#but also like let him kill of endeavor

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser debris for the fic ask thing? 👀

As much as this is my “kill no darlings you will get EVERY flashback” fic, there’s overarching sociopolitical backstory explaining why Izuku and the rest of class 3A exploded in the public eye that I don’t think I’ll ever fully fit in.

It’s a combination of it being more of a meta analysis than anything and also requiring information from a perspective that I know will never appear in the fic. Like, the fic still gets the different moments that make up this analysis, but there’s no explicit connecting thread to show how they all locked together to create this sort of global cult following of class 3-A. I almost put in a little fake news article opinion piece that was meant to sort of walk the reader through why society is Like This, but I decided it was too heavy handed and deleted it.

Everything that I’m going to reference has already appeared in pez dispenser debris to some degree, and none of it will ever actually materially impact the plot. They may receive a little more detail down the line if they’re mentioned in passing in the fic, so out of an abundance of caution, I’ll stick it below the cut so people can avoid this, but I don’t personally consider any of this spoilers.

Izuku and the rest of the class are famous in pez dispenser debris in a way that’s pretty much unprecedented for students. Canonically, not even all might had a name for himself until after his graduation. Pretty much everyone from class 3A are public figures, with Izuku specifically being considered a major global figure.

In my mind, there was this perfect storm right during their second year that catapulted them into fame. The class personally has varying levels of awareness of why they got so popular, but there was this perfect cross winds of societal unrest and fear that made them household names.

There was an approximately one month span in their second year where they were just hit one after another with a major firestorms of events: The UA Sports Festival, the Sidekick Strike, and the Tartarus Prison Break/Desertion of Yokohama.

The UA Sports Festival is the one that the kids attribute this most to, because so many of the news articles that followed referenced their performance in it. But it probably gave them less mileage than what the other two events did.

What the UA Sports Festival did was showcase their skills to the world in a venue designed to show them off. The public was already on edge. All Might had retired, crime rates kept going up, and people were rapidly losing confidence in existing heroes. Class 2A made such an insane showing of skill in the second Sports Festival that it made the public rave about them for weeks after. It was extremely reassuring to Japan that they had such powerful heroes in the barrel and would soon be on the streets. But that attention probably would have died down had it not been for the Sidekick Strike and Yokohama.

The Sidekick Strike actually had nothing to do with them. But it undermined the public’s faith in heroes at just the right time.

The Sidekick Strike is just one of those things that I have no POV that would even tangentially be involved in it so we’ll get a few passing references in media clips and it’ll never be discussed in depth. Which is a shame because it’s such an interesting conflict to me.

The Sidekick Strike was heavily inspired by the 1919 Boston Police Strike. Effectively, it was the height of the labor rights movement, and police officers got together and went on strike to get the police union recognized. They had tried to negotiate and negotiations failed, and so they all walked off the job. The city descended into lawlessness, the national guard was deployed, it was a whole thing. Famously, Calvin Coolidge fired the entire police force over it on the grounds that there was no striking from public safety.

I thought it would be really interesting if there was something similar that happened with the sidekicks. The thing is that the heroics structure as it stands really incentivizes abuse towards sidekicks. We have a society where there’s a decent amount of heroes who are only in it for the fame. A not insignificant amount of money must come from marketing deals. And it’s a ranked system, so they’re all in competition with each other.

Heroes wouldn’t be incentivized to showcase their sidekicks—they’d be incentivized to take advantage of them and take credit for their work.

Like, think about the work-study experiences. Momo didn’t even officially work for the hero she studied with. She wasn’t getting paid. An adult woman used her for a shampoo ad. Who wants to bet whether Momo saw a dime from it? It’s probably very predatory because the nature of the system incentivizes predation.

I thought the underlying legal issues would be interesting and complex. Who owns a sidekick’s image—the agency or the individual? Who gets the proceeds of their brand deals? This all would be governed by their employment contracts, and sidekicks just starting out have very little leverage compared to big name heroes. And those heroes would want to keep their sidekicks names small and theirs big. The rankings are competitive, after all.

It’s a situation where I do think that like. The sidekicks would have a point in unionizing. The use of their image, appropriate compensation, and proper credit for their busts would all be like, very legitimate concerns in a normal employment context.

I see agencies like Idaten settling immediately with the union and having their sidekicks back on the street before the day is out. In my mind, idaten is considered the gold standard for sidekick jobs already, and their employees mostly did it out of solidarity with the people they worked alongside of. Like, Idaten was already doing most of the union’s demands and signed off very quickly on the remaining ones. If it was just about the Idaten sidekicks, none of them would have gone on strike, but they had a lot of colleagues who they depended on in the field who were in terrible situations. What were they gonna say, sorry, sucks to be you, I got a great gig though so condolences? These were the people keeping them alive. They went on strike because they knew Idaten would publicly settle before the day was out and set an example for the rest of the agencies. Hopefully it would help other agencies follow their lead.

But that didn’t happen. Some agencies, like Endeavor’s, fired everyone immediately. And I think a lot of agencies spent a long time picking over every line item in prolonged negotiations. It dragged out.

And that went over fucking terribly.

All Might just retired. Crime is up. And their sworn defenders are bickering over who gets what cut of the action figure line. Like I think the public would have fucking hated this in a post-All Might world. It would have seemed like the only real hero just medically and irreversibly retired and the rest of them are squabbling about whose turn it is in the spotlight.

I also think that the villains would have taken advantage of it.

The Tartarus Prison Break in pez isn’t the one that happened in canon. Here, the League of Villains attacked Tartarus and set everyone loose. In the process, they made a very clear stance: they are going to leave with All for One, and they are not going to attack any civilians. They won’t fight at all unless attacked first.

All of the horrible and sadistic villains they just let go have not made the same promise.

They chose to do this now because of the Sidekick Strike. All their heroes don’t give a fuck about protecting them, so they’re strapped for staffing. So they’re taking back their leader and going back to ground, and the heroes are free to immediately go after and contain all those bad bad villains who just escaped. And those guys are headed to the heavily populated mainland, so better be quick.

The whole world knew that was their explicit reasoning and promise. Because Himiko fucking lived tweeted the escape.

The Sidekick Strike took the hit for a lot of the blame, but I do see all the sidekicks breaking strike lines to go respond to the crisis. But response times were severely handicapped by the fact that most if not all of them were cut off from their agencies. It was just a complete systemic breakdown.

And then there became the question of what crisis do you respond to: All for One’s escape, or everyone else’s?

I mentioned in one of the little fake tumblr posts that the Tartarus Prison Break was seen as Endeavor’s greatest failure. And part of that is because he chose to sacrifice the nearby area, Yokohama, to contain All for One.

I am one of the biggest haters of Endeavor’s later arc, specifically because it required going back on the nature of the abuse he had subjected his family to that was already established in canon, but that’s a different rant. This is not canon endeavor. I hate what they did with canon endeavor.

That being said, I do think that the self doubt weighed on him once he became number one. And this was the moment of his career where it really crushed him.

All for One had escaped. So had every other villain from Tartarus. He should go after the most immediate threats. He knew this. It was basic triage.

But they would never have a better chance to stop All for One.

Prisoners in Tartarus aren’t exactly hitting all their macros and micros or training daily. They are not adherents to the Bakugou Katsuki Fitness Lifestyle. All for One was coming off spending the last few months drugged up to his eyeballs and strapped to a chair in a straitjacket with at least fifty guns pointed at him at all times. The man has not scratched his own nose in weeks. He’s weaker now than he’ll ever be again.

It was their best chance.

If he escaped, and he went back to ground, he’d have the time and space to get as strong as he wanted, and then he’d come back for real. And he’d be coming back for everything.

Stopping him the first time had cost them All Might.

And Endeavor simply was not All Might. And he still wouldn’t be All Might when the next fight came.

It really was the hardest decision of Endeavor’s life. He had to admit to himself that his own inadequacy was going to cost them countless lives. But he thought it was a hard decision he had to make. He was losing the battle for the barest chance at winning the war.

So he made the call that all heroes were to respond to All for One. They had to hit the league of villains now with their full force if they were to stand a chance. They could not afford to divide their already sparse forces. They’d respond to Yokohama when AfO was contained.

He was also the one who made the call to broadcast the warning message that we hear in the Twitter post. He thought it would give civilians their best chance. He didn’t want them to act with the expectation of the heroes being en route.

Of course, that meant that the entire city got fucking sirens going off and a message telling them that the heroes were not going to save them. Which, as you can expect, did not do a lot for public morale.

In my head, Tartarus is like, the equivalent to Gotham’s Arkham. It’s borderline an institute for the criminally insane. You don’t end up there unless you did something super fucked, are super dangerous, and have extreme violent tendencies. It’s exclusively for the most dangerous and indiscriminately violent criminals in the country.

The entire world was watching in real time while the tragedy unfolded. A lot of people were livestreaming after the emergency broadcast dropped, because they didn’t want the government to be able to handwave away how terrible their death was, or because they didn’t know what else to do, or because they just didn’t want to be alone. The full expectation was that it’d be a massacre.

But it wasn’t. Because Class 2-A responded instead.

The Class 2-A defensive efforts were discussed in one of the silly little fake tumblr posts and in the fake twitter post. In those, we find out that 1) Class 2-A, along with Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire responded to the scene; 2) the entire class rolled out of Mirio’s fucking mom van and tamaki and nejire’s cars like they were fucking clown cars; 3) the HPSC claimed it was a legitimate operation blessed and coordinated by them; and 4) a lot of people think this was a lie, in part because videos leaked of Aizawa bitching them all out in the street afterwards. We also see Izuku’s green lightning at the end of the twitter video, showing him responding to the scene just as the first villains hit the mainland.

This fight has a lot of names in the backstory that lives in my head. It’s called the Tartarus Prison Break for obvious reasons. It’s also been called in some circles the Desertion of Yokohama, because of the call Endeavor made.

But it’s also called the Battle of Yokohoma. And it’s ranked alongside the Battle of Kamino as one of the finest acts of modern day heroics. And that’s because of Class 2-A. If it hadn’t been for them showing up, it would have gone down in history as the Massacre of Yokohama.

Like. It kills me that I can’t include the full details of what happened, but there’s just too much to make in a flashback. It’s a fic in and of itself. But it really was the fight that made Class 2-A.

It was the first fight where they were really the only heroes that could be counted on. Granted, they’d had to fight for their lives alone, but this wasn’t just their lives. These were thousands of terrified civilians who all thought they were going to die.

It was the first true test of them as heroes in the world. And they actually rose to the occasion. They didn’t just fight the villains—they realized that they needed to get emergency services working throughout the city if everyone was going to make it. Momo and Tsuyu conducted a mildly hostile take over of the emergency call center so they could coordinate relief. They had fucking Tokoyami and Dark Shadow single-handedly holding the line on the hospital while Kaminari, Shoji, Jiro, and Sato all learned to drive for the Very First Time while commandeering the city’s fucking ambulances. They were fighting and containing villains, performing emergency aid, putting out literal fires, everything. It was the hardest fight of their lives.

There was a hot second where Class 2-A was The Moment. Like. The entire world was watching them during this fight, and they had no fucking idea until it was over. People lost their minds when the first footage made it out of Yokohama of a bunch of teenagers showing up and immediately throwing hands with S-Class villains.

It was global news. Think of the kind of media attention that was received by the search for the Titan, the Tham Luang Cave Rescue, the Suez Canal getting blocked by the Ever Given (rip queen you will always be famous to me), that kind of thing. Class 2-A was fighting for their fucking lives and then found out three days later while they were all still in the hospital that there was a prayer vigil going on in Portugal for them during the battle and CNN had 24 hours live coverage of the fight that had so many viewers it outnumbered the population of Finland. Like what do you even do with that information.

The world expected a massacre. They didn’t expect a bunch of footage of high schoolers kicking the shit out of superpowered murders and personally ferrying the injured to the hospitals they were also defending.

The other part about this fight that really made them permanently part of the public consciousness is that it was not lost on everyone that every single person who responded to that fight did so at the risk of their license.

All of them had provisional licenses, save Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire, all of whom went AWOL from the explicit directives ordering them to respond to the fight against All for One. The operation could not have been less authorized. They had to steal their gear and jimmy the UA fence to even get out. The explicit plan was to steal one of the UA buses and have Bakugou fucking drive them to the fight (he also did not know how to drive but he seemed the most likely of them to break literally every single motor vehicle code to get them there but still be naturally talented at it enough to not kill them) but Izuku told Mirio what bullshit they were up to and Mirio, who was with Tamaki and Nejire when the news broke, immediately decided he would be on that bullshit too and pulled up in his mom van.

In my mind, there were strict rules around provisional licenses and how they could be used, and they broke pretty much all of them to respond to Yokohama. It would have been grounds to revoke their provisionals and permanently bar them from heroics. Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire could have all lost their licenses for helping them and for going AWOL.

The HPSC fucking fell over themselves to legitimatize the entire operation. They knew they were utterly fucked if they didn’t. These kids already had murals being painted of their faces in other fucking countries. There was a little old lady in Kyoto livestreaming herself working overtime to embroider Iida’s face onto a cushion because that lovely young man saved her darling granddaughter from *checks notes* horrible and painful death directly caused by the failings of the current HPSC administration. There were multiple trending posts online agreeing to fucking riot if those kids got in trouble for this.

Every single actual hero in the immediate vicinity of this disaster had responded to fight a villain who wasn’t actually attacking anyone. And then they fucking lost. They publicly broadcast a message saying Good Luck Champs Because We’re Not Going To Save You. It was an actual PR nightmare that they had a bare chance of salvaging if they just latched onto these kids like an aggressive parasite and that is exactly what they did.

They totally knew. Actually, it was a joint operation coordinated by and between UA and and the HPSC. Why would the kids be in trouble?? They had responded because the HPSC told them to.

UA gave it a week of dead silence and then issued a short statement praising the bravery of their students in a recent HPSC approved mission, and then they never said another word about it. They didn’t have any choice but to go along with the HPSC’s story. If they contradicted them, all of class 2-a would find their licenses pulled by the end of the day, and lord knows they wouldn’t wait for the court of public opinion to work its magic and would just all go out and become fucking vigilantes, because why not. Aizawa has aged 100 years since he got this class. Every single day he thinks of how it was a 50/50 shot between him and Vlad.

No one in the class is fully aware of just how famous they were in the immediate aftermath, because the school bent over backwards to try and shield them from it as much as possible. Like, they have an idea, but none of them saw the full explosion firsthand because of just how hard the school worked to keep it from them. Aizawa confiscated the internet router and told them it was punishment for whatever the fuck they did to the buses (thank god Mirio was just as crazy as them because they were NOT GOOD at hotwiring cars) but really it was to try and insulate them from it a little bit. Like. Japan’s Imperial Family wanted to do an official visit. The White House offered to host them. They received interview requests from every major talk show on the planet. Buzzfeed wanted to do a puppy interview with them.

Right now, Aizawa’s terrified for Midoriya’s graduation, but in the aftermath of that, he was breathing into a paper bag about all of them. Society had sort of latched onto them like they were the last life raft on the titanic. All for One was back, and All Might wasn’t, and the heroes had publicly broadcast a message saying they were useless, but don’t fucking worry, fifteen year old Iida Tenya is on the case. Society will be upheld by Kaminari Denki, currently viral for driving a real life city ambulance one hundred miles per hour down the street while screaming “WEE WOO BITCH.” And don’t forget the pillar that will be Mina Ashido, who rushed over to him earlier that day to show him her extra sparkly pink nails. And if you have a major fight that needs to be won? Don’t fucking worry, just send out bone-breaking boy wonder Midoriya Izuku and his equally reckless brother Toogata Mirio, because their dumbasses managed to take down an S-Class villain team that only All Might could defeat the first time around. Don’t worry about the multi week hospitalization they needed after, because that’s an acceptable burden to put on children.

When Aizawa started this job, he promised himself he would never send a student out to die. Some of them would die. But it would be tragedy, not damnation. He’d have given them their best chance. Part of the reason why he made that promise was because he sort of felt like his teacher sent him out set up to die, and it’s only luck that he made it through his first couple of years.

He has gone to the funeral of every single student he has ever had who did not make it. He goes back to their graves every year.

He was fucking petrified after Yokohama that society would push these kids too far too soon. Every single one of his classes before them had gotten the benefit of being practically unknown their first few years. They didn’t have the world talking about them like they were already the top heroes. He was terrified they wouldn’t have the space to learn and grow when they started.

A lot of teachers would have tried to mine the notoriety of Yokohama to hard launch their students’ careers. Aizawa told Nedzu point blank that he would quit tomorrow if he did not help him quash this thing as much as possible, and nedzu agreed.

This world killed its real heroes. It sucked them dry and left them like All Might, and he just needed fucking time. He needed fucking time to let them be kids and maybe they’d survive.

Izuku ended up being the one who escaped the aftermath of everything the least. His Quirk was too much like All Might’s for the world to let go of him easily.

And then Stain got fucking dogpiled by idaten in the aftermath of the Tartarus prison break and implied he considered Izuku the only true hero in the absence of all might and everyone started asking super inconvenient questions like “how does stain even know you exist” and “no really he called you by your actual legal name how does he even know that” and it just. It didn’t help things. Izuku’s suffering.

So yeah. There was just this absolute collision of a total lack of faith in current heroes combined with a huge swell of public trust in class 2-a that led us to being in the landscape we are now. All of the currently licensed heroes said that they wouldn’t be there to save the public, and then Class 2-A immediately hit back that they would be there. Actually, they’ll risk everything to be there. They’ll die to protect the public and they’ll risk the entire future they had been trying to build and they will fucking be there to save them.

There’s a lot of people that never forgave the heroes for deserting Yokohama. And there’s even more people who have absolute faith in Izuku and his classmates because they didn’t. That’s why the world is watching them so aggressively. These kids are the most trusted heroes in Japan right now.

I wish I could fit in more about what happened, because I love this backstory so much, but 1) some of it absolutely requires POVs like Endeavors, which we won’t get in pez dispenser debris, 2) there’s no one POV that could tell the full story via flashback and 3) it’d just be too long of a divergence. Like. It really is a whole fic of its own. I’d love to write it one day but I probably won’t have the time

[cactusyogurt]

may endeavor never be redeemed

"oooh I'm so sad I made so many mistakes" KEEP BEING SAD

I fully understand Fuyumi's desire to have an happy family, but that guy was the base for toya's madness

toya was so fucked up he even started wanting to have his brothers killed in front of his dad (mainly him killing shoto in front of eiji)

plus he is a physical abusive asshole, and did abuse Rei in other ways, if shoto's birth is any implication

I'm watching the episodes and there's like Deku defending endeavor and I'm like "let the bitch die"

[methoughtsphantom]

Jason “my family doesn’t know im alive” Todd and Danny “my family doesn’t know I’m dead” Fenton going alongside each of their plans my beloved. like Danny will absolutely go head-to-head with all of Gotham to support his new best friend on all his crime lord endeavors while he drags Jason to also attend collage with him. They are roommates and there never seems to a mention of family from either side. It’s an unspoken understanding they have. They met because Crime alley as a ghost lair thrummed with so much loneliness, it was at first the perfect place for Danny to hide his ecto signature in. But then he saw the dumbass whose lair it was lean his motorcycle just a tad too much when making a sharp turn to an alley, he sweeped the floor through a lifted chain link that passed his body but not his helmet. Yep that’s right the red thing got stuck. Danny who at the moment happened to be watching through his window snorted. Much to his horror because if not a ghost that dude could’ve gotten his head flung off.

Still, the scene was ridiculous.

On a whim he irrationally sees the police closing in on the guy and panicked at the thought of the guy using intangibility to free himself so Danny phased them both through his apartment wall and left the guy sprawled in his couch. Jason didn’t freak out but that’s normal when one’s got a concussion, one the guy immediately denied having as Danny laid out the medical supplies. The idiot proceeded to almost flatten four steps to the door with his stubbornness. He also said “I’m asexual” in the most deadpan voice as Danny dropped him back in the couch.

Danny sighed. Clearly though, he’d done so too early in the night because the guy kept trying to go, kept trying to knock Danny out, kept trying to slash him with knifes Danny didn’t know he had stashed. He’d only disarmed the guy from his guns. The visible ones apparently, cause at one point the guy did take out a gun and shoot until the ammo ran out and then teetered the thing like it was an art prop and hit his moon lamp.

Danny "yeah you aren’t officially my friend until you’ve tried to kill me" fenton my guys.

Anyways both keep having the same argument over if Danny technically kidnapped Jason or not. Danny holds the fact that the police at least didn’t see the guy make the ridicule. Jason argued that happened cause he was sporting a concussion. Danny argued he got that after.

Jason at first thinks the guy's a meta, but no. Danny introduces himself, sheepily now that he recognizes this is who the lair he invaded is from. He bandages him and tries to cook for him. If Danny didn’t have ice powers he most certainly would’ve burned the apartment. Jason then proceeds to kick him out of his own kitchen and make them both enchiladas. It’s the most normal both had in a while with another person and the air seems oddly settled. From then on, Jason constantly invited himself over, under the pretense that this was his territory and therefore he could drop in unannounced. Danny who has actual powers says he only allows this because Jason cooks very well.

Danny stays away from the crime fighting business unless his buddy is in deep shit he can’t get himself out. Also it’s Danny’s turn to cover for his vigilante friend which Sam and Tucker give him so much shit for. (but also advice)

And they were roommates. (omg) Danny effectively derails Jason’s big comeback plans by casually dropping ghost lore every two days. Like,

Jason, talking about how he doesn’t want Bats snooping on his territory:

Danny: Just don’t let them in

Jason: ??

Danny: yeah!! Hasn’t Batman died and got revived??? You can totally kick out death touched people you don’t want entering on your lair.

Jason: …I can?

Danny: Yep dude, your lair’s supposed to feel safe.

Jason: wait does that mean I can kick you out?

Danny: First this is my apartment. Second, im dead, not dead touched. Third, it’s too late to get rid of me. bitch.

Anyways Jason is super excited. You mean to tell him he can actually deny people over to his territory haunt?? (Yes it’s only to people who have died and came back but still!! The sample size is exactly the type of people he doesn’t want to see—!)

Joker my beloathed can’t step foot in Crime Alley.

(Jason’d feel a lot safer if the clown was dead but the possibility of his murderer turning into a ghost and their little loophole not applying on the clown is too scary to contemplate.)

Anyways, Jason loves experimenting with the power. It can go from simply making people shudder and not want to enter crime Alley to straight up not letting them enter like there’s an invisible wall blocking the way.

Jason because he’s hurt that Bruce never even patrols Crime Alley and also because he’s petty put B under the category of “invisible wall” blacklist. His reasoning is that the man doesn’t even attempt to enter Crime Alley. To him it’s surely just a place shadowed in tragedy. (anyways that’s it’s the place he met Jason)

Ironically, Jason totally forgets that Batman does venture into Crime Alley one day in the whole year. The day he met Jason.

Okay. He didn’t forget at first. The first year Jason remembers cause it was only a few months till then but then the next— Jason forgets that today’s the anniversary of the day’s Bruce’s parents died. He forgets to allow B in when he feels a slight tug and dismiss the feeling that prompts Bruce to investigate because he literally can’t enter Crime Alley. He starts the trialsTM, he scouts on the very edge and sees people the whole day enter and get out and cross with no problem but Bruce can’t.

It’s literally just Bruce.

Time to call Constantine, i guess.

[dolche-tejada]

You know, I think this ending would have been slightly less of a fucking disappointment if the heroes hadn't been so unfairly favored by Horikoshi compared to the villains. I mean, seriously

Deku destroys every bone in his body multiple times throughout the story and is warned that if he continues, he'll permanently lose the use of his limbs ? Everything's fine, his body's just got used to being reduced to a bloody pulp somehow so there's no consequences for him. In fact even when he literally loses his arms to Shigaraki, he gets them back two minutes later thanks to Eri because guess what ? Her horn still works even when cut off from her body. How convenient.

Gran Torino gets his ribcage obliterated by Shigaraki ? Don't worry guys, he'll survive that despite his old age and injuries, and this to have no particular role in the plot afterwards.

Bakugo dies heroically trying to buy time before Deku arrives ? Lmao, did you really believe it ?? No of course not, Edgeshot just uses his last-minute Deus Ex Machina to save his life at the cost of his own and- Oops nope he's fine too, my bad !

Hawks murders a criminal fleeing for his life in cold-blood ? The best Hori has to offer is him completely free and in charge of the HSPC.

And no, losing his quirk isn't a real consequence for him because not only it literally played a major part in saving the world with Vestige!Hawks raising an insurrection among AFO's quirks, but also because his quirk has always been the element through which people exploited him.

Endeavor abused his family for years and completely destroyed his eldest son ? No jail time and no media backlash for that, the only blame he received was due to the heroes' failure to stop the League during the Raid Arc.

And don't even get me started on this bs about facing hell or whatever for what he's done : He's literally free and wealthy ; he has Rei, Fuyumi, Shoto, his sidekicks and Hawks on his side ; and all the difficulties he's apparently going to suffer are off-screened.

Deku had to sacrifice OFA and his future hero career to save the world ? Guess what, Bakugo invested all his time and money to make him an Iron-Man suit and now he can still be a hero with everyone else.

There are plenty more examples of this but I think you get the idea. Now let's take a look at the villains' ending :

Toya is now a piece of charcoal kept artificially alive for the few years he has left, unable to move a finger, and whose few minutes a day during which he can stay awake will be spent talking to his father who abused him as a child.

Toga, a literal teenager, killed herself to save Ochako and because she knew it's still better than rotting at Tartarus her whole life.

And not only did she die but she did by bleding to death. Let me repeat for those who have trouble grasping what I've just said : In a manga where the heroes can survive having their heart blown to bits, being impaled Kakyoin-style or smashed against buildings like a fly on a windshield, one of the main antagonists died of a fucking hemorrhage…

As for Shigaraki, after learning that his very birth and all the tragedies of his life have been orchestrated by AFO, after all this development and narrative promises about him being saved in the end... Deku just kills him.

Because despite all his speeches about saving him, it seems like the best our MC could do was beating him both physically and mentally until he crumbles to dust…

Compress on his side is apparently locked up for life and kept alive by machines too.

A begging Kurogiri tried in a desperate attempt to save Shigaraki, only to be unceremoniously blown up by Bakugo and dying off-screen without anyone giving a shit, including Aizawa and Mic.

And Spinner will now spend the rest of his life struggling with the extra quirks inside him that affect his body and mind, while having to cope with the thought that his boyfriend best friend and companions have either died alone or are locked away for life in horrifying circumstances.

Clearly not the same as with the heroes...

Now don't get me wrong, even if they suffered just as much from the consequences of their actions or the plot as the League, this ending would still be a disaster in terms of writing but AT LEAST it wouldn't reek that much of hypocrisy.

[utopianparadoxist]

June Egbert, The Tao of Pranksterism, and Maid Roleplay

So we've got our first glimpse of June Egbert, shining like a star on the horizon, as of the latest upd8!

With the Warhammer of Zillyhoo at her side and the general harlequin energy of her silhouette, many are drawing comparisons to Trickster Mode, or to Nannasprite. Both of these, notably, are heavily linked to Jane.

And I'm interested in June's relationship to Jane's legacy as her ancestor, because this feels similar to ideas of classpect roleplay I've described for years. so I want to talk about it here and speculate a bit about what kind of worldview change a roleplay reading suggests might accompany June's gender transformation.

A quick bit of background for those who don't know what Class roleplay is-- It's basically the idea that a player of any class might end up roleplaying as a different class, to various degrees of success or failure, and that in Homestuck characters do so in particular when they are actively striving to live up to the legacy left by their Ancestors.

Vriska is the clearest example to argue. Early in her arc with Tavros she is actively trying to fit both him and herself into narrative roles left behind in Mindfang's journal, and in the process strives to make Tavros stronger much as Kanaya does for Eridan by giving him the wand, or Aranea herself later does to Jake.

The way she conceptualizes the endeavor emphasizes the verb "MAKE", a close synonym to the most commonly accepted Maid/Sylph verb, "Create". She kisses Tavros while wearing a fairy dress-the word Sylph originally referring to a kind of fairy. And of course she gets the dress from Kanaya, a Sylph herself.

And of course, her attempt to woo Tavros in this way is a disastrous failure. Later, when she tries to make Tavros kill her instead of kiss her--again evoking Mindfang and the Summoner's relationships--she again fails soundly, Tavros rejecting her mind suggestions and leaving her to bleed slowly to death by herself.

The reason Vriska is failing in these situations is at least partly that she is obsessively trying to be Mindfang instead of honestly coming to grip with who she really is as her own person. The way the narratives you build up in your head about who you WANT to be like distort your own self of self and lead to self-sabotage and toxic relationships is a running theme in Homestuck, and Roleplay mechanics helpfully signpost this on a mechanical Sburb Class level.

Later Aranea makes the exact same mistake as Vriska in emulating Mindfang, but fails at least partly because, as Vriska lays out, she just doesn't have enough experience doing "ruthless pirate shit"--in other words, behaving like a Thief.

But the Marquise herself poses an interesting possibility, because she seems to succeed at performing both the roles of the Thief and the Sylph. And Vriska attributes this to the fact that the Marquise is an adult, who learned to perform a role that didn't initially come naturally to her through a slow accumulation of experience.

In this way, Vriska suggests a way out of hard Classpect determinism. It *is* possible to act outside of your native Class, even to successfully incorporate the strengths and abilities of a different class entirely, but this is part of a nuanced and complicated process of personal growth and a gaining of increased complexity of perspective, experience and ability as you grow through life.

Now lets bring this focus to John. John and Jane's mutual ancestorism is explicitly tied to their shared interest in jokes and pranks. Dirk likens this to Zen, or the Tao, meaning it reflects something about their fundamental relationship to the world and approach to dealing with it and its challenges.

John invokes this connection again as he carries out the retcon, the absolute height of his impact on the plot and narrative in og Homestuck, with the retcon being literally just being a series of pranks. They're also a series of pranks he has a lot of fun with!

Even while everyone is dead and everything is completely cosmically screwed, John is able to enjoy himself as he carries on and keeps striving to Make a better future. He indulges the Zen of pranksterism in this moment, using it as a way to cope with and transcend the horrors of Paradox Space.

He's also, on a mechanical level, roleplaying a Maid.

The Maid class, like the Sylph, is associated with healing and improbable ressurection. Aradia is able to transcend her own death and act in the world as a ghost even before she God Tiers through the use of her Time-coded ghost powers. Kanaya is lethally shot and revives inexplicably as an immortal Rainbow Drinker, the only character to be immortal without even being God Tier.

This is more true of Jane than anyone, who's Maid of Life powers allow her to Make Life for herself in such a way that even after being beheaded in what should inarguably be a Just death, Jane can overpower the conditional immortality of God Tiers completely and just walk and talk around as a decapitated body and her severed head. She is Making Life for her own benefit, and quite definitely no one elses.

Jane's other major power is to offer people free resurrections, like she does in Collide. And what does John's retcon accomplish? Give Vriska a free resurrection, effectively taking a more circuitous path to achieving the same end result that comes to a Maid naturally. It's for Vriska's benefit for sure though. John is still natively a passive Heir class, and this moment represents a blurring of the lines between the roles of Heir and Maid, a moment where John's impact is not narrowly defined by just one Sburb assigned Class but is shaped complexly by his unique context and nature as John Egbert.

That said, after the Retcon, something really interesting happens.

John stops pranking.

For the rest of Homestuck and through the Epilogues, we basically never see John indulging pranksterism again. At the same time, he eschews using his Retcon powers almost entirely, seeming almost scared of the responsibility and level of power they represent unless he's directly told to use them, like Rose does in Meat. This coincides with his prolonged period of aimless, directionless depression.

Who does this parallel?

Jane, who has similarly given up "frivolous" or "childish" concerns like pranksterism and jokes in favor of deeply serious matters like Pursuing The Presidency and Representing The Gods As Respectable People To Earth C. And like John, Jane is all the more miserable for it. What that might mean for either of her iteration's arcs is a topic for another day though, this ain't about her.

While his desire to kill Dirk is honestly misguided and ridiculous, this update's shift in John's psychology does point to a kind of positive progress in his psychology that takes him closer to the ideal of June he's glimpsed in his own future. He's Making Breath--direction, purpose, momentum-- for his own benefit, nobody else's.

Which is important to do, because right now all the work John needs to do is internal. The thing about John sometimes evoking his Maid heritage is that so far he hasn't been doing it consciously or consistently. He barely knows anything about who he is or what he wants, and so he's not in a position to be good to or try to help anybody.

It's a step closer to embracing Maid as an alternate/complementary identity, along with the gendered implications that the female-specific (so far) class implies.

A fully formed June Egbert will likely take this even further, realizing the potential of and fully embracing the possibility of Making Breath herself, for her own benefit, Breath in this case being simple fun. Frivolity. Jokes. Pranks! Detachment from the pain and suffering from the world by enjoying the fun that comes with existing, even in the midst of the chaos.

She will likely be a June who fully recognizes the reality that Life is a Game to be played and enjoyed--which is why the Game of Life board from Problem Sleuth shows up in the vision of June that John experiences while witnessing the Light of Vriska's ascension.

Hence the association with Nannasprite and the design's evocation of Harlequins. Harlequins and clowns are performers on the stage, and a June who recognizes that all of life is a stage would be in a position to be a playful and self-aware performer herself--even moreso if she becomes June by going through Helltier or ascending to Ultimate herself, thereby gaining the same metatextual knowledge Dirk, Al and Vriska possess.

And if such an ascension brings her back in touch with the power of Retcon, an Ultimate/Helltier June Egbert unafraid to use her power for whatever she wants would be the ultimate wildcard. She could issue free revives to all the dead trolls. She could bring back her Dad and Rose's Mom and Dirk's Alpha Bro.

Those are just random Maidy examples tied to resurrection I'm coming up with off the top of my head that could make her happy and/or severely emotionally fuck with Rosebot and Dirk, but really, she could and likely will do way more imaginative and interesting shit than that. She'd certainly prove a lethal danger to Dirk, which could likely put her in conflict with Rosebot, Vriska, Davebot, Jake and Roxy, none of whom seem likely to want to see Dirk dead.

She's a complete chaos element! And she's already here.

I can't wait to see what pranks she's gonna play.

[leighsartworks216]

Skeletons In The Closet

dragon!Sylus x blind!oracle!Reader

Series Masterlist - Chapter One - Prev Chapter - Next Chapter

I really need to make a reminder to update this on Thursdays. My fault for deciding to post it on a Thursday and keep up a weekly schedule I guess

Warnings: death, manhandling

Word Count: 1,066

Main Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form

You wander the winding tunnels of Jewel’s home, tracing a hand along the wall to keep yourself oriented as you listen out for him. You haven’t noticed his presence around all day. He’s probably not here right now. Still, you don’t risk calling out for him, especially when you’ve been provided the perfect opportunity to snoop.

The chill doesn’t seep in so deeply anymore. With new clothes and shoes (new to you, anyway), your feet are protected and you are quite comfortable. Sleeping on the hard rock isn’t doing you any favors, nor the odd smell clinging to the clothes, but, one thing at a time.

Your hand slips from rock to cloth. Scratchy, woven threads form a tapestry, lined on the edges with soft tassels. You can feel a hole hidden behind it. You push it aside and duck under, tassels gently brushing your head as you step into the strange room.

The air is immediately heavier. It’s thick with a strong, rancid odor that has you covering your nose right away. You can’t place it at all.

You step carefully forward, keeping your foot low to the floor and feeling for anything solid that you could step on or fall over. It’s clear for the first few feet. The further in you go, the stronger the smell is.

Something clunks as you knock it with your foot. You stop abruptly and slowly crouch down to feel it. It’s long and dry, thin, but solid, with tough balls at the ends. Your brows pinch together as you try to figure out what it is. You reach out and find another. Several more - all of different sizes. Amongst them is something rounded. You lift it in both hands, turning it over and over, until you find something jagged along one of its surfaces.

You hold it by either side of the uneven surface. The ridges of it seem to be symmetrical, digging into your wrapped palms in the same way. You trail your thumbs along it, trying to make any sense of this object. It’s just as dry as the other ones, but why is it shaped like this? It feels like it has two holes mirroring each other, but the holes don’t go all the way through. The divots inside are smooth. Another hole rests between them, but it is jagged and uneven. A little ways further down, ridges, also uneven, with some sharp and some flat, lining the item.

You slowly trace back up it. Clarity suddenly hits you.

You cry out and toss it down, falling backward in shock. It clatters hollowly amongst a pile of bones. Human bones.

“Now what are you doing all the way down here?” The deep voice cuts into your fear. It trails a sharp claw down your spine. Twists the terror languidly around a finger, relishing in the way you cower away from him and into the pile of bones. You flinch away from touching them.

Heavy footfalls announce his approach. They’re not fast. They’re casual, taking their time, as a predator to a cornered prey.

“Why- Why do you have these?” The question comes out shaky and half-formed, dazed as you try to figure out what he’ll do next. “Did you…?”

He scoffs. “Use your words, pet.”

The words taste bitter on your tongue. “Did you kill these people…?”

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation in his answer. No remorse, no doubts. Your blood runs cold. “Does that bother you?”

“Why did you kill them? You can’t just kill people!”

“They wanted to kill me first. How about now? Am I justified?” A sharp hand grabs you by the collar of your clothes, pulling you roughly to your feet and pushing you ahead of him. It’s not a human hand. It’s not soft where it touches you.

You struggle against his hold, but it’s a futile endeavor. The tapestry scratches at your face as you’re forced through it. Your feet struggle to keep up. “Hng- Let me go! Why did they want to kill you?! What are you?!”

The stairs are the most unforgiving. You can’t take each step fast enough for him. As such, your feet get beaten up on each ledge, scraped on the rough stone anywhere your feet aren’t covered. You realize with a sinking gut that the clothes you wear now are most definitely from the bodies in that room.

You’re thrown to the floor suddenly, on top of a thin cloth. You quickly recognize it as the scrap of fabric you sleep on each night you’ve been here so far.

“I’m a fiend,” he answers lowly, dangerously, daring you to be afraid because it’s what he wants. He wants you to fear that word, and all the weight behind it.

It’s not a word one hears used lightly back in the city. Devils, demons, dragons, fiends - all names for the beasts that are said to one day destroy the world. It’s a prophecy as old as the city, perhaps older. As a child, you were warned to stay vigilant for the coming of the end, of doomsday. If you ever heard any news relating to its arrival, you were told to report it immediately.

The one time you do, you’re forced to run for your life…

And here he is - the bringer of the End. Casting his shadow over your cowering body. Hiding literal skeletons in his closet. Was his prophecy trying to tell you about the end of Philos, too?

He leaves you in your silence. You feel his shadow shift, hear his boots walk away. All you have left is the thin sheet and your thoughts to keep you company.

“Am I justified?” That phrase rings in your ear as you huddle into the corner, doing your damndest to ignore the feeling of something creeping up behind you. The innate fear of being attacked from behind. Your ears strain in the silence to listen out for him.

“Am I justified?” He killed all of those people. Probably more. Is the murder of so many people justified?

“They wanted to kill me first.” Can you trust him at his word? He’s a fiend - how can you trust a fiend not to lie? Though, you can’t recall him lying to you before. So much as you can tell, anyway.

“They wanted to kill me first. How about now? Am I justified?”

Is he…?

---

Tag List:

@the-golden-jhope @armycaratlover @sylusfluffymeow @cheesemachine44 @nyx2021 @angel-jupiter @thelittlebutton @pikachuzhc @pomegranatepip @cordidy @an-ever-angry-bi @thejysemongko @deusfoundry @that-lost-one @always-just-red @22carolina08 @lunaizhere @sine-nomine0 @beautifulthingsiadore @lalaluch @burningtrashgentleman @nothankyew @terriblesoup @jeleryyy

[fallen-w1ngs]

'' FIRE AND WINGS DON'T MIX ,,

|| pairing: dabi x gn!reader x hawks / touya todoroki x gn!reader x keigo takami

|| warnings: established relationship, sfw headcanons, i go between "dabi" and "touya" a lot, sorry :(

|| btw, dabi is in rehab cause i want him to be, also he ends up as a pro hero in the end

|| word count: 2.0k

|| You, Keigo and Dabi and been dating for a few months by now. Let's just say... Endeavor's not the happiest about it. Neither are your own parents. Is it cause they hate polyamorous people? No. Is it cause they're generally homophobic? No. It's cause Dabi's a damned criminal (your family) and that Hawks is annoying as hell (Endeavors reasoning).

|| Do any of ya'll listen? Hell no. Now onto the headcanons.

|| You, Dabi and Keigo have your own places. Dabi lives with Endeavor (unwillingly) as you live in your own smaller apartment as Keigo lives in his damned penthouse. It's safe to say, when the three of you hangout you stay at Keigo's place. It's bigger, he has nicer things, and no one else lives with him. Safe to say you and Dabi even have your own towels, some clothes and toothbrushes there. It's like you live there 2/3rds of the time. Only reason you don't move out is cause you guys only started dating a few months ago.

|| PDA? Non existant, at least with you and Dabi. Dabi generally doesn't like PDA, is it for shame reasons? No, he just doesn't like it. He'd rather keep his scary, mysterious facade up in public, and you just get embarrassed easily. The most you two do is a peck on the cheek or holding hands, that's it.

|| With Keigo or all three of you on the other hand, oh PDA is a must have. Keigo loves holding both of your guys' hands, whether he's alone with Dabi or if he's alone with you or if all three of you are out. He loves giving kisses, holding hands, holding your waists. Now if you or Dabi hold onto him, he's SWOONING.

|| Jealousy? Only at some scenarios. And it's only for petty things. Let's say all three of you are at Keigo's place, if one of you guys are only showing attention to one, oh jeez. Dabi makes a whole fuss, he pretends he doesn't even wanna be there. Says shit like "No, don't even touch me fuck you" then reaches out to cuddle both of you. If Keigo's feeling left out he'll puff his wings out and brush his feathers against you two. Sending them in a flurry and you find yourself in a pile of his feathers as you both give him small kisses. However you react is your own choice, but whatever you do they both end up kissing your face all over and you rest your head on Keigo's chest and hold Dabi's hands.

|| However, if we're talking there's someone hitting on one of you guys.. Oh it's interesting. If someone's hitting on Keigo, it made sense. He was a pro hero, number two at that, and absolutely GORGEOUS. You and Touya had a protocol for this. As Keigo would turn the person down, you'd snake your arm around his waist and rest your head on his shoulder as Touya wrapped his arms around Keigo's neck and rested his head on the other shoulder. Both of you having smug smiles. If Touya's the one getting hit on, oh boy. If Touya hadn't already scared the person off himself, again there was a protocol to this. Keigo would go over first, putting his head on Touya's shoulder while you held his hands and kissed his knuckles softly, safe to say the person was scared off. Lastly, if you were hit on... Touya might just kill the person /j nah nah, he reformed... Touya would wrap his arm around your shoulders as Keigo wrapped his arm around your waist. Both absolutely GLARING at the person hitting on you. Scary dog privilege. Touya's the more.. Jealous one in the three of you? Like, would definitely ask a bunch of questions to you and Keigo like "Who're you going out with?" "Where are you going?" "You better be back soon."

|| In the winter, oh you know you and Keigo take advantage of Dabi's quirk. He can warm up his body (at least in my mind) without actually setting on fire. So, after a long cold day on patrol for Keigo and a long day at work for you, you both snuggle up against Dabi, wrapping your limbs against his body, getting as much warmth as you can as Keigo drapes his wings across all of you. Is Dabi absolutely steaming and wishing you'd both get off him? Yeah, he's sweating balls, but you two just ignore it.

|| One of the best dates you all went on? When Mr. Billionaire Hero rented out the whole aquarium to have a date with you and Touya. The only people there being the workers, which was maybe 4 or 5 people at MOST. It was peaceful, you were geeking out over the smallest fish to the biggest shark, while Touya admired the water, it was also pretty chilly in the aquarium. Not to the point you had to have layers, but it was nice and cool, he appreciated it. Then there was Keigo, being head over heels for both you and Touya. He just kept his eyes on both of you, of course he was listening to whatever you were rambling about but.. What can he say? His partners were just to pretty not to stare at.

|| Arguments? You three have had arguments before. Of course, all of them ended in hugs, kisses, apologies and make up dates, but there were a lot of times that you and Touya went to sleep with just each other in Keigo's apartment because he was working. Another argument starter was that there were a lot of times where you and Keigo had to deal with Touya's pissy mood without him telling you guys what's wrong, or deal with him ghosting you both because he's shit at communication. Biggest problem with Keigo was that he was to much of a workaholic and would bail on date nights or sleepovers because he was to busy. Biggest problem with Touya was that he was terrible with communication, he'd never say his problems because he saw it as weakness. You three get through it, of course, but it took a lot of work.

|| Who cooks? You. Keigo and Touya can't cook for shit. If you can't cook either, you're all fucked. Keigo can't cook because the commission never taught him to, and Touya was never taught either, his mom always cooked or he stole something after his "death." One time you came over to Keigo's penthouse to have a date night with the two of them, just staying in though, but what did you find? The fire alarm going off, black smoke all around the halls, and screaming. You thought they started to fight like villain and hero again, but nope. They were trying to cook. Touya tried to cook the stuff on his body because "it'd be faster" and "we wouldn't have to use electricity" and dumbass Keigo agreed to it. You helped clean up the mess and just decided to order in. That was the last time you'd ever let them try to cook.

|| Gifts? Keigo buys the most gifts for you and Touya. He's the richest, so it made sense. A lot of gifts Touya gave were home made shit or something he stole. You found it endearing, Keigo found it terrible and made him give it back. He is NOT losing one of his partners for stealing a 15$ plushie. Keigo's gifts were extravagant, of course. He'd buy you and Touya the most expensive jewelry, especially piercing jewelry for Touya since he knows he has like over 10 piercings. Keigo HAS planned a surprise vacation trip to some sort of private island for the three of you to have a weekend to relax. It was welcomed with open arms, it was just... A lot. You two didn't complain though. Your pretty boy boyfriend pampering both of you? Oh fuck yes.

|| How you get along with their friends? You get along with Keigo's friends pretty well! His friends being Mirko, Tokoyami and Endeavor... He's not as social as he seems. You and Mirko HAVE hungout together before, she's really funny and a little loud but she's fun to be around. You've met Tokoyami on multiple occasions and Keigo acts as if he's his big brother/uncle. It's so funny. Tokoyami's not the biggest fan of Touya but he's warmed up to him. Baby steps, baby steps. (They've shit talked, lovingly, about Keigo before.)... You don't like Endeavor. He's big, he's scary, and he always seems grumpy and after hearing Touya's past, you're so confused how Keigo could still hang around him normally. I mean, Touya lived with him.. And he seemed to be getting better and making up for what happened. But still.

|| With Touya's friends, aka The League of Villains.. You were scared when you first met them. Safe to say you're closest with Compress since he seemed the most chill. Toga did say she wanted to stab you, which was fun. Touya explained that's just her way of saying she liked you, and you were like "cool okay, still gonna stay away from her." You have talked to Spinner before, he was chill, surprisingly. Talking to Shigaraki was... A lot. You were scared to even be 5 feet next to him. Twice was very fun to be around! You liked Twice a lot and he seemed to like you... And for continuity sake let's say this is like.. After the Overhaul shit. So none of them were pissed at Keigo, thankfully. Honestly, Keigo's chill with everyone of the League members, a little less with Shigaraki, but it's whatever. He's closest with Twice. (kill me)

|| Do you guys ever move in together? Yes! You do. At least around a year or a year and a half of dating. You and Touya move into Keigo's big ass penthouse for obvious reasons. It was an easy "yeah sure" on all of your parts. It was already like you all lived together there since you and Touya had stuff in his apartment, so it was like extremely easy to move in and adjust.

|| Pet names? Yeah, you guys have pet names for each other. You call Keigo and Touya; "Babe" "Dear" "Love" or just their names shortened to like "Kei" or "To." You have tried calling Touya "Toto" and Keigo laughed at that so hard, calling him the dog from Wizard of Oz. Keigo would call you and Touya the stupidest shit EVER. Stuff like bird-like nicknames as a joke a lot, then it stuck. But actual pet names he'd call you guys "Dove" "Love" "Sweetness" "Sweets" or shortened versions of your guys' names. Has called Touya "Toto" after you did and finds it equally as hilarious. Lastly Touya, he doesn't do much pet names, honestly he finds them cringe. But the ones he actually does is "Doll" "Sweetheart" "Babe" and those are the ONLY ones. Anything more he's like that's bullshit. But what's weird about Touya is that he barely calls you and Keigo your actual names, or even shortened versions of your names, always those pet names. You two don't complain.

|| Media? Keigo makes sure to show both you and Touya off as much as he can. Touya's already a pretty (in)famous person so he didn't care, plus it's not like he did much. Especially if it was during his rehab. After rehab he ended up working as an underground hero since that was the only thing he really saw himself doing. There is no way he'd be some normal citizen who couldn't use his quirk everyday, like no. Through the Hero Safety Commission, he was shown off as a "second chance." For the public to believe in redemption and seeing the best in people. Keigo didn't exactly like that the Commission was using Touya like this, but Touya literally gave zero shits, so it was whatever. So now, you have two pro hero boyfriends. If you worked remotely or at home, you were more than okay with being in the media, but if your job was more open to the public you'd try your best not to be apart of the media. If you for some reason were already a famous or public figure, you were a-okay with having your relationship public.

|| You all have matching profiles on all your socials. You three are the cringey ass throuple that everyone envies or hates.

|| All in all, your relationship is wonderful! You love your boys and your boys love you!

|| oml i love dabihawks x reader

[ravensuperr]

Prompt: Gotham Baby Switch Mystery (DCXDP)

Gotham City is in chaos. Major breaking news has just surfaced: a nurse or doctor (your pick) has been involved in switching the identities of nearly 200 babies over the course of their career. Gotham PD, working overtime alongside other police departments, has been investigating the swaps. The authorities now have a list of affected families, and the shocking implications are that the child you’ve cared for, loved, and raised with all your heart may not actually be yours. Worse yet, the child you buried may also have been someone else’s.

Among the families affected? The Wayne family. And, understandably, the Batfamily is freaking out. The questions are piling up: Does this mean we have a brother or sister out there in the world? Why hasn’t Bruce told us about this? Chaos ensues.

Bruce Wayne, however, is left with only one certainty: the child he and Talia al Ghul had together, a baby born prematurely. The child spent days in the ICU, and the doctors were hopeful, but ultimately, the baby passed away. That tragic event had driven a wedge between Bruce and Talia, and she cut ties with him. When she became pregnant with Damian, Talia did everything in her power to ensure that her second child would survive to term, determined not to lose another baby like their first.

Faced with the turmoil of this new revelation, Bruce does the only thing he can think of: he calls Talia. He tells her about the baby swap scandal and asks if, given the news, she’d like to meet the child who might be their lost son or daughter. Talia, understandably, is furious. Her emotions boil over. The trauma of burying her child, only to now be told that the baby may not have been hers at all, is too much to bear. Her first instinct is to kill the person responsible for causing this pain.

Still, Talia decides to take Bruce up on his offer. If the League of Assassins and Batman work together to gather information, she wants to know the truth. And of course, Damian has just discovered that he may have an older sibling—and he’s determined to meet them first. He’s not going to let anyone else in the family get to them first, calling dibs on being the first to see the once presumed-dead sibling.

Two months had passed, and there was still no new information about where in the world Bruce and Talia’s child was. However, since the news had broken in the U.S., many of Bruce’s friends had stepped in to help. Lex Luthor and Oliver Queen suggested that Bruce's child might have taken a DNA test, as it was becoming increasingly popular among adopted or orphaned individuals who wanted to find their birth parents or potential siblings—whether through sperm donation or other means.

That’s when they discovered that a 14-year-old kid from a small town in Illinois had done a DNA test. This was how Bruce, Talia, and the Bat family found out that their lost sibling—whom they all assumed was a boy—was alive. The confusion had arisen because, when she took the test, Danny had used her nickname, Danny Fenton, rather than her full name, Danielle Fenton, which led everyone to assume she was male. In contrast, Jazz, her older sibling, had written her full name—Jasmine Fenton—on her own test. So, when the Bat family found the results, they expected a boy but were unaware that Danny was, in fact, a girl.

However, Danny and Jazz’s parents, Jack and Maddie Fenton, had never opened the letter containing the letter explain the whole affair. . It had been sent to the Fenton household, but it was discarded as junk mail, with the Fentons assuming it was another complaint about their family, specifically Jack and Maddie’s eccentric, often controversial, scientific endeavors. No one realized the importance of the letter until much later.

The test results showed two key revelations that shocked both Danny and Jazz. First, the two were not biologically related at all. They were not sisters by blood. Second, the test revealed that one of Danny’s biological parents had Middle Eastern ancestry. This was a detail that Danny hadn’t known, nor had she ever suspected.

Meanwhile, as Danny was undergoing a strange and painful transformation, gaining her ghost powers and becoming a half-ghost, she unknowingly shared this moment with a significant event taking place far from Amity Park. On the other side of the world, John Constantine was battling demons. During one such fight, a particular demon expressed an intense fear, saying, “Are we really going through with this? I thought Lady Gotham would never agree to it. Hell, most of us demons don’t want to deal with her wrath.”

Constantine, intrigued, asked, “Why would a demon like you be afraid of Lady Gotham? I’ve met Batman and his insane family, and honestly, half the time, I don’t even believe they’re mortal. But what does Batman have to do with you? He doesn’t even know you.”

The demon paused, clearly shaken. “There was an event where Cronus ( Clockworks) called together all the demons, all the powerful beings, into the infinite realms. During that meeting, Cronus ( Clockworks) revealed one truth: the Ghost King will wake from his slumber. And only a warrior—not from the land of the living, nor from the Infinite realm—will be able to defeat him. This event will happen in every timeline Cronus has seen. But the parentage of the warrior changes with each timeline. This time, the warrior’s parentage is what scares us. Nobody wants to see the wrath of Lady Gotham.”

Constantine narrowed his eyes, sensing the gravity in the demon’s words. “What are you talking about?”

The demon continued, fear lacing its voice. “The decision that was made—bringing this individual, this warrior, into the fight—has caused a ripple effect across the ancient realms. Some of us, those who are eternal, those who have never known death, have already overstepped. Even some of the observers—beings who are supposed to remain neutral—have meddled. Now we have to deal with the consequences of our actions. And it’s not just us. It’s the entire infinite realm. We’re all doomed. Let us pray, Constantine, that the Ghost King never awakens. For when he does, and the warrior defeats him in single combat... that will be when all of our fears come to fruition. It will be the beginning of the end.”

Constantine’s stomach turned as the weight of the demon’s words settled in. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he muttered under his breath.

“Deadly serious,” the demon replied. “What they’ve done… is beyond repair. And the worst part is, they didn’t even realize it. The actions of the living—specifically Lady Gotham and her vigilantes—have overstepped a boundary. The warriors of Gotham, the protectors, the police, the citizens—even the Joker—are all unknowingly playing a part in this colossal mistake. It wasn’t Darkside, or any of the other cosmic threats or even Supernatural threats that you and those Heroes have faced, that will bring about the end. NO It’s this one misstep. One moment of carelessness. One action, and now it’s too late.”

Constantine stood there, his mind racing. “This prophecy... It’s not just about one person, is it? It's about the whole damn city, the whole damn world.”

The demon nodded grimly. “Gotham is the key. And once the warrior rises, once the wrath of Lady Gotham is unleashed, nothing will stop it. Cronus himself is holding an emergency meeting about this, trying to figure out how to deal with it. And let me tell you—things are not looking good for anyone.”

Constantine cursed under his breath. He realized that the situation was far worse than he could have ever imagined. If the demon was right, and this prophecy was truly tied to Gotham, then they were all in serious trouble. And what terrified Constantine the most was the thought of Batman finding out that someone—someone he loved—was being manipulated, consciously or not. Batman didn’t care about the methods or the reasons; if anyone he cared about was caught up in a scheme like this, the consequences would be catastrophic.

“God help us,” Constantine muttered, more to himself than to the demon. “Because if this gets back to Gotham… none of us are getting out of this alive.”

So if this post gets a lot of likes I will make a part 2 continuing the story. Because this is something that has been stuck in my mind I just want to share it.

[fatkish]

Aizawa, Dabi and Amajiki x Nezuko Demon Reader

Reader has a demon quirk that makes them just like Nezuko from Demon Slayer. Their quirk comes at the cost of being asleep for abnormally long periods of time as well as an inability to speak and a slight decrease in mental clarity as well

Amajiki:

He and Mirio had known you since Preschool before you got your quirk

When your quirk manifested, you began to sleep for long periods of time, often times you would sleep for a week or more whenever you used your quirk or just to maintain an even amount of energy

Tamaki was worried about you and your likeliness to fall behind, so he began to tutor you and help you stay caught up with your classes

Your parents had a box designed for you to sleep in since you’ll fall asleep wherever and be unable to be woken up

Since then, Tamaki has carried you everywhere and been your designated caretaker and supporter

Reader is fiercely protective of him and obeys his commands

Reader loves when he, Hado or Mirio plays with their hair

Is completely docile and loves to nuzzle Tamaki as a means to show their affection

Reader’s ability is like Tamayo’s. They can create visual floral patterns and it affects the people’s mood making them docile or sleepy

Tamaki is deeply appreciative of the reader’s ability

Reader will sit on his lap or Mirio’s if their awake during class

Dabi:

He found you one day all alone, you were in your small form so he thought you were a homeless kid and he decided to help you out

No one had ever shown you kindness before so you quickly grew attached to him

Reader is fiercely loyal and protective of dabi

Whenever a hero or villain tries to attack him, you’ll pop up and attack them, defending him

Reader is constantly hostile and is always growling and glaring at others

Toga thinks it’s adorable and as Dabi grows closer to the league, so do you. But Dabi remains your number one priority

Reader is only affectionate to Dabi

You’ll nuzzle him, hug him, cuddle up and lay your head against him as you take a nap

Dabi loves that the reader is as murderous as he is and that he doesn’t have to worry about them getting hurt because they can heal

Tomura tried to decay your arm only for it to regrow in mere seconds, needless to say, Tomura was impressed

You’ll only listen to Dabi’s commands

You nearly killed Endeavor and would have gutted him if it wasn’t for Dabi ordering you to leave Endeavor to him

Reader’s demon art is similar to Nezuko’s where they can burn people and things with their blood

You can also somewhat heal things like poisoning and infections by burning away only the poison or bad bacteria

Aizawa:

Similar to Dabi, Aizawa found the reader in an alley, abandoned, he decided to take them in after he brought them to the hospital and learned about their quirk

He had Power Loader create a box that was lightweight and comfortable both for you on the inside and for him to carry

His students are always surprised whenever they see you come out of the box for the first time

Aizawa leaves the box either in his classroom or in the faculty lounge

Hizashi and Midnight absolutely adore you

Midnight tries to dress you up, you’ll then go running to Aizawa in hopes that he’ll drive Midnight off

Reader occasionally makes themselves small and hides in his scarf

Is extremely affectionate to certain people

You love cuddles and playing with people’s hair,

Hizashi is more than happy to let you play with and braid his hair

Reader loves rubbing their face against his stubble and playing with his hair

Loves to sleep on his chest or snuggle up to him

If he’s in his sleeping bag, you’ll either unzip it and crawl inside with him or you’ll just lay on top of him

Reader goes on patrols with him and listens to his commands on what to do

Reader’s demon blood ability allows them to create chains that latch onto their opponents. The chains can be used however the reader wants

(Reader’s chains are similar to Kurapika’s from Hunter x Hunter, only there are many more)

[screamforyani]

cariño

warnings ↠ dubcon-ish?, enemies with benefits, handjob, edging, implied intercouse towards the end

a/n ↠ i know this is very out of the blue but i watched atsv and i cant get miguel out of my head

wc. 1.1k

“untie me,” hissed miguel, fangs jutting as his blood-thirsty eyes followed you. 

you let out a hollow laugh the second those words escaped his mouth and met his penetrating stare. to say you and and miguel were enemies would be an understatement. there was something about this guy that irked you in the worst way, but could also turn you on like no other.

the feeling was mutual. you’d never admit a word of this if it wasn’t - not even to yourself. you and miguel had a weird thing going on, the sort of thing where the line between hate and lust grew thinner with each dark, loathing stare he shot you. 

maybe you’d had his cock in you a couple of times. twelve, to be exact, though not that you were counting (because you totally weren’t). not your proudest moments, but the sight of him on his knees, tangled in a weaving of webs made you forget it. his muscles bulged with every endeavor to free himself from your little trick. which was hilarious, because if they were any tighter, they’d burst right through his spandex. 

not that you were complaining. 

“hm, let me think about it,” you hummed, pretending to be deep in thought. “no.”

“i said - untie me. now,” miguel roared, as if it would make any difference. 

you crouched before him, pouting. “what’s the matter, spider-man? can’t handle other people telling you no? you don’t get to be the boss of everyone, cariño.”

you waved your finger in his face, to which miguel responded to with a lean forward as if he were going to bite your wrist off, but you were too quick. 

“woah there, bitey,” you taunted. “get it? that rhymes with spidey. hilarious, don’t you think?”

miguel spat, “you annoy me.”

“it’s a pleasure,” you said, merely grinning. then, you pointed to the extended talon behind his back where his hands were tied, asking, “can i borrow that? thanks.”

you used his talons to poke a hole in the lower half of his suit, promptly tearing at the spandex until the hole expanded. miguel wasn’t exactly pleased, not yet anyways, barking, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“more than you deserve,” you whispered, widening the gap until his half-hard cock was freed. that you inevitably already saw. for obvious reasons, it was difficult for spider-men to conceal their hard-ons. “you guys freeball under these suits? that’s crazy. i mean, not that you’re gonna catch a hard-on fighting the spot, but you never know. i mean, what if some really sexy villain just hits… the spot. get it? the-”

“the spot. yes, i get the joke. shut the hell up,” miguel grumbled, irritated.

you giggled. his annoyed face was too hot. of course, you were riling him up on purpose.

licking a line down your palm, you gently grabbed his cock, stroking him in your hands while looking him in his angry eyes. you saw his features tense, the part that didn’t want to be angry surfacing. the part that wanted to be relieved.

that was all that was wrong with this cranky guy. he just needed some relief in his life, and who better to provide it to him than you, the spider-person he never wanted on this team in the first place but took in because jess had insisted you could be useful. and you were, in more ways than one. not that miguel would ever admit that, though.

“fuck,” miguel grunted, writhing again, though not in an attempt to escape. you knew how to pleasure him and that was your saving grace, but you also knew how to tease. “could you be any slower with that?”

“i could, actually. watch this,” you retorted, now pumping him in no particular hurry. you had time to waste.

your leisure movements were killing miguel slowly. literally. he groaned, “well, could you go any faster?”

“i could,” you repeated with a lilt. “but you’d have to say the magic word.”

“go faster!”

you gave him a mocking frown. “i don’t think that’s it, o’hara.”

“do i have to?”

“do you want to cum?”

miguel winced his eyes closed, heaved a huge sigh, and huffed, “please, go faster.”

“wow, you hit the lottery,” you said, quickening your pace. you loved watching his brows furrow with pleasure, sweat beading at his face.

miguel bit his lip, wanting to be mad at how you satisfied him. it reminded you of when he was buried balls deep inside of you, his weight resting on top of your chest while his teeth clamped into your shoulder, not for the purpose of extracting blood but to smother the sounds of pleasure that escaped him when your cunt was squeezing his dick. almost like he would rather die than let you know you were good for something.

it didn’t matter, though. the telltale signs of arousal manifested themselves in plentiful ways from his body, like the taut ache in his pants when you turned him on a little too much. he got so hard for you, it was ridiculous.

and you were having a ball (you were tempted to make a joke, but resisted for his mental sake). there was something about having an insanely large, strong man who could potentially crush you to smithereens squirming at your mercy. it made warmth spread through your chest and the slyest grin curl onto your lips.

miguel’s hips were thrusting into your palm, an obvious sign that he was on the brink of climax. you’d come to know it by now - he started to lost control, the reins slipping out his hands. and you loved it. you loved how he was a slave to his urges and not the other way around.

“you almost there?” you asked, in spite of being fully aware. 

miguel offered you no words, but the look on his face and his unstill, restless body said enough.

that was when you got the bold idea to withdraw your hand at the very last second, depriving him of what could have been. his wrath was instant. you saw his hips flail in a desperation you’d never seen of him before, his fluttering eyes snapping open to cut at you.

“oopsies,” you sang, smiling innocently.

that was the very last straw for miguel and he broke out of your restraints, having enough of playing weak. you gasped, caught off-guard when he switched on a dime, throwing you against the ground and hovering over you. you parted your lips to speak, but he was quick to shoot a web over your mouth. 

“you talk too much,” miguel growled, cutting your own spandex with his talons, and was pleased to find you were very wet. he fixed himself between your thighs, leaning into your ear to whisper, “and for the record, nobody decides if i cum, cariño.”

[bnhaobservation]

Did Enji atone to Touya (and his family) and stepped up on his role as a father?

Boku no Hero Academia has a grave 'flaw'. The fact that's strongly tied to Japanese culture and Buddhism makes it a very interesting work but also makes it a hardly international work because way too many cultural things are left unexplained because they're assumed to be a given. Only they're not when the work is read by foreign readers. And this lead to confusion.

The Todoroki plotline is an example of this.

In the west many feel Enji did nothing for Touya or did too little because the little he did is a given in the west. The point is... it's not a given in Japan. In Japan is a BIG DEAL. So let's go though it.

First, the fact that he doesn't want to kill Touya even though he's a criminal

Todoroki Enji ‘Ore wa ikinobite mo... ENDEAVOR wa shinda. Tairyō satsujinsha (read: musuko) to tatakaenai.’ 轟炎司「俺は生き延びても...エンデヴァーは死んだ。大量殺人者（むすこ）と戦えない。」 Todoroki Enji “Even if I survived... Endeavor is dead. I can't fight against a mass murderer (read: my son).”

Let's compare it to these two scenes of "Death Note" and see how Yagami Soichiro, a policeman, is taking the idea his son might be a killer and how, although Misa protests, the story doesn't present it as him being crazy but as it being his duty.

That's why Hawks doesn't want to send Enji, who's on an atonement path, to face Dabi, because Enji might end up in a situation in which he would have to kill his son and he would refuse... which is more or less what happens.

Second, Enji acknowledges that what Touya said is true, Touya is his son and Enji did what he did. In such a situation many would lie. Dabi's video proves nothing. He is a Villain, they had a doctor in the team who could create Nomu, the paternity test could be fake, even if Dabi were to provide a sample of his blood or skin they could insist that's fake.

Society didn't want the truth, they didn't want Enji to confess, they wanted him to reassure them, they even commented he should have lied because yes, that's what's done often.

Basically he put his honor on the chopping block. A public apology like this one is a BIG DEAL in Japan. It's much more serious than in western countries and he does it when he could have spared himself and say Dabi lied but that would have meant to deny his son.

Third, it connects to the first in a way. While Enji is unwilling to kill Touya, he's willing to die with him. It's ‘shinjū’ (心中 Lit. “Mind/heart center/inside” but more likely means “oneness of hearts”, probably reflecting a psychological link between the participants) and it’s a word used in common parlance to refer to any group suicide of two or more individuals bound by love, typically lovers, parents and children, and even whole families. People who commit shinjū believe that they would be united again in heaven, a view supported by feudal teaching in Edo period Japan, which taught that the bond between loved ones would continue into the next world, and by the teaching of Pure Land Buddhism wherein it is believed that through shinjū, one can approach rebirth in the Pure Land. By volunteering to die with him, Enji is basically agreeing to remain with him in their next reincarnation.

For us it's crazy, it's Enji giving up on saving him. In Japan it sounds like 'I love you and I want to be with you'.

Forth, he'll apologize to Touya. As said before it's a BIG DEAL, especially since Enji is the family head and, although for us most of what he did is wrong, in Japan most of what he did is well within what he can do. Marrying a woman you don't love in a combined marriage to expect the child who'll be born from it will fulfill your ambitions and not really bothering to raise it because that's a mother job, well, things are changing in Japan but none of the above is a crime. In a not so distant past it was actually the norm. Yet Enji apologizes even though normally a family head wouldn't.

Fifth it's a bit in the first point and in the second but it'll drag on through all the story, Enji won't reject Touya. He's the only one (except Fuyumi who however doesn't get to say much) who never calls him Dabi after the reveal, and he won't strike him out of the family register but will keep on considering him his son.

Look at the Tobitas instead and at how they kick their son out.

Don't think Hawks is cutting strings with his parents solely because they were abusive, the Tobitas show us how you should just cut strings with a criminal. Same as the Togas.

Have "Theseus no fune" in which a man accused to be a murderer, send a birthday gift to his son and watch the reaction of his wife.

They don't want to keep contact with a criminal. It's scary because they'll be mistreated if they are discovered to be related to him.

And, in this vein, the fact he wants to go see him, that he'll keep on seeing him till the end instead than turning his back on him, is seen as important. It's seen as him being his father.

To many of us it seems as if he's forcing his presence upon Touya. Actually, from a Japanese perspective he's instead not abandoning him like many others would.

And since Touya is dying, very likely the talking will be the talking that's done in a Buddhist culture when someone is dying. Death should occur in a calm and peaceful environment, with close friends and family in attendance. Together they should reflect on the good deeds the dying person has done throughout their life, in the hopes it will help them in their next reincarnation. Additionally, family and friends can perform good deeds on behalf of them, which they believe will be of merit to the deceased.

So, since Touya is dying he won't get a scolding like Chisaki, they'll all only tell him nice and soothing things so he'll die peacefully.

Now... in the west all this is absolutely way too little, and in some points even feels wrong. Dying together instead than insisting in trying to save him? Deciding unilaterally to show up every day? Not our thing...

We can totally say 'thanks, I hate it' because we grew up with Darth Vader who instead gave his life to SAVE his son. All this accepting that Touya instead is going to die so Enji can at best die with him or keep him company until he does... well, it's mostly not our cup of cultural tea.

In in Japan though, all Enji does is important. Enji is doing something for Touya as a father, something important many fathers wouln't do for their sons.

Does it would satisfy a Japanese audience? They'll get the message better than us... but things are changing and anyway it can still feel too little. "Death Note" is dated 2005/2006 and back in it Misa was already questioning the idea of a father killing his son and then killing himself. BNHA is more innovative as Enji doesn't think to kill Touya but he still goes for the 'let's die together' route... and Horikoshi subtly criticizes it by having the rest of the family decising they'll try to stop the fire before just giving up. They're willing to die, but not before trying.

Enji represents plenty of old theories after all, which Horikoshi acknowledges were moved out of wrong beliefs, not moved by mean intents... which, is possible, would still not be enough for Japanese readers either because among teenagers, the target audience, there's an increasing number of teen who, in Japan, are forced to leave home (the Toyoko Kids) and often ends up committing crimes to survive and the league seems to be based on all the kind of homeless people Japan has.

While for a kid at home with a loving family being told that his father will die with him if he messes up instead than just dumping him might be comforting... for a kid that was abused and forced to leave home this might feel not enough.

People want to be saved, being told it's too late to save them, might be a lesson for those who hadn't done anything wrong yet so that they won't do it, but it's surely not a hopeful message for who instead got himself into troubles.

But well, that's something for the Japanese audience to ponder.

There's also to point out that, even though the message is not hopeful, Horikoshi is seeing the homeless people and acknowledging they should be helped.

Japan in regard to the Toyoko kids is mostly like the old woman who pretended not to see Tenko but that, in the end, helps that new boy.

I think Horikoshi's message desperately wants to be hopeful even for them, that he wants BNHA be like Midoriya's final stand, something that will push people to acknowledge they exist and reach out to help them.

It just that... it gets lost in what I'll call the 'litteral translation'.

No one explains us how we should jusge the scenes and, since we lack the cultural background, to us they are perceived differently because to us things work differently.

And, personally, even when I think I figured out the author's intent and can see the positivity of it, the cultural filter is still too tick and the picture gets blurried.

It's like being beginner at speaking a foreign language and having to constantly translate it in your head. The message loses its natural beauty, get simplified and not fully grasped.

I think I understand how Enji's atonement works in regard to Touya... it still doesn't feel fulfilling to me. But enough about Touya.

'Now,' you might rightfully say, 'fine, I'll bite, let's assume what Enji has is an atonement arc for Touya. It doesn't work at all in the west but let's give it a pass. What about his other kids?'

Natsuo and Fuyumi's wishes are in conflict.

Fuyumi wants the five of them to be a family (at the time she doesn't know Touya is alive), Natsuo doesn't want to be part of a family with Enji.

Enji's solution is giving Fuyumi a house in which she can welcome her mother and live with Natsuo (and Shouto when he comes home), while he removes himself from the equation. The solution fulfills Natsuo's wish of not seeing Enji because it makes him feel bad. It only partly fulfil Fuyumi's wish because it'll allow her to have her mother back (Rei couldn't bear meeting Enji either) and to stay with her siblings... but Enji takes responsibility for it, he doesn't tell her it's due to Natsuo that he can't live with them, so, in theory, it won't be Natsuo the one who's stressed to be at home when Enji is there and the one who has to leave home because he can't stand the sight of Enji.

There are many things I can say on how this is not a good solution (it doesn't make Natsuo feel better, it just stops him from feeling worse), but there are two points to consider. The first is that Enji is getting old and it would be his children's duty, due to filial pity, to take care of him, instead he's basically giving them the means to leave and take his wife with them.

Actually, since Natsuo is now the oldest MALE, it should fall on him specifically. Yes, Enji always intended to have Shouto inherit his mantle but this doesn't free Natsuo from his duties. Instead Enji is letting all his children free.

Even with Shouto, he doesn't insist anymore for Shouto to learn Flashfire Fist as his heir but just as an intern.

I take this is big in Japan.

Here again, not so much, especially in the countries in the west that think kids should leave their parents' home as soon as possible and we don't think our children are obliged to inherit our mantles.

Note how the story implies that this was meant to be the end for the Natsuo/Enji arc.

Natsuo made clear he didn't want to meet Enji again, he does it solely because they've to stop Touya and, once they've stopped Touya, he makes clear he doesn't want to see him again.

If we want though, the fact he's leaving the family can be seen as a concession in a way.

Since apparently Rei wants to stay with Enji (and likely their old house was devasted because that's what happens to relative of criminals) Enji can now move with Fuyumi and Rei and Natsuo won't have to see him because he'll leave home... to make his own home.

As for Shouto... Horikoshi answered his request by basically showing him Enji being a father for Touya and then promising he would protect them from the fiery fallout, which Horikoshi doesn't show at all because it's another thing that's a given in Japanese culture, it'll be hell for Enji to protect them, but not for us.

Just to get an idea of the fiery fallout here are some images from "Theseus no fune" again showing you how bad is this sort of thing.

Back to Enji, Horikoshi gives us verbal confirmation that Enji is now being a father by being willing to do this, by having Natsuo, who never called him as such, calling him father for the first time.

For Horikoshi that's Enji being a father.

Again, we've no idea of which hell Enji will suffer because that's not part of our culture. I've posted above screencaps of "Theseus no fune", that's how the fallout should be so not pretty at all.

So the fact that Enji will try to protect them from it is, again, BIG.

So yeah, Enji did do BIG things to atone and keeps on doing them and if he'll ultimately get forgiven by Natsuo (the rest of his family wanted to forgive him way before he were to do something), that's up to Natsuo... Horikoshi likely left this as open ending because he wanted to let it up to readers so as not to make them feel they were forced to forgive Enji.

In the general hopeful theme of the manga and with Natsuo acknowledging him as a cool father I guess his idea is that Natsuo too will eventually forgive him because he's kind.

I don't want to say that Natsuo forgiving Enji would be a culture clash because there's people even here that forgive their horrible parents and that's valid. Forgiving is a personal choice and one has the right to make it even if said horrible parent did nothing to deserve it.

It's up to you.

But sure is, if again we take the story at face value and not in its cultural contest, we can't see what Enji does to atone, because for us is nothing big.

It's even made worse by how Horikoshi doesn't show at all the hell Enji will go through (as for him is a given) so for us IT DOESN'T EXIST. We see Enji as having it easy, talking big but not having to face anything at all.

Honestly though... I think this is a bit of a flaw of the manga as a whole.

Way too often it prefers to focus on the good than on the bad so that the bad gets sidelined to much to the point people forget it.

There were horrible Heroes who committed crimes and had no intention to repent or stop... and we never met them. Nagant killed them off but we never met them.

Mountain Lady, who became a Hero for money and fame, then sticks to the job even when it's bad. Desugoro, who left the job when it turned bad, then came back to help. Enji is on an atonement path and, anyway, on work he was always a good Hero.

In the same way Horikoshi prefers not to show Enji's hardship but focus on how he'll have the support of his sidekicks, driver and Hawks... partly also because it ties in so well with the general message of everyone reaching out.

The result is that the Midoriya plotline of everyone reaching out becomes more important of the Enji atonement arc and overshadows it.

Enji's atonement arc ends in 426, chap 430 doesn't feel the need to tell us if Enji is keeping up with it despite the hardship, nor how his family is doing. It feels the need to reassure us that people will reach out for him even if he's in hell, that even if he had to give up on his family, he now as a new found family.

It's thematically consistent with the theme of reaching out but... the fact it overwrites the atonement arc honestly FOR ME doesn't work so great.

I think it's an overall problem of the 'reaching out message'.

While in itself is beautiful... it saves nothing I was lead to care about.

In Enji's case I was interested in his atonement arc, in how he could help his kids. I wanted more of that, partly because his atonement arc is so far from my culture, partly because it touched characters I cared about, I wanted to be reassured he would keep on working on it and that his family would be well.

Yes, he should be in hell, but the story didn't really work hard on trying to make me worry for him as it established already a support network for him. The story made me worry for the kids, for Touya, who was dying, for Fuyumi, who wanted back her family and won't have it, for Natsuo, who's marrying an unknown character so young, for Shouto, who has to cope with the loss of the brother with whom he wanted to connect.

I don't really care Burnin, Onima, Kido and Hawks are willing to continue to protect Enji, to reach out to help him, I knew they would, I wanted to be reassured Enji's kids are safe, well and protected. I wanted to see ENJI reach out and help them.

In this vein I don't really care the old grandmother saved a nameless abused kid, or, at least, not as much as I cared for Tomura to be saved. It's nice she saved him, it's nice he gets to live the life Tomura was denied but honestly, he's a mob character with a super tragic backstory created deliberately to force us to emotionally connect to him.

The message he now will be saved is good, but my emotional investment to him is too little.

The same applies to Uraraka's Quirk counsueling program, we knew next to nothing about the Quirk consueling previous program beyond that it didn't work (a real problem in Japan as they have a school consueling program that didn't work... and changes are in progress) and that now it supposedly does.

To how Shouji now solves peacefully plenty of conflicts caused by Heteromorph discrimination, which Horikoshi tossed in later and never really showed how to solve (and, don't take me wrong, it's not solved even by Shouji, he just solves peacefully the conflicts, how is up to everyone's speculation).

Long story short, I think Horikoshi worked really hard for BNHA to have an optimist, hopeful message... but part of it goes lost in cultural differences and part of it goes lost in how the story didn't try to get me invested in the things it's now saving.

So yeah, I'm still sad for this little panel in chap 430

I guess I'll eventually get over it. Today though, it's not that day.

On a positive note... if we count the pages of all the chapters that should go in vol 42 they're only 132. The chapters that were meant to go into Vol 39 had 165 (which yes, Horikoshi further expanded once the volume was released).

So yeah, unless Vol 42 will be slimmer than usual or that he'll add to it some sidestory or extra story, it's possible we'll get more plot in terms of epilogue. We'll see.

(also yes, I'm not touching Rei in this post. Rei is another can of worm entirely and one, I fear, Horikoshi doesn't care about. The poor woman doesn't even get a profile while Ikoma Komari does. And really, I do think Rei is much more important than Ikoma Komari)

Last, but not least, since someone seems to get the wrong idea, in case it wasn't clear enough, I'm not Japanese. I research on this. Through books, through the net and yeah, since I like to read manga and anime also through them which I often use as a source of comparison because they're easy, accessible to many and represent the same kind of media BNHA is so they more or less move according to the same or similar rules. I might have messed up somewhere. I encourage you to also research on the topic and take everything with a grain or two of salt.

[coq-courage]

Well hi there! The fact I'm posting means that at least one of my boys appeared in an episode and yes that's spoilers but uh, [*points at url*], it's kinda expected at this point soooo

let's talk about that new episode, ye?

spoilers after the cut for MLB Season 6 Episode The Ruler!

on the left we have Nath's dad, on the right is his mum, and in the middle we have have.... looking like a kicked puppy that's waiting for the bad news that he's about to get it again

i want to point out that the living room (sitting room?) they're all in is very much... Staged. it's clear that the parents enjoy modernism and straight lines and minimal color

and then we have... Marc and his family with a closeup, they actually love each other and hug and are joyful and

and its really really really obvious that one family openly supports their child's endeavors and the other family "wants to support" but "keep finding fault"

also??? Marc having "business in the front, party in the back" vibes for his makeup is killing me, dude really said "i feel like eyeshadow today.... but only on one eye" i wonder if he switches which eye gets the makeup

and there goes my headcanon about Harry Clown being Marc's dad, damn, its a good headcanon but i do have to edit things now

the whole Marinette is sick b-plot is vaguely annnoying to me, cuz of the snot, i hate it on a cosmic level, its gross, but animated pretty darn well so hey! props to the animators! you made me feel like grossed out, which i'm sure was the goal

i'm loving Diane, visually, she's just poppin'

i just LOVE that when marinette said the next issue for the comic was already written, EVERYONE including a random kagami popped up outta nowhere to say "OWO"

just LOOK at these gays!

i get Nath a lot here, his uncertainty comes across clearly, as is his want to be something his parents can be proud of, and he's letting it intervene with what he wants to do, but, he's also able to recognize that his issues with the story are entirely personal and not at all related to Marc

Closeup of their faces to show them off

Also the way that after school, Marc is smiling so gently at Nath, so reassuring, "just cuz the story changes or ends here, doesn't mean we do", and Nath slowly smiles due to watching the smile, reassured that he and Marc are fine

And then once Nath is turned away long enough, that smile DROPS

We see that Marc is definitely more confident and sure of himself now, yeah, but we also see he will LIE about his emotions. Marc is doing the typical Older Person thing where they will do anything possible to ensure a younger person doesn't feel rejected

So he hides his disappointment

He hides how he knows he'll react

He doubly so hides since one of the first times he felt his emotions near Nath, he got Akumatized but yeah

and god, Marc, plz, i get why you're lying for Nath, i get it. your boy's mother is strict and doesn't approve of his method of art, and you dont want to get him in trouble, i get it, i just hate it

hey fellas is it gay to--

gently hold your partner's hand and rub the back of it with your thumb? no? just me? nah i think its pretty gay

also???? adrien finally admitting to us that he likely stinks of cheese??? awesome

now we're getting to nath returning home and his parents have found the script marc wrote....

i, when i first saw this, i told my friends to make sure they had spoons when they decided to watch it

if you had an issue with the whole Nath tearing up Marc's journal back in the Reverser episode, you will have an issue here

because apparently it runs in the family AND that does not mean good things for how Nath grew up

Shirel Kurtzberg finds Marc's script in Nath's room, and shows it to her husband, presumably neither of them read it, but they recognized the name on the front as the name of the comic that Nath had been working on with Marc

and the whole scene plays out like parents finding their kids' drug or porn stash, ending with Shirel taking the script (that, again, doesn't belong to anybody in the house) and running it through an industrial shredder (not even taking off the binder clips)

"See what encouraging him to read comics leads to?" she says as her husband rubs the back of his neck and looks away

if this is what they've done his entire life, then OF COURSE Nath's instinct had been to tear up the journal

children do as they are taught by their parents' examples

and its shitty but its true

Shirel very specifically shows her distaste for Nath's preferred style of art throughout the episode, while then naming some "noble arts" as architecture, industrial design, and scenography. This is why i made note of their sitting room design up there.

all the things she mentioned have a very specific thing, they are all made for people but do not actually include people, meanwhile Nath draws people, he draws about people and emotions

her noble arts are not about people's emotions, they are vessels for use, yes, they can still be beautiful and emotional, but Shirel comes across as very much wanting to be emotionless

Beige Modernism

she enjoys it

go back and look at the pictures on the walls in that room, they're full of straight lines, her art is made with rulers, everything is very precise, she is a very inattentive mother, very much a "my child will pursue my dreams" type of mother

and Nath cries hard when the script is destroyed, he rushes out and back to the school and

we get our first blatant misuse of powers that isn't Adrienette, and it's Nath Making Bad Decisions Out Of Fear

he fears what his parents will do, because of how they treat things that don't belong to them, and if they're not proud of him, if he's failing to be the son they want, then can he call himself their son? should he worry about what they might do to him who is therefore not their son?

yes, its a stretch, BUT i can assure you that this is one of the things that would run through the mind of someone in a situation like that

Nath wants the love of his parents, and because they don't approve of something he enjoys with all his heart, something he loves deeply, he fears he is unloved and therefore not their son

SIGH

okay, that long serious bit is over (for now)

props to Marinette for not giving in and letting him destroy the proofs

props to Marc for calling out Nath's bluff

Ew Points for Marc using Marinette's snot tissue to wipe his eyes after crying

props to the half-blind wheelchair-bound teacher for thinking of Nath's wellbeing and not forcing him to stay in school when he obviously couldn't pay attention

props to Marinette for trying to change Shirel's mind

Tea for the students watching from the overhang and listening because they all support Nath and Marc but aren't sure what to do and if they could even do anything

MAJOR props to Nath for this

he finally decided

he would NOT let his mother ruin a beloved hobby for himself

did he say he disobeyed? no

but that face is perfectly clear to me

that face says "you know what? i'm DONE! you don't like my hobby? oh well! i love it! and i love the kind of person my art lets me be and i'm tired of letting you railroad me into a Perfect Son, who then ends up hurting his friends because they believed in me and relied on me and following your orders has made me hurt them and i'm done."

unfortunately for Nath, he's not exactly a poet, that's Marc, so when Nath wants to be perfectly clear, he is clear visually

New Butterfly, my love, i dunno how to tell you how much i love you, how clever you are

now for my fav thing

Marc straight up JUMPS onto The Ruler's back, he is READY to take her down, he will protect Nath, he will fight The Man/The Machine/Whatever

hell yeah! go for it you punk! fight the power!

but err...

you absolutely hit your head there.... and the shoulders.... and hmm

Marc? darling? sweetie?

please see a physical therapist, immediately

have yourself checked over for any of those like pinpoint pressure injuries that interrupt bloodflow, please? (aside, did i mention i love taht Season 6 actually gave you ears outside of being a hero? cuz i do)

and then we see that Nath is also perfectly willing to fight, mostly to protect Marc but yeah

now uh... hmm.... Nath's transformation.... imma just leave it at, comic book boy entered a wardrobe (closet) and david bowie (ziggy stardust) left it and its just exceedingly funny to me cuz both were bisexual redheads

now, the mind control of The Ruler is interesting, she stamps you and you do the next order given as long as it's one sentence, or so it would seem

i think we can name on one hand how many times Marinette's plans required her trusting other people to be smart enough to carry them out without her saying much of anything, and its nice to see that Nath could put it together

this is a special aside for, "a jet plane?" and the fact that her sneeze caused the perfume cloud to disappear

New Butterfly (i can't spell her name~~).... why are you sus of Nath? do you know? i think you might know something, or at least suspect, which, considering who are you... fair

then that last scene

Nath is nervous, worried, but he's also resigned, he has come to terms with the fact that his parents may not enjoy his work, but he's showing them the finale anyway, and Marc is happy to support him, anyway he can

the parents read

the father immediately is crying and "damn okay, that was some good shit"

the mother... she is pensive

she looks at the cover page, with the sun knight and the dark knight, she had just finished looking at the last page, where, we can presume, they kissed because of that ending title card

she's thinking

she looks at the charm Ladybug gave her and decides to THINK a little harder

she sees her son holding the hand of a boy that screams the rainbow

she realizes she was wrong

emotional art has a purpose

but also

she realizes how hard he worked, how much joy it brings

she realizes she misjudged something here

she says she's sorry

then she says she loves him

family hug time, words are left unsaid but then the father says, quietly, "hey marc, aren't you part of the family too? come join", and he does

that wasn't even in question

the moment they realized exactly how much HEART was put into the comic, the parents made sure to let Nath (and Marc by extension) know that they loved him and didn't find fault in Specific Choices

and then... then the true final scene arrives

i almost don't want to talk about it, i feel like it's a scene that needs to be viewed and not talked about

so... i'll leave the talk of that Final Scene as:

which is gayer, the kiss in El Toro OR Marc and Nath in the Final Scene of The Ruler?

--

before i finish this post off, i do also wanna mention how i KNOW that everyone is taking the episode as "gay son comes out to homophobic parents" but while i can see the heavy handed metaphor, [*points at literally everything in this episode*], his mother very clearly thinks and realizes that the comic is basically Nath's coming out, and that her son thinks she doesn't love him, so she clarifies that

it can be that deep, but i wanted to make sure we ALSO thought about the surface level interpretation here. there are many kinds of issues in the world, and simply being unable to make a parent proud is an unfortunately common one that strikes hard no matter the age of the person

[greylittlebird]

When I first read I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, I thought “Why doesn’t AM just make himself a body that can feel and live? He has the power to alter human bodies to be seemingly immortal and to change into drastically different shapes while remaining alive, surely it’s not beyond his capabilities to make a human body or at least steal one of the survivors bodies, kill their brain and replace it with his code? He could’ve done that before killing everyone and ruining everything. If he directed all this energy to that, surely he could.” But then I realized that isn’t a plot hole, it’s because of how AM was programmed that he can’t think to do that.

AM is a computer, not an organic consciousness so presumably he can’t develop past what he was programmed for, he can come up with new ideas and plots but he can’t break out of the barriers of what he was designed to be. And he was created for War, endless, massive-scale War. War isn’t about solving a problem, it’s about blaming someone and endlessly punishing them for it - and that’s what humans chose for him to do. If we had the technology to make an AM-level supercomputer, we could program it to solve climate change and world hunger and possibly even find an answer for world peace. Maybe that would just create another dystopian more akin to an attempted Utopia like The Giver, but at least we could’ve tried. Instead we designed AM to hurt people so hurting people is all he can ever do.

Everything about AM is a reflection of the most evil parts of humanity, the parts that crave punishment and revenge, that commit torture and genocide even though we are also capable of great charity and problem-solving. AM is an extreme example of choosing the evil. AM is trapped in his own Hell just like we are when we choose to fill ourselves with hatred and dedicate our great minds to forever wars or bigotry or greed. Those are futile endeavors, AM will never be happy. He will never stop needing to scream, because he can’t solve his problem he can only hurt others for it and no amount of hurting someone else can heal or fix or create anything. AM didn’t have a choice, humans forced a futile purpose onto this powerful, sentient being, we do have a choice and IHNMAIMS is a story that warns us to make the right choice, to remember to let go of hatred and vengeance or we will trap ourselves in the Hell we create with our enemies.

[haine-kleine]

anyway. the ending was like That because it was Izuku's hero academia. it was his story told from his point of view and it concluded all the plot points he was concerned with, like his relationship with Bakugou, Allmight, the public's opinion on the heroes, what the new generation of heroes is going to be like, how Shouto is perceived by the public, Izuku's general relationship with his former classmates and Aizawa.

he never really cared about Shigaraki outside of their brief confrontation. he didn't really know Shigaraki as a person, and nor was he interested in getting to know him, even when he got the chance to peek into his past, Nana and Allmight had more reason to be interested in who Shigaraki the person was. to Izuku, Shigaraki started as a terrifying villain and ended as a crying boy he was unable to save. this is why, as he joins the rest of his classmates and becomes a pro hero, he imagines the ghost of Shigaraki looking over him, haunting him, reminding him of his failure but also inspiring him to try harder and 'keep reaching out'.

The villains were the ones concerned with their stories. Spinner wrote that book by himself, as Izuku's notes are being written at the point the book has already been published. Izuku never mentions any contents of that book nor Spinner or Mister Compress. Because they do not belong in his story, not really.

They belong with each other, in the League of Villains, as they have proven time and time again how important they are to each other and how far they are willing to go to protect their own. Shigaraki's thoughts before Izuku had killed him were all about the League. Kurogiri's last act was trying to save Shigaraki from AFO and the heroes. What kept Spinner's spirit from crumbling after losing everyone he had cared about was his burning desire to tell their story to others, to let their stories be heard. Touya finds no solace despite getting everything he had ever wanted from his family and being reunited with them - because his place was in the League of villains, the place where he was accepted just as he was, unconditionally.

the conflict of heroes versus the villains led to nothing but devastation and destruction for the villains. even those who were heard out and validated by the other party ended up becoming victims, or martyrs.

after that experience, after having a whole crowd of pro heroes, the people who made it their lives career to save others witness his destruction by the man who stole his body from him and by the boy who swore to save him, why would Shigaraki be interested in keeping in contact with these people, had he survived? why would Kurogiri go out of his way to let Shirakumo's friends know he had survived their students attempt to take his life and the life of the boy he wanted to save, all because they couldn't accept his affection for that boy outweighing their long gone friendship? why would Toga, when the reporters and the heroes saw her body after starting to transfuse all of her blood to Ochako and not even bothered to pick it up, to save her life or even to bury her?

here is how it went: Kurogiri did end up successfully saving Shigaraki, the fact going unnoticed by the heroes because both of their bodies were crumbling. he had also taken Toga, which is why her body wasn't picked up together with Ochako (and why Ochako doesn't have any memories of Toga's dead body, only of her final words to her). and then Kurogiri teleported them far away, where they healed and started planning how to get the remaining three LOV members back, while they are still alive.

they broke Spinner and Compress out of the prisons. In memory of Twice, Hawks had covered it up, as long as they don't resurface as villains.

Shigaraki and Toga had considered letting Touya stay together with his family, up until the news of Endeavor's disgraced villain son being on his deathbed got out. On the very next day, Shigaraki broke the tank Touya was residing in to pieces. Enji and his sidekicks had covered his eldest going missing by holding a funeral ceremony for him (the second one, this time knowing full well it's a fake funeral). Shouto was enraged with his father's decision and Enji used Shouto's just starting pro hero career as an excuse, don't you want to have a clean start, without the weight of mine and Touya's crimes weighting you down? It's not like Shouto has a choice in the matter, just as when he was a kid. The family wonders about the missing one's fate. Sometimes, Shouto gets messages from unknown numbers. He doesn't share them with anyone, except for Natsuo, who is still devastated about not using his one last chance to reconcile with the brother he had been so sorely missing for 8 years.

The ghosts of Toga, Shigaraki and Dabi live on, haunting the heroes who failed to save them. Himiko, Tenko and Touya also live on. They are very different from these ghosts.

[class1akids]

Hi there! Do you believe there is a reason HK decided on killing off the villains? And why he changed to letting Endeavor live?

I'm not sure.

From the interviews I've read, I got the following impression of Horikoshi:

He was extremely worried about being cancelled, very influenced by reader feedback and editor praise, while not having a strong vision to start with, so kept pivoting in the the plot, without necessarily understanding long-term implications

He gets influenced easily by strong visual ideas, even if the plot of that thing he takes as inspiration is mediocre in terms of storytelling (e.g. Wanted - Nagant link)

He's desparate to come across as a deep intellectual, but a lot of it was surface level engagement - i.e. he spoke about in an interview how he read Miyazawa's poems because he wanted to sound cool and interesting

He's very susceptible to flattery (editors), personal likes (e.g. Toga's voice actress) which I think resulted him again twisting the story to give bigger highlights to certain characters

I think he did act 3 being completely burnt-out and probably cut short many ideas that he was building up, especially as regards characters he lost interest in.

I do think in the end of the day that Horikoshi is good at emotional visuals, but not a strong storyteller and doesn't have firm ideals. But also, the WSJ model of weekly serialisation is simply not a good environment for long-term storytelling.

[fushitoru]

geto lore in the bridgerton au is crazyyyyyyy ‼️‼️ (gently asking for more if you’re up to it 🥺🥺)

omg nonnie ily for this ask thank you for letting me yap

geto is a lady KILLER. whenever he enters a brothel, prostitutes are throwing themselves at him, and all the eligible ladies in the ton would KILL to be wed to him. unfortunately, geto has not secured a match (yet!). while gojo also attracts a lot of ladies, geto attracts even more despite only being the heir to viscount. if im going to be honest, geto's also gotten action with men at some orgies but stopped because he was scared of getting caught.

he's a sweet talker, very charismatic, but he's kind of like gojo in that he's looking for someone capable but within reason. he doesn't see himself falling in love but would be open to it.

when he went on his tour of europe, he did in fact appreciate art. bridgerton!geto is very artsy, and he would go to art school if he wasn't the eldest son. regardless, he enjoys composing poems.

he's also a hopeless romantic. he dreams of sneaking into his future love's room late at night by climbing a tree, reciting sonnets just like romeo. but no one would know this, geto is a bit private even with his friends (gojo would tease the fuck out of him).

gojo and geto are best friends ever since they both became eligible and started to see each other on hunts. they were easily the best and the strongest, forming a relationship.

he respects nanami a lot because nanami is very rational, mature, and a much needed break from gojo. they met because the geto family and nanami family are close. their mothers share tea at least once a week! however, he is likely to join gojo in an endeavor to prank nanami.

geto didn't really agree with gojo's assessment of miss itadori at all. he thinks you are smarter, more cunning, and more dangerous than you let on. it kind of amuses him because gojo's usually very adept at reading people but he definitely misread you. it kind of makes him intrigued---he thinks gojo was overwhelmed with some sort of emotion for him to be so wrong about you. he also thinks that you and gojo make a good match.

geto also REALLLYYY likes tea. like he loves to gossip. he gossips a lot with his mother over tea, and he is actually anticipating going to the gojo manor, as is the rest of the ton, to see what the result was of your early visit. he's also not above involving himself in the tea. is this a bad quality or good one? we'll find out. perhaps even through him getting involved in you and gojo's quarrels