#he isn't a pawn

[irontragedyreview]

I'm going to be honest, I wasn't going to write about the leaks in this chapter (I still like to see more leakers posting about this, especially those I trust the most), but if there is something more obnoxious than the shipper discurse, that is the men discurse and the way in which they interpret the characters in shonen, because believe me, shonen is a genre where the worst takes by men on characters are concentrated, especially when you talk about the side emotional. Seriously, many men have not left their edgy child phase who believes that the world is horrible and that the characters have to see reality, etc., outside of the children/teenagers who watch the shonen genre more than anything for the fights, etc. many men who literally have hundreds of followers who analyze the stories as if they were experts on the subject, from the most toxic masculinity perspective.

Also, in all the previous chapters I wanted to do an analysis about Tomura and Izuku but no matter how much I wanted, the words didn't come, these leaks plus certain comments managed to unlock my words.

I'm going to start with Tomura because he's the birthday boy. The takes I have read of this character throughout the manga, especially outside tumblr and by men, are terrible, however nothing compares to the comments after these leaks, from people saying that it was great because his character didn't deserve redemption, that at the end was nothing more than a puppet of AFO and therefore his construction doesn’t matter or not exist because Tomura for them didn’t exist outside as an object for AFO, etc. One of the insights that chapter 418 left is that Tomura/Tenko has never made a single decision in his life and that his path has always been marked and signed by AFO. Those words remained in the minds of the readers and were validated by the fact that the origin of Decay was made by AFO and even Tenko’s birth was planned by AFO, because again AFO is the villain of  thousand plans and is in every step. Seriously, Tenko was only born to be another pawn in AFO's game, because according to the leaks AFO created him and therefore even Tomura's decisions are only a permitted ramification of what AFO wanted him to feel and think.

However, it’s a damn lie, it doesn't matter that AFO was a starting point for Tomura, his ideas, his relationships with the LOV, are HIS. It’s that he chose, not for nothing his last words before of being swallowed by AFO were "even if all my hatred fades and only an empty shell remains, I must still be a hero for them (the villains/his LOV)” it’s the first time since the final battle began that Tomura looked closer to peace and his words were reflected in being a hero for his people, the helpless who are abandoned by society. Likewise, another of the things that was repeated during his confrontation with Izuku, it was wanting to make it clear that he wasn’t human, that nothing more but destruction would be his salvation. In the same way he repeats that he killed his family because it was his will, because someone like him was born "rotten", his quirk marked him to be only destruction. This was even repeated by AFO, the constant search for Tomura to internalize that what happened was something he was looking for and we’re aware that it’s a lie. The decay's "awakening" was a traumatic event that was exacerbated for Kotaro, who beat his son and instilled fear in him, not for nothing Tenko was having a breakdown when his quirk "awakened", he didn’t want to kill Mon-chan, his sister, his mother or family, he was a scared child who just wanted to reach a safe place. The only death where Tenko could say that he has a minimum will is with Kotaro but ignoring the context is a mistake.

It’s not innocent that during the fight in the fortress Tenko would have felt more violent and resurfaced when he saw how all the heroes around him gave their lives to revive bk, we have him screaming "why no one helped me when there was still time, when I wasn't that broken yet" (not exact words but a paraphrase), Tenko was still there fighting against AFO, Tenko never disappeared no matter how hard AFO tried to quell him, the pain of a society that ignored him formed his vision of a heroes society like something rotten, the vision of All Might as the hero who shapes a society that hides everything among shiny things but forgets those that the heroes ignore or not fit in.

Because something that we can’t ignore that the society that gave rise to villains like Tomura and even AFO, is an apathetic and cruel society to people that doesn’t fit. We can argue that beyond all the things that AFO has done, perhaps he wouldn’t be what he is now if he had not grown up in a society that had just discovered the quirks and saw some of them as monsters and others as something to worship (he kills the shine baby because he was praised), society is so apathetic that it ignores or encourages a cruelty that creates its villains and then is surprised by it. Tomura is also the result of those people who saw a child walking in the streets in shock and stained with blood and passed by and when a single person approached him, just looked at him and said well the heroes will take care of it, leaving him alone. Maybe nothing would have changed because AFO already had a plan for Tomura but the apathy of that society that prefers to ignore responsibility (I'm not talking about citizens having to enter burning buildings replacing professionals, but doing small things, helping people in a small way example helping a lost child, etc). A society that was happy with someone like All Might protected them but when he began to fail and couldn’t take his place turned their backs on him, the same citizens who are seeing children fighting a war and the only thing they think about is losing faith when the results are adverse or when they had to give a safe place to civilians like them or heroes like Deku.

It’s this society that Tomura wants to destroy and it’s understandable because, we can discuss whether the way Tomura wants to do it is correct or not, but let's not deny that Tomura gave a place to people that society pushed away because they didn’t fit in and that he wants protect. What I'm trying to get at is that everything that shaped Tomura and his decisions to create the LOV are his decisions, he isn’t a puppet and his vision isn’t to be a pawn just because AFO gave him his quirk, his vision of society isn’t wrong, Tomura chose his path, he chose his people. Izuko's analysis will come shortly because this analysis was too long for me.

[monstermoviedean]

finally put my finger on what bothers me about the setup for jack and dean's relationship. it's that i personally don't find it exciting or interesting to parentify someone who's been parentified for 30 years already. i know people disagree with me here and that's fine! but i feel that adding another layer of parentification without any meaningful change to the first layer is just. insult to injury i guess.

dean finally gets to tell mary what he went through and he forgives her and it seems like maybe he's going to get to be his own person, finally, with that weight off his back, and then one episode later cas and mary are gone and jack is there and sam needs him too. and sam pushes dean to push down his grief and parent jack. and that's it. dean becomes jack's parent. in some ways he's still acting on how he was parentified for sam. and that could be explored in interesting ways i suppose. i just don't find the execution compelling. in fact it just makes me really sad.

[instantpansies]

life is hard for us oz fans who are only meh about wicked. have half a meme.

[pianokantzart]

I have been spoiled ahead of time that Alastor has a bit of a rivalry going with Lucifer regarding who gets to be Charlie's father figure.

And then I saw this was Alastor's face the moment Lucifer showed how much he actually cared about his daughter...

Oh, that's the face of a demon who's spotted a chink in the armor of the overlord of all of hell.

[fromtheseventhhell]

It's crazy that people still uphold show!Sansa as a well-written character and pretend that liking her is the pinnacle of feminism when it would be infinitely more impactful to acknowledge her terrible and misogynistic writing. This is the same character who, while written by two men, was thankful for the abuse she suffered because it allowed her to grow. The same character who we had to be told was smart because the writers were too lazy to develop or show her intelligence. The same character who had to rely heavily on the men surrounding her and ended up accomplishing nothing on her own merit ( and no, thinking that she deserved to be Queen doesn't mean that she earned it). She is not well-written, she is not complex, and she is not a feminist character. Which is fine! If you enjoy her then good on you, but please stop pretending that she's something she isn't just because you feel the need to justify liking her character

[autiwara]

One thing I really want to see out of the Yingdu arc or just season 3 in general is Cheng Xiaoshi ask about, confront or mention Lu Guang's nightmares (I feel like they're night terrors at this point tbh) because although CXS is always asleep whenever Lu Guang abruptly wakes we know he isn't unobservant or dumb when it comes to other peoples wellbeing, and especially not LG 😭

[betterdeadthansmeg]

Cut scenes from series II and an alternate version of the first shower scene in Stasis Leak.

[llycaons]

his assassin mentor is so sweet with him wth

[leiascully]

Rewatching Pilot and realizing how red Karen Swenson's hair is and something something Karen-Billy-Theresa/Scully-Mulder-Samantha parallels. It's not a fully formed thought. But there's something.

[coachbeards]

hm

[cluescorner]

Some people: Kaeya’s bio father is an abusive monster who abandoned his son in order to achieve his own selfish goals. He is an evil man who deserves everything awful that might happen to him. 

Other people: Kaeya’s bio father did the right thing and leaving Kaeya in Mondstadt was the only way to give him a halfway-decent life. He is a better father than he is given credit for and should not be as hated as he is. 

Me: Kaeya’s bio father is integral to the general ‘war is hell and bad choices can reverberate across time’ thing that Genshin seems to be going for. He made unethical choices, but mostly because the ONLY OPTIONS HE HAD WERE UNETHICAL. If our understanding of the Alberich’s role in Khaenri’ah is accurate, General Alberich (my name for him until stated otherwise) was suddenly in charge of a hopeless and dead kingdom which begged to be saved. Assuming that there was a reason Kaeya specifically was chosen for this mission, General Alberich was forced into a position where he needed to choose between the lives/future of every Khaenri’an vs the life and future of his young son. Abandoning either is an awful thing to do and a horrible decision, but the bad decisions of Celestia and Rhinedottir have led to a scenario where General Alberich can only make bad decisions. In the end, he chose to prioritize his people and made his young son into a spy. We do not know the process for this, but knowing how much Hoyoverse loves to torment people (especially Khaenri’ans) we can assume that this process was horrific for Kaeya and could definitely be considered abuse. General Alberich is effectively making his son into a child soldier for a war that the majority of people never wanted or asked for, and one Kaeya was likely far too young to understand. At least, until he was forced to grow up far too quickly in order to fulfill his duty. General Alberich likely loathed everything about what was happening and even in his last moments with his son he asks for forgiveness. He knows that what he is doing is wrong, but to turn back now is to both abandon his subjects and make everything that happened to Kaeya in order to turn him into a child spy be for nothing. So yeah, General Alberich is a terrible person who made horrible choices. But war and the bad actions of others have created a situation where he has nothing BUT horrible choices and where being a terrible person is the only thing he can be. And that’s without considering how the curse/abyssal corruption could impact the scenario. 

[bhaalsdeepbat]

Astarion: Finally, we're catching up on our puppet master. And the hunt ends at Moonrise Towers.

screaming crying throwing up over this line with durge and romanced astarion on my duo run. they both start as puppets, then are free enough of their former masters to make their own choices, then they both have a choice: chain themself to their master or be free.

with durge that's either resist or become bhaal's chosen. If they resist, they're marking to certain death. To be free of Bhaal is to die, and I think they're acutely aware of that. To become his Chosen is to extend the amount of time they live, but they know it won't truly be living, if they live their life in service to another.

with astarion it's to break the cycle of abuse and be more than what nearly 200 years of empathy-breaking hell - Sisyphus pushing up the boulder but make it seducing people, eating rats and insects, night after night, knowing everyone you touch is doomed to die - made him OR unchain himself to everything Cazador did by killing Cazador without ascending, allowing him the safety of his abuser being gone so he can finally start feeling and healing without the ever-present threat of becoming a slave to Cazador again.

Their romanced "bad" endings all require someone to become the other's puppet. If Durge becomes Bhaal's Chosen, they force Astarion back into servitude and make him no more than a puppet after taking over the Absolute to start slaughtering the world in Bhaal's name. If Astarion Ascends, Durge either agrees to the loss of their independence and personhood by becoming a spawn OR the relationship falls apart.

I don't have anything else to say I'm just screaming about this lmao

[jin-zixun]

ALSO actually after SMS claims all the credit for cursing Jin Zixun and Wei Wuxian is getting after him because he died for what he sees as a stupid reason... JGY comes to SMS's defense and is like "don't feel sorry for yourself we were going to kill you anyway" so like... what would have been the net gain of him lying about not being behind the curse if he just... basically admits they wanted WWX dead for other reasons anyway

[niaerinisms]

Pre-BB!Gaius whenever a vampire does some shit: Listen, I put you in this world, and I can take you out of it

[asyipyip]

hold on everyone shut up im getting super emotional about jonathan sims

[imminent-danger-came]

What are your least favorite lmk characters?

(lmk is one of the few shows where I think 'least favorite' is actually a fitting description. Most of the cast just have such fun and unique personalities, so it‘s pretty difficult to actively dislike any of them imo!)

(not counting cop out answers like the Goldfish Demon)

I‘ve sat here for an hour trying to figure out which characters I would pick myself. I‘ve genuinely never thought about it before, that‘s how GOOD this show is 😆

Like- the Host Girl low-key feels like cheating. (Again- I don‘t dislike her but she doesn’t really have a CANON personality. Everything about her is purely fanon and hinges on her being Macaque‘s generic cute daughter.)

Not sure if Mo counts either. He doesn’t really rise in the rankings through virtue of being a cat for me. Most of the time there just isn‘t much for him to do.

I physically CANNOT pick someone from the main cast or the brotherhood- that hurts just thinking about it. ALL WOMEN ARE QUEENS (I have soft spot for Chang‘e in particular!). And even the characters we’re supposed to dislike are such a blast on screen! The Mayor was so fun! And Lady Bone Demon? As a least favorite? NEVER.

I guess by process of elimination my least fav is Syntax? That‘s the closest to a reoccurring character I can get.

IDK. Maybe you have a character that comes to mind immediately 🤔

I'm going to argue that there is some interesting stuff with Mo, and I may sound the way the pepe silvia guy looks, but that's okay. Anyways, episode 2x03 shows Mo's devotion/loyalty to Sandy, which on it's own isn't really much, but it's the fact that Mo is the one to bring sandy back in 4x06. Pigsy's big heartfelt speech doesn't do the trick, but Mo giving Sandy unconditional love does. And boy, is there something there! Like, "You said it Mo! The world may be full of darkness, but to let the light shine, all we need to do is stand together!" Girl, what is going on between Mo and Sandy! Mo get's a pass from me not by virtue of being a cat (I'm actually a dog person, I got 4 puppies), but by virtue of loving Sandy. We have so much in common.

But yeah! There really isn't a character I dislike in this show. I love everyone a lot, and most characters, even if they don't have interesting stuff going on are a blast to watch on screen.

I'm someone who is legitimately a fan of the Jade Emperor because of his one cool speech and subsequent death on screen. "Heh. And I suppose you think that person is you? How is it you come to stand before me today Azure, was there a point where you questioned it? Or were you too oblivious with your own delusion to realize that you were a mere piece in someone else's game. You may try Azure, the throne will be yours, but if you think I'll gift it freely, you are mistaken." Coolest shit ever. Big fan.

But. And I'm sorry to everyone, but I'd say Jin and Yin are my least favorites. I know. The gold and silver demons everyone loves. Like, they're fine, they're entertaining, they have a lovely placeholder as a manifestation of a simpler time, but that's also just kinda all they are. And they don't need to be anything else! It just also solidifies them as my least favorites asdfadsf. I'm sorry boys.