully!—anything it wants and not have to worry about belying its phony stakes and made-for-Twitter cliffhangers because it has deprived Deku of his own capacity to reflect.  He can't spoil twist reveals of his own true intentions if the narrative completely locks us out of his head!  Nevermind how much of his final battle has occurred inside a shared goddamn psychic space.

All of this has made it totally impossible for me to read the story as a story.  Not only do I see the strings, the strings have become all I can see.

Of course the vestiges are back one last time for a dramatic punch, despite multiple chapters swearing up and down to us that we were seeing a big emotional sacrifice play.  Last chapter we witnessed the word vomit that was Horikoshi trying to justify Star's pilots surviving their planes blowing up, because that's how determined Horikoshi is that no one on Team Hero actually die.  Of course the vestiges came back.

Who cares?  Truly, who the fuck cares?  I don't care about them; I don't care about whether they'll be back again in the epilogue; I don't care about why Vestige Might and Shinomori are missing from the punch; I don't care about the story finally trying to pretend that anyone in its pages has ever given a single starving river rat's ass about All For One's humanity.

—NOW ENTERING FULL-FLEDGED RANT ZONE—

I care about the only characters who have ever been facing actual stakes in this war: Shigaraki and his followers.

    

o Even though I care, I don't have it in me to weigh in much about Shigaraki's seeming death here, and especially not his last words.  I'm far too jaded about Horikoshi's cliffhangers to think that anything I say now about Shigaraki dying and what it means for both Hero Society and the people Shigaraki leaves behind can be assumed to still be accurate two weeks from now.

I hope it's a fakeout.  I hope a chunk of Shigaraki's body fell through Kurogiri's last portal and the hyper-regen can kick back in once he's no longer being assaulted on all sides by the allies of the kid who was trying to “save” him.  I hope Horikoshi has one last stupid asspull up his sleeve.  I hope for a complete Karma Houdini ending for Shigaraki and the rest of the League.

If we don't get that, it's gonna suck, and it's gonna turn Deku into a fraud and a liar.  I don't care if the story wants me to think Shigaraki was saved; I don't care if Deku is satisfied with having saved "that crying boy."

I have not forgotten that "that crying boy" gently refused to accept Deku's "save" when the bell rang to go home. He wanted to go back to his friends, instead; he reiterated his desire to be a Hero for the Villains.  The crying child returned to the form of Shigaraki Tomura and then AFO devoured him.  Deku didn't save the child then, and he hasn't saved him now.

Remember how Eri didn't count as truly saved from Overhaul until the first time she could smile fully and freely?  Guess what stops you from doing that?  Right—being fucking dead.

And those touching last words of Shigaraki's won't do Spinner much good on account of him still being brain-damaged from a bunch of extra quirks no one can remove, because the only people who could are, again, fucking dead.

Unless, of course, the theorists are right and Deku is going to be not only not quirkless in the epilogue (meaning all that drama and emotion about sacrificing OFA is going to be another fucking lie), he's going to have the "unified" OFA+AFO quirk via Shigaraki's fistbump.  Meaning Deku can remove the extra quirks, presumably just before telling Spinner that Deku saved-via-killing the love of Spinner's life.

Solidarity among outcasts is false and toxic.  Everyone should just rely on Heroes more, no matter how much Heroes have failed them in the past.

o One last thing I want to address, less about the canon and more about the reactions I've been seeing elsewhere to the prospect of Shigaraki (and any combination of Dabi, Toga and Spinner) being dead: the idea that being dead is the best possible outcome for them because if they don't die they'll only have to spend the rest of their lives "rotting in jail."

Great job, team; nice message to take home.  Everyone pack it in.

    

Firstly, and to get this out of the way, that is a false binary that totally ignores the long history of Shounen Jump villains getting absurd Karma Houdini endings where they walk off into the sunset free as birds because they've changed their minds and resolved to be better, or at least have decided mass murder is no longer worth their time and effort.  (Vegeta wasn't the first mass murderer a Shounen Jump story rewarded with freedom and friendship, nor was he the last.)

But more importantly, that false binary is one that could only be presented by someone who truly does see prison as a fate worse than death.  No rehabilitation is possible.  No supervised release or house arrests in the care of assigned guardians who want better for them.  No lenience can be granted in recognition of the League's mental states; they can be admitted to no mental hospitals focused on therapy.

The "better death than prison" line is the product of a perspective that has never had to seriously consider the prospect of living behind bars.  It's a childish imagination of prison as a nebulous Bad Place where Bad People go to be Punished For Being Bad, or a self-righteous fantasy of a cold hell where sinners are sentenced to suffering eternal.

People can tell that the League have suffered too much to sentence them to Forever Bad Times, so they comfort themselves with the idea that at least they died happy, instead of living forever in a pop-culture-informed crayon doodle of concrete and solitude.

I’m not here to tell these readers that there aren't people in the world who would rather die than live under watch for the rest of their lives.  I won’t deny that Japanese prisons are bleak and there’s every chance that the prisons in Horikoshi’s fictionalized Japan are even worse.  But I am asking people espousing the view that death would be better than incarceration to seriously consider all the angles on what that sentiment means.

If it were you facing the life sentence, are you so sure you would prefer to take your own life?  If it were someone you loved who would rather die than face imprisonment, would you help them—hand your older brother the gun, or your younger sister the knife?

Or would you want to hope that they could get some help instead, have an opportunity to connect to something meaningful—find religion, take up reading classic literature, connect with someone inside or via letters?  Would you want them to accept the lawful punishment for what they'd done rather than evade it by ending their lives?  Would you want them to hold on in case their case could be reassessed someday, that they might eventually finish serving their sentence or be moved to someplace that would focus on helping them rather than punishing them?

Would you want a glorified cop in a cape making that decision for them—or you—based on that cop's ability to "forgive"?

If you think prison is a fate worse than death, why is it okay that people like Gentle Criminal or the Shie Hassaikai Trash Trio have to endure it, while mass murderers, serial killers and insurrectionists like the League get to escape through death?  Think of every purse snatcher who gets paraded in front of cameras with their arms bound and their face muzzled; think of Twice at sixteen; think of Mr. Compress now.  Do these people deserve to suffer in the kind of torment you're imagining prison must entail?  Would it be better for them to die rather than endure it?

If prisons in BNHA's Japan are so terrible as all that, isn't that something the kids should try to fix?  Shouldn't that be a part of the mass societal improvement project people are swearing up and down the kids will have nicely sewn up in the epilogue?  If the kids aren't going to fix these prisons—these places that take suicide risks like Ending and spit them out worse than ever; these places like Tartarus where the wardens call the people in their charge monsters and animals—then why should I believe the kids are going to fix literally anything else?

Or is it simply the case that it's perfectly fine that prisons should be this way; shitty prison conditions are only bad when it's the villains whose sympathetic backstories we know who're facing them?

"It's a shame, but the League has to pay for their crimes."  But why does that “have to be”?  Isn’t it because no one involved—not the characters, not the author, not the people who accept this ending—can envision a world where the “has to be” could be otherwise?

That's the problem with, "Killing someone can be a way of saving them," and, "They would have just spent the rest of their lives in prison anyway."  It's a stunted mentality that leaves no room for the radical reforms and systemic improvements that are necessary to stop this whole cycle from repeating.  Worse, as I very much suspect we're going to see in the epilogue, it's a mentality that says the system is actually fine as it is—the only real problems were caused by a tiny handful of bad actors, and now that they've been removed, everything else will self-correct, and things will go back to normal.

    

That precious, perfect status quo that Deku swore to return: this is the way he brings it back, it and everything that comes with it.

    

o In summary: if this ending sticks, then what we have in My Hero Academia is thus:

A world that played at being grounded, but which turned out to run on arbitrary rules, magic thinking and Evil Babies.

Characters that were presented as radically kind, but whose endgame resolutions represented a cruel underlining of the status quo, in which only those who suffer in silence deserve not to have to.

A story that wanted to be staunchly idealistic but which ultimately entrenched to hollow, meaningless platitudes.

o P.S. So like, Nana’s vestige saved Shigaraki off-screen, right?  So even after all her fear that Shigaraki would have to die, even after all the efforts she and Deku made to help Deku break him down, at the very last moment, she wanted to save him.  And she did so in the only reason she could, as one psychic scrap to another: she held his soul together when he was shattering apart.  But when Deku comes to the very last moment, when Shigaraki’s body is shattering apart, does he do anything to try to hold Shigaraki together?  Try to tell Shigaraki how to use Black Whip to hold his body together, call for Sero and his tape, Aizawa’s Erasure, anything like that?

If it doesn't stick?  That I'm less sure of.  But I'm pretty sure Deku's fucked as the Symbol of Hope no matter what.  There’s no way, at this point, to fix his portrayal as the kid who has a drive to save that eclipses all common understanding.  Every part of the story, before and after that declaration of Yoichi’s in Chapter 287, has served to undermine that claim.  This is just the last nail in the sky coffin.

    

Nah.  Instead, he just administers one last punch to finish the job.  The boy with the drive to save that eclipses all common understanding, everyone.

[lopposting]

I have the feeling that originally, earlier in development, P was supposed to die at the end.

(Or, About more than a year after the official release,

the headcanon that changed everything for me.)

So the ending I'm talking about is this, the Rise of P ending.

But what really made me think this is this event in 2022. (people back then correctly guessed might be one of the endings or the ending of the game. Taking from this post here)

At G-Star Neowiz booth in 2022, there was a promotional statue of the Saintess statue in the game, except the figurine of the puppet is strangely suspended, as if it's literally ascending to heaven. The post writer also notes even then that the figurine looks like P. (The literal Rise of P)

There's also some footage of the figure here: (around 1:16)

The symbolism seems very very apparent, as though Neowiz were spoiling their own game two years before release. Not only is the figure literally ascending to a higher plane (imagery often associated with death), the statue itself is an inference to a famous statue of Mary mourning the death of her son. The writer of an article covering Neowiz's section at the event also notes that the ascending figure looks like P, and that it has a feeling of melancholy.

Beginning and End

Around the time of the release I think what was going around was that Rise was being considered as the "true" ending. It's interpretably the best possible outcome of the game, but I feel like it's also because it made the most sense thematically (the puppet -> Human ending, and the saintess statue being foreshadowed earlier). But P's collapse at the end was also widely (mis)interpreted as his death. And I think that's also because, in a way, it makes the most sense thematically. Puppet awakens in the train, goes on an adventure, and then sacrifices himself for who woke him up in the first place, it's just narratively a very classic and might I say standard thing to do in that very traditional, circular sort of storytelling sensibility.

However, we know that the truth is that P has fallen asleep (a human act). It is still his death in some sorts - but he's leaving a past behind and it's his "rebirth" that is being emphasized now.

And then it hit me.

I don't know if P knows that he will survive reviving Sophia.

Keeping in mind that if P was originally supposed to die - I think the entire end sequence of ROP and the overall tone of it makes SO MUCH sense to me now.

Sophia brings a lone puppet to life in the train, he is animated, listening, fighting. At the end of his journey, so much has changed - but to return her favour perhaps, truly human at heart, he returns her life to her, and then - returns to back to stillness. It’s just a narratively very tight and circular thing to do in a traditional storytelling sense, especially when you consider a kind of tragic korean media sensibility that might have influenced the country in which this studio is based out of. (Film critic Roger Ebert once suggested that he had not yet seen a happy korean film.)

I am not an expert on the Korean cinema, which is considered in critical circles as one of the most creative in the world (“Oldboy” won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2004). I can say that of the Korean films I’ve seen, only one (“The YMCA Baseball Club”) did not contain extraordinary sadomasochism.  "Oldboy" review (2005)

Not to mention... Since release, I've always felt like there was this strange feeling of sadness, of melancholy, permeating throughout the entire game. Of course, we're walking through a destroyed city, but still. And I was glad that that didn't seem lost on other people:

We know that Sophia is able to turn back the clock for our main character, but turning back time is Sophia's ability, and it's possible that she can't just revive anyone once that part of her that animated him was returned back to her. Okay, maybe it's a little contrived - but that hardly matters when audiences can often overlook these things for the sake of a story making a statement. Besides, remembering that P could not even wake up without Sophia's help in the first place, it's possible that for whatever reason, he cannot sustain life on his own. In his POV this might very well be his final act.

Another thing to keep in mind is that P has just lost his father. He's witnessed Polendina's death, Antonia's death, etc., in a string of major losses throughout the game's final arc. We see him mourn over his dad but in the ROP ending it will then cut straightaway to the balcony scene. Regardless of how much time has actually passed, Geppetto's death is the scene right before this one. I don't mean to suggest that this act was one of pure self-destruction, but it is something that we as the audience can't help but feel affects him and the decision we are seeing now.

There's a certain gravitas to the way he's walking towards her that in the released version isn't unjustified, but the tone of the entire sequence has so much conviction and sombreness that it came across as a little odd to me in retrospect. And I also think this is why others might have (mis)interpreted the ending as "he died", because of the tone of this scene. But in line with the game's themes - I remember that often, it's the intent that matters. And if he doesn't know that he's going to survive this, and this is what he chooses is his final act, for all intents and purposes, it IS him sacrificing himself to save Sophia.

Re-contextualizing it this way, I think the balcony scene was maybe originally meant to be him choosing to look at Krat one last time. I definitely think that was the implication now.

P's blue butterfly flying away (his spirit leaving him). I used to think this blue butterfly represented Sophia, but now I feel like it represents P ? as I don't think we ever see this specific blue butterfly anywhere else in the game. [maybe a reach I dunno]

To be honest - when LOP first came out, up until about a week, I really did think he was dead. I was honestly pretty sad about it, but in equal parts I was sort of really impressed that Neowiz would have the guts to kill off their breadwinner straight away [I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THIS TOO AHH]

So if this ending was originally written to be P's demise, I wonder why the powers that be would have rolled that back. Presumably they need him alive for some sort of future franchise instalment? Maybe they genuinely thought it was just too sad? But there is one thing that doesn't change, and it's what P doesn't know.

The truth is what you make it, I suppose.

Who are you? Are you a puppet or a human being?

[phantoms-lair]

80

Danny Phantom x Video Game

"Condor you will be assigned a partner for this mission. Code name Potoo. He's from another agency, he'll meet you in Spain." To be honest, he was expecting someone like Krauser. What he wasn't expecting was... "Condor to Roost. That is a child." "Come again, Condor?" "Code Name Potoo is literally a child." There was no visuals on over the ear pieces, but he could imagine Hunnigan's pursed lips. "Our other branch indicated the despite his appearance, Codename Potoo wasn't a child." Our other branch was trying to get out of some shit. Because that was a child. "I don't supposed they'd be willing to offer said agents files?" "They're...classified beyond our clearance?" Hunnnigan sounded puzzled, as well she should be. They were a mission to rescue the President's daughter. Nothing should be beyond their clearance. "I think a closer look is due at our other agency. Condor out." Leon took another look at the black haired teenager who was glaring at him. Mostly looking at the shape not quite hidden under his turtleneck. Leon's money was on some kind of control collar or bomb to ensure complicity. Mission one, save Ashley. Mission two, save Codename Potoo

~

Leon had been a cop for all of one day. And maybe it was egotistical, but he felt he'd been a better cop in that one day than those two were in their entire career. They didn't question the boy on the investigation. They didn't notice the collar he was wearing. They seemed very unconcerned that people had been disappeared here lately. And when one didn't come back in a timely manner from his pee break, he'd sent Leon and the kid. If it was just Leon he'd hoped it was because they HAD noticed things were wrong and this was all contrived to separate Leon and the kid so they could make sure he was okay. But no, they were just lazy. Any attempt at communication with the kid had been met with glares and Leon wasn't entirely sure he could talk. But he couldn't blame him. Look what the government had done to him, why would he trust one of it's agents?

But the further they got into the woods, the worse a feeling he had. This place felt wrong in way he couldn't put into words. He wasn't sure if he felt better or worse wen they found the house. Leon called out several times, but didn't get an answer. He apologized when they found the old man who lived there, but the kid tensed. And good instincts as he noticed the missing officers bloody id on the ground. The old man might have taken him by surprise if the kid hadn't throw a bowl off the table surprising him. Leon leapt to his feet with a spin kick that knocked the man into a wall, his neck hitting at an odd angle. The kids hands flew to his mouth. "I'm sorry you had to see that." Leon felt no regrets about killing a man who'd come after him with an ax, but doing so in front of kid was a different matter. No matter what that kid may have been forced to see prior. "It looks like one of our guides is hurt an might need medical attention. I'm going to look for him, okay?" The kid nodded, pale but still in the game. A scream lead them to the basement. Leon took lead on the search and couldn't help but draw his gun when they found him. It was the one bad habit he hadn't been able to break from Raccoon City. No matter how much it had been drilled into him that when he saw a bloody corpse that the corpse itself was not a threat, that's where his gun automatically trained. Thankfully the corpse stayed where it was. He had to get the kid out of there. "We need to stay quiet." Leon instructed. "Let's get back to the car and report this. The kid nodded, all signs of defiance gone. They moved back to the stairs, only to have the man form earlier be blocking their path. Broken neck and all. "Not again," Leon griped, earning a confused look from the kid. Still, it wasn't hard to put the dead man down again, and grab the kid to head for the car. Their path was interrupted though, by a door smashing open ,and two men leaving the previously locked off area and right down their escape route. Okay, new plan. Gesturing to be quiet, he headed down the hall towards the new area. He had to look back a few times to make sure the kid was following him, he moved so quietly. his stealth skill must have been why he was put on the mission. Sadly the new area didn't have an exit, so they went up the stairs to a small room. Leon quietly locked the door behind them. "If anyone tries to get in, barricade the door with that bookshelf." The kid nodded. Leon looked around and a small planning area caught his eye. On it were pictures of Ashley and a map of Valdelobos, with a lake marked. "Condor to Roost. I've found evidence that our target, Baby Eagle, is in the village." "Our intel was correct." Hunnigan sounded pleased. "Continue your search and I'll find what I can about the area." "Anything on the other agency." "Need to know only," Hunnigan said with an amount of frustration that mean like him, she apparently didn't need to know. "Right, Condor out." Leon shut off his comm right as there was a thud of an ax against the door. The kid was good to his instruction and slammed the bookcase down, far more easily than Leon thought he would. "We need to get out of here." Leon explained. "Follow me." He kicked out the window and dove through it. He turned to catch the kid only to find him landing by his side. He pulled them out of sight before the attackers could finish breaking down the door and see where they went. "Kid, is it going to hurt you if I take that collar off?" The kid recoiled, eyes full of fear. "I won't if it will hurt you," Leon assured. "But...I knew this girl named Sherry. She'd be about your age now. She was infected with a deadly virus and received a cure. The government wanted to take her, to make her into a weapon. And the only way they'd agree to leave her alone was if someone else took her place. Me." The kids eyes widened. "I wouldn't let them do that to Sherry. And if there's anything I can do to get you out of here, I will."

He could see hope and fear warring in his eyes until finally the kid pulled his turtleneck down, careful not to touch the medical monstrosity around his neck. Leon gulped at the sheer amount of trust he was being shown. The metal sent what felt like small shocks through his fingers as he worked on it. But the mechanism wasn't complicated and soon gave a satisfying 'clunk' as the lock unlatched.

The kid grabbed the collar flung it away as far as he could. Leon couldn't help but wince as his flesh hissed upon touching it. What had seemed like a minor irritant to him seemed to be caustic to the kid. The boy gasped for breath and made the first vocal sound Leon had ever heard him make. A sob. He collapsed to his knees and Leon caught him, holding him gently and telling him it would be okay, he's free, the government will never touch him again. The moment was broken by a cry of "¡Agarradlo!" "I'll hold them off." Leon said. "You get back to the car. Tell the officer there we were attacked and his partner is dead. When he goes to get back up flee." He lined up his shot but was interrupted by a blast of green whizzing past him and hitting the villager in the face. "I don't have to take orders anymore." The kid said shakily. "And...I want to help that girl." "This is going to be really dangerous, kid." Leon warned, trying to be nonchalant about the glowing green fire in the kids hands and eyes.. "Believe me. It's a step up from the experiments." The kid said dryly. "They were planning to torture and experiment on me till there was nothing left. They just thought using the control collar to force me on this mission would get them more funding. And my name's not kid. It's Danny." "Okay Danny. If you want to bail at any point, I'll get you out of here." "No need, I can escape just fine on my own - once Ashley's safe."

He didn't exactly plan on taking Danny's word for it, but the green fire definitely upped his survivability odds. Hopefully together they could save Ashely too.

[mangoshorthand]

If we're insisting on a romantic plotline for Five set up in Season 3

Right. I've heard people saying that Five/Lila was set up from season 3. That all their banter was deliberate foreshadowing or something. Now, I'm not sure if that's something the writers said or if that's just people seeing banter and affection and then attributing it to romance with the benefit of foresight. (If it's the former, then it was set up extremely poorly and frankly I refuse to believe that was the plan).

So, if Five had to have a romance plot in s4, (as Blackman decreed) here's how I would have set it up from season 3 in a way that would hopefully not have seemed too weird/forced.

One of the main gripes people had about that season is that most of the Sparrows were introduced and then discarded quickly, so the introduction of a plotline in which Five has a dynamic with one of them might have gone some way towards helping with this.

Now, I know that pairing Five with a Sparrow is an overused fanfic trope that rarely plays well and it's kinda weird for TWO Hargreeves boys to pair up with their multiverese sisters, BUT we are living under Blackman-law and thus Aidan Gallagher must swap spit with someone as soon as possible after turning 18 so this is the best I have:

I would change/develop (and potentially recast) Jayme. Be prepared...this is long:

Personality/Background

She feels out of place in her family.

She hates the limelight and doesn't cooperate in their branding activities.

Even with Reggie drugged up, life feels just as shitty (maybe shittier) to her being under Marcus' regime.

She's been done with the whole sparrow academy thing since she was a kid and is fascinated by the somethings and nothings of ordinary life.

She has a tendency to 'run away' and do her own thing. The Sparrows see her as unreliable and selfish.

She's cynical and feels no loyalty to the Sparrows as a whole, but she does have personal loyalty to Sloane and Alphonso.

You could put her in the wrong/younger body like Five, which could also be leveraged to put distance between herself and the other sparrows, but I also think that would be too convenient a plot contrivance to play well on screen.

I would keep Season 3's plot largely similar, just with the addition of a friendship between Five and Jayme:

S3 E1+2

Initial fight

Five and Jayme have the same initial fight scene with a little more prominence. It goes roughly the same way but perhaps add a bit more interaction/smack talk between them.

Bar Room conversion

At the point Five is first wearing his retirement outfit, a situation occurs that sees he and Jayme sitting at the bar of the hotel obsidian. There are few hard feelings about the fight. They grouse a little and rub along well even though Five clearly thinks she's a spy.

They get onto the kiss with hallucinatory Delores and Five's whole story comes out.

Jayme thinks the peace and quiet of the apocalypse sounds kind of nice (a notion he thoroughly disabuses her of).

She finds herself oddly touched by Five's devotion to getting home to his family, although she can't really fathom doing the same and finds it hilarious that he continues to insist that she must be a spy because they're her family.

Jayme tells a story of being a child and hiding in the mansion and playing house in a little den where nobody could find her. It was her escape. When she got older, she used to escape the mansion and hitchhike around the country for weeks at a time, enjoying a slice of ordinary life.

Five asks her why she came back every time instead of staying away. She can't answer him, but the answer is obvious to him: she too loves her family and doesn't really know how to live in the real world beyond her childhood 'playing house' in her den.

She strikes back that it takes one to know one, and Five concedes this.

But her story chimes with Five, and this is what catalyses his retirement/roadtrip arc with Klaus.

S3 E3-6

Five is pretty busy so they don't interact again until E7. BUT...

The bar room conversation with Five pricks Jayme's conscience and she throws herself into trying to find Marcus and protecting her family.

The confrontation with Harlan goes similarly except Jayme doesn't die and she is instead devastated about Alphonso's death, making her one of the fiercest advocates for killing Harlan. She's angry that Allison did it and she couldn't.

S3 E7

Before trapping the Kugelblitz in Christoper

Jayme lashes out at Five/all of them. Five correctly intuits that she's still upset about Alphoso and angry she didn't get to kill Harlan.

He comforts her in his uptight way and tells her from experience that killing for revenge/out of anger doesn't do any good, but resonates with her that not being able to save the people you love is a terrible, powerless feeling. He ends in saying that, for what it's worth, she shouldn't feel bad for wanting a normal life.

She hugs him tightly, surprising him. He hugs back stiffly but not unhappily.

Post-Kugel-trapping

Lila encourages Five onto the dancefloor, and Five in turn encourages Jayme onto the dancefloor.

They dance and laugh, and it's clear that they enjoy being dance partners. There are a few cross shots that show them liking one another's company. The last we see them together is somewhere around Lila telling Diego she's pregnant and Luther and Sloane's engagement:

Five and her are slumped on a couch. She said she's glad it's over and she's going to put all this behind her.

He asks what she's going to do. She says she wants to try to be a family without being a Sparrow and find her own way in the world. She's going to open a little coffee shop, grow her own food, find a simple life. What about him?

He tells her that his road trip with Klaus didn't go as planned, so he's planning to get nice convertible and go travelling for a while. She says that he'd better put her coffee shop on his route. He replies that he'd like that, and then leaves to find Viktor.

Right before the Kugel-splosion

She is in the conversation with Ben, Christopher and Fei and states her intent to leave and have nothing to do with their plans, but still wants to stay on good terms.

They reject her pretty roundly, and she leaves to go and find Sloane thinking she'll have more luck with her.

And then Christopher blows.

Halfway up the stairs, Jayme is unconscious as a result of some falling rubble, and the expanding Kugelblitz puts her and Ben in equal danger. Five instinctively saves Ben (because he will always choose his family) and Jayme dies in the mansion.

S3 E8-10 (After Jayme's Death)

Five feels guilty and more than a little resentful of Sparrow Ben's assholery given what happened.

His decision to give up the fight and accept the end of the world is somewhat influenced by his bitterness over this.

Otherwise, S3 continues unchanged.

S4 (nearly there)

I would have to rewrite the entire series, but here are the basics:

Jayme crops up again, unable to remember anything until marigold is reintroduced.

She and Five are the ones who get stuck in the subway (or similar plot device that allows years to pass for them while no time passes for Five's siblings). They get together relatively quickly, maybe within a year or so. They have a peaceful few years together growing their own food and trying to coax an old barista station back to life so they can make their own coffee. They're both genuinely happy, Jayme absolutely thrives there, and there would be lots of scenes of Aidan Gallagher kissing someone for Steve to enjoy. (Sorry Steve. Your writing decisions might suck but I'm really giving you a hard time here.)

When Five finds the journal, he hides it from her, although he clearly struggles with himself over it, and becomes unhappy. After a few months of him not being himself, Jayme finally gets it out of him.

When she asks why, Five's all: "Because I choose you. I didn't choose you last time so I'm choosing you this time. I love you blah blah kissy kissy for Steve"

And Jayme's like "Yeah, I appreciate it but I love you too. You wouldn't be the man I love if you didn't leave this behind and go back to your family. I want you to be happy and you can't be happy knowing that you can get back to them."

Five accepts this sadly and thanks her for the little slice of normality and peace they shared together. For a moment it looks like she's going to stay and he's going to leave, but at the last second she joins him. Five is her family now, and so are all the Umbrellas too. She can't keep 'playing house' alone. Wherever they are, she will be happy.

And then the series ends totally differently and they all get their happy endings.

[sugoi-writes]

Nun!Alastor x Reader - The Confessional - Part 1

It's 1 AM, and @st-alastors-confessional has me foaming at the mouth. I wrote this far-too-long drabble based off of the MOD's Nun Alastor. Please please enjoy!

Warning: Not proofread in the slightest, with implications of sacrilege and sinning behavior. You've been warned! I might do another part with more debauchery down the road hehe

The sermon was going swimmingly, all things considered. The Pastor and Priest, St. Vox, lead with a soulful, boisterous tone. Albeit, he had always led his sermons with a strong, charismatic energy. He left the congregation absolutely enraptured, waiting on hand and foot for him to speak again.... You, another sinner among the crowd, tried to absorb what you could from his ravings and ramblings.

Clearly, when you wound up in Hell... you found out the hard way that God was, indeed, real. You had long been a on-Christian, and even if you still weren't... you couldn't look the facts in the face and say they weren't true. It was a simple notion:

God was real. You were not a loyal believer. You did a bad thing or two, and now you're in a church in the heart of the Pentagram, seeking answers.

You were hoping to find a way to get into Heaven... St. Vox's approach was very traditional, almost 'Dark Ages' approach. A phrase you heard once or twice rung through your mind, clear as the morning church bells:

" When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul in purgatory springs..."... no, was it sings??? That, you werent sure... either way--

Many wealthier, gullible sinners would shove money towards the Church, desperate to buy their way out of Hell. The more meek, kind hearted sinners would often throw money to the offering plates to prevent their love ones from suffering the same fate... Whether their monetary sacrifices were successful or not... well, that's yet to be seen. And no one truly know where that money goes...

And so you searched and listened in the pews patiently, hoping that something would reveal itself to you... Would living justly get you out of here? Would denouncing sin in its entirety get you the ticket out of this hellhole? Hell, did you need to declare yourself celibate? You certainly wouldn't be opposed, after some of the shit you saw on Day One...

In all honestly, you'd be willing to throw a few dollars in the pot on the off chance your gut was wrong about St. Vox's approach. As you know, your intuition had led you astray before...

You were five Sundays deep in this contrived drivel, and yet, you still had questions... The questions that plagued your mind could only be answered by the Priest, ideally during Confessional tonight... But, as you tried your best to stay awake through another biblical tangent, you were startled by a choral uproar. The choir, made entirely of clergy, was the closest thing to Heavenly that they, or any sinner, could hear in Hell.

Honest efforts were being made to sing the hymns and profess the Gospel accurately. The pitches and incantations were perfectly admirable, even enjoyable... and surprisingly, all of this was all done in Latin. It was nearly enough to raise goosebumps across your flesh, your senses pleased by the perfect, harmonious progressions.

One among the nuns who sung, with strong, crimson features, met your gaze in the middle of the refrain. You felt the gaze burrowing into you deeper, trembling subconscious as the song made you sway along.

A pointed, yellowed smile graced your eyes as the deer demon sang along. The overall tone of the higher melodic line had felt like cashmere; it was refined and soft due to their(?) unique voice texture. It was a tone that you felt was familiar... a comforting one. You couldnt put your tongue on it, squinting slightly at the demure nun. They(?) seemed to notice your infatuation, their hands folding neatly together and clasping a fine, ornate rosary. Their hands were elegant, long and thin, reminding you of a Royal... surely, those hands were used for more than empty prayer?

You felt your mind run to impurities and sin almost instantly, panicking as you tore your sight away from the Nun. You felt your throat running dry as you shook your head in shock. You couldn't be thinking this way about a nun-- a NUN? Quite literally, a celibate being, devoted to God and His work. This felt... wrong. So wrong, even for a sinner like you.

Your legs brushed tightly against one another, hoping to stiffle the feeling that pooled in your core. You watched the way that the Nun's chest rose and fell, how the angular jaw was complimented by the small, bobbed tufts that framed it. Your eyes became lost in the visual stimuli as you pondered just how demure and sweet this Nun must have looked under the habit...

You bite the inside of your cheek as you felt the Nun's eyes still looking to you, as if they KNEW exactly what you were thinking. 'If you keep undressing me with your eyes, I might catch a cold,' your mind mimicked in their voice.

You felt indecent, completely exposed to someone who you should be regarding as an example of purity and devotion...

As the hymn finally concluded, the Priest dismissed the clergy. He was swiftly wrapping things up as the coffers and offering plates made their rounds around the room. The nuns assisted, coming row by row to collect generous donations and desperate offerings. You felt yourself stiffen as you noticed the red and black demon making their way closer to you, voice teeming with a startling sweetness.

"Blessings unto you, dear Sinner. Many thanks. ...Blessings unto you, dear. How has your mother been fairing--?"

As the velvety voice grew closer to you, you felt yourself unable to move, paralyzed with fear. What if they knew you were lusting over them so superficially? Would they be able to tell?

You nearly fell into the aisle as a sinner slammed into you from behind, thrusting money towards the chaste nun," Pl-Please!!!! Please, this is all that I have!!! Sister Alastor, Sister Alastor!!! Bless me!!! Bless me, Sister!!!"

The Demon nun took pause at your row, noticing you struggling under the weight of the sinner on top of you. Your lungs felt like they were being squeezed shut, unable to expand in their efforts. You pushed with all of your might, eyes closed as you fought back," W-Watch it, you f-- Ugh, you putrid FUCK!!! Get off me!!!"

Swiftly, Sister Alastor's hand was on the neck of the sinner, squeezing tightly as he gasped and gurgled. The nun simply smiled, head tilted," Dear sinner! Your penance is null and void if you cast discomfort and pain upon thine neighbor!" The nun's neck practically snapped at velocity they cocked their head up, looking downcast at the panicking demon. Unable to look up, you missed the smile Alastor wore, threatening to tear the demonic face of the nun in two.

"Take your vile hands and cast them into the River Styx... for your blood money is not welcome in these halls... Now leave this scared place. "

The sinner gasps, coughing and sputtering as he scrambles away, causing you to fall forward out of your pew. Just when you think you're about to eat shit: two large, taloned hands delicately hold you aloft.

"Are you unharmed, little lamb?" You blink for a moment, looking up slowly... only to find Sister Alastor's face an inch from your own. You stuttered as your hot breath fanned against his face, your legs threatening to give out under you.

"Y-Yes, Im-- I'm quite alright. Thank you, Sister..." You allow Alastor to place you back onto your feet, the hands of the docile-looking demon smoothing out your outfit and brushing off imaginary debris.

"I apologize for making you intervene. Thank you-- I would've been trampled to death, were it not for you." The deer Demon's smile could have made the devil tremble... but to you, it seemed entirely sincere," Thank me not, dear Lamb. For the Lord always calls upon his disciples to help those in need." Alastor takes a step away from you, bowing their head and giving you a polite curtsy.

"Alas, I must be away. But, should you need to seek council... the Lord always has room to hear out your wayward strifes and confessions." You reach out and almost touch the Nun's habit, sheepishly blushing when you sense the farmer's flinch.

"A-Actually... will the Priest be seeing anyone for Confession tonight? I... I have concerns. Concerns I feel like he could help me through... Im troubled, and just..." Your eyes are downcast, unable to look at the devilishly handsome demon," Im... concerned about my salvation. And need advice on how better to achieve it... or, if its really too late for me now."

You feel your heart leap into your throat as the Nun's head pulls off a complete 180° spin, the body following suit a moment after. Alastor clasps both of your hands in his own, smile wide and full of glee," But of course! Our hallowed halls could never deny such an honest soul seeking the Lord's guidance!" Alastor's head grows closer to yours, voice hushing. You're forced to lean in too, his voice hardly above a whisper.

"However, he will be unable to see anyone just yet. Return at the Witching Hour... he will have an audience with you then." Your eyes widened as you smiled back, eagerly shaking the nun's hands," O-Oh thank you-- Thank you!!! I appreciate that! I'll be back soon, then. Bless you, Sister Alastor! "

You nod and bow back to the nun, who regards you evenly but warmly, before watching you leave. You did not see the smirk that spread across Alastor's face... the glint of excitement that lights up his candy red eyes.

Oh, he knows damn well that Vox will not seek an audience with you that late in the night... who best to stand in for the Priest other than himself... the Mother Superior?

His mind festers with demented excitement as you stumbled out of the church, looking like a scared, timid doe... Oh, how he would enjoy seeing you again. He would need to prepare for your visit... after all, you would be doing your fair share of confessing AND atoning for your sins... your eyes hid nothing from him. And he was going to enjoy seeing them well up with blissful tears, a wanton expression gracing your cheeks...

The click of the nun's shoes echoed as he followed the other clergy members elegantly, his face not giving anything away. Oh Lord, how you've blessed him with a most delightful pleasure... he'd be sure to repent for his indecency later.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

Hello 💗

Quick question that could 100% be solved by a Google search but I much prefer your storytelling

Why on earth is Alex known as mr snarl? <333

hii lovely 💗 omg i am MORE than happy to tell the story of mr snarl! make yourself a cup of tea, sit back and relax, and let’s get started:

as you might already know, “mr snarl” is the nickname that’s usually used to describe alex’s persona during the am era. allow me to provide some prime examples of mr snarl:

basically, mr snarl is characterised by the slicked-back, cool, arrogant charisma that was typical of alex’s performances during the am era. he’s not friendly or approachable, he’s deadpan and snarky and all edges, and is generally seen in sunglasses and black leather.

a great example of mr snarl in action alex’s 2013 brit awards speech:

(but also you can find him in literally any performance from 2013/2014)

my favourite thing about the story of “mr snarl” though is that the name originated from alex himself. in an interview from 2022, he discussed his old stage personas:

he has a name for his performer ego, which has always snarled and sang with the corner of his mouth turned up in disdain: mr snarl. “sometimes mr snarl shows up,” turner explains. “we’ve just been rehearsing some old songs for the upcoming shows and it’s weird what feels right and what feels contrived when there’s five of us in the rehearsal room. it feels completely insane to embody this guy singing to a carpeted room. there i stand, singing at the carpet and wondering how do you sing a damn song like ‘teddy picker’?”

what’s interesting to me is that obviously ‘teddy picker’ was written way before the am era, so maybe alex’s idea of mr snarl includes the eras before am too - or maybe he was thinking of how he performed it during the am era. either way, as far as i’m aware, everyone in fan spaces like tumblr seems to solely use “mr snarl” to refer to alex’s persona during the am era (anyone reading this who has a different view, please feel free to jump in and correct me!)

mr snarl might be all cheekbones and snark, but underneath it all our favourite little deer-eyed dreamer was never far away - especially if miles kane was present!

[wellpullmystring]

My thoughts on Toy Story 5 at D23

I MISSED WOODY SO MUCH AND THE REST OF THE GANG BUT ESPECIALLY WOODY I LOVED SEEING WOODY AND CO.

It seems the little girl they're all staring at in the concept art is Bonnie. And she doesn't seem that much older. This is one of the most interesting things to me. I figured TS5 might have a significant time skip to keep some weight from the ending to TS4. We know that at least a year has passed from the credits in TS4. But I don't know if having them reunite so quickly will be a good idea. If the gang gets right back together, Toy Story 4's ending could lose some of its meaning. I never thought a permanent separation would ruin the ending to TS4, but having them come back together so quickly could potentially jeopardize the emotional stakes of TS4.

How is Woody even back with them so quickly? What circumstances would have them all together again in such a timely manner? Did the toys explicitly ask Woody for help?

The reunion of the gang was done in such an unceremonious manner. I knew the gang was gonna be shown together in the promo. But they didn't even build up their reconciliation in the quick video they showed.

Bo Peep isn't mentioned. Bo Peep isn't in the concept art. Bo Peep is nowhere to be found. Does Woody separate from her? Is Woody simply going on an adventure with the old gang before planning on returning to her? Is she with him and just not in that particular scene?

Woody and Buzz (also Jessie) are the only ones that were mentioned in the plot summary. I find this interesting. They are also the only characters to appear in the video that was shown. I get the feeling that we're going to see a return to the TS2 and TS3 style of leads.

Toy Story 4 was hardly shown as they presented images from the previous films to pull us in. I also found the language being used to be very interesting. "Loyalty." "Friendship." "Growing up." There wasn't much that could be directly linked to Toy Story 4. The only image shown from Toy Story 4 was a flashback scene with Andy. Does Andrew Stanton not care for that movie?

I find the fact they went with the "toys vs. technology" route interesting. This has been a suggested plot since before TS4 released. I think it could be a great way to weave together the messages of abandonment or fear of rejection and insecurity that the series has long studied into a cohesive fifth installment. My only worry is that it could seem boomerish or like it's pandering + perhaps date the film.

They're really doing the whole "delusional Buzz" plot again lol. TS4 was the only movie to not fully do this. I worry that facing an army of Buzz Lightyears could seem a bit childlish. But it depends on how it's done in the movie. I hope it doesn't feel like another contrived way to get TS1 buzz back.

A lot of my thoughts on the movie will depend on how much of an emphasis these plot elements have on the movie. Are they an inciting set of moments to set the events of the movie into motion? Are they subplots? Are they main focuses? The plot summary of Toy Story 4 that released with its teaser trailer would have you thinking the entire movie was about Forky. That proved to not be the case at all. My primary worry is that the movie will feel like it doesn't add emotional components to Toy Story as a franchise while acting like filler. This was my concern for TS4. I hope they can do it right again. The initial details aren't the entire picture of the emotional crux of the film.

What will the end goal be? It'd seem redundant to have Woody reunite with the gang and leave once more. But I also think it has a higher chance of happening with the fact that everyone seems to get back together so quickly. These characters are going to be faced with a sad truth: Kids don't care about toys as much now. With this in mind, I can think of a few immediate options. Maybe they'll now all become lost toys with Woody. Maybe there's an option we haven't considered. Maybe they really will bring the only child on the planet in who could reasonably have an emotional connection with this random string of toys for a suitable period of time: Andy's kids. This could be a fascinating existential idea. The toys have established they can find new purposes when their owner is done with them. What happens when there is no more purpose in the world for them period?

[illwynd]

Utgard-Loki's Tale

I finally got to perform this thing tonight, so I guess it has reached its final form.

This poem is inspired by the traditional Icelandic rhyming poem Lokrur. My adaptation uses a bastard Kalevala metre (trochaic tetrameter), with various features of both Finnish poetry (repetition and alliteration) and Icelandic poetry (alliteration and abundant use of kennings and other wordplay), and I developed it specifically for spoken performance, in accordance with the way the story would originally have been passed along. There's some really geeky shit in here.

Also my thanks to @obligate-rebel who gave me a thumbs-up on an earlier iteration of it :D

...

By men I am called Utgard-Loki

Outlands’ trickster, apt in magecraft,

Skilled in spells and in shape-shifting

One who worked his tricks on wanderers

One who wickedly deceived them

When to his threshold gods came calling

You see, all Thor and Loki knew about me was that I throw all the best parties—what else is there to do when you live way out in the Outlands?—but everyone in attendance has to be the best there is at whatever it is they do, so these two gods... they thought they’d crash my party, cause some trouble, start some fights, show me who’s boss in my own house, and I had to figure out a way to get them to head on home without actually starting a war, because, y'know, that would tend to put a crimp on the party scene. So do you want to know how I managed that trick?

Surely you have heard them tell it?

Heard the tale as they recite it

Heard about Thjalfi, swiftest,

Tricked in foot-race versus Hugi

Passed by one who treads so lightly

Or the contest of the mighty

Rymr, he who calls the thunder,

Put his lips upon the vessel

‘Pon the cup all full and frothy

Froth as white as salty sea-foam

And the thirsty draughts he drew then

Drained the horn—of but a mouthful!

So it seemed by liquid’s level

Sore was he, Midgard’s protector

Falling short in simple trial

Surely you have heard them tell it

Heard the tale as they recite it

Heard how Loki, sly and clever

Set his hunger versus Logi

Chowing down along the trencher

Met the two with crumbs between them

Drawing even, feasts devoured

Loki patting bulging belly

Smirking with his smile ‘broidered

Met they then—but skinny Logi

Ravenous as wolf in winter

He had eaten all the meat…

And all the bones… and all the trencher!

Thus was Laufey’s heir defeated!

And you must have heard them tell it

Heard the tale as they recount it

How the grim one’s son continued

Put him forth another challenge

Boasting of his strength of body

Strength indeed of all his sinews

I set before him then the mouser

Tomcat’s father, hearth’s wee tiger

Purring on the floor before him

That he should test his might upon it

Asa-Thor bent low to grasp it

Bent to wrap his grip around it

Struggling with grunts of effort

Grunting as he tried to lift it

But one paw he barely shifted!

One paw raised above the tiles!

Purring still the feline bore it

As Baldr’s brother failed to heft it!

Fury gripped lord of Bilskirnir

And in his anger bade another

Challenger be brought before him

Said I then I thought my mother

In her youth a wrestler had been

But in her dotage still might suit him

Wroth was he with red beard bristling

Stomping on the mat before him

As Elli hobbled to her corner

But soon she did contrive to hold him

Hold him fast with arms around him

Arms like bands of stubborn iron

Till his knee did bend beneath him

Shamed was Grimnir’s lauded kinsman

Beaten so by woman wizened!

Tell me those are not the stories

More or less as you have heard them

But one voice has not been cited

One has not been heard to tell it

That is me. And if you’ll heed

I’ll tell the legend as I lived it

And each contest I’ve recounted

—true it is that I deceived them

Wanderers of Aesir kindred

But look at it from my perspective

Behold for but the briefest moment

Consider how I first had found them

Sheltering in fingers’ caverns

Cowering within the leather

Where the last night I had left it—

I swear I did not mean to wound them

Or to frighten with my snoring

I was merely heedless taken

Heedless of their headstrong journey

Thus I met them in the morning

Waking to their faces frowning

Trying to be most disarming

Not to give them cause for worry

Then they asked ME where the pathway

To the hall of Utgard-Loki!

I saw it full, the very future

Of which I’d had no foretelling

For they queried after speaking

‘Mongst themselves of doom impending

Doom that they would deal that monster

Dwelling in those halls unknowing

Well!

I endeavored to dissuade them

Placing in their path obstructions

Surely less than cruel misfortunes

Set before them my conditions

If they’d travel with my guidance

They would travel by my schedule

I would call the halts and respites

I would carry all provisions

Thus I handed them frustration

Goaded them to resignation

Alas the doggedness of gods

Was not within my calculations

So, if they’d not be dissuaded

Then ‘twas I must scheme before them

How to meet their whim for action

Without inviting my destruction

Thus I pointed them to pathway

To the door of Utgard-Loki

Once apart I shed illusion

Readied all in preparation

Waited till they came a-hailing

Thunder roaring at my doorway

And ‘twas I that granted entry

Though they did not recognize me

As they came to show their mettle

Prove their might in any challenge

Fain was I to meet their boasting

With my own skill in devising

Thus I placed the end of vessel

From which Odin’s son drank freely

Down upon the dolphin’s doorstep

Thirst could never be so mighty!

Not to drain the fishes’ highway

In this way I meant to thwart him

Meant to tactfully confound him

Meant to make him long for Asgard

Not to linger ‘neath these timbers

Then, said I to ember’s elder,

Let me place on you deception

Garb yourself in Aesir aspect

Shape the hungry tongue within you

Solid where your spark did flicker

That Laufey’s son so sly and able

Might not swiftly recognize you

As he sits down at the table

Thus I spake to Munin’s brother

Of the planned dissimilation:

Wrap yourself in men’s attire

From the ash-wood make your raiment

Lace your boots of supple leather

Then set foot upon the pavement

There to meet Toothgnasher’s wounder

There to race against him striving

Round the path of mead’s lacuna

Thus alike I worked enchantments

On the great snake Midgardsormr

On that serpent world-encircling

One that Thor once snared while sailing

Scales reshaped to furry shoulders

Still he hissed alike I tell you

That one trait you might have noted

Naught else of his essence showing

And then came the last contender

Gracious guest of all the prudent,

Spoils of the years’ survivor

By her leave I did conceal her

Veiled her hair in moonlight’s metal

Bent her back like twisted tree-limb

So Harbard’s son would be no wiser

When she set her hold upon him

In the aftermath of trials

Egos soothed with ale aplenty

I revealed to them my secret

That they would not feel too cheated 

Nor would they feel too affronted

All I wished was their forbearance

Parting then as friendly rivals

So they would crave not for vengeance

For Jotuns have our share of talents

Our own place on World-Tree’s branches

Spells apart from gallows’ knowing

More are we than Aesir’s foemen

There my tale is near completed

But if my tongue’s allowed to waggle 

Somewhat more of gods and giants

And the bitter blood between us

Just a few words I will venture

Fury, I have surely felt it

Anger aching for requital

For accounts all to be settled

Quenched with blood the battle’s metal

But I’ve seen no better ending

Not for bards and not for swordsmen

Than to sit by fire flaming

Telling tales with close companions

Ale in hand and sated, cravings

And all the stars above bright-blazing.