#is this a meta??

[arioko]

aizawa experienced a quirk awakening, specifically during shirakumo’s death.

analysis? insane ramblings?? me looking too deep into things??? these all can be true. let’s just get into the meat and potatoes of this first and foremost.

quirk awakenings in my hero academia are usually defined by a quirk either gaining new abilities or going beyond the original scope of the quirk. an example of this is when toga found out she could use the quirks of people she transformed into, or dabi finding out he also had an ice aspect to his quirk similar to shoto. these awakenings are extremely rare, are only seem to happen during traumatic, life threatening circumstances.

one of the most recognizable things about aizawa is how his hair and capture weapon will float whenever he uses his quirk, and something i don’t think i’ve seen anyone else point out is the fact that in vigilantes, during the school days arc, teen aizawa’s erasure doesn’t do this at all.

these are two of the instances where we see teen aizawa use his quirk, and his hair and capture weapon don’t levitate like they usually do. “maybe they forgot,” and here’s the thing, i don’t think that’s the case? like i said earlier, aizawa’s floating hair and scarf are one of the most recognizable aspects of his design, to the point that in universe deku even points it out. betten court, the artist of vigilantes, had been drawing aizawa for 50+ chapters at this point, so i sincerely doubt he genuinely forgot to add this.

even here, for a second you think that his hair is floating here, but then you see that he’s actively moving and that’s why he’s hair is flowing backwards. almost like they’re tricking you into thinking that it’s floating before showing you what’s actually happening.

so, basically, back when aizawa was a teenager, his quirk didn’t do any sort of levitation effect. which, eventually, leads to this.

the first time we ever see aizawa’s quirk do the levitation effect, it’s during one of the most traumatic moments of his life, the garvey fight. this was specifically after he had witnessed shirakumo’s death.

and when do quirk awakenings usually happen? after extremely traumatic experiences. which was what aizawa had experienced just seconds before. keep in mind that aizawa was so on edge during the fight that he (supposedly) hallucinated shirakumo’s voice cheering him on. there was most likely multiple other physical things going on as a result of the stress and adrenaline rush, so a quirk awakening isn’t exactly too extreme here.

how does this aid his quirk? i dunno, but it falls into the quirk awakening category by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t something his quirk was thought to be capable of doing prior to the event. we aren’t sure if erasure worked differently when aizawa was younger.

so, tl:dr, teen aizawa’s erasure didn’t cause a levitation effect, however, after witnessing shirakumo’s death, it caused a quirk awakening which created the levitation effect we see in the present.

[night-lie]

so while i was making this gif for my deathnotetober entry for "chess" i noticed something... weird. i mentioned it in the tags but i can't not elaborate.

do you see it too? the side closest to us has TWELVE squares. that's not a standard grid size. there are EIGHT squares going in the other direction, which IS standard.

"surely that can't be right," i said.

well. buckle up.

here’s a quick edit with a neon green outline for the edge of the board and the vertical row that's easiest to count. it really is that size. can this be anything but an error?

EDIT: just for clarity, here's another sc with brightened colors so you can see that the surface in the gap between his face and shoulders is the floor, not the board.

what if the animators were just copying what obata drew? i went to find the corresponding scene in the manga. volume 11, chapter 90.

6x6. not a chessboard size, but heaps more normal than the anime one, even without half of the squares colored in. (they are colored in the color version of the manga.)

the board has some... noneuclidean properties, though.

these are from the same page. on the right it still looks like 6x6 at least from the horizontal row i can see, but the left seems much bigger to me. or maybe i'm starting to lose it?

the board makes another appearance in chapter 93 with this being the best angle of it. unfortunately it's impossible to say how far behind the speech bubble the grid extends.

it's also difficult to count how many squares the rows we do see are. the third row from the left with misa looks like it 7 squares? because why the hell not.

it shows up one last time in chapter 94, after which near stops using it. probably got tired of it changing sizes.

let's check for more apperances in the anime, since we've looked at episode 33 already.

episode 34 and it's. it's freaking 6x6 like in the manga!

the noneuclidean properties strike again. peep the blue arrow pointing to another white square. the row is at least 7 squares.

LUCKILY the board makes no futher appeances after this. the 12x8 scene has not been fixed in ReLight 2.

*deep breath*

so. we've established it's not a chess board, or if it is, there's an error with it. (i'm not gonna blame animators who probably had someone breathing down their neck to work faster. errors happen. obata drew it wrong originally, too, if it's supposed to be a chess board).

but i'm still not fully satisfied. is there anything this could be, diagetically?

my best guess, a checkers board (though i suppose the wammy's kids would call it a draughts board). i have a reason for that, other than the 8x8 boards being interchangeable between the two games.

this quick moment of near knocking down the kira legos with a cork gun.

both in the in the manga and anime he fires two shots BUT it looks like the cork bounces from kira to x-kira, knocking them over. with one move, near knocks over two figurines.

this is called jumping. you've probably seen a cartoon where someone comically jumps over all of someone else's pieces and cinches the win. i would have put a gif of that here but i couldn't remember any.

checkers is often seen as a more juvenile version of chess, like how near is younger than L. L plays chess, near plays checkers. checkers is the "easier" game. it's not a fair comparison, though. they use the same base concept, they have pawns and a king (/queen, depending on language), but the differences are too big to really claim they're the same.

just like L and near.

checkers is, in fact, older than chess. they played a variation of checkers in ur. freaking UR. ancient mesopotamia. 3000 BC. a variation of chess can be tracked back to only the seventh century. that's AD. did you know that?? i wouldn't have if i didn't look it up.

so, now i just need to find a variation of checkers with a 12x8 grid on the board from the wikipedia list. be right back. shouldn't take long.

*genuenly, a two hour long rabbit hole later*

so. bad news.

there's no 12x8 board. there's ARE 12x12 boards which is great, but not what i was after. there's only ONE variant with an uneven grid, a 6x4, in a game called tobit. it looks like this.

...i give up.

post cancelled. thanks for reading.

i'm gonna go mahjong.

[edsrosetattoo]

This is the best idea in the history of film.

[elledotexe]

READ BELOW -

Edit: With the amount of notes this has received I want to make it clear (since people who have reblogged and added their own opinions to this, one saying to completely shun studies in total that garnered a lot of attention) that while these studies specifically geared toward veterans are meant to help and were possibly requested from the previous administration, extreme caution should still be advised and you should do your research as others have suggested.

Our dearest Trump has allowed ending of employment for whatever reason now regardless of disability, race, gender, sexuality etc., we all know what Meta has turned into and what the current administration probably has to do with that and definitely has to do with the TikTok ban... I'm just saying do not be surprised if somehow these records end up being used for more harm than good if they just decide it'll be a... fun weekend hobby.

I want people to make informed decisions regardless of what they decide! But they have made it very clear on the kind of people they are and what they will do to harm any sort of minority. Please consider that when you call this "unnecessary fear mongering", as well. They are already erasing valid data/searches from social medias and valuable sources. The most important thing is safety.

[memehex]

Now more than ever we need to make Tumblr unmarketable, do NOT invite the government into this space.

[malfoyesque]

[ladyshinga]

[h3artw0rms]

So the gift Powder received from Ekko was a necklace with a blue peony.

And you know me from my Vi and Caitlyn post so of course I'll look up what the flower language of that means and it's the following:

And if you look closely, you can see the profile faces of Ekko and Powder in between the petals

In this reality, the two can't be together, as he wasn't HER Ekko. But Powder still means the world to him.

[spoondrifts]

something about vi never wanting anyone in her life to change. something about jayce not caring at all how much viktor has changed so long as he's alive. something about the way vi associates radical change with death, perceiving jinx's continued existence as a kind of necromantic horror—the way jayce would shatter fundamental laws of nature without a second thought in order to give viktor the best chance at survival, in whatever form that may take. transformation as rebirth vs murder, hextech vs shimmer. nature has made us intolerant to change, but fortunately, we have the capacity to change our nature. and then jayce, realizing that he hasn't changed at all, not really—that he is a scientist at heart, and he shouldn't have tried to be anything else. and then vi, realizing she has become someone unrecognizable—never thought my sister would turn bluebelly. and for both of them, it's too little, too late.

[probablybadrpgideas]

The Monster Manual but it's blatantly written by the monsters

[mycroftrh]

Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

[problemnyatic]

so matt's absolutely giving scorched earth orders behind the scenes right. Not only are publically visible transfems dropping like flies, but every third person who musters up the audacity to comment negatively on Staff or Matt about this vanishes fucking instantly

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Expertise can't help you here.

[rollercoasterwords]

pet peeve is when a fellow hater conducts their haterism such that they leave the hater community vulnerable to attack. “i think characterizing Character A in x way is boring and annoying” = beautiful, flawless, unimpeachable haterism. no one can tell u that u aren’t allowed to find a certain characterization boring. “it is morally/objectively wrong to characterize Character A in x way” = sloppy, reactionary, overcommitting. you have left our eastern flank open to attack girl what the hell….now my dedicated hater troops are taking fire from YOUR enemies fuckkkkk

[musashi]

i want more nuance to be entered into the discussion of the green girl sorority and how differently cynthia plays elphaba in comparison to those who came before her because while a lot of people are rightfully like "why was elphaba not black from the beginning" and celebrating that she is now being played by a black woman, i think we need to be careful in just writing off all the elphabas of the past as Random White Girls when the role was championed (and often followed/succeeded) by a jewish woman

the pop culture archetype of the Wicked Witch has deep roots in antisemitism stretching faaaar far back. there is a level of reclamation happening in casting idina menzel, a jewish woman, to play the Misunderstood and Maligned young girl who is branded as exactly that. and stage!Elphaba is also written and acted with jewish stereotypes in mind--she is loud, aggressive, no-nonsense, blunt. she is quick to advocate for herself and shut down the discrimination she faces. all of this is very intentional! her personality is abrasive from years of abuse, and that makes propagandizing her easy. this is literally the thesis statement of the musical--it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed.

cynthia's performance of elphaba is fucking INSPIRED despite going in a completely different direction. she's much more reserved, analytical, one of her key character traits is how well she can read people (see her calling out Galinda as insecure/putting on airs in their first scene together, clocking that Fiyero is using his party guy persona as a shield for his own depression) elphaba's attempts to blend in and make herself smaller all fail simply because of her existence, if not that then because she feels empathy so strongly she often struggles to hold back from acting, protecting.

personality wise, though, cynthia's elphaba is very quiet and closed-off, not at all the bullet-to-the-face that she is in the stage show, and... she still gets propagandized and maligned. though this seems to contradict the other interpretation, it tells of the other end of the spectrum of propaganda, one that black women watching (and many, MANY other marginalized folks) are sure to identify with--it does not matter how "nice," how reserved, how small a black woman makes herself. a racist society will still scrutinize her every action for a way to parse ill intent from it, brand her as an angry black woman who is dangerous and wicked, and write off any humanity she has in the process.

these two very different interpretations tell of the lie of assimilation. the fact of the matter is, when you are marginalized, there is no way to sand down your edges enough to make the people oppressing you "accept" you. that is why wicked is a tragedy at its core. whether loud and aggressive or quiet and unimposing, there is nothing elphaba could have done to make the people of Oz see her as anything other than a scapegoat to blame all their problems on.

so while i definitely appreciate that people are excited for black girl era elphaba, i would encourage us all to still show appreciation for what came before--that was not white girl era elphaba. that was jewish girl era elphaba. two houses, both alike in dignity, two stories both worth being told.