#everyone else got so many

[oobbbear]

I see a pattern in my fav characters

Secondary character important but often overshadowed by their main cast friends, definitely not the writer’s favorite child with half a backstory flashed out enough to make them interesting but vague enough i can take my own spin on it without feeling out of place

Bonus point if they constantly switch between sweet and unhinged

[hootyhoowoo]

A little 15 min doodle but first post of the year has to be Bingqiu!

[diamonds-at-y11]

Mel was really having the worst time of her entire life this season. Almost dies. Watches her friend die and is then promptly kidnapped. Well at least she gets to reunite with her brother— WRONG. Finds out she’s a child of an affair. Whatever’s going on with her and LeBlanc. Has to come to terms with having magical mage powers suddenly. Finally returns from magical backrooms. The world is on fire. Boyfriend’s lab partner has ascended to godhood and is now taking over the world. Boyfriend yells at you for manipulating him. You have to kill your mother because she teamed up with magic Jesus. Boyfriend sacrifices himself and lives in the cosmos for the rest of eternity with his lab partner. At least she got cool powers ig.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 266

Back on my Danny & Ras frienemies/rivals/maybe-lovers-nobody-can-tell-their-signals-are-very-mixed train. 

See, Danny has gone through time a lot. Often. It comes with being Clockwork’s charge-son-thing and honestly he finds it fun. And several times he’s used this time travelling to get some training in. Enter Ras, stage left, also a teen at the time and also learning swordsmanship from the same person. 

And they… utterly despise each other. They would kill the other for an apple slice, if the other one would die! But also, only they can kill the other, as it is obviously their right! 

And well, they keep running into each other. It has been a hundred years, surely the other would die by now? But of course their rival would live through utter spite. Probably to spite them specifically. 

The amount of times they have ended up sparring- trying to kill each other or not- the moment they see the other is actually ridiculous. But time is also passing. And… Danny understands, not having another to talk about things people are forgetting, or have already forgotten. 

How they ended up actually talking without a murder attempt was a long story that included a demon, a dragon, a pair of fae, some bandits, and a lot of alcohol, but it happened. And then it happens again. And again, and now it’s just kind of normal to share a drink after their spars, talking about things that no longer exist, and things they miss. 

Sure Danny can go back in time again, but he knows better than to do it willy nilly. He’s matured, he’s been an adult for a hundred years now, he knows there’s consequences for messing with time, even with Clockwork’s blessings. 

The first time they got married was technically for an undercover assassination. Well, Ras was there to assassinate someone, Danny was there to grab an artifact that should Not be in the realm of the living. And they got divorced after, it was fine. 

They just, also got married again when they met a few years later, for another job. And… okay, so maybe they have gotten married over a dozen times now and only divorced like half of those times. Half of those were for the bit or while drunk! 

And even if technically they’re married or shared a bed, it’s not like they're exclusive! As Ras’ daughters’ existences attest to (adopted in one case or not). They don’t exactly have a label for their relationship, despite others asking for one or trying to put a name to it themselves. 

Now Danny knows Ras isn’t exactly a good dude, or at least on the side of ‘good’ as he’s a literal assassin. But he also knows that good? Bad? Rather relative. He had gotten labeled as a villain when he was just trying to help all that time ago after all, and really who was he to tell someone else how to live their life? 

Which brings him to now, where he’s run into his old frienemy-rival and his youngest daughter. Who has a braindead teenager and a small toddler. Which is fine, really- but also, Talia dear, why are you using a brain dead teenager to guard your three year old son? 

…

Okay, Talia dear, Ras (Derogatory), why are you using your brain dead son and grandson to guard your younger son and grandson? Do you not have the Pits, which you were soo proud about Ras? Yes, he will spar with you, but for Realms’ sake, heal, what’s his name? Ah yes, go heal Jason and he’ll actually stick around for a few years, deal? Good. 

[23z567]

i realy want some chocolate rn

[uglygirlstatus]

at least we’ll always have Archie: The Musical

[marshmallowgoop]

no thoughts just Heiji Hattori (HD)

[sunnymainecoonx]

How many people witnessed softie food addict horror who needed something in his mouth or he would actively kill and turn to cannibalism 🧍‍♀️ or was that just me.... anyways honestly it was silly.. he'd maybe get along with cook horror... I just like fanon crossovers guys*sadge

Anyways canon horror is also silly(really silly. What an asshole, man)(no seriously he's actually such an asshole.. I might love him for that but-) I don't think he would get along with the others(loser)

[akirathedramaqueen]

The bias is not always conscious

And that's the case with Stolas. That's it, that's basically the post, so you can count it as your tl;dr, but let me elaborate. :)

(A little gratitude note! Sorry @tealvenetianmask, I failed being concise here, but I thank you for encouraging me to put it all together :3 I also thank you for our conversations about Stolas and about museums in particular which heavily contributed to it)

I think there's some misunderstanding when people get offended by the suggestion that Stolas acts classist/racist. It seems that people assume we’re implying he is malicious and intentional with it, but the actual problem is that he doesn't think.

S2EP2, Seeing Stars, 1:29

The problematic behavior we're discussing is reflexive and internalized. Stolas was raised in an environment where the lower demon class is looked down upon, and while he believes he expresses nothing but deep respect for Blitzø and treats him as an equal…

Goodnight, Blitzø. S1EP7, Ozzie's, 14:50

And while you can see from this bow that this intention is sincere, which is both wonderful and fascinating—he preserved this profound gesture ever since he was a kid, despite being actively discouraged from doing so!...

[Stolas]: I'm Stolas! It's nice... Ouch! [Paimon]: Don't bow to that one! He bows to us! Idiot! S2EP1, The Circus, 7:40

He was still raised in privilege and influenced by the narratives around him. For him, it's acceptable because that's what he was taught is fine. It's part of his everyday speech, and he never actually asks Blitzø, or anyone else, how they feel about the literally belittling nicknames (like literally—do you notice how often he uses the word "little" when referring to imps?).

I mean... there's a lot, okay? I'm just going to pull out some examples off the top of my head. All of them are from Season 1, and I'll explain why later.

I was hoping you brave little imps would accompany us! S1EP2, Loo Loo Land, 5:15

Ugh, that's better... Where's Blitzy? He's my knight in shining armor, not you, littler ones! S1EP2, Loo Loo Land, 13:22

And it [grimoire] isn't supposed to be lent out to itty-bitty imps like yourself. S1EP5, The Harvest Moon Festival, 0:30

Greetings, tiny Wrath Ring imps! S1EP5, The Harvest Moon Festival, 8:22

[Stolas, in the background]: Who dares threaten my little impish plaything? S1EP6, Truth Seekers, 18:20

How the fuck did you get caught by humans? Are you little creatures not being careful up here? S1EP6, Truth Seekers, 19:38

He also takes pride in being part of Ars Goetia. That pride seeps into his mind whether he wants it to or not. He lives in a huge palace, never worries about money, can arrange a seat in a club that’s always booked out, and gets admitted to a hospital immediately, while hellhounds wait five years for a Hellbies shot.

Being part of the Goetia family is rather valuable, you know. S1EP2, Loo Loo Land, 4:39

Most of these examples come from Season 1 because, after the disastrous Ozzie’s date, Stolas begins to unconsciously cut back on this language. He seems to sense that something is wrong, though he doesn’t fully understand why. However, he is acutely aware of the problems with the transaction and the unfair dynamics it creates, and he is serious about putting Blitzø on equal ground by providing him with the means to run his business independently of Stolas.

And still, he maintains full control over the conversation during the Full Moon meeting, immediately dismisses Blitzø after one mistake, and throws him out. He continues to impose his narrative on Blitzø and…

I don't look down on you! How many times do I— When have I ever?! S2EP9, Apology Tour, 2:45

When have you ever indeed, Stolas? You literally look down on Blitzø saying that. This moment illustrates the problem clearly. He isn’t lying when he says he doesn’t look down on Blitzø because he genuinely believes he doesn’t.

Despite all said, Stolas is making a tremendous effort and is progressing, and he is far ahead of Stella, who is openly classist/racist and very conscious of her biases. So I believe—no, I know—he will get there one day. But not today.

This is something I take quite seriously, and I think people need to understand how dangerous this subtlety can be, as it happens all the time in real life too.

How often do you ask yourself why medical research groups are predominantly represented by white, cis, upper-middle-class males, and how this affects the efficiency of treatments suggested in these studies for everyone else—women, people of color, non-binary folks, and those who struggle financially?

How often do you visit museums and see art created by wealthy aristocrats who defined what constitutes 'fine art,' while 'folk art'—often created by marginalized communities—is overlooked and lost to time?

I could elaborate further on how deep and cruel this bias is, but I’ll stop here. I just ask you to consider why you might get offended when someone points out Stolas's subtle bigotry and why you might downplay it compared to the loud, aggressive Blitzø, whose anger and avoidant issues are obvious.

Just sit with it.

[shoot-i-messed-up]

Was always worried about the angst of unrequited love, had never realized the sheer amount of comedic potential that it has.

Imagine one-sided Superbat where Clark is fully aware that Bruce has a crush on him but is being his repressed self about it, and Clark is just like, “I’m not gonna touch that :) you’re going to figure that out for yourself, buddy, and in the meantime, I’m just going to have a good time and be best friends with you as you inevitably pull yourself together enough to either fall out of love or to confess :) and I’ll just let you down gently because I care about you :)” but he absolutely 100% is using it to his advantage in the meantime. His puppy dog eyes had never been so effective before. He’s gotten out of Monitor Duty three times in the past month.

[keferon]

i understand that the start is a bit upsetting and the plot could be a little confusing but i have to say, Ninth has the best dratchet I ever read

Yep. Wholeheartedly agree. Ninth is definitely not for everyone but oh boy, the first intermission?? Muah. One of the most fucked up out of all body horrors I have read but also easily one of the best Dratchet depictions. And the moment when Hot Rod narrates? Ahahaha amazing.

I have funny love/hate relationship with this fic haha. On one hand, yeah, the flashback parts are great. On the other, I don’t like fleshy animals. It’s 50/50

[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

[necromancer-nonbinary]

this twitter post and the angelbroth art i reblogged the other day came together beautifully in my mind and i spent all of work today dreaming of making this image. now it has come to life under my hands <3

[werewolfsmile]

Just watched The Big Bang Job again today and I rambled about this in an earlier post reblog but it deserves its own post..

The way Eliot dresses makes so much more sense after meeting Moreau and his goons. He rejects all notions of being anything like those well dressed men in their suits again. So blank and uniform, just another soldier in Moreau's private army.

That's why his shirt is always untucked, sleeves rolled up, collar unbuttoned. Not to mention the hair - the biggest rebellion is his hair. A constant reminder of who he is now that stays the same, no matter what he wears.

And it just makes me think how this is such a good representation of the identity crisis he went through (and let's be real, is still going through).

Eliot used to be one of those men. He had his hair short, wore the tailored suits and carried the guns. He didn't accessorise. He suppressed every aspect of an individual personality in order to fit the role that Moreau had for him.

Sure, we're not blatantly told all of those things in the show, but we can infer, simply from looking at Moreau's goons and how they're presented.

Seeing Eliot surrounded by those goons in the pool scene is more than just showing us the threat to Eliot and Hardison - and also the threat that Eliot and his reputation present. It's about showing us the demons of his past, the nightmare that he doesn't want to go back to. Eliot had alluded to his past before but it's been nebulous. Now, we finally see that past take shape and it's hideous.

But Eliot didn't stay like that. He got out - he got free - and he has been reclaiming pieces of himself ever since. Until, finally, he's the evolving Eliot that we know and love. He prefers to dress casual and relaxed, with strong reminders of his roots throughout. He keeps his hair long and loose - not military regulation, not 'professional' as far as male standards go, not even convenient for fighting. It's all a way of stealing himself back, and making sure the differences between who he was then and now are stark and vivid.

I could keep rambling but this is already twice as long as I intended. Just ... Eliot Spencer. He still doesn't view himself as a better man, never mind a redeemable man, but he is. When compared to those goons, his transformation is clear as day.

[nabaath-areng]

I have way too many alts that I keep to myself (which is why I generally refrain from posting them), but I'm going to ignore that habit for a moment just because I'm feeling particularly insane about this guy.

[beedreamscape]

This has to be the last thing I say on C3 finale because otherwise, I will not stop, it simply baffles me in its mediocrity. And obviously, this will be negative, if you loved it, good for you, this is my takeaway as someone who loved this campaign and was severely let down.

This finale changes everything that came before and not for good, better yet, it emphasizes all the faults in the structure of what c3 tried to be, it made most of the campaign feel like a true exercise in futility — How far can we go in a campaign that is meandering and unsatisfying? How long can we have the same discussion over and over and over again despite everyone knowing how this will end? How long can we drag out characters that don't change without anyone noticing? (spoiler everyone noticed)

Can't say I was emotionally invested in the finale because I tapped out back in the 70s, came back for Aeor/Downfall shenanigans, and left again. But in experiencing the finale something became clear to me:

THIS STORY NEEDED TO BE SHORTER.

WITH ANOTHER PARTY AT THE HELM.

If the objective from the very conception of C3 was to wipe out the gods, that had to be clear from the very start. And it wasn't clear, at all — not in the characters, not in the starting city, not in theme. This was a completely different campaign at the start! That clarity was what made Calamity so great, it was short and precise, and every pc SERVICED THE THEME, filled with hubris and contempt, not to mention the setting.

Even Ludinus went in circles for convenience of the campaign length and became a weaker opponent for it, more of a nuisance than a villain. The threat he posed at episode 50 was much stronger than now at 120 something. The battle against Otohan was more nail-biting and emotionally engaging than fighting Ludinus and Predathos, a god eater!!!!

This campaign would've benefited from three to four acts instead of one overarching objective like the past campaigns because urgency is the name of the game and we can't carry urgency for 70 episodes straight (and they didn't).

The constant inclusion of the other parties made it clear how easy it was to detach BH from the story, how easy and fun it was for them to tell it through another party's eyes (one of the main reasons why I walked away back when I did, but that's more of a personal preference).

Which is not to say Bells Hell's didn't deserve a long story! They could very well have existed in a more intimate campaign which these characters were clearly built for! Their premises begged for closer looks in slow moments, something tragicomical, exploration of the inner world while developing MARQUET and its microcosm of injustice and politics which was left in the dust mid-campaign (pun intended).

And I'm not suggesting this just for our enjoyment, I know it's them playing and their enjoyment comes first blah blah, though this is a multi-million company therefore their jobs but this would contribute to their enjoyment! You could see several moments in the campaign how tapped out they felt and acted. I doubt it was "fun" discussing the gods situation ad naseaum, trudging through landscapes they barely cared about, with empty arcs.

I could nitpick every fault I see in the finale but it would be pointless, these issues have been dragged from ages ago and poor character matching, and now this is a culmination of everything and it barely fazes me anymore.

(And yeah it's their game and it's "free", but that doesn't undermine its weight as a story, stories were made be analyzed, and it was a poorly structured one no matter how much I still like and admire them as people.)

WHICH is not to say I had no fun at all ever, I did! several times! and that's what makes me upset, it could've been great instead is just meh.