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the-dumbest-po3-au · 5 years ago

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part 4 - the dumbest po3 au

its been. nine. montsh im SO SORRY GUYS LMAO

for those of you who dont know what the dumbest po3 au is, click this link

for those of you who have not read the summaries for power of three, part 1 - part 2 - part 3

alright!!!!!!! dovewing time

the fourth apprentice

the book opens w/ ivykit and dovekit in the nursery. ivykit suggests going out to explore the territory and dovekit is like “wow. that sounds like a fantastic idea ivykit you are so smart"

whitewing says No Absolutely Not, and leaves at some point to go make dirt. they sneak out and not 5 minutes later they get lost. dovekit gets blames ivykit for suggesting it and they get into a fight. they both get really mad & dovekit runs off. because shes like a stupid 2 year old gets distracted, rams her head into a rock and passes out. rip dovekit. she wakes up and sees a fox kit coming towards her. she screams.

her head hurts and shes tired and now shes going to die. out of nowhere a huge cat beats up the fox and scares it away. dovekit passes out (again)

when she wakes up, she is next to a cat messing with a bunch of weird plants. the cat sees that she woke up and introduces himself as littlecloud. he asks what her name is. “dove… dove…?? i dont know” says dovekit.

he asks her how she got there, and if she has any family. she does not remember. so littlecloud tells her she’s gonna have to stay here for the time being. he asks her if anything hurts, and dovekit says she thinks may have hit her head.

he gives her some of the weird plants and she goes back to sleep. when she wakes up her head has stopped hurting and she feels a lot better. she gets up to go walk around and is immediately introduced to the tawnyspawn.

tigerpaw is stupid and friendly (and hellbent on being her future best friend). dawnpaw is obnoxious and a bit (read: extremely) condescending but interested. flamepaw is nice and also the only one with half a braincell.

they take her around and introduce her to the rest of the clan. she sees blackstar and is like. “im pretty sure thats my dad” tigerpaw gasps. flamepaw and dawnpaw are like. “What.” “he saved me from the fox im pretty sure thats my dad,” says dovekit

they go harass blackstar. dovekit follows him around like a puppy and the tawnspawn follow her. he has this train of literal 2 yr olds trailing after him and is wildly unhappy about this development. russetfur is also definitely siccing the kids on him to make him mad.

dawnpaw gives dovekit a passionate speech about the clans, but mostly how evil riverclan kicked completely innocent shadowclan out of their home, and how shadowclan has to set everything right and deliver justice to those cringe fail fishheads, or something.

a few days later the tawnyspawn are off doing their own thing and dovekit goes to see whats going on. dawnpaw tries to shut tigerpaw up but he spills the beans anyways. “we’re going to attack riverclan on a Secret Mission so that we can win back shadowclan’s honor and become WARRIORS so you cant tell anybody”

dawnpaw sighs. “dovekit this is for Big Kids Only, so you cant be here.” flamepaw is trying to talk tigerpaw out of doing this in the bg but tigerpaw is being stubborn. dovekit is sad about it but goes back to sulk in camp (and to harass her new dad).

a few hours later tawnypelt runs over to blackstar and is like. “blackstar my children are missing nobody knows where they went”

"oh!! they went to go attack riverclan to get back shadowclan’s territory!” informs dovekit helpfully.

“what.” says blackstar, tawnypelt, and russetfur in unison. the sky immediately opens up and starts Pouring. tawnypelt freaks out. dovekit is like “why cant we just follow the sound of their voices??” but everyone ignores her bc they think shes just being stupid.

“Fine!! ill just go find them on my OWN” says dovekit, following them by the sound of their voices (theyre proally arguing over something stupid).

now four of shadowclan’s children are missing. “you brought that kid here so you get to deal with her,” says russetfur. blackstar sighs dramatically and goes off to find his new child.

dovekit runs into an old man cat. “whatre you doin here??” says old man cat. “im looking for my friends!! whats your name :0? im dovekit!!” “my names purdy!”

blackstar shows up and is like. who tf are you. “this is my new friend purdy!!!” says dovekit. blackstar doesnt even know how to respond. “look we’re going to go back to the camp right now and we’re not taking this dude with us.”

dovekit is like “??? no??? we have to get my friends theyre right over there??” she says pointing in their direction w/ her tail. blackstar is ready to cry. so blackstar and purdy follow dovekit as she leads them closer to riverclan territory where they hear the tawnyspawn screeching like banshees.

they run over and find several cats w/ the tawnyspawn who are pinned down. “if you breathe in my direction ill kill all three of these children,” says a snotty dude.

“who tf are you” says blackstar

“im darktail you insolent snot,” says darktail.

one of his cats grabs dovekit and blackstar snaps. he lunges at darktail while purdy beats up the dude who snatched dovekit. the tawnyspawn take advantage of the moment, escape, and dogpile the other cats. its a disaster.

darktail swears revenge on blackstar till his dying day or something. nobodys really paying attention to him at this point. he runs off w/ his crew. “alright then” says blackstar. this has been a really weird and long day for everyone. blackstar wants to leave purdy but all the children immediately start crying. they bring purdy home.

“holy crap!!! purdy!!!!!” says tawnypelt. “why are you here??” but then she sees her children. she and rowanclaw give them a very stern lecture about Not Running Off Without Telling Anyone (in which tawnypelt is a massive hypocrite but to be fair god told her to)

in the meanwhile, blackstar asks dovekit how tf she knew they were there. “i could hear them, Obviously. ???? cant u not???” blackstar just looks at her. dovekit realizes that probably not everyone shares this ability. blackstar shoos her off and calls a meeting w/ the senior warriors.

dovekit goes off to bother purdy for stories and play w/ the tawnyspawn. nothing particularly interesting happens. blackstar and russetfur call her over later and start assessing her abilities. its only slightly a disaster because shes wildly distracted 80% of the time and her powers are unwieldy bc shes a kit.

cue training. there is a lot of trial, error, and tears (on both sides) but it works out in the end (mostly).

time skip. its been a few months. dovekit becomes dovepaw and blackstar mentors her b/c of her powers. at this point shes gotten control of how to pick out numbers, locations, troops, etc. basically she is a living radar.

blackstar calls another meeting w/ the senior warriors and afterwards calls a clan meeting. “alright losers we’re going to take back our territory and kick riverclan’s butt”

they go over the clan w/ all the cats and begin the trek home. another time skip because that takes a while and nothing particularly interesting happens.

when they get back, the clan stays outside the border while blackstar has dovepaw do a sweep of the territory. she finds a patrol led by a black cat named reedwhisker. blackstar picks a patrol out and they go to ambush the riverclan patrol.

the shadowclan patrol takes reedwhisker + the patrol hostage, but lets one go to tell mistystar. mistystar takes a patrol and comes over. “if you dont give us back our territory i will kill your son” says blackstar. mistystar is like “bro. i dont even want your stupid crusty territory anyways. screw you.”

she takes her son and the rest of the patrol and leaves. another win for shadowclan, obviously. maybe they have a party idk. end of book.

fading echoes

cinderheart has not been doing well. she’s been doing really badly, actually. her best friend died and she blames herself. she’s still grieving and continually lashing out at everyone around her. poppyfrost and honeyfern attempted to be there for her but after the continual rebuffs they decided to just give her space.

unfortunately cinderheart. doesnt have any other friends in thunderclan, so the only person she can talk to is lionblaze. unfortunately theres only so much he can do from windclan, so mostly shes been just been going into a downward spiral.

ivypaw hasnt been doing great either. she feels extremely guilty because she thinks its her fault that dovekit ran away, and when dovekit is never found, it gets 50x worse.

but she also doesnt want to say anything about her involvement in fear of getting punished. as time goes on, she starts getting babied by the clan (almost like leopardstar when she was a kid) because her sister disappeared and she took it really hard.

and like on one hand, she likes the attention, but on the other hand its too much a lot of the time. she starts adopting this “stop babying me!1!1!!!”/kinda edgy persona. the clan takes it like shes grieving, and she’ll grow out of it, so they dont say too much.

so the book opens w/ ivypaw and fernpaw’s apprentice ceremony. brief context about how fern was recently found by the thunderclan border w/o parents and taken into the clan. fernsong is apprenticed to brightheart. ivypool is apprenticed to cinderheart.

firestar probably thinks that they might be able to bond/break through to each other because they recently lost a sister/adjacent sister. neither of them are particularly enthusiastic about it.

cinderheart isnt particularly invested in ivypaw’s training. ivypaw can tell and gets rightfully frustrated, bc brightheart and fernpaw are getting along great and making lots of progress, while ivypaw is falling behind becuase cinderheart is being a terrible mentor.

ivypaw starts fighting back (disobeying, talking back, etc.), partially because this is the only time she gets paid attention, and partially because shes just mad, which makes cinderheart mad, which then makes ivypaw fight back more. this causes cinderheart to become more and more distant. in short: ivypaw’s apprenticeship is a disaster.

at some point during training, theyre practicing climbing trees and cinderheart tells ivypaw to do something. to spite her, ivypaw does the opposite and ends up falling, dislocating her leg. cinderheart panics and cinderpelt emerges.

cinderpelt basically possesses cinderheart and relocates her arm. they go back to camp and take ivypaw to the medicine cat den, gives ivypaw some poppy seeds and ditches.

“wow um. wtf was that” says cinderheart. leafpool is like, “hahaha………… about that. you’re um… cinderpelt reincarnated.”

“what.” says cinderheart

“CINDERHEART IS CINDERPELT REINCARNATED???” screams foxleap at the top of his lungs in the middle of camp. whatever was left of cinderheart’s life shatters.

so now instead of ignoring her, the entire camp won’t leave her alone - except now they just treat her as they would cinderpelt. “hey cinderheart remember when [enter something that happened in the old forest here]??” “hey cinderheart can you fix my paw??” “hey cinderpelt-” “are you going to become a medicine cat then??”

to pour more salt into the wound, cinderheart now gets a free commentary on everything in her life!! (this definitely includes lionblaze) there used to be sort of a barrier between cinderheart/cinderpelt but since cinderpelt emerged/took control, it shattered.

so between cinderpelt complaining about all the terrible decisions she’s made and the entire clan pretending that she’s cinderpelt instead of a Completely Different Person, when hawkfrost shows up w/ an invite to fight club on the weekends cinderheart is more than happy to take him up.

sure hawkfrost is wildly annoying and clearly hates her guts for some reason (no matter how hard he pretends not to whenever tigerstar is around) but this is great for three reasons.

1) nobody in the dark forest has any idea she’s cinderpelt. 2) warrior training!! emphasizing she is a Warrior not a medicine cat. 3) time away from cinderpelt!! they arent the same soul so they cant read each other’s thoughts (unless theyre trying to communicate) and cant share dreams

so she might be purposely oblivious. whatever. she doesnt even know who hawkfrost is b/c anybody outside of riverclan immediately forgot about him because he really was not very effective at all. and its not like hes about to start spilling the beans until shes ready to be indoctrinated w/ dark forest propaganda.

meanwhile, tensions between shadowclan and thunderclan have been rapidly rising. again. prey is being stolen, scents are on other territories, patrols get into skirmishes often.

firestar is hurt because he was trying to get mistystar to lay off on the territory and blackstar is mad because they literally Just got back and thunderclan is ALREADY trying to reinstate old rivalries.

cinderheart really isnt paying attention to what’s going on cuz shes. more than a little wrapped up in her own problems. until it turns into a war.

this battle feels way more vicious than normal. cinderheart tries to recall how this whole thing started and realizes she has absolutely no idea what tf is going on???

throughout the fight she notices weird stuff happening. mousewhisker and redwillow nod to each other. ratscar + blossomfall swap glances. applefur pulls snowbird off thornclaw’s back. literally wtf thinks cinderheart

and then russetfur takes a stab at firestar. out of nowhere, thornclaw goes for her throat. cinderheart barely saves russetfur in the nick of time - the injuries are bad enough that she is forced to retire.

“screw literally everyone in thunderclan except u” blackstar says pointing @ cinderheart “and i hope the rest of you rot in the dark forest.” he rounds the rest of shadowclan up and then leaves.

“well that was weird” says cinderheart. she goes off to find ivypaw and realizes that shes. not responding. oh thats a lot of blood-

cinderpelt pops up again and works w/ cinderheart to patch up ivypaw until she’s stable. they bring her into the medicine den together and let leafpool look her over. she says that they made it in time and ivypaw will live. she leaves to go look after the other patients, leaving cinderheart with her apprentice

cinderheart realizes that this is her fault. had she actually paid attention to ivypaw and given her proper training, this wouldn’t have happened. she resolves to try a lot harder to be a good mentor for ivypaw’s sake.

cinderpelt approves and apologizes for being so intrusive on cinderheart’s life. she really doesnt want to be in here either - this was a decision the idiots in starclan forced on her. she was taking it out on cinderheart, which wasn’t fair for her.

cinderpelt promises to try to give cinderheart as much privacy as she can (while trying to figure out how to get out of her brain). cinderheart thanks her. there’s a brief bonding moment.

cinderpelt says that since ivypaw seems stable she’s going to go to sleep now, since she exhausted herself earlier.

just as cinderpelt goes out to the back of cinderheart’s mind, blossomfall comes storming in about how cinderheart messed the plan up and how cinderheart screwed everything up for everyone & she’s a traitor to the cause, Honestly cinderheart you’re so useless-

“literally wtf are you talking about” says cinderheart

“you saved russetfur,” blossomfall says. “if we take out the leaders and deputies, we can destabilize the clans enough that taking over will be a piece of cake. are you a dark forest trainee or not, cinderheart?”

end of book

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simkjrs · 7 years ago

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msa ch3 asks

Anonymous said: I love how msa Izuku comes across as an honest to god cryptid: can't see his face, absolutely the kind of person you'd find at a gas station at 3 am, doesn't want attention, most likely distant cousins with Mothman

msa au is just me fulfilling all of my ‘protagonist is a cryptid’ dreams by making msa izuku as cryptid as possible. favorite character archetype: cryptid

Anonymous said: so the msa au is my life right now thank u for that & I just read through the update twice so thank you for that x2 and I had to go back and look for Izuku and Kirishima's deal when it came up again and realized oh hey Kirishima agreed not to try and stop Izuku from leaving after 3 minutes and they didn't put a time limit on that i wonder if that'll come up again (& then my brain jumped to Izuku using that Forever. "we had a deal" every time it comes up. he cannot be stopped bc kiri promised)

got it in one!! izuku will abuse the wording of that deal forever if he can. good eye!

Anonymous said: relatability of msa izuku: trying, doesnt trust feds, inability to sleep, ready to jump out 4th story window at a moments notice, anti-attention-

that’s msa izuku living the cryptid life of his dreams

Anonymous said: So wait you don't have to answer this if it's a spoiler but the collarbone blood tattoo™ is what's making deku's existence confusing to electronics, maybe?

yep, you got it! normally izuku is able to keep his presence from overtly affecting the electronics around him but scripting really starts messing with them.

Anonymous said: quirkless msa deku anon and can i just say that deku looking eraserhead straight in the eye with lie detector policeman there and him saying "i don't have a quirk" and said policeman not detecting a lie is arguably the best thing i have thought of today.

tsukauchi: tsukauchi: wh tsukuachi: how did you even do all of [gestures at ch2 events] that without a quirk? izuku: it’s a special talent of mine.

Anonymous said: I just read chapter 3 and oh my god oh my god oh my god. Your Izuku is who i aspire to be 24:7. Like everything he says makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time. You did good. <3

haha we are all aspiring to izuku’s levels of impromptu sass. im glad you liked the new chapter!

Anonymous said: I'm probs rlly late cuz I Love in GMT+1 which means 9 HOURS of difference but I love your writing. Man, dude, being from beyond time and space, you always manage to create the perfect harmony between comedy and suspense that has you giggling while trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe. Just. OH BOI.

this ask is so funny and sweet at the same time. i love you

@arinrowan said: it's kind of ironic that msa!izuku is exactly the kind of person who would benefit from friendship with/interacting with canon izuku.

msa izuku would benefit from friendship in general but you’re right. he needs the kind of quiet but aggressive support that canon izuku gives

Anonymous said: Cuz I'm trying to see if I can figure this out, by "told me about Kamino Ward", does that mean that Izuku tipped kirishima that that was where bakugou was? How did he know tho, did baku's spirit go to him and tell him that? Did izuku actually play a part in the rescue???? So many questions

THE ANSWER TO ALL OF THESE... [spoiler alert] is actually ‘yes.’ more soon...

Anonymous said: when they start asking questions abt kamino ward at some point he just gets fed up and says "I JUST DID IT BECAUSE THE GODDAMN CAT WOULDNT LEAVE ME ALONE. I DONT EVEN LIKE BAKUGOU" and the heroes are like :0? what if, we brought bakugou here?

izuku doesn’t even acknowledge that the kamino ward incident happens it’s like theyre just talking to a brick wall

Anonymous said: Izuku has no control over his own sass anymore and it's glorious?? Says "that'll be 500 yen" and looks surprised at himslef, says "now it's 600 yen" and looks downright mortified, the sass is too much for his smol body, sassmaster izuku ftw

to quote @salvainterra, “i love the fact that izuku never stops even when he himself thinks he should stop.” izuku listens to every nonviolent intrusive thought that crosses his mind and it both incredible and unfortunate. izuku is no longer bound by human limits

Anonymous said: msa izuku is the living embodiment of the "fuck this shit im out" song

ABSOLUTELY

Anonymous said: tbh when msa chapter 3 said that izuku slept 12 hours at nighteye's office, i was guessing that he would just passive aggressively sleep as much as possible for as long as they had him. won't give them the satisfaction of watching him wander around in his holding cell. hes in the middle of the interrogation and he puts his head down and goes to sleep (btw love your work!)

haha no he was just so exhausted he passed out for 12 hours. he hasn’t had a good nights sleep in weeks, as soon as all [gestures at ch2] this was over he just crashed

Anonymous said: Wow the new chapter is great!! Stellar as always. I can't help but imagine what's going on from Izuku's point of view with the spirits. Am I the only one who thinks Aizawa's spirit was trying to apologize or something when Izuku talked about not being forced into anything?

there was definitely some spirit stuff happening... i will say that aizawa’s fox spirit is the one who asked/persuaded izuku to tell aizawa what was Up with his quirk

Anonymous said: tbh i want to see them question izuku with a lie-detector quirk or something. like he'll say something positively ridiculous and everyone's gonna go "wait wtf he's telling the truth??!!?!!?!?!?!?"

hoho... well... buddy im not gonna say anything...

Anonymous said: Hello! I found your works recently and have an insane amount of time in the past few days going through it all, cause is all beautiful. I want to scream at you about all of them but you only get so many words with this so I'll focus on msa rn and I read chapter 3 of msa last night and since then I've been switching laughing at Izuku's sass, crying cause Izuku has so much angst involved him and I just wanna hug him, and screaming cause whAT WAS THAT CLIFFHANGER?!! Just what. Thanks for ur works-A

THANKS, thats the kind of reaction i aim for when i write something. im super happy you liked it!! <3

Anonymous said: Technically his quirk is "Being alive" or "Having a functioning body" but saying that would probably end with the same blank stares. As a side note, in the manga (and canon in general) they mentioned quirks are activated by the 'quirk factor energy' or whatever... Do you think that might mean that people who are quirkless just don't naturally have enough quirk energy to activate their latent quirks? it would also make some sense from an evolutionary standpoint, the glowing baby is from the first

generation that had enough of the qfe to actually manifest their quirk and after that generation the lowering number of quirkless could be attributed to those that have a deficit in the production of said energy and they might actually have latent quirks. The pinky toe missing could be the final mutation that causes them to have enough energy for their quirks to work.. The only issue with the theory I see is OFA not awakening latent quirks with it's energy jumpstart...

i think that’s a pretty good theory! it lines up pretty well w/ the worldbuilding in msa. as for afo, :3c

Anonymous said: Hey uh.. I know this is probably 100% non canon in your AU but I was re-reading your MSA fic and I misread something that made me think that Izuku is actually dead and his body is actually being run by his guardian spirit who possessed his body/took his place when he died... *sweats* Its a really weird.. dark idea but I thought it was sorta cool and you might like it..? um.. I'll just let myself out now

god yeah that would be so dark and everything in msa would actually be even worse than it was before

Anonymous said: When deku explains nighteye's quirk i can only think of that's so raven.

theyre valid questions...

Anonymous said: I spent my break reading the asks sent to you RE: chapter 3 of msa and I cannot stop fucking laughing over "look eraserhead dead in the eyes and tell him you don't have a quirk" thank GOD I'm supposed to be happy and smiley to everyone

honestly, this is conceptually such a powerful moment that i can’t not put it in the fic now

Anonymous said: msa izuka finally get set free but kiri has started following him around. States its official hero business but really just wants to see what other "cool shit" izuka will do.

izuku pulls an Official Cryptid Move (tm) and disappears while walking thru a liminal space

Anonymous said: i love that when aizawa starts asking about deku's quirk he's like, 'screw this i'm answering in riddles now'. this is such a great fic!!

Anonymous said: “It’s a secret,” he says. “A secret that no one knows, that one will suffer, and one-half loathes. Who knows if it’s true or not? The only thing we can confidently say is that it’s one thing that should not be.” Okay, so this is probably one of my favourite little scenes from your fic, partially because it sounds so ominous and badass and makes pretty much no sense. I loved your update, I was so tense the entire time I was reading it, but also giggling hysterically because /Izuku/ just - Izukus

hmm i sure do wonder where izuku got that riddle from... and what it means...

this riddle is just izuku complaining about everything because as long as he’s in this situation, he might as well make it perfectly clear how unhappy he is about EVERYTHING. when else is he going to have an audience for him complaining about his various maladies

Anonymous said: I think that a part thats particularly true to izuku's character is when kirishima makes the observation "damn maybe it IS good we arrested him so he can sleep" & izuku goes into a miniature coma for 12 hours bc being arrested presented the perfect opportunity for him to finally be able to sleep

nfdfsljndslfnjdf YEAH, everyone please stop this child it’s for his own good

Anonymous said: Reading know what i've made by the marks on my hands is really terrifying when not in Izuku's pov because you now know how scary?? it is for some other characters and Izuku looks crazy-- but you know he's not because cheesus???? This kid???????? Honestly I love it so much, thanks for your amazing writing and I want you to know that I enjoy it a LOT.

that’s the goal... showing how weird and strange and bizarre izuku is from everyone else’s point of view... i loved the outside pov bc i got the chance to show how much of a cryptid izuku is, something that izuku himself isn’t even aware of and thus would not make it into his pov

Anonymous said: anon who ((still)) hasn't read bnha here. chapter 3 of msa is amazing. i cannot get over the sheer amount of sass found in such a smol boy. also kirishima is quickly becoming my favorite character because of how supportive and caring he is. kirishima/deku is apparently now something to add to my armada of ships. for that i thank you. also i cannot wait for deku to meet spirit!one for all. it will either be glorious or horrible.

haha im always happy to introduce someone to the wonders of kiri/deku!! its an extremely good friendship... and in my professional opinion everyone should get on it and make it the Hot New Thing. as for ofa, ;3c

Anonymous said: I just thought of this but during Aizawa's interrogation I could totally see his spirit just blatantly looking away from Izuku while Aizawa is asking about his benefactor.

HAHA YUP, i love izuku saying all kinds of stuff about spirits and no one can make any sense of it and meanwhile the spirits are trying to tell him to stop. but izuku cannot and will not be stopped from passive aggressively vaguing about them. he WILL get his complaints in if its the last thing he does

Anonymous said: “I just fixed your entire Quirk, you cabbage.” I'm sorry but this. This is beautiful. I'M GOING TO GO AROUND CALLING PEOPLE CABBAGE NOW

i was worried it was a bit of an overused classic internet insult but this is reassuring :p

Anonymous said: every word that comes out of MSA Izuku's mouth is a blessing

but not to our three heroes and their intrepid intern sidekick...

Anonymous said: Shit after the msa chapter i've got so many questions about Kamino. Did the rescue occur the same with minor variations? Is AfO still down? Did All Might fckin die? Has OfA been passed down yet? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS

im uncreative and unoriginal with canon events so we’ll see.... we’ll see.

Anonymous said: MSA CHAPTER 4! I just found it today and I'm already rereading it. I did not know how much I needed sassy dead inside izuku. I Love this fic so much! That cliff hanger was so good! I'm so exciting to see more of izuku's pov. I love kiri but like I can't get enough of this izuku and his thoughts and reactions to things. This is so well written. The pacing in chapter 2 was so good. It felt like a heist and then keeping the readers guessing with not knowing if he was gonna get away was so good!

thank you so much!! im really glad you enjoyed the story that much <3 <3 sassy izuku is a pleasure to write honestly, can’t wait to see him more in future chapters

Anonymous said: Ohhhhhh you should update msa! It's so unbelievably good! I love the interaction between kirishima and izuku! Like I'm so excited to learn more about kamino ward and how that's gonna affect izuku going free and keeping his identy safe

:3c

Anonymous said: In chalter 2 of the msa au, did Kirishima think anything about how Deku said "I swear to every spirit I know"?

he dismissed it as a kind of weird, niche turn of phrase. like oh, guess this guy believes in spirits and junk, but im more worried about literally every other weird thing he’s done today

Anonymous said: So does MSA!Izuku always mess with attempts to record his presence? I feel like this would be kind of a major problem when it comes to getting himself a school ID or the like. (He's going to school somewhere, so he must have a school ID stashed somewhere). You know, they could potentially use this to track his identity down. They can try contacting schools to see if any had issues with one student needing to have an excessive number of photo retakes.

nope, usually izuku can keep it under control! the blood sigil on his collarbone is what really let him passively affect the electronics.

Anonymous said: Ok so msa!Izuku says "he shouldn't" exists, and when I first read that I was really confused, do you mean he shouldn't exist in the way that he sees things he shouldn't, or that he literally should not exists and Inko has no freaking clue where he came from/he was not a planned child?

yes to the first proposal. other than that, spoilers...

#I ACCIDENTALLY POSTED THIS BEFORE I FINISHED ABORT ABORT ABORT #ok i finished we're all good now.#ask #ask compilation #msa stuff

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topicprinter · 6 years ago

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Hi all, I recently wrote this post about how Drip screwed over its most loyal customers and I thought perhaps /r/Entrepreneur would get value out of my lessons learned.----If you’re not familiar, Drip is email marketing software that’s pretty heavy on the marketing automation front. I won’t do them the courtesy of a link, so you’ll have to Google them if you want to check it out.They’ve been around since 2012 or so, founded by someone I trusted, but he sold the business to Leadpages a few years ago, and it’s been going downhill ever since.I’ve been using them for years as the backbone of two “side” businesses: IndieHive, which covers this website for freelancers and the related products and services that I sell, and Everleads, a curated lead generation site for freelance designers and developers.In 2016 and 2017, I really dug deep into Drip. I built out dozens of interconnected workflows to carefully shepherd my subscribers through various funnels and sequences with duplicate emails or annoying content that’s not relevant to them. I integrated my web front-end with their APIs so that I could customize the site for subscribers. I wrote bridging scripts to connect it to Mixpanel for analytics, and I used Zapier to hook Drip up to even more services. It was the heart of my entire business, and it was awesome.But throughout 2018, things started to go awry.I kept experiencing glitches in the workflows where people would get stuck on workflow steps that should be instant, like “remove tag”. Or people would end one workflow and start another, but not have any of the data that the first workflow had set. There were honestly dozens of these little glitches, but individually they were minor.Also troubling: deliverability started to slip. Not precipitously, and I can’t prove that it wasn’t just my emails, but I have heard from others that they were having issues with getting their emails into people’s inboxes in 2018.But the most egregious thing for all of this was that support was basically no help at all. I probably opened two dozen support requests in 2018 and I’m not sure they actually resolved a single one. We’d spend hours going back and forth so they could even understand the problem. Then they’d almost always say one of two things:“For a workaround, just insert a number of delays between steps in your workflows so that the system doesn’t get confused!” So all my workflows had little 5 minute delay steps to try and make sure things worked correctly. Which they still didn’t. Wtf.Or they’d just say they need to escalate to the developers and then I’d get an email weeks or months later from some random support engineer letting me know they were still looking into why the most basic functions of their software don’t work right. Awesome.Alarmed by this, I repeatedly researched alternatives throughout 2018, but nothing seemed worth going through the pain of migration and the risk of just having similar issues somewhere else. So I kept resolving to be patient with Drip and hope (pray) that they were hard at work at undoing whatever architectural disaster had led us here.And then…In early January 2019, while I was on a relaxing cruise with my wife for our 15th anniversary, I got an email from Drip:https://ryanwaggoner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/drip-bullshit-pricing-email-2.pngSo basically: “Hey, we’re raising our prices in 12 days! You can keep your current price if you switch to an annual plan!”And if you read it carefully, there’s something pretty important missing from this email.It doesn’t say what the new pricing is**. Seriously wtf.**So I emailed to ask. They responded the next day (so now I have 11 days) to reveal they were doubling my monthly price.Drip raised my price from $184 / month to $368 / month with 12 days notice.That’s just about the worst way imaginable to treat your oldest and most loyal customers.And it was the last straw for me.Now, to be clear, I completely understand wanting to grow a company in a new direction, or thinking that you need to raise prices to reflect more value.But you don’t do it when your platform is half-broken, you don’t do it with 12 days notice, and you grandfather in existing customers, at least for long enough for them to migrate. Also, you tell them the price when you tell them that prices are rising.It’s hard to imagine how Drip could have been more disrespectful to their customer base than what they did here.So as of last month, I switched all my subscribers to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign for Everleads and IndieHive, respectively. That’s thousands of dollars that Drip won’t be getting from me. I managed to get both setups completely migrated off just before their billing renewal dates, in one case with literal minutes to spare.It was a pain and required some late nights but it was worth it to deny them another penny.I’m not alone in feeling upset about this. Twitter was ablaze for weeks with people who were angry and bailing for greener, more respectful pastures. I’ve taken a sick joy in watching a lot of people migrate off Drip with much larger lists than mine.I also cancelled Leadpages in favor of Instapage. I was already unhappy with Leadpages, mainly because it feels pretty clunky and dated, they aren’t very responsive to user feedback, and they’re still missing some pretty basic things (like being able to pass form data to the thank you page. Seriously?).Side note: I was going to link to the Leadpages idea portal, but they apparently shut it down. Makes sense, since it was filled with hundreds of good ideas with many, many customer votes that had been ignored for years.Regardless, even if Leadpages was awesome, they own Drip and I won’t give another penny to such an unethical company that treats its customers so poorly.And this migration was a huge pain (which is what they were counting on), partly because of how complex my Drip setups were, but also because ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are both pretty different from each other and from Drip. On the surface, they all do some of the same things, but once you dig in, things diverge, which made the migration especially painful.Drip is complicated. Stupidly so. In fact, it’s so complicated that there are a number of problems using it:It doesn’t really work. I mean, it does like 99% of the time, but that last 1% means that some of your subscribers are going to have a bad time. And it’s not just that their emails won’t show up. They might just get stuck in a workflow, or skip some emails in a sequence, or get things at the wrong times, or lose data, etc. And since this happens randomly, the number of subscribers who experience it accumulates over time.The customer support reps don’t really know how it works, because it’s too complicated. So you end up spending hours writing up descriptions of the problem and putting together screencasts to show how things don’t seem to be working, and the only response you get is that they’ll have to ask the developers.It encourages you to setup really fancy complex automations which, even if they did work, are way beyond what you actually need. Just imagine: you can do anything! You can track everything! You can have an unlimited number of tags and fields! Track and automate all the things!Your setup can end up being really brittle and deeply tied to the Drip architecture, which is a problem if you want to migrate off. And it’s hard to expand and modify over time without breaking all kinds of things for your subscribers who are in those automations.The setup is hard to document. It’s easy to end up with a large collection of documents and spreadsheets and screencasts to try and explain not only what you did, but why you did it.It’s hard to audit and debug when things go wrong. And things will go wrong. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening with your subscribers, where things went off the rails, and how to get it back on track without screwing things up further.In the end, Drip for me felt like a really shitty programming language. Technically possible to do almost anything, but so painful that in the end you wish you hadn’t bothered.By contrast, ConvertKit is simple. And yes, I think it’s too simple in places. I think there are some genuine gaps in the functionality that makes it a little too hard to get done the things you want.But I’m also aware of the fact that I’m coming from Drip and a really convoluted setup, so being forced to simplify is probably a good thing.And ActiveCampaign is not simple, but it’s powerful in a bunch of ways that Drip should have been. Additionally, it has the distinction of actually being, you know, functional. Crazy, I know.Also, ActiveCampaign apparently is more open to feedback than Drip. I posted a Twitter thread listing some things that I like about it and Jason VandeBoom, the founder of ActiveCampaign, setup a call with me to go over some of my feedback. And ActiveCampaign isn’t a tiny company; they have hundreds of employees and are much larger than Drip. It meant a lot to me that Jason would just jump on the phone with a random customer to see how they could improve.Meanwhile Drip’s emails aren’t even signed by an actual person. During this whole debacle, I don’t think anyone from Drip actually responded to anyone’s tweets or complaints. A couple days after the initial announcement when things were blowing up on Twitter, they sent this out another email that was basically "sorry, not sorry"Just like their price increase, all of their corporate communication just screams “We don’t care about you. Go away.”So I did.I’m actually really glad that I dropped Drip, after all that. Partly because of how much better ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are as tools, but mostly because it taught me a lesson about how you need to be careful when you’re a small company about who you integrate with, because while your interests may align now, that could change at any point.But this rant has gone on long enough, so I’ll save that point for a future post.Disclaimer: just in case Drip decides to sue me (which would be so on-brand for them at this point), ALL the descriptions of Drip’s functionality, failings, and communications is to the best of my recollection and should not be taken as a literal word-for-word account.----Happy to answer any questions about my experience with Drip, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign. Would also love to hear anyone else's experiences with any of those (or others you'd recommend in the space of email-based marketing automation).Original post: https://ryanwaggoner.com/drip-pricing-review/

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