#like his value and strength as a hero has been called into question

[adrift-in-thyme]

Hmm Twilight is being very touchy methinks

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

The Vanishing of (Holly) Wheeler

As a follow up to my post yesterday as to how they might lead in to season 4, I wanted to chime in as to what I think the alleged second episode will be about.

I know the easy answer is that Henry has taken her. Given the reference to the first episode of season 1 and the BTS photos of Holly and Henry, it does seem like a slam dunk. However, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced than that.

Henry doesn't capture Holly.

With the military blocking access to all of the Gates, there really isn't any way for Henry to get out to get her. He's still too weak. Any misstep could prompt the military to move in and wipe out everything he's worked for. He needs to bide his time and regain his strength.

Now, time is something he has because of the military blocking access to the Gates. Once he's at full power, the blockades that were set up will be nothing to him. For now, they're doing him a favor by keeping the heroes out. He just needs a way to regain his power. He needs to feed, as he did in the Lab on that fateful day. Every kill makes him stronger.

I fully expect them to double down on the Nightmare on Elm Street references by having him prey on children. The question is how does he get them?

Linda Hamilton.

I know I joked about her playing Nana, but what if they decide to play her against type by having her help the monster. Whether she's in his thrall, trying to find a way to control and weaponize the monsters, or just admires the "beauty" of the Upside Down's existence, I think she might be the key to everything.

Now, I don't think these kids will be tossed into the Upside Down or anything. I don't think there's any value in it for Henry if these kids are devoured by a demogorgon. Instead, I imagine they'll have it be a full Freddy Krueger experience where he feasts on their dreams in some way. He just needs a way to get to them without anyone figuring out what's going on.

Enter Linda Hamilton's character, who has been called into handle the supernatural aspects of things. She somehow arranges for kids to be used as food for Henry. If you think it's unlikely, just remember how long the Lab operated in Hawkins under everyone's noses. Kids are going missing, which the military handwaves away. Holly goes missing, immediately setting off alarm bells for the Party. They manage to locate her in an isolated camp set up at a farm or whatever, resulting in Mike, Will, and Robin (and maybe others) going out to investigate. This would tie in with that script page we saw where Robin stumbles across a kid and Mike is sneaking around.

Eventually, they'd find her, possibly having to enter her dreams somehow in order to pull her out. This would give them the break they've been looking for, as Holly would have some kind of information as to what's going to happen.

I'll admit there's flaws in my prediction here, but it's the best I can do with the information we have.

I know Holly has to be important somehow, narratively, if not in-universe. She's been shown to be more aware of what's going on that most bystanders. She saw weird stuff happening in Joyce's house in season 1, the disturbance in the trees in season 3, and people talk freely around her as if she's not even there. She may not know the significance of any of it, but she knows things. And, as a Wheeler, she's probably pretty bright, but also with the innocence to not rule something out as "impossible."

Maybe Holly does end up in the Upside Down, but I can't see her surviving like Will did. Will barely survived, and he was quite a bit older than Holly would be. If she were to end up in there, then I would think that Henry wouldn't be interested in hurting her, at least not right away.

Does anyone else have thoughts about this?

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM Manga Update 233 Review: Evaluation

I had initially postponed writing this until the next chapter, but I've come to realise I have so much meta to write that it's best I do each chapter individually.

Summary because it's been a moment

The first part of the chapter is set in the mountains above City G where the Council of Swordmasters is based. At their building, the three disciples are reviewing what they've been able to unearth about Sweet Mask. It's precious little, with nothing available before his signing up as a hero. Iaian surmises that this fits in with the information that Bushidrill has been able to uncover on Amai's shifting appearance. They consider that the shape-shifting could be a special power, but in light of his behaviour towards Do-S's hostages, was much more likely a sign of progressive monsterization. Iaian expands on it by recounting what he'd seen of Sweet Mask at the surface when he'd seen a monster struggling to keep its humanity. With surprising empathy, Iaian states that it's often those who've lost something who know its true value. They decide to keep a careful eye on Sweet Mask but say nothing to Atomic for now. Okamaitachi hopes that they end up glad to have kept Sweet Mask's hands clean.

Elsewhere, we see Kamikaze (it is not right to call him Atomic Samurai in this context) and Nichirin paying their respects at a shrine dedicated to successive generations of the Swordmasters. They are accompanied by two young people, here to take the places of the slain Swordmasters. We are treated to Yuta's thoughts of hunting down whatever remains of the Monster Association. Nichirin apologises to the pair to say that if he'd been stronger -- but Shido cuts him short. His father lived by the sword, after all, and falling in battle was an honourable death. Besides, as a bodyguard, seeing Nichirin alive would have pleased him.

Speaking of that, given how gravely Nichirin had been injured, it naturally leads to Kamikaze asking after the old man's health. Nichirin sits on the ground and hitches his robes up to show a pair of cybernetic legs. His entire lower half is now mechanical and he's apparently no worse off for it [Aside: I guess the doctors who butchered Air back in Chapter 182 weren't joking about Metal Knight's skill in cyborg medicine].

He stands up, and, declaring that circulating one's chi through body and weapons made them part of a whole -- artificial bodies included -- unsheathes his sword and slices at an apple that he tossed into the air. The apple is apparently unharmed, but the cliff face in the background is cleaved. The apple falls to the ground, and Shido and Yuta marvel at the accuracy of the old man's cutting the cliff but sparing the apple. Nichirin states that he did cut the apple as well. Kamikaze picks up the apple and explains that this is Nichirin's special technique: it's so fast and finally that the Apple rejoined itself, apparently unharmed. He is relieved the old man is his usual self.

It's now Nichirin's turn to ask him a question. Now that his rival Bang has retired, will Kamikaze stay at the Hero Association? Kamikaze looks wistful for a moment as he recalls himself leading the charge to take down Psykos-Orochi. He says that, indeed, he'd initially gone only to challenge himself, but now he had experienced something that he couldn't get anywhere else. Besides, he still had one more person whose strength he needed to fathom -- we are shown that it is King. He'd decide after then.

As he takes his leave, Nichirin thinks that Kamikaze has changed. Being thrown among a variety of strong fighters with vastly different strengths had broadened his mind. Maybe being a hero wasn't so bad after all. He says that last part out loud to Yuta's puzzlement.

We cut to the hero Association and to Saitama and Genos approaching it. Inside, Forte is putting the finishing touches to a dog house Black Sperm is disgusted, but shelter and food, even if it is only dog food, are what he needs right now, at least until he rebuilds his cell count. Saitama and Genos heave into view and Forte greets them. Black Sperm rushes behind the dog house in well-justified fear. His life wouldn't be worth a scrap of cigarette ash if Genos caught sight of him. Fortunately, Genos is a bit distracted, first by the dog's name, then by the news that Forte lives next door to Saitama. He wastes no time in evicting Forte.

I have a feeling the dog is going to be trouble

Finally, we're in the M-City branch of Mouse Sushi, the cheap rotating sushi place with the infamous nasty t-shirts Saitama loves. Atomic Samurai is there with his disciples, having paid a futile visit to King's residence. There's only one problem with this place: someone keeps taking every plate they have their eye on. After the fatty tuna plate is taken, Atomic stands up to confront the person only to find that is King. The chapter ends with Atomic standing over an anxious King and asking if he could talk to him for a few minutes.

Whew, if you think this is meaty, wait until we get to the meta. Grab a drink!

Meta

I really struggled with thinking where to even begin with this one. Well, let's take it like a hot bowl of soup, start on the outside and work our way in.

The Real Kaijin Shows Up

Small things first. It's hilarious that Genos invokes more fear than the actual monsters do at Saitama's residence. Surprising that he's been visiting Saitama for a while but has never run across Saitama's neighbours or pets until now. You'd think that Saitama had brought home a tiger. As if he were extolling how the beast is still barely half-grown and tame, and all everyone else could see is how it's already the size of a large fridge with cruelly-curved claws longer than one's fingers and fangs sturdy enough to bite through one's skull. Forte may know not to mess with Saitama but he's so aware of Genos's capacity to do actual violence to him that the latter doesn't even need to breathe a word of threat to commandeer his house.

the really big dogs don't need to growl

Don't Panic, It's Just A Monster

I love thus story: people are not blind or stupid. It's hard to keep secrets when someone takes an interest. The disciples are on Amai Mask's trail, and while they're fairly certain that they've uncovered a monster hiding as a human being, the circumspection and nuance they're showing is remarkable.

Despite their misgivings, they're prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and see him more as a person struggling to retain his humanity than as a monster biding its time to strike. In this, Iaian leans towards the former interpretation, while Bushidrill would rather err on the side of caution. Okamaitacchi is in the middle but is of the mind that this is a fluid situation that could go either way.

It's really neat that what was once a one-off gag, with Iaian telling Meltzegard that he could read the latter's murderous intent, has been repeatedly revisited ad deepened in the course of the story to create what is a wise and sympathetic response to a potentially dangerous situation. The disciples aren't blind to the danger of a monstrous hero, but because they can read intentions, they're willing to be heroes to the core and risk reaching out a helping hand to a struggling person.

Iaian's taking a risk in hoping there's a person in Amai who can be saved. But what else is a hero about?

Decisions and Inspirations

So, what will you do, Kamikaze? Had Nichirin died, what he'd have had to do would have been simple. As the new head of the Council of Swordmasters, Atomic would have had to resign as a hero and raise up a new generation. Thankfully, he's been spared that.

It's refreshing to get more insight into Atomic's character and find that he's been looking for both a source of challenge and inspiration in his life. Bang had certainly provided both while he'd been a fellow pro-hero. However, Atomic deciding to lead a charge to the very skies rather than stand on his pride and be an old man shouting impotently at the battle raging overhead had been a revelation. Terrible as the Monster Association showdown had been, it had also been a peak experience unlike any he could have imagined. He's hooked. [Since this is so late, Child Emperor's suggestions of a specialist dragon-slaying team would have found in Atomic an enthusiastic sponsor]. But he still wants a rival, so off he is to challenge King.

a new fire has been lit in this guy who thought he understood everything

Coming to Nichirin, I have three things to say:

A: Words Are Best Eaten Cold, With Salt

Despite having a disciple working as a hero (Spring Mustachio), Nichirin hasn't thought too highly of heroes. Depending on the translation, he'd called them hunters... or pest controllers. It's nice to see that he's had to eat his words.

I hope those words are tasty

B: The Old Lie

'Dolce et decorum est pro patria mori' . I don't blame Shido for clinging onto a view of his father bravely laying down his life. He needs all the comfort he can get.

We know the truth. Zambai was not felled by a superior foe but by a sentient barf bag spitting in his face.

Amahare's desecrated remains were so fragmentary that his coffin needed only a single pallbearer. A cruel duty indeed for Yuta to perform.

Nor can we forget Spring Mustachio fighting desperately to stop Nichirin's transected body from being burned, then Fubuki frantically keeping him alive, his guts kept from spilling out by what had been Genos's precious designer jacket.

a tableau of horror

This had been an actual conflict, not a carefully-managed test of skill vulgarly called a 'fight', and there was nothing sweet, fitting, nor fair about it.

C: Sword and Spirit

AND NOW FOR THE PART I'VE BEEN WAITING FOREVER FOR! Forever being from December 2017. It also ties into more recent chapters. The border between living and non-living has always been a bit porous in One-Punch Man and it's amazing to watch Nichirin make no distinction between his biological body, his sword, and his prostheses to forge a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Once again, it comes down to spirit and willpower.

Had Genos witnessed this, he'd have asked Saitama for a leave of absence to study under Nichirin. This is the missing part that has been nagging at him, the question he'd asked Saitama about whether his parts truly made him stronger, to which Saitama had had no answer. Heck, just being able to observe Nichirin would have been profoundly inspirational for Genos.

ONE, however, is not in the business of giving Genos anything cheaply. No, on current headings, he's going to have to work it out for himself. Indeed, he accidentally and instinctively touched on the answer when he seamlessly rejoined himself after being bitten in two by Elder Centipede. He didn't think about what he was doing then: he was just totally determined not to be dismissed by that miserable worm. [It goes without saying that Kuseno did not get a distress call, nor brave monsters to see what the fuck was going on for himself because of a mere broken leg and some loosened plates of armour.]

Before and after: plates laid on a bias rejoining so perfectly there's no damage to see. And all the internals are fine too. Black magic shit that got the old engineer out of bed to do a field inspection.

Come to that, Saitama does know about the importance of will but does not know it consciously. Yet another gag that has become very much not a gag is that any object Saitama holds that he does not want to break becomes unbreakable. Cheap store-bought chopsticks catch a falling man -- and his clothes, in turn, don't give way. They become an extension of Saitama, like Nichirin's sword does of himself. Speaking of swords, it's notable that when Atomic Samurai managed to draw the sun blade, it was impossible to tell where the man ended and the sword began. Saitama just has no idea that that's what he's doing, so he can't teach it to his increasingly frustrated disciple.

the same principle, played very differently, but each in a life-or-death situation

And like that, another piece of the puzzle of the power scheme of OPM has been shown to us. No one character has the whole picture. We will hopefully get to piece it together by the end, and we hope that the right characters understand it well enough at the right time to make for good outcomes.

Next chapter review will be much shorter!

[mintacle]

also Jason Todd for survivors of abusive systems </3. I lived in a country under dictatorship that we ended up having to flee from (self exile or refuges, you decide) after they took my father from me.

Jason is someone who acts against the system and rules ,for the people the system pretends to be about, but is actually against. He is a protector, when we were kids and used to hear about things the resistance did, and we would absolutely myth-ify those people to something super human. They sounded exactly like red hood.

That's why it annoys me when people claim that he isn't better than a cop or his fans are pro death penalty. No he is so personal, he is a revenge fantasy, he is a savior fantasy, he is so much things.

Absolutely anon. One thing I love about Jason is that you can take Bruce as a father figure, or Bruce (+ larger vigilante system) as a justice+enforcement system. Jason stands out as a resistence to the status quo, questioning the values of the powers that be and following his own sense of justice.

His focus on harms done and prevention + effective relief make him stand out. It's not just about rescuing a citizen in their moment of need, it's about taking out the persistent threats to well-being and calling out the hypocrisies of the other self-appointed protectors.

Even without Bruce he is a victim of institutional negligence and oppression, having been left on the streets to fend for himself as a child and run away from a foster system not built to serve him but to keep him from becoming a "problem". And the power fantasy of someone who has been repeatedly in life victimized by those in higher power, to come back still with the strength to help those whose positions he is familiar with, that is applicable to any kind of abusive system.

To me Jason Todd is a hero without the anti-(hero), because I see the story from his narrative viewpoint. I see the Robin Hood hero of the people in him. Him being perceived as a threat to "true justice" by other vigilante characters feels fitting to me, because that's how the resistance is treated irl. Just that maybe Batman's justice isn't as true as he likes to believe it is. And Jason is right to call him out for his inadequacy and how he failed to live up to what the Batman was supposed to be, when he started his crusade of justice.

[art-the-f-up]

Hi, its the anon who talk about writing your Palestinian Hero AU. First, i wanna say thank you for your answer. I was really unsure about writing it bcs its a very serious topic. But like you said, we have our way to show solidarity, and i wanna show it through this fic based on your AU.

So id like to ask a few questions about the AU first for me to implement into the fic (since this is your AU after all, and id like to get it as close as possible to what you envision):

1. Does Laaiqa and Ahsan know each other as civilian, and do they know their identity.

2. What do they do as civilian. You dont have to answer this one if you feel like its sensitive or painful to answer

3. Do you mind if i add extra heroes? Don't worry, i won't use all the miracle box 😂 maybe just one or two. Im also gonna change how miraculous holder got chosen work so it will make sense why only so few miraculous were active during the G word.

Thank you for your time and words. I'll see to it that this fic get finished and may it brings Miraculers to also help stop this G word.

Hello! Best of luck to you, it's no pressure okay? I don't want you writing a fic thats got you all stressed instead of motivated or excited haha. The point of fanwork is representation and entertainment.

Laaiqa and Ahsan do know each other's identities, but they did not know each other as civilians before meeting as superheroes. They are mostly vigilant, so they don't come out in public as much. Which is why the public has, on their own, created the names Ladybird and Black Cat (in Arabic) for them. They call each other by their first names.

Laaiqa still lives with her mother in a small apartment in Jenin, and rarely gets to hear about how her father is doing in prison. Ahsan lives with one of his family friends in Gaza, working part time with his friend's dad in his shop after he lost his family and home. (I took this one simply out of one of our own tribal cultures. I realized many Palestinian values match that of our tribe and in our case when a single family member is left one of the families of the tribe take them in as their own. Most cases the child then tries to help in some chores/job even though he is not forced to but it is just a form of gratitude on his part. Pity on any individual is forbidden and is considered dishonorable but that's just me and I'd love to find out from a Palestinian if this is okay.)

Of course you can use whatever heroes you'd like haha. I didn't set this AU up in a specific timeline, I just took it out of what Palestinian life has been like these part 75 years. But yeah the basic message is just their resilience and strength no matter the situation.

[jse-dnd-au]

The JSE D&D AU Pantheon

—

The Ever-Gazing One

Other names: The Ever-Gaze, The World's Visage

At the dawn of the ages over this realm, there was only The Ever-Gazing One. It was he who began the forward march of time, the outward flow of space, and the rise of life from the ground. The first races of this realm were naturally peace-loving– even those races with the innate forces of chaos and evil in their blood had their place, for everybody was seen as having value to the Ever-Gaze.

Over time, some began to question the Ever-Gazing One. They wondered how their creator could possibly understand the struggles of mortality from his pedestal in the beyond.

In response, the Ever-Gaze created five more deities to rule alongside himself– the Champion, the Magnificent, the Lifebringer, the Sharpshooter, and the Wayfarer– and imbued each one with the power of being able to walk among the mortals so that they, too, could understand their strife and be divine messengers.

However, this did not please everybody. Some of the folk who had originally questioned the Ever-Gazing One were not satisfied, and thus placed their faith elsewhere. Their collective will created That Which Observes, an opposite entity to the Ever-Gaze who promised them power in thanks for bringing it to life…

Cleric Divine Domains: Life, Light, Order Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of Devotion, Oath of Redemption, Oath of the Watchers Warlock pacts that would suit this deity: The Celestial

—

That Which Observes

Other names: The Corrupting Blade, The Master of Puppets

Those who had turned from the Ever-Gazing One placed their faith in a new deity of their own creation, which they called That Which Observes. They pictured this entity as an opposite to the Ever-Gaze; where the first had light, the other darkness– and where the first had weakness, the other, immense power. Followers of That Which Observes claim they have prophetic dreams that would seem like nightmares to common folk– but instead of fear, they embrace their own strength and the strength of their new god.

Interpretations of That Which Observes vary as widely as the power it is said to wield. As eras have passed, the tale of its creation has been morphed to fit various definitions; over time, this anti-deity has gone from being a fiend to a ghost to a mere feeling and back again. But one thing remains consistent in all the tales: That Which Observes is a master of the shortblade, it being a weapon of mass corruption able to strike down even the gods themselves…

Cleric Divine Domains: Death, Trickery Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of Conquest, Oath of Vengeance Warlock Pacts that would suit this deity: The Fiend, The Great Old One, The Hexblade, The Undead

—

The Champion

Other names: The Hero, The Mighty Fist of Justice

The Champion was the eldest of the five deities that the Ever-Gazing One manifested for his people. He was known to lean towards methods of chaos, but also goodness and light; he wouldn't stand for tyranny of any kind, and ventures created in his name were often emboldened by his blessing, so long as they met with his approval.

Soldiers would regularly invoke the Champion's name during times of war against dark forces, such as those who followed That Which Observes. In tales of ages past, he was known as the Ever-Gaze's right hand, and the one who would strike down the forces of darkness and injustice…

Cleric Divine Domains: Forge, Light, Tempest, War Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of Glory, Oath of the Watchers Warlock Pacts that would suit this deity: None

—

The Magnificent

Other names: The Arcane Artist, The Phoenix

The second eldest of the Ever-Gaze's deity-creations, the Magnificent has long been known to be a patron of magic as well as the arts. In every interaction with the other gods, he left his mark with a certain flourish and grace, and in many depictions, he is shown as having a cape made of the entire night sky and dancing around all of existence in a single day. Because of this, the christening of many theatres, museums, and places of magical study begins with a ceremony in the name of the Magnificent.

Despite being overally benevolent, not all folk followed the Magnificent, or believed he had good intentions. These people claimed that those who followed this deity were often led astray into darkness, never to return– and this belief was not entirely unfounded. Many who invoked the Magnificent did so in the name of curiosity for the arcane, which often drew people to the shadows, and often into the sight of That Which Observes...

Cleric Divine Domains: Arcana, Twilight Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of the Ancients Warlock Pacts that would suit this deity: The Archfey

—

The Lifebringer

Other names: The Giving Hand, The Judge

As neither the eldest nor the youngest of the Ever-Gaze's creations, the Lifebringer was often shown and spoken of as having a strange duality. For every person who believed him to be benevolent and merciful, there was another who saw him as ruthless and unforgiving. As a result of this, there are clerics of equal numbers on either side of this dichotomy– and the Lifebringer makes no claims to having one be truer than the other. Regardless, whether the mortals welcomed a new life into their world or lost a loved one, they would invoke the name of the Lifebringer, either to ensure a long and prosperous life or to pray that the afterlife would be welcoming to them.

Despite all of his spiritual implications, many artificers and apothecaries would call upon the Lifebringer to bless their latest studies or patients, for he was also a patron of creation and the sciences. As a result, several places of higher learning would hold special events in his name to ask for his blessing of the educational year.

Cleric Divine Domains: Light, Life, Grave Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of Redemption Warlock Pacts that would suit this deity: None

—

The Sharpshooter

Other names: The Marksman, He Who Sees True

The second youngest of those the Ever-Gazing One created to rule alongside himself, the Sharpshooter was both the patron of familial ties and of bonds of friendship. As groups of adventurers would set out for the first time, many would pray to the Sharpshooter for his blessing over the party and their growth together. Beyond that, he was also the deity known to be a guardian of nature and patron of the hunt; whenever his faithful would successfully bring home their next meal, they gave thanks to the Sharpshooter for its life.

As this deity was naturally good-aligned, many would also invoke his name in a plea for luck and good fortune. Popular sayings for those who would do this would often bid the recipient "the true aim of the Sharpshooter", so that they might get the most favorable result.

Cleric Divine Domains: Life, Nature, Peace Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of the Ancients, Oath of Redemption Warlock Pacts that would suit this deity: None

—

The Wayfarer

Other names: The Traveler, The Hand of Fate

The Wayfarer was the youngest of the deities of the Ever-Gaze, but was still given a task that proved to be of great importance; he was to keep watch over time itself, and to make sure that everything which had a beginning also earned its rightful end. Matters of diplomacy often began with the invocation of the Wayfarer so that he might bless both parties with lasting peace.

His position over time itself left him with an overally neutral outlook; while he leaned more towards goodness in his actions, he understood that sometimes evil was necessary to bring it about. This caused a lot of people to question those of his faith of how they could be so certain of future events, and even led to some falsely claiming that they could call upon the Wayfarer's own power over fate in order to perform the impossible– but true clerics of the deity knew better than to meddle with things beyond their control; everything would sort itself out with time, after all.

Cleric Divine Domains: Knowledge, Order Paladin Oaths that would suit this deity: Oath of the Watchers Warlock Pacts that would suit this deity: None

—

[calldres]

reposting this story since the blog that reposted the prompt isn't worth remembering

the prompt is a demon is "slain" by a hero, but far later pursued a simpler life, and fights the hero again now that they have something worth fighting for

Queen Velouk Is Dead

Even though the title "Demon Queen" sounds infamously important, to me its never been more than a title. The people in the mortal plain think its a title given, taken, earned by the right of strength and taken from those who held it before you, and that I'm the most bloody of them all. Earned by bloodshead, ruthlessness, and nothing more.

Like most mortal demonology beliefs, its surrounded in speculation and "what ifs" from the mouths of priests too high a rank for others to question. To me, this specific belief is an outright lie. But they did get one thing down to a proper measurable science.

How to kill us.

They learned the power of our blood, and the bond it has with whoever the queen is and her inner circle. They're still wrong about who becomes the queen, however. Our queen is the same as their king. The monarch picks a favorite child, and they rises to power through tradition honored respect alone. Nothing more. The inner circle of trusted leaders is even comprised of the same family

But their holy weapons they planned to slay our queen with this time around was very very flawed. Normally they lure a weaker member of the inner circle to kill, Bind a weapon of choice with their blood so its far easier to kill a related higher demon, then use it to recreate the sound of a ripe melon in the mouth of a biting dragon with our heads. I hear of their newest blind zealot's plan from our seers. he already captured Rouk, our Blood of the Rift, and plan to raid one of the gates he made to come for me next. "Hmmm, that's cute". Sounding indifferent for the sake of the air of confidence is normal for our queens, though I am actually excited for this bearded bastard to attempt to slay me. The throne was never for me anyways, and I plan to leave it for my daughter who is a far better warrior than I will ever be.

My plan is simple: his hammer never worked on me from the start. I'm adopted.

To minimize the deaths in our kingdom, I wait along with our guard and an a member of the inner circle as witness to greet this self proclaimed folk hero at the planar gate Rouk made. It's important for that hammer flailing fool to see which gate to open, and our Blood of the Forge by my side will let him see us plain as day. "Come witness the death of a liar" was a good enough selling point to bring him within spitting distance of my to-be-assailant. The rift is torn in front of us, and an almost 3 meter tall behemoth of a human adorned with the blood, fangs and bones of my brethren steps through the threshold, followed by what I assume to be his trusted brothers-in-arms

I uncloak my staff, and strike the ground to silence the terror of the gathering civilians. That man stands eye to eye with me, and my people expect blood for blood with my guard at my side, right here and now.

"I see you didn't embellish the tales of your feats of strength, that's a first".

Piercing the silence, I attempt to shake the faith of his blind followers. Accusing their leader of lying while being welcomed with the sight of a cityscape far more organized than their glorified cow paths should do it, since it's in stark contrast to the savages they expected to find here.

He greets me with a voice somehow more coarse than rust. "Ironic to hear from you, Queen of Liars"!

Oh is that what they call me now? Was "Bastard's Butcher" not catchy enough? Maybe it didn't sound as good coming from a bard. I know he values that.

I raise my palm, ordering the guards to lower their weapons. Sure I could have this 5 on 5 fight break out, but I don't wish for anyone else to die in my stead.

"I know what you're here for. No need for unwanted bloodshed. This shall be a duel. You slay me and take my horns for your nation as you promised, Or you die here and now, along with your cause. Those are your two options"

His brothers keep their weapons at the ready. They either must not fully believe me, or expect their zealot to order them otherwise.

The ambient chatter and shuffling of the now gathering masses fill the air. He holds his hammer up to his chest with one hand, runs the other over the ritual stained head, and eyes me down to size

He unspeakingly rushes directly to me, past his men in a lunge almost too fast to use one of my few tricks. I was never very good in combat, contrary to my daughter's and court's boasting, But I've mastered geoshaping and phasing arcana well enough to pull of this stunt I've been wanting to do since I've been crowned. He knocks me to the ground, I raise my staff to guard myself, and his hammer rings down to my head as I unveil my trick

I shove my head through the pavement

I hear a cacophony of panicked screams and scattering feet as my people exclaim "Queen Velouk is dead!" with the tonality of a mourning priest watching the temple basin turn blood red. The dread filling air tightens my heart. This will be a day in our history marked with sorrow, but I know things will resolve soon. I now know his bloodlust will drive him to further violence, but he is only here for my horns. He will cut them from my corpse and leave soon. My daughter will want revenge after she is crowned and given the power to lash back, but I know hearing of my swift death will remind her to be less foolhardy in her approach. That savage is a worthy challenge, and I need my dear girl to take her 2time.

My spirit recovers its form after tearing myself from my body head-first, and I wait for the chaos above the obsidan roads to resolve. Once I am formed enough to move, I push myself through the gate and the last step has finally come

I begin a new life elsewhere

More years than I've bothered to count have passed. I no longer bare the horns that pierce armor and hide alike, or the skin to stop blades. I'm the daugher of an elderly farmhand. His daughter was possessed by an exile of my old kingdom and I shunted his soul out her body. took a good while for the father to trust the second new voice he heard from his daughter's mouth, but he learned a few things about demonology humans had wrong this whole time

when possessed, the original person is dead the moment the demon enters them. The struggling and anguished moans come from the demon not being able to control a new body very well, not because the host trying to break free. Once the father understood my words as I struggled to speak, he mourned his daughter's death, but left the body alone. Thankfully hes reasonable enough to see a demon calmly explaining something and understand it as a lack of hostile intent. He may of been grateful for when I banished the demon that did kill his daughter, but he wanted nothing to do with me at first. Nobody in that village did, frankly. What wise person would approach a body ambiently twitching on the barn floor for 2 days? Nobody tells you how hard it is to lose all your muscle memory at once.

Now days, while I may have a family, most folks here don't trust me, but they greatly appreciate having a "mage" on hand that can till soils far faster than any bull with a harness, while also keeping the other demons away. The father on the other hand has actually gotten quite kind with me once I changed my body to no longer be a walking reminder of his deceased daughter. To him, I'm a villager with a working spirit and "a heart of gold" as humans put it.

As the winter bite comes with the new winds, villagers become anxious with what always follows soon after. Tax day, Then a season of poor yield. People are scared of what the new tax will be, Since we heard there was a new king after some bard came through with a band of traveling merchants singing something about "death to the scandalous royal, birth to the honorable king". There was some part where he says "hail" way too much so I usually go to the grain mill to drown out the sound. very annoying, that one.

The peace of shoeing a few horses is broken with the clash of the fence gate. My wife runs with news "A knight is here, and demands tribute for his king"

Tribute? They're normally rather straight forward and call it what it is. A tax. "Whats this business 'bout a tribute?"

Distant screaming rings at the village board, and I rashly break away from the horse.

In the center of town is two knights on horses and a royal in gilded black and gold armor with the crest of crossed fangs adoring his horse's barding, saddle, and a patch on his breastplate. I know this face. Its the lying bastard himself, and that must be the new king

One of the knights grips my son's hair with deathly fear in his eyes. The king's axe is drawn and he addresses the now gathering townsfolk

"With new leadership, loyalty to a dead man is no more, and who takes his place must know who is newly loyal. You are all asked to pay tribute, and I will consider your worth. This boy here felt the need to remind me of the tax of a dead law. I, Bahram the demon slayer, savior of your land, and newly honored king will defend the honorable and reward the loyal. I am not an unreasonable man, and no blood shall run for dishonor. But you must pay tribute for your protection"

There are reasons why the wrath of a higher demon is so feared, even among the few humans who witness it. The soil hardens beneath my feet and the air stills. Our visitors may not know this, but my countrymen know exactly what this means, and cautiously back away. The king eyes down to the forming hole in the crowd, and sees the face of a displeased farmer staring back up at him

"Do you have something to say, dear girl?"

I speak the only words echoing in my head. "Let my son go".

"And who are you to make demands?"

he's evidently lost his knack for spotting demonic activity

Phasing is useful for many things. Few are prepared to fight the push and pull of matter and aether, and a stray breeze of aether through the brain is all it takes to cause a massive spike of anxiety in the living

The horses rear up in vocal terror and dismount all of them into packing the dirt road a touch more flat with the impact. The knight still gripping my son pulls him down as he plummets off his mount. The king rights himself as the crowd fearfully gets very far away from all of us. They know what's about to happen. It's been witnessed before when bandits tried to raid our stores of food, and they will witness violent retribution again.

Fury shoots out of the kings mouth as he declares "Whoever assailed my horses, come forth! Your crime shall be known".

A child exclaims "Raise your horses better"! Nobody hushes the child. There must be some confidence that nobody outside this circle painted by the abandoning crowd will be harmed.

"Very well." and the king waves a flat hand at the knight with my son, and he then kicks in his leg to make him kneel and lowers his head. The king marches over to raise his axe and declare "Then a reminder of who is your king is in order"

Geoshaping is also quite useful. I stiffen my right hand at my side as I eye his armor, unblinking. he does not bring down his axe unto his neck. i don't allow him.

i sustain the order to the two knights so they cannot resist, the other hand crooks the king to face me, like spinning a mannequin. I hear their desperate attempts to twist their body any way their metal coffins are pulling, the slight rustling of the leather and cloth padding under the platemail and chainmail I grip unmovingly

"A mage is in our midst!" I wish for that knight to remain silent, so I tilt his head to the ground fast enough to put him to rest. The king scrambles to have anything eloquent to say to me. I bend his knees so that he now lies at eye level. I glare across to give him a moment. I wish to hear his last words. I do not intend on loosing the life i wanted all this time, but I will not be as uncaring as he is, despite my wrath. I will hear his last words.

the anger and fear within the demon butcher makes the veins in his forehead tighten like they could suspend a bridge. his voice breaks as I pull him to be just before me. Unblinking. Unmoving.

"Unhand me, mage! I reaped the demon queen's horns! I placed them within the holy basin! I fulfilled the prophesy! I am your king!"

He really has gotten rusty

With the authority of higher demons speaking unto him "You never changed, have you? Well despite you butchering my people after taking my horns, I can at least thank you for getting me off of that throne. I can now live a calm life". The strong wash of fear and anger abandons his face in place of full fledged dread. My seers have showed my family and I the countless dangers this man has faced, yet I have never once seen this man completely loose his want for composure. Sorry, daughter. You will need another way to honor those you lost.

I close my fist.

[missnobodymadness]

for the oc-creator relationship asks ^^ (finally got time to get to this one ;w; ) 📼 🎙️ 📻 🎮 👾

Hiiii, how have you been doing?! I'm so happy to see you around! :D Thank you so much for sending me some asks, I really missed answering those. ♥

Alright, let's gooo!

📼 - Which OC is your favorite?

I'm gonna be so biased for this, but...my girl Myline. She has a very simple design but our history is priceless...I've had her for almost two decades now, she was the first character I ever created and has so so much value to me! I met one of my favorite people because of her back when Naruto RPCs were super popular, we are friends to this day!

Myline is not just an original character for me, she symbolizes all the good and bad moments of my life and was always there for me, Myline is coming to the grave with me. :P

🎙️ - Which OC is liked in their universe that you do not like?

Gotta give this one to Dakarai, that abusive piece of poop. He is basically the typical wanna be hero, he hides his true self from others while abusing his family and being the worst son of a gun ever behind their back.

📻 - Which OC is disliked in their universe that you like?

And...Myline again. :'D She is considered as a terrorist and even her kid gets the side eye despite having nothing to do with her mother because people are full of prejudice and can't really think for themselves.

She literally has been pursued by the Five Great Shinobi Countires (especially by Kumogakure) in Boruto, even though Akatsuki was long gone, my girl can get no rest.

I guess this quote of her says a lot:

"My hands may be the ones covered in blood right now but the reality you refuse to see is that I am not the one standing proudly over a thousand dead bodies"

🎮 - Which OC is the worst person, in your opinion?

Since the question says "person", I will go with my humanoids and Masha is by far the worst. She is a cannibal and that alone says a lot already, but she is also vindictive, remorseless and impulsive, this along with how street smart and sneaky she is makes her quite scary.

👾 - Which OC is the best person, in your opinion?

My precious girl Aisha, for sure! Believe me when I say this woman had all the right to turn into a villain (I actually have an AU of her where she is but it's mostly for RP purposes with a friend of mine) but she never lost her hope and strength to fight for a better future...and what a great future she would build for herself, turning into a woman of power!

She is very social, friendly, hardworking and open-minded, with very strong humanitarian traits and the kind of friend you think about calling when you need that help. Whenever people ask me which OC of mine I'd like to be I always say Aisha. :P

[the-hem]

"All of the Time." Introduction to the Maitreya Upanishad, the Exploration of the Mysteries of the Future Buddha.

The Maitreya Upanishad was written around the third century CE. It is numbered 72 of 108. The concept of the Maitreya, the One Who Builds, intersects all religions. Mankind, of course builds all kinds of things, many of which destroy all that has been made in the past.

Such manmade impermanence and the search for what is permanent and clearly of value, unlike war, violence, hatred and so forth is the quest of one who is in search of Enlightenment, AKA a Buddha.

To know is not enough, one must know the right things at the expense of the wrong and wield Enlightenment like a star wields hydrogen- using constant fusion between reality and the mind to produce something pure, without hinges on it, that doesn't come and go.

Maitreya, according to legend is the last of the Buddhas and has not yet arrived. He is the messianic figure of Vajrayana Buddhism and represents an end to all attrition, all anger, worry, fear, horror, corruption, and delusion in the world. He is gold colored, like the sun, like our greatest source of free wealth, our ability to form lasting friendships. Friendships with other persons, corporations, governments and institutions and friendships with our pets and ourselves through our educations, work, and hobbies on an increasing duration and number across the world are a sign the Maitreya is making His arrival.

Maitreya holds a blue peony, the sign of the most heightened form of wisdom, and is always two handed. He is the Buddha that most resembles an ordrinary person, but as we will see the work of an ordinary person is anything but ordinary.

The Upanishad begins with an invocation, then a discussion between a King Sage and a master, which is one of the more usual formats for a discussion of this sort.

Here begins the Upanishad:

Om ! Let my limbs and speech, Prana, eyes, ears, vitality And all the senses grow in strength. All existence is the Brahman of the Upanishads. May I never deny Brahman, nor Brahman deny me. Let there be no denial at all: Let there be no denial at least from me. May the virtues that are proclaimed in the Upanishads be in me, Who am devoted to the Atman; may they reside in me. Om ! Let there be Peace in me ! Let there be Peace in my environment ! Let there be Peace in the forces that act on me !

I-1. The King, Brihadratha "the powerful hero" by name, had his eldest son installed on the throne and considering the body to be impermanent and feeling disgusted (with worldly life) went to a (penance) forest.

There he performed the highest kind of penance and facing the sun remained with his arm uplifted. At the end of a thousand years the sun-god (taking the form of the sage Sakayanya "the grafted branch") approached the sage.

Like fire (blazing) without smoke and burning all as it were with his effulgence the sage Sakayanya, the knower of the Self, said to the king: ‘Rise up, rise up, choose a boon’.

Bowing to him the king said: ‘Revered Sir, I know not the Atman. But we hear that you are a knower of the truth. Expound to me that’.

‘This request of yours is impossible on the very face of it. Do not ask me this question.

Oh descendant of Ikshvaku "the bitter gourd", choose (the fulfilment of) other desires’. Reverently touching the feet of the sage Sakayanya the king gave utterance to the following religious text (Gatha).

The king is called the son of a bitter gourd, but even that can produce a man who is capable of dealing with impermanence and seek the nature of the Imperishable. We just discussed Him in the Maha Upanishad, that phenomena which is called Atman or the soul. Atman is the cause and the effect of existence and its making of itself.

We know God makes bodies and puts souls in them and we know we have to do something important with both and then when told what it is, we don't do it. The answer to all of the above is as the Teacher says "burn like a fire without all of its smoke and all of its light all of the time."

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 275, Replies Part 1

1) “The stakes are high, so let`s jump in, on chapter 275: Encounter, part 2.

wait, 2?

When was the first part? let me check.

…

oh

holy shit, part one was back on chapter 68, when Midoriya and Shigaraki had their pep talk on the mall

fucking hell Hori”-  Oh yeah, this face-to-face rematch has been a long time coming. And to think, back then, we thought Midoria was gonna be the one who was overpowered compared to Tomura’s strength and speed. 2) “Ah, so that`s how you got him on your sights, I see. I thought the fact you had seen him before was enough, but that also explains it. Kinda.

Would that technically classify the search quirk as a stockpile one?”- In a sense, yes, though the fact it retained the data also further necessitated AFO stealing Ragdoll’s Quirk, because then he wouldn’t need to go to the trouble of adding Midoria’s info to it himself. Truly, the man will put no effort into a task if he can simply trick others into doing it himself and reap the rewards of their hard work in an instant. 3) “Now I had forgotten the part about the weakness being also on display on his HUD, that is kinda OP we need to nerf it in the next patch

Fate… The word makes me shiver in fear, considering what I now know…”- TBH, I’d be interested to know what it lists as Miidoria’s ‘weaknesses’, because that might allow us further insight into what his total powerset with be with all of OFA – or on the other hand, if it still retained the data from the training camp, what weaknesses he might have had might simply have been overcome by the present. And as for fate…well, it all comes back to that question: How much of this fight is destined because of Izuku and Tomura’s opposing natures, and how much of it is AFO’s controlling hand from the shadows? 4) “Anyway, that might indicate that Aizawa is going to join the fray earlier than expected… which might also mean he`ll be at the risk earlier than expected. Oh boy, that ain`t gonna be good.”- Not good, but also, not the worst. He is basically the only reason Tomura can be attacked at all right now, especially with physical blows. Still not an overwhelming advantage, but not as much as it would be if he had his full powers on demand. 5) “And Shiggy is landing, it`s time for the next leap, if Endeavor don`t get to him in time.”- For a given value of ‘landing’. Graceful and dignified, it was not. 6) “oh jesus what the fuck is that Shigaraki? What you`ve done with your body, I can`t even process what is what in this image”- Still not used to his own immense power, so when he tried to twist his upper body to the side to follow Izuku’s path, his own momentum partially buried him from the inertia. 7) “Shiggy, why does it look like you`re glaring at your own crotch? At least that`s what the previous` panel seem to point at”- Glaring straight at izuku all the time, through all the buildings and dust clouds between them, never once taking his eyes off the target, not unlike Aizawa does in a moment. It just helps sell how deadly focused he is on getting to Izuku above all else, at the whim of his master’s compelling voice. 8) “did he slinked his spine back and used it to catapult himself the other way? At least that`s what it looked like to me”- He might have somewhat used his upper body as a fulcrum to launch himself sideways asap- hasn’t quite figured out how to fly yet, so he’s doing what he can to keep moving towards Izuku in the shortest possible time, no matter the method he has to work with to achieve that. 9) “Anyway, I think Shigaraki is about to deploy an EMP on the battlefield, which might be a considerable problem for the heroes, because that mean they`ll have to fight him without reinforcements.”- Not that there’s any reinforcements leftto call for anyway. The radios’ best function is keeping track of where Tomura’s heading, and now he’s taken that out, once he gets ahold of Izuku he can rush anywhere he wants to and appear without warning.

(MHA ch 246)

10) “Yeah Endeavor, those are the soldiers of tomorrow, they will be the one fighting for justice and all that. You better train them right, because there’s a good chance they’ll end up saving your life one day, unfortunately.”- Some day’ wound up being ‘less than 4 months from now’. If not for Izuku’s presence as a massive piece of AFO bait, Tomura would have dusted Endeavour a long time ago by now.

11) “I mean, he did hear it Midoriya, he`s right behind you, and he has a communicator as well, I know we theorize he might have some hearing loss from his own explosions, but I do believe that he would hear endeavor shouting on his ear.”- Also, a disability like that would have limited his effectiveness as a hero, especially if he’s incapable of hearing cries for help over the sound of his own blasts.

12) “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN MIDORIYA HE WAS RIGHT THERE ALL ALONG HOW DIDN`T YOU NOTICED HIM BEFORE”- He did notice him, he just expected that Bakugou would hang back and look for the opportunity to blindside Tomura from his blind spot whilst he focused on Izuku, not stick right by his side the whole way. 13) “WHY ARE WE STILL SHOUTING MIDORIYA WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES”- Sheer shock at bakugou’s character development. 14) “But yeah, there`s also that point, Bakugo has this rotting inside his soul for quite a while, his last, erm, “talk” with Midoriya brought this to light, but wasn`t enough to solve it completely. Now, the chance to finally pay back All Might for his sacrifice is here, and Bakugo won`t let it slide”- On the other hand, his actual chances of victory/payback against Tomura as slim to none at present, even with Erasure limiting him. 15) “Been quite a while since we last saw a murder face, but this time it is more than welcome.”- Bakugou’s murder face vs Tomura’s. Who wins?.... Tomura. His serenity over killing you is far more intimidating than Bakugou’s eagerness. 16) “Yeah definitely didn`t catch that, but alright�� let`s see if this is at least a more positive way to look at it than the previous outlook you had in your own strengths and weakness.”- It’s at least pushing him to improve himself and his strengths and weaknesses more, to become a better hero capable of catching up close to Izuku, even if he may never quite surpass him 17) “Oh, alright, that`s even better. He didn`t had an specific quirk for that, but he quickly put together other options that could be used to serve the same purpose.

which is a good sign of his own potential with the pile of toys he was given, but is a terrible news for the heroes.”- Izuku always had a lot in common with AFO’s usage of his multiple powers, what with his ability to combine his classmate’s strengths together for effective strategies. It makes sense that now Tomura has the same power, he’d also be likewise inventive with his various different options.

18) “HE GOT HERE BUT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT WHY IS MIDORIYA DECAYING HE DIDN`T EVEN GOT HIT BY THE QUIRK YET WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING AIZAWA ARE YOU THERE WE NEED SOME HELP HERE”- The body’s natural instinct reacting to a superior menace that’s focused on killing you, as depicted creatively by Horikoshi. Fight for flight, but neither one will save you. @thelreads

[cursedcomics]

Dream Job: Writing Legion of Super Heroes.  Pt. 4

Am I a better writer than Paul Levitz?  Hell no. Like 99.9% of comic writers, I can confirm that I am not.

But I think his last run kind of proves that you just can’t just have a talented writer write DC out of this problem.  The Legion is undermined by a structural problem that you have to fix.

I am not better than Paul Levitz, but I am the right writer for this moment.

I am a great plotter who can see the end goal and is solid with dialogue.

One of the glaring problems with the Legion is that a superhero book succeeds long term based on the strength of their rogues gallery.

That is why Batman and the Flash are so long lived.

The Legion hasn’t had a great rogues gallery since Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen torched the value of Mordru and the Time Trapper in the Great Darkness Saga.  (Now to be fair to Mr. Levitz, his second Time Trapper was fantastic and “Legion scaled” and a vast improvement over what came before, but I still question the decision to burn both of your feature villains to prop up a mort like Darkseid.  It was the equivalent to having Wonder Woman villain Triangle Man do a drive by in Gotham and kill the Joker and the Penguin in order to make him seem like a serious Batman villain.  You would never make that call.  But they decided to make that call to “make the stakes big”. That worked, but it only worked in service to that story. It really hobbled the Legion concept long term at a time when the Crises’s aftermath was eating away at the brand.)

Now you may or may not agree with that assessment of the fallout of the Great Darkness saga.  That’s fine.  There is a lot more to this.  That’s only the start of what went wrong with the Legion’s Rogues.

The Legion has all the elements of a dominant rogues gallery, but collectively the writers under the mandates of editorial leadership haven’t been able to put that together. 

In every timeline management has pushed, there have been variations on Legion villains.  Sometimes they were decent.  Often times they just sucked. 

Glorith sucked in the original timeline.  She rocks in 5 years later.

The Fatal Five rocked in the original timeline but the Emerald Empress was killed and Validus was revamped to be the son of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad and removed.  In the Reboot timeline, they have a mort replacement for Validus. 

That is yet another problem with just returning to a more productive legion variant timeline be it the retroboot or the reboot or whatever.

Conceptually what you want to do is cherry pick the best variations of each villain and organically plant them natively into the new timeline, whole and unmolested.  Same voice. Same History (if known, A logical history that explains their historic thought process, otherwise).  Same motivations. That is what my stories are written to do.

In the original timeline there was generally a perception that the big three were Darkseid, Mordru, and the new better Time Trapper.  By time 5 years later rolled around, Darkseid was, I don’t know.... living in Florida in a retirement home in his second career as an evil step mother.....Mordru was never the same after having his ass handed to him.  And super awesome new Time Trapper was taken out in a fantastic story (Legion #50).

In 5 years later they recast Glorith as the Time Trapper and pitted her against Mordru.  It made Glorith Legion villian 1 and Mordru legion villian 2.  it worked a little, but still, Mordru was never as great as he had been because so much effort was put into elevating Glorith.  And still, at the end of the day, Glorith just took the place of the time trapper.

While I want Mordru at the top of the Legion Rogues Gallery, I want a list of heavy hitters all fighting Mordru for control. 

I don’t want just the Time Trapper vs Mordru.  

I don’t want Mordru vs. Glorith.  

I want the Time Trapper vs. Mordru vs. Glorith vs. Darksied vs. Lady Styx vs. Pulsar Stargrave vs. Computo vs. Starfinger vs. The LSV vs. the Ruling Court of the LSV vs. The League of Super Assasains vs. the Fatal Five vs. future Mr. Mxyzptlk vs. Satan Girl vs. Moebius vs. Universo vs. The Composite Superman vs. Bion vs. The Progenitor vs. Grimbor and Charma......

(Now I know many people read that and think “Geez, doesn’t he have any ideas of his own?”  Of course I do.  But I have to slave my desire to create something new to do this job right.  Flooding a comic with my ideas and characters would only create yet another “flavor” of Legion that fans would find inferior to the Legion they personally love. 

I want to bring back everyone’s favorite individual Legion ...to at least some degree.   I love all of those characters and I feel a mission in my heart to do them justice and put them out there ---their true selves --- for the next generation of fan and DC comic writer.

It will feature a fair amount of retold tales and origins...It is tough to write these kind of “retold tales” and give them vibrant energy. It grates against the creative instincts of most comic writers who spend their time working very hard to come up with something fresh.  I am very much a technician and a researcher.  I am well suited and focused to do this job.)

The Legion has all of the elements of a truly elite rogues Gallery,

I am dedicated to polishing them up and showcasing them to a new generation.  My new shared timeline will allow the best versions of all of these villains to return at their historic best to the current DCU.

I am not the greatest comic book writer DC could hire, but they just tried hiring the most accomplished and decorated comic writer they could hire....An award winning comic writer....And it didn’t work. 

Finding just another skilled writer to make another random fresh take hasn’t worked the last several times and it isn’t going to cut it now. They need someone who can write to fix the systematic problems with this slumbering media asset.

I am the writer they need at this moment.

[bestworstcase]

What are your thoughts on Jacques as a character? Do you have any?

“you think running off like your sister is going to make the schnee name stronger? it won’t. siding with her only divides us.”

rwby does a neat thing in v4 of utilizing slimeball-in-chief jacques to do the heavy lifting of foreshadowing ironwood’s tailspin into fascist tyranny—which is, of course, a bit of emotional sleight-of-hand to misdirect unwary viewers, because ironwood has hitherto been framed as sometimes misguided but having his heart in the right place, whereas jacques is a smug, child-abusing bastard of a capitalist and we don’t want to agree with him when he calls ironwood’s power-grabbing self-aggrandizement what it is. this is a role jacques reprises to great effect in v7, wherein his campaign for the council seat is a cynical performance of giving a damn about mantle but also makes him one of the most effective critics of ironwood’s increasingly dictatorial regime; he is, after all, the inciting force behind the council’s attempt to take ironwood to task for his unilateral and secretive actions of late, even going so far as to literally give robyn a seat at the table.

not to argue that jacques gives a flying fuck about anything but maximizing the SDC’s profits and flexing on someone he perceived as an obstacle to that goal—because he doesn’t—but, his role in the narrative is to be sort of the canary in the coal mine for ironwood’s hero-to-villain arc.

and that makes the remark quoted above very interesting to me, because: that is the exact rhetoric that undergirds the rwbyjnorq approach to internal conflicts. how many times have we heard variations on “salem seeks only to divide us” or “we can’t let salem divide us” or the kids fretting out loud that arguing and disagreeing only plays into her hands?—and here is that same rhetoric coming from the mouth of one of the most unpleasant characters in the entire show, whose foremost narrative role beyond facilitating weiss’s character development is telegraphing that ironwood is bad news.

it’s such a breathtakingly clear illustration of how easily the specter of “division” can be used as a tool of manipulation and control, how readily it goes hand-in-hand with a cynical emphasis on the appearance of unified strength above everything else, and how division in and of itself is a morally neutral quality. jacques is, of course, not wrong that weiss stirring the pot by leaving to be a huntress and shirking her nominal responsibilities as the future CEO of the schnee dust company could rattle investors and raise some serious questions about the long-term stability of the SDC; but ethically and emotionally it is also something that weiss must do, because the SDC as it is now is not worth preserving and living under her father’s thumb will destroy her.

so she leaves—divides the family, if you will—and finds her own way, and later returns with the inner strength and emotional support she needs to reconnect with the parts of her family and the schnee legacy that she values without sacrificing herself in the process.

which all feels very, um, pointed wrt the current ozma/salem unity/division power struggle over the fate of humanity and the obvious parallels that can be drawn between jacques’ abuse of his family and the god of light’s abuse of his creations.

anyway

i also appreciate jacques as a character who is just, profoundly and satisfyingly awful. he’s very like adam in that regard; whatever redeeming qualities he once had, he left behind long ago in pursuit of his self-centered goals and what’s left is a person who has decided with total confidence to become the worst version of himself, and there’s always something enjoyable about watching that sort of character cause problems for everyone else.

[mintacle]

Like you mention anti-hero has multiple uses and in literature it first noted a hero that did not have the traits traditionally associated with heroes. For example an anti-hero may be gruff and sarcastic where a traditional hero is hopeful. An anti-hero could be meek or cowardly where a traditional hero is big and brave. In a story without Batman Jason is still an anti-hero and could describe himself as such by comparing himself to cultural and literary thoughts on heroes.

Hi!

Good point actually and thanks for the excuse for me to ramble about this a bit more (TLDR below). But before I do that I just want to add these screenshots which I’m going to assume are from the same person:

So an antihero can either be contrasted by another specific hero, which is the argument I went into more on my original post I believe you are referencing, OR, yes, as a contrast to the current general heroic values. These values are changing all the time, so let's first take a look at what we consider a superhero is. Yes, there are other hero genres, but we are talking about Jason Todd, a dc character, so I’m narrowing it down to Superheroes.

According to TV tropes a superhero will typically have following traits:

-powers/abilities

-costume

-secret identity

-opposing fate or a supervillain

Jason has abilities, you can argue about if he has powers (allblades, resurrection, enhanced human strength/healing), but I prefer to think he doesn’t really. He has a costume, although one of his traits is to actively oppose the idea of costumes and gimmicks, but his red helmet has established itself to be very recognizable. He has a secret identity. He opposes fate, not often a supervillain though. 

A classical superhero (Gilgamesh, greek/egyptian/hindi lore, etc.) was actually only defined as a hero due to their superpower, morality wasn’t really an issue. So, secondly, what are the morals we associate with a superhero?

modern superheroes are highly likely to be anti-utilitarian and have extreme adherance to a moral code. (I’m gonna link this research paper just in case anyone wants to read: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284229535_Cracking_the_superhero's_moral_code)

But Jason is the peak of utilitarian thinking. He believes firmly that killing one person to save many is not just right, it is our obligation. And yet the manner in which he takes the life of those he deems unworthy isn’t gleeful, no, it’s an extreme adherance to his own moral code. He is doing what he believes needs to be done. So, he is not heroic in his utilitarianism, he is heroic in his conviction and strong-headedness.

Finally, let us consider more vague traits of antiheroism; image, attitude, aesthetics. Leather, anger and being an intimidating dude doesn’t make jason an antihero, because Batman is all of those too (kinda his point, no?). Sarcasm doesn’t make him an antihero because all the batboys are sarcastic and quippy, that’s what you do as batman’s sidekick. However, his loner status is a purely antiheroic trait. 

So Jason can be an antihero, he can be just a hero. I think he is an antihero though because his point is to question the methods and efficiency of other heroes, but that is the easier question. The truly fascinating question, and the one you, dear anon, brought up as well, was, does Jason consider himself an antihero?

 “Regardless, he sees himself as a hero.”

Yes! And this was really my issue with Jason calling himself an antihero in the webcomic.

He would see himself in clear opposition to evil, as his main goal is to save people and avenge victims, and that is what matters most to him. 

It would have been interesting if he refered to himself as an antihero as a snide remark to the way other people label him, but it didn’t seem like that. It could have been meant to show his literary knowledge and general intelligence to be aware of the impression he gives, but I really don’t think there was that much thought behind it. And yes, maybe the webcomic creators meant to introduce him to readers who don’t know him as well. But if so, then it’s just sloppily failing the rule of “show, don’t tell.”

TLDR; Jason Todd can arguably be either an antihero or a hero and any medium that doesn’t acknowledge or try to problematize that dynamic misses an opportunity and doesn’t fully portray Jason’s character.

[forasecondtherewedwon]

fic ask meme: hangman/phoenix, 3? :D

Thank you for the prompt, Anon!! Buckle up for a slightly angsty one!

Shuffle #3: “Morning Elvis” - Florence + the Machine

And after every tour, I swear I’ll quit / It’s over, boys, now this is it / But the call, it always comes

Trapdoor Prayers

Rating: T Word Count: 1359 music shuffle fic game!

When Jake wakes up in darkness, he stays very still. It’s the key to disorientation. He closes his eyes again and breathes slowly, reminding himself that not knowing exactly what he’s waking up to is normal. After years of this, it’d probably be sleeping in the same bed too consistently that’d freak him out.

Where he’s waking up doesn’t matter right now—what matters is why. Groaning and stretching his neck slowly from side to side, he groggily attempts to separate the amorphous dream he was having from flashes of real, remembered stress. Shooting down an enemy jet. Saving Maverick and Rooster. Man, all that hero work really took it out of him, so what dragged him out of sleep?

Jake stretches his legs next and bumps into something. It sends a jolt through him when the something touches him back—a hand coming down on his calf over the bedsheet.

“Good morning,” Phoenix tells him, patting his leg twice.

He’s too tired even to yawn.

“Doesn’t feel like it,” he says, eyes barely open.

“It’s not really. It’s the middle of the night.”

“What the hell, Phoenix,” Jake complains, his voice thick and whiny. He rolls away from her and pushes his face into his pillow.

“Let’s talk.”

“’Morrow,” he mumbles into the pillow.

“You hung back,” she says, obviously deciding to ignore his input. “You’d eliminated the threat, the Tomcat was continuing its return to the carrier, and you hung back. Explain yourself.”

“Cover.”

He can reply without going out of his way to be overly cooperative. Maybe short answers will make her leave. Except it’s Phoenix. Right. Well, that tactic might work on somebody less determined.

“There weren’t any other 5th-gens on radar,” she counters, sounding totally sharp and awake (must be nice). “Mav and Rooster didn’t require cover at that point.”

“Might’ve caught up,” Jake argues. He’s getting grouchy now, and he keeps his face buried in his pillow. “They were flying a fucking horse-drawn carriage out there.”

“So fly their speed.”

“Uh, respectfully, nuh uh.”

“I’m serious. You should’ve flown in with them.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he grumbles sarcastically. “Remind me next time I’m saving their asses.”

Phoenix laughs dryly.

“You just couldn’t do it! You had to race in and be the hero, hang back without them, and then blow past them on the way back to the carrier! You couldn’t stay with them long enough to bring them in!”

“As their wingman? I value myself a little higher than that.”

“Do you?”

Jake rolls back towards her, rustling the bedsheets, motivated more by honest-to-goodness confusion than anything else. Is Phoenix really questioning the strength of his ego? Has she met him? He squints at her, annoyed that his vision is adjusting to the dark.

“What were you doing out there, Bagman?” she asks softly. Her hair’s down and she’s wearing a loose t-shirt and sweatpants. Although she sounds alert, she must’ve been in bed too before she came to disturb him in his. Couldn’t she sleep?

“Hero stuff.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

Phoenix shakes his knee and he looks at her again.

“You shouldn’t do shit like that.”

“Look who’s a sore loser.”

“You put yourself in danger for no reason.”

“Honey, that’s the job,” Jake reminds her.

“No, that wasn’t the job. You were ordered to go help them, not to hang around and wait to see if more 5th-generation fighter jets might show up and outnumber you so you could be the one who needed saving.”

“Nobody ordered me to come straight back. Maybe I don’t want to wait ’til I’m a hundred years old like Mav to become an ace.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t live to a hundred if you keep making stupid choices.”

“If you keep criticizing the way I fly, I’m going to stop trying to fall back to sleep and we will have a problem here,” he warns.

“You were incredible out there,” Phoenix says slowly. “But you can’t fly the way you do forever. Sometime, you won’t make it home.”

The mattress shifts as she rises. Oh, she’d love to leave it at that, wouldn’t she? That perfect, lecturing finality. That I spoke last so I’m right and you’re wrong. But Jake reaches out for her. Even in the dark, his reflexes are quick, his spatial sense excellent. His hand closes around her wrist and he admits, “It does take its toll.”

“I can’t believe you’re agreeing with me.” He can hear her smiling.

“Let me finish,” Jake instructs. “It takes its toll in the form of you waking me up in the middle of the night to tell me whatever you think I did wrong. Which, in reality, was nothing.”

“Jake—”

“Shhh.” She said his name. He feels it in his chest. He skims his fingers down to close them around hers. “Have you slept?”

Phoenix leans away from him, but she doesn’t pull her hand free.

“Tried to.”

“Too busy thinking about how awesome I am, huh?”

When she tugs in an effort to get her hand back, he holds on more securely.

“Lie down here,” Jake says.

“Don’t think, just do?” Phoenix questions wryly.

“Bingo.”

He hears her sigh. She really must be tired—as wiped out as he is, minus the benefit of however many hours of rack time he managed to get before she came in. He wonders if she woke him up right away, or if she sat down gently and watched him for a while. Hopefully not; he’s been told he’s not a very attractive sleeper. Apparently, he lets his mouth hang open. Sometimes he snores. Informing Phoenix wouldn’t be a great way to persuade her to rest here awhile, so Jake puts all his faith in swaying her based on the way he holds her hand. It feels good to him.

“Alright,” she says.

Jake surrenders the near pillow and wriggles over to the far one, making space on the narrow bed. Phoenix lifts the sheet and slips in next to him. Suddenly, he can smell her, he can feel the warmth of her even though they aren’t touching. She gets comfortable, readjusting the pillow, and it’s the first time since she entered that he wants to keep his eyes open. To his eyes, she’s still dim, indistinct, but he likes this soft-focus Phoenix, the black shape of her hair tumbling over the pillow, her hand resting on the sheet between them. He wants to hold it again.

“Don’t lose sleep over me,” he murmurs.

“I wouldn’t if I could help it. Worrying about you is so inconvenient.”

Jake grins and thinks he can see her smiling back.

“Permission to spoon you, Lieutenant?”

“Denied,” she says, the word wrapped in a yawn.

“No reward for being woken up? I was in REM sleep!”

“Your reward was the common sense I tried to give you.”

“Yeah, it didn’t take.”

“I tried,” Phoenix says lightly. Her head bows towards his as her eyes close.

“You sure did,” he agrees. “You ambushed me while I was half-asleep and easier to manipulate.”

“I should’ve whispered it in your ear instead. Over and over. Convinced your subconscious.” She’s sounding sleepier all the time. “Inception.”

“What would you have whispered?”

She whispers it now: “‘Come back.’”

He chances a brush of his fingertips across her forehead. He’s losing her to sleep. When she tilts her face into his touch, he sweeps the hair off her cheek and places his palm there.

Stroking her warm skin, Jake thinks about the throttle in his grip, urging forward into certain combat and then staying behind when it was over, sweat running down his temples, silently daring the enemy to send more planes. He thinks about the cool, uncaring blue that the sky was and the feeling in his gut, in his throat, when he launched off the carrier with the knowledge that the odds were against him. Like any addiction, flying’s got him right where it wants him and it’s poised to shorten his life.

Phoenix won’t change him. He’d have to change himself. And he just isn’t ready.

[makeste]

save no matter what.

so this is going to ultimately be a post about Deku. however, if you’ll be so kind as to indulge me, I would like to start things off by making a point about Bakugou. specifically, I’d like to point out that back in the day before this kid got Character Development no Jutsu’d, people weren’t always so inclined to view his attitude towards winning in the best light. which is a nice way of saying that he came off as unhealthily obsessed, not to mention more than a little unhinged.

sorry for the image spam btw, I just think they’re funny. he’s so demented lmao. KILL DIE CRUSH.

anyway so we’re gonna do the rest of this below a cut before it gets long. but I promise it really is a Deku post lol. don’t let the pre-readmore stuff fool you. I PROMISE THERE IS A POINT, AND WE WILL GET TO IT.

anyway! so yeah, we really didn’t have the best impression of Bakugou’s whole winning fixation at the beginning there. and I mean, it’s not like we had the best impression of Bakugou himself at the start of things either. we were already primed from the very first chapter to see this kid as an adversary to Izuku. the story goes out of its way to paint him in pretty much the worst light possible. which is why what happens next is so interesting.

because one might see all this and think, “holy heck, this kid is off the shits, somebody needs to set him straight pronto and get it into his head that winning isn’t everything.” because that’s almost the natural conclusion to draw. “look at this kid, he doesn’t care about helping other people at all, all he cares about is winning, someone needs to come along and show him that he’s got it backwards.”

except that’s not what happens, is it? because this is where, much to my delight, Horikoshi came along and started subverting expectations. because not only is Katsuki not rebuked for being so obsessed with winning -- it’s pretty much the exact opposite.

the one and only time Deku ever straight up hands Katsuki’s ass to him is when he says he doesn’t want to win. Deku is IMMEDIATELY all, “THE FUCK KIND OF BULLSHIT DID I JUST HEAR OUT OF YOUR TRASH MOUTH,” and that’s when he sets him straight.

the important people in Katsuki’s life never tell him, “hey you need to cool it with the whole winning thing.” All Might and Aizawa never scold him for it, or tell him that he shouldn’t try with everything he has to win, or that wanting to win is a bad thing. on the contrary, they both commend him for it. and ultimately, he’s told by All Might that this desire is actually one of the two fundamental qualities that every great hero needs.

he completely turns the whole thing on its head. not only is it not a bad thing, it’s actually crucial. essential. because what the desire to win really is, at its core, is tenacity. it’s the fiercest kind of determination. it’s not something he should be ashamed of; it’s something that sets him apart, something that makes him worthy. he is someone who refuses to back down no matter what. refuses to give up, no matter what. and this quality, which is initially misunderstood by some to the point where even the villains mistakenly take him for one of their own in the making, is eventually validated to the fullest degree by the person that Katsuki looks up to the most. his desire to win goes from being this awkward “son wtf are you doing” thing to being one of the core philosophies of the series. and ever since then, we pretty much don’t question it.

so why do I bring this up now? well, the answer to that can basically be summed up in one word.

“parallels.”

so here’s the thing. there’s been a lot of talk lately about Deku’s ridiculous, reckless, and absurdly self-destructive desire to save others while having little to no regard for himself. currently he’s lying in a hospital bed, having broken approximately 218 out of the 206 bones in his little hero body (yes, somewhere along the way he found an additional dozen bones to break). it is worrying. it is Concerning. and it’s raised a lot of questions, such as “???” and “wtf is this idiot doing.”

and a lot of people have been pretty critical of him! this is, of course, an ongoing thing with this child, and people have been giving him grief over it going as far back as chapter 6.

while others have been bothered by it going even further back than that.

and I’ve seen these sentiments being echoed pretty frequently in the fandom as well. and there are basically two talking points that I want to address here. the first is the idea that Deku’s aggressive brand of selflessness stems from an inherent lack of self-worth. in other words, because he prioritizes other people’s safety and well-being above his own, and is willing to go to such drastic lengths to save them, there’s this feeling that he doesn’t value himself enough, that he must not care about himself.

but I don’t think that’s quite it. let’s go back to those parallels first, though. let’s take another look at Kacchan.

what I mainly want to call attention to is the intensity here. again, it’s something that at first strikes most readers as being absurdly over the top. the truth is, I think a lot of people simply can’t relate to it. Katsuki cares about winning with a ferocity and a fervor that most people, for better or worse, simply don’t have. I certainly don’t, lol.

but he does. to him it’s not a shallow, superficial thing at all. it’s important to him, perhaps the most important thing. I think we often talk about it in terms of it being a desire, but imo a more accurate way to define it is not as a want, but as a need. in other words, it’s the opposite of the question “what is it this character wants” (i.e. “what is it they can’t live without”)? instead, it’s a question of “what is it they don’t want” (i.e. “what is it they can’t live with”)?

and in Katsuki’s case, the thing he can’t live with is feeling like he hasn’t tried his absolute best. he needs to give his all in everything he does. he wants to win, but winning just on its own is not enough.

it has to be earned. he has to prove to himself and to everyone else that he deserves it. anything less than that is unacceptable. anything less than that, and he can’t be at ease. he can’t be settled. he can’t rest. and so he puts everything he has into winning, even if it means going to extremes. because it’s that important to him.

it’s something that’s at times alarming and even disturbing for others to witness. but nonetheless, it’s a part of who he is, and at the end of the day his teachers accept that, and the story acknowledges that it’s his greatest strength.

so now, to finally bring this back around to Deku, this is what I keep seeing in his character as well. only in his case, the thing he can’t live with is knowing that he didn’t do everything he possibly could to save someone. or to put it another way, Deku, at his core, is someone who cannot rest until he knows that everyone is safe. simple as that. it’s not just a desire to protect people; it’s a need. he needs to know that everyone is safe and protected. otherwise he can’t be at ease. it’s no different from how normal, everyday people aren’t able to feel at ease unless they know that they are safe and that their loved ones are safe. it’s just that in Deku’s case, this same fundamental need extends to everyone, not just himself and his friends and family. everyone. he can’t live with himself knowing that someone was in trouble, and he had the ability to do something to help, but didn’t. and so, if you literally can’t live with not doing something, you basically have no choice but to do it.

and this is what in my opinion defines Deku’s character. Kacchan, in trying to understand it, noted that Deku doesn’t seem to take himself into account. but I think OFA Prime summed it up a little more accurately. “he rages for the sake of others. for them, he does his best until he can do no more. this young man is possessed by a drive to save others that eclipses all common understanding.”

so yeah. it’s not that he doesn’t care about himself at all, it’s that he cares about others even more. he has that same intensity and ferocity towards saving people that Katsuki has towards winning. and just as it was difficult at first for fans to understand Katsuki’s feelings, it’s hard to fathom the sheer depth of that “save everyone” feeling that compels Deku to break his own body in that pursuit. it’s scary, not to mention extremely destructive and dangerous. and so really, it was almost inevitable that there would be some backlash.

but just like Katsuki’s desire to win was ultimately validated in the end, I think Deku’s desire to save others will be as well. in fact it already is being validated, for starters by the other denizens of OFA, led by Lil Bro as mentioned above. let’s go back for a moment to that same scene.

here we get a huge hint that “Deku gets taken down a notch and chewed out and scolded for his recklessness” is not, in fact, the direction that the story is going in. because in general, when the main villain starts mocking the hero and saying that they’ve done something wrong, that’s a very good sign that said hero is actually on the exact right track. like, no offense, but as far as character critiques go, AFO is probably the least qualified person in the entire manga to start offering those up lol. so yeah. if AFO is denouncing Deku for something, and OFA Prime is praising him for that exact same thing, I think it’s safe to say that means he is in fact doing something very, very right.

“okay but makeste, he nearly got himself killed and broke all of his arms AND legs and is now lying in a fucking coma,” you say, gesturing emphatically to the last page of chapter 298. “so I mean, that’s all well and good that Wonder Boy has the best of intentions and all that, but at the end of the day he’s only one kid. he literally can’t save everyone, and if he pulls one or two more stunts like this, he’s going to get himself killed.”

and okay, but this here is the other talking point that I wanted to address. because it’s true, Deku does need to learn a specific lesson here. but that lesson is NOT that he can’t save everyone. this is a superhero story, guys -- “you can’t save everyone” is never going to be the underlying message, ever. it’s the OPPOSITE of the message. Deku is the hero because he tries to save everyone. because he doesn’t give up on saving people no matter what. that is literally the core of the story. it has been since the very first chapter.

so then what is it that Deku actually needs to learn here? well, once again, it all comes back to those parallels.

btw, I really just love how he’s carrying Katsuki there lol. he’s just so done with him.

but anyway. so, the final exam arc. Katsuki initially wants to win at all costs -- but there’s a hitch. because even though he wants to win, he refuses to do so while working with Deku. enter Deku’s left hook, and one impromptu Rival Encouragement Speech later, our boy has thankfully come to his senses.

but here’s the point -- the lesson here wasn’t “you can’t always win.” rather, the lesson that Katsuki needed to learn was that you can’t always win alone.

yeah. so now you can see what I’m getting at here.

“...on your own.”

that’s the key. this is the one and only thing that Deku actually needs to get into his head. wanting to save everyone is fine! his will to save others has never been a weakness -- it’s been the most admirable thing about him from day one. it’s what makes him strong. it’s why All Might chose him. it’s why OFA has chosen him. it’s what sets him apart, and I firmly believe it’s what will ultimately help him save the day and defeat AFO as well. because what other character would look at Shigaraki Tomura, the person who just impaled his friend and destroyed an entire city, and instinctively reach out a hand to try and save him? and if you don’t think that’s going to wind up being key to the final battle, you and I have very different ideas about this series’ endgame.

Deku’s determination to save everyone isn’t arrogance or futility. it is and always has been his greatest strength. but what he’s missing now, what he needs to learn, is simply to trust. y’all might have seen that theory about the Fourth’s quirk, and why All Might was so hesitant to tell Deku about it. basically, the theory (which is based on an attempted translation of the crossed-out parts of All Might’s OFA notebook) goes that the Spidey Sense was so overwhelming that the Fourth -- whose cause of death was one of the things crossed out -- eventually couldn’t bear it, and went to live alone in the middle of the woods somewhere. and possibly wound up killing himself?? all of which is just speculation right now of course. but it makes sense. and it would certainly explain why All Might, being all too aware of Deku’s self-destructive tendencies, would keep that from him.

but if this is the case, that means it’s clear that the Fourth’s solution didn’t work. “give up and accept that you can’t save everyone” clearly is NOT the answer to be had here.

the answer is trust. trust that his fellow heroes have his back. trust that they’ll be able to help him reach the people he’s not able to reach on his own. trust that they can work together to save everyone. that he doesn’t have to rest the entire world on his shoulders alone.

it’s the one lesson that All Might, his predecessor and his teacher, never learned himself until it was too late. but of course, All Might never had a prickly and determined rival who was ready to step in and deal out some tough love if need be. a rival who, perhaps, just might soon get a chance to repay an old favor.

“I don’t wanna hear you say you can’t save someone.”

I’m just saying. just as Deku has been watching Katsuki all this time, and admiring his determination to win, and emulating it himself, so has Katsuki recently begun to emulate Deku’s determination to save others. we’ve seen it not just in his recent act of self-sacrifice, but even in little things like his habits and tricks of speech. just like Katsuki is Deku’s image of victory, Deku is becoming Katsuki’s image of saving others.

and so I’ll bet you anything that if Deku ever starts to doubt himself, or starts feeling like his dream and desires are futile, Kacchan will be there to set him straight with a good old fashioned Rival Encouragement Speech of his own. possibly with his own left hook to match, though his left shoulder is currently out of sorts atm so he might need to modify that approach a little bit. but the point is, he’ll be there. and he will not allow Deku to give up on himself. he will be there to remind him that he doesn’t have to face this alone.

so yeah! finally managed to wrap up my giant Deku meta which I’ve been working on for ages and rewritten like fifteen times lmao. just in time for this to be relevant for all of a day, probably, depending on what happens once chapter 279 drops lol. but yeah. tl;dr, local boy tries to do too much, but his heart is in the right place, and hopefully all he really needs is a good pep talk from his tsundere bff to set him to rights again. r.i.p. to the Fourth, but he’s different.

[the-nysh]

Yknow, when I reread King's speech to Saitama regarding his personal dilemma of boredom, overwhelming strength, and emotional alienation, I'm kinda struck on how its core message/issue is similar to Rick and Morty of all things. While Saitama is infinitely more moral than Rick is, they both have the same problem of being the apex of their respective areas, but it is their general approach to life that causes them problems, particularly interpersonal ones. Saitama likes to seep in the idea that his strength is both an unstoppable force and an inescapable curse, but tbh regardless of how is surroundings change and more people enter his life, Saitama is gonna remain miserable if he doesn't bother to change internally.

And Saitama is a really fucking stubborn person that is set in his ways. While he does change incrementally, his main thing is still the same, so his issues remained the same. I'm sure ONE himself has asked himself this question when he wrote the webcomic and realized Saitama needed to be brought to such a low point to really face some hard facts and lessons he needs to confront. So of course he's gonna hit him where it hurts :( what a mean bastard

And I just so happen to have an old meta post on King & Saitama's discussion, which you may like and yup we're seeing those themes become relevant once again vs Garou. (Now, I haven't seen Rick & Morty to comment on the similarities, but) "Saitama is gonna remain miserable if he doesn't bother to change internally" yes, that, or challenged on a mental/emotional level (not physical) to get him to move and step beyond his personal perceived bubble of alienation/stagnation. (Unfortunately using Genos for that is...hhhh;;;)

Both he and Garou are very stubborn in their own ways, that now ONE's been breaking them both in evil underhanded ways, to 'teach' them a cruel reality check lesson. Where after seeing his own worst fear come true (Genos), Saitama's faith in his own heroism is slipping and at risk of losing his last ability TO care (his humanity...) My earnest hope is that the real Garou in there is able to 'wake up' past the serious punches or regain more of his usual discernment past god's control, to actually SAY something with his usual 'what the hell, hero?!' scolding. To snap some actual attention or awareness back to Saitama's disturbing un-hero-like venting and destruction. To bring some of Saitama's usual heroic values/reason back under control. Because this battle's no longer become just a Garou problem (to help him find himself), it's also now a parallel Saitama problem to stop him from losing himself, and to illustrate his unaddressed (dangerous and darker) character flaws as well. :O (Who can actually 'help' the other regain themselves first remains to be seen...)

But Saitama won't realize that from a one-sided beatdown where all his venting remains unchecked by the other party who's not actually (mentally) participating, or if Saitama spirals in his darker thoughts all alone. You see what I'm getting at? How much more satisfying it would be if there's actually a two-sided dialogue calling (reaching?) each other out, where even Garou (and I mean the real Garou, once he's broken free enough before he's actually 'saved') can finally unload his hard critiques (just like King did) such as 'you're strong, but so what? some hero you turned out to be...' (oohf;;) It would be somewhat of a modified role reversal(?) from where it's not just wc Saitama schooling down from his fixed pedestal onto a desperately rock-bottom wc Garou anymore, but a manga Garou bringing attention to a lowered Saitama's flaws that he cannot ignore anymore either. Especially not after these consequences. (Hhh, anyway this is what I meant when they basically have the chance to 'bond' over their mutual losses - since no one is really 'winning' with grace here in the fallout; it doesn't even matter if Saitama can physically 'beat' god Garou either, since both their characters' sense of selves and perspectives - their 'light,' reason, and hope - still need saving.)