#like……seems insane right????

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[warpedpuppeteer]

My favourite part of reading about people starting to watch 9-1-1 is when they go "i know y'all said Buddie were like that but I didn't think they were like THAT".

Because no matter how unhinged we managed to make them sound, actually watching Buddie scenes happen in front of you in the show is absolutely batshit insane. It's truly a once-in-a lifetime-you-won't-believe-it-until-you-see-it kinda thing 😭

[gingerswagfreckles]

Probably the only thing giving me any hope at this point is that every few days some random gentile posts in the Jewish subreddit something along the lines of "I think I'm going insane am I going insane what's going on why is every single comment on my social media feed straight up Nazism why does nothing get taken down when I report it why is my niece simping for a terrorist organization what's happening are you guys seeing this shit." And the answer is always yes ofc we have been seeing this shit for a while. But it's always nice to get some confirmation that someone else is seeing it too.

[letyhide]

When Mapicc did things that hurt Zam she was okay with laying her head low, apologising, changing her morals, working around her oath, and sticking by Mapicc.

Zam did things that hurt Mapicc. They were never directed at him, Often they were done out of refusal to fight him directly. Yet Mapicc still saw the lack of support during Mawn, and how Zam threw hearts at Bacon (when he was their enemy) as betrayal. And was hurt.

Due to Mapicc’s reactions to being hurt being usually violent, and directed towards Zam, it’s easier for his feelings and needs to be overshadowed compared to Zam’s in discussions. Because he sees himself as the victim even after being the perpetrator of some real damaging stuff - stuff that is often way worse than the what is done against him. Because yeah, Despite everything that happened to both of them, Mapicc is sitting on a comfortable 20 hearts, while Zam is on 4 BECAUSE of Mapicc and how many times she has been killed by him. Mapicc’s response to things is usually fighting and violence. He has self preservation and self interest very high on his priority list. While Zam’s n1 response to situations is usually self sabotage. That’s why their conflicts work so well. Zam throws herself at Mapicc many times, and just accepts whatever the outcome is (most of the time she knows she’s gonna lose).

But still Mapicc’s original worries and feelings are still valid. And they come out of a place of care for Zam and insecurity in himself. He just doesn't know how to deal with them. When he’s in a heated discussion with Zam he starts saying how "if killing you is gonna end this conversation, then i will do it” just another way of saying “i would rather hurt you than deal with my own feelings”.

It’s crazy to me that they both seem to not see the care and effort they each put into their relationship. it seems to be all about "who used who more" when, it genuinely is not about that. (Recently yes. Mapicc admitted to using Zam for the flame fight when wanting to cut her off. and yesterday he wanted to use her to get Mane with the arrow cannon). But all this talk about using one another is.. Quite frankly useless.

When Mapicc first mentioned the feeling of being used by Zam, it was all about his jealousy towards Derapchu, Zam’s new 20 heart teammate, and not being included in plans anymore. He felt like Zam was just calling him whenever she was in danger and needed help. Yet during *that talk* After the flame void trap, Zam asked Mapicc to stay by her side, and Mapicc refused. And says “if you ever need help with a fight or are in a dire situation. call me”, when he was accusing Zam of only using him for fights prior to this. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. He only sees Himself useful in pvp. So mainly renders himself available for pvp fights. Or it could be projection? He accuses others of seeing him only for PVP skill. When He's the first one to do that. During the same talk he says “I provide what? pvp skill, that’s what i'm saying bro, that’s all i'm good for” And assumes everyone else does too… And I genuinely think this is what this misunderstanding all boils down to: Mapicc’s insecurities about himself, and his place next to people. After a teamless season, Zam pulling away might’ve gone better if it didn’t, in his eyes, prove exactly Mapicc’s worries. (but he's also an hypocrite as he's the first one to throw Zam away when the empire logged back on).

Mapicc pushes his feelings, and Zam, away. Says he didn’t mean the apology that day, because being angry has always been easier than being vulnerable for Mapicc. And this time Zam just doesn’t take it. All this time of having Mapicc’s insecurities being projected onto her, Mapicc actually uses her for the creeking thing, blows up her flower field and he couldn't be more blunt about his hatred for her, when all she's done is be there for him. And she snaps. “Mapicc should’ve known him this way. He just used me”, and looks back and picks apart every single thing Mapicc has done wrong to her, which to be fair. There is a lot. But also conveniently leaves out all of the hearts he gave her, she leaves out how many times Mapicc jumped back into a fight just to try and save Zam, Even though it didn’t benefit him directly. She leaves out how the other day Mapicc left her a heart in a chest. When you have the full picture you KNOW these two care about each other.

They’re so used to being by each other's side, and so bad at communicating the care they have for one another, that the second something goes wrong all they’re left with is their unresolved feelings, that they never got over, and use it as a weapon to hurt the other.

When Zam accuses Mapicc of using her, he replies “how did I use you, what did I get out of you exactly”. Even telling Minute “how did I use him, he’s the dropper” again giving this image of how he sees other’s (and by extension his) value through their fighting skills. As if "It wouldn't make sense that he would use Zam, because she is not as skilled as pvp as him". This of course isn’t what he actually believes. It was almost what he wanted Zam to believe, (and what he wants to believe himself, but he cannot even stick to this version in his head, as he replies that "I never said you did nothing" to Zam. when that's exactly what he was implying) because that is easier to explain, it makes more sense for “Mapicc” to believe that than for him to admit a “i care about you”.

And when Mapicc was alone with his thoughts, he thought about what Zam was saying to him... Did he actually use her? He says that, if he did, it wasn't on purpose.... Well except that one time. Which he sees as justified since Zam gave hearts to his enemy! Bacon... who... is now his teammate...... huh.... and the team really wants them to reconcile and he realizes that it just not might be his call as he was the one that farmed her until she was at 4 hearts... hmmm........ I'm so excited to see where this will go.

[mohntilyet]

my initial knee jerk reaction to lucanis/spite saying "family, enemies, contracts" was bad because it felt like an oversimplification but actually thinking on it i really love that lucanis forces himself into this box to make things make sense in his life. family is unconditional, enemies are to be killed, but contracts is so. interesting... man who promises mila that he will find her father because he does not fail contracts. the same man who tells effe that he will kill her slaver because he needs to turn her from a poor young woman that he sympathises with, into someone he can make a deal with. it's not kindness, it's not weakness, he's just fulfilling a contract, and crows don't break contracts. if he kills a bunch of racist blood mages during that process, then he's not breaking the rules, just bending them. a very convenient excuse to be a good man while still being a crow and assassin. and of course when spite is forced into him, he gets out of it with something familiar! by making another deal! something he could work with, something he HAS to work with, because being just an abomination is unthinkable. if he can work himself out of this problem like he's done with every other contract in his life, in his mind maybe there's some tiny chance that this becomes another job that he can claw his life back from.

[itsnotacostume]

we as a fandom do not talk about this scene enough. what the fuck is this. why did he feel the need to install this? so he could stare at his boybestfriend all day without having to get up?

[essektheylyss]

I do find the uptick in folks who got upset that some of us felt like there wasn't enough follow-through on narrative consequences suddenly turning around wanting the Hells to be hunted by Vasselheim very funny, because I'm just like... so what I'm hearing is that you want your faves to be on the run from religious leaders because the choices they made had such massive ramifications and so aggressively spurned that religion it demanded exile if not outright execution, because it makes for a more interesting story with more interesting characters.

I understand the canary in the role mine now: you're jealous of me. You want what the Essek stans have.

[eyrieofsynapses]

why Aurora's art is genius

It's break for me, and I've been meaning to sit down and read the Aurora webcomic (https://comicaurora.com/, @comicaurora on Tumblr) for quite a bit. So I did that over the last few days.

And… y'know. I can't actually say "I should've read this earlier," because otherwise I would've been up at 2:30-3am when I had responsibilities in the morning and I couldn't have properly enjoyed it, but. Holy shit guys THIS COMIC.

I intended to just do a generalized "hello this is all the things I love about this story," and I wrote a paragraph or two about art style. …and then another. And another. And I realized I needed to actually reference things so I would stop being too vague. I was reading the comic on my tablet or phone, because I wanted to stay curled up in my chair, but I type at a big monitor and so I saw more details… aaaaaand it turned into its own giant-ass post.

SO. Enjoy a few thousand words of me nerding out about this insanely cool art style and how fucking gorgeous this comic is? (There are screenshots, I promise it isn't just a wall of text.) In my defense, I just spent two semesters in graphic design classes focusing on the Adobe Suite, so… I get to be a nerd about pretty things…???

All positive feedback btw! No downers here. <3

---

I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the beautiful, simple stylistic method of drawing characters and figures. It is absolutely stunning and effortless and utterly graceful—it is so hard to capture the sheer beauty and fluidity of the human form in such a fashion. Even a simple outline of a character feels dynamic! It's gorgeous!

Though I do have a love-hate relationship with this, because my artistic side looks at that lovely simplicity, goes "I CAN DO THAT!" and then I sit down and go to the paper and realize that no, in fact, I cannot do that yet, because that simplicity is born of a hell of a lot of practice and understanding of bodies and actually is really hard to do. It's a very developed style that only looks simple because the artist knows what they're doing. The human body is hard to pull off, and this comic does so beautifully and makes it look effortless.

Also: line weight line weight line weight. It's especially important in simplified shapes and figures like this, and hoo boy is it used excellently. It's especially apparent the newer the pages get—I love watching that improvement over time—but with simpler figures and lines, you get nice light lines to emphasize both smaller details, like in the draping of clothing and the curls of hair—which, hello, yes—and thicker lines to emphasize bigger and more important details and silhouettes. It's the sort of thing that's essential to most illustrations, but I wanted to make a note of it because it's so vital to this art style.

THE USE OF LAYER BLENDING MODES OH MY GODS. (...uhhh, apologies to the people who don't know what that means, it's a digital art program thing? This article explains it for beginners.)

Bear with me, I just finished my second Photoshop course, I spent months and months working on projects with this shit so I see the genius use of Screen and/or its siblings (of which there are many—if I say "Screen" here, assume I mean the entire umbrella of Screen blending modes and possibly Overlay) and go nuts, but seriously it's so clever and also fucking gorgeous:

Firstly: the use of screened-on sound effect words over an action? A "CRACK" written over a branch and then put on Screen in glowy green so that it's subtle enough that it doesn't disrupt the visual flow, but still sticks out enough to make itself heard? Little "scritches" that are transparent where they're laid on without outlines to emphasize the sound without disrupting the underlying image? FUCK YES. I haven't seen this done literally anywhere else—granted, I haven't read a massive amount of comics, but I've read enough—and it is so clever and I adore it. Examples:

Secondly: The beautiful lighting effects. The curling leaves, all the magic, the various glowing eyes, the fog, the way it's all so vividly colored but doesn't burn your eyeballs out—a balance that's way harder to achieve than you'd think—and the soft glows around them, eeeee it's so pretty so pretty SO PRETTY. Not sure if some of these are Outer/Inner Glow/Shadow layer effects or if it's entirely hand-drawn, but major kudos either way; I can see the beautiful use of blending modes and I SALUTE YOUR GENIUS.

I keep looking at some of this stuff and go "is that a layer effect or is it done by hand?" Because you can make some similar things with the Satin layer effect in Photoshop (I don't know if other programs have this? I'm gonna have to find out since I won't have access to PS for much longer ;-;) that resembles some of the swirly inner bits on some of the lit effects, but I'm not sure if it is that or not. Or you could mask over textures? There's... many ways to do it.

If done by hand: oh my gods the patience, how. If done with layer effects: really clever work that knows how to stop said effects from looking wonky, because ugh those things get temperamental. If done with a layer of texture that's been masked over: very, very good masking work. No matter the method, pretty shimmers and swirly bits inside the bigger pretty swirls!

Next: The way color contrast is used! I will never be over the glowy green-on-black Primordial Life vibes when Alinua gets dropped into that… unconscious space?? with Life, for example, and the sharp contrast of vines and crack and branches and leaves against pitch black is just visually stunning. The way the roots sink into the ground and the three-dimensional sensation of it is particularly badass here:

Friggin. How does this imply depth like that. HOW. IT'S SO FREAKING COOL.

A huge point here is also color language and use! Everybody has their own particular shade, generally matching their eyes, magic, and personality, and I adore how this is used to make it clear who's talking or who's doing an action. That was especially apparent to me with Dainix and Falst in the caves—their colors are both fairly warm, but quite distinct, and I love how this clarifies who's doing what in panels with a lot of action from both of them. There is a particular bit that stuck out to me, so I dug up the panels (see this page and the following one https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-30/):

(Gods it looks even prettier now that I put it against a plain background. Also, appreciation to Falst for managing a bridal-carry midair, damn.)

The way that their colors MERGE here! And the immense attention to detail in doing so—Dainix is higher up than Falst is in the first panel, so Dainix's orange fades into Falst's orange at the base. The next panel has gold up top and orange on bottom; we can't really tell in that panel where each of them are, but that's carried over to the next panel—

—where we now see that Falst's position is raised above Dainix's due to the way he's carrying him. (Points for continuity!) And, of course, we see the little "huffs" flowing from orange to yellow over their heads (where Dainix's head is higher than Falst's) to merge the sound of their breathing, which is absurdly clever because it emphasizes to the viewer how we hear two sets of huffing overlaying each other, not one. Absolutely brilliant.

(A few other notes of appreciation to that panel: beautiful glows around them, the sparks, the jagged silhouette of the spider legs, the lovely colors that have no right to make the area around a spider corpse that pretty, the excellent texturing on the cave walls plus perspective, the way Falst's movements imply Dainix's hefty weight, the natural posing of the characters, their on-point expressions that convey exactly how fuckin terrifying everything is right now, the slight glows to their eyes, and also they're just handsome boys <3)

Next up: Rain!!!! So well done! It's subtle enough that it never ever disrupts the impact of the focal point, but evident enough you can tell! And more importantly: THE MIST OFF THE CHARACTERS. Rain does this irl, it has that little vapor that comes off you and makes that little misty effect that plays with lighting, it's so cool-looking and here it's used to such pretty effect!

One of the panel captions says something about it blurring out all the injuries on the characters but like THAT AIN'T TOO BIG OF A PROBLEM when it gets across the environmental vibes, and also that'd be how it would look in real life too so like… outside viewer's angle is the same as the characters', mostly? my point is: that's the environment!!! that's the vibes, that's the feel! It gets it across and it does so in the most pretty way possible!

And another thing re: rain, the use of it to establish perspective, particularly in panels like this—

—where we can tell we're looking down at Tynan due to the perspective on the rain and where it's pointing. Excellent. (Also, kudos for looking down and emphasizing how Tynan's losing his advantage—lovely use of visual storytelling.)

Additionally, the misting here:

We see it most heavily in the leftmost panel, where it's quite foggy as you would expect in a rainstorm, especially in an environment with a lot of heat, but it's also lightly powdered on in the following two panels and tends to follow light sources, which makes complete sense given how light bounces off particles in the air.

A major point of strength in these too is a thorough understanding of lighting, like rim lighting, the various hues and shades, and an intricate understanding of how light bounces off surfaces even when they're in shadow (we'll see a faint glow in spots where characters are half in shadow, but that's how it would work in real life, because of how light bounces around).

Bringing some of these points together: the fluidity of the lines in magic, and the way simple glowing lines are used to emphasize motion and the magic itself, is deeply clever. I'm basically pulling at random from panels and there's definitely even better examples, but here's one (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-16-33/):

First panel, listed in numbers because these build on each other:

The tension of the lines in Tess's magic here. This works on a couple levels: first, the way she's holding her fists, as if she's pulling a rope taut.

The way there's one primary line, emphasizing the rope feeling, accompanied by smaller ones.

The additional lines starbursting around her hands, to indicate the energy crackling in her hands and how she's doing a good bit more than just holding it. (That combined with the fists suggests some tension to the magic, too.) Also the variations in brightness, a feature you'll find in actual lightning. :D Additional kudos for how the lightning sparks and breaks off the metal of the sword.

A handful of miscellaneous notes on the second panel:

The reflection of the flames in Erin's typically dark blue eyes (which bears a remarkable resemblance to Dainix, incidentally—almost a thematic sort of parallel given Erin's using the same magic Dainix specializes in?)

The flowing of fabric in the wind and associated variation in the lineart

The way Erin's tattoos interact with the fire he's pulling to his hand

The way the rain overlays some of the fainter areas of fire (attention! to! detail! hell yeah!)

I could go on. I won't because this is a lot of writing already.

Third panel gets paragraphs, not bullets:

Erin's giant-ass "FWOOM" of fire there, and the way the outline of the word is puffy-edged and gradated to feel almost three-dimensional, plus once again using Screen or a variation on it so that the stars show up in the background. All this against that stunning plume of fire, which ripples and sparks so gorgeously, and the ending "om" of the onomatopoeia is emphasized incredibly brightly against that, adding to the punch of it and making the plume feel even brighter.

Also, once again, rain helping establish perspective, especially in how it's very angular in the left side of the panel and then slowly becomes more like a point to the right to indicate it's falling directly down on the viewer. Add in the bright, beautiful glow effects, fainter but no less important black lines beneath them to emphasize the sky and smoke and the like, and the stunningly beautiful lighting and gradated glows surrounding Erin plus the lightning jagging up at him from below, and you get one hell of an impactful panel right there. (And there is definitely more in there I could break down, this is just a lot already.)

And in general: The colors in this? Incredible. The blues and purples and oranges and golds compliment so well, and it's all so rich.

Like, seriously, just throughout the whole comic, the use of gradients, blending modes, color balance and hues, all the things, all the things, it makes for the most beautiful effects and glows and such a rich environment. There's a very distinct style to this comic in its simplified backgrounds (which I recognize are done partly because it's way easier and also backgrounds are so time-consuming dear gods but lemme say this) and vivid, smoothly drawn characters; the simplicity lets them come to the front and gives room for those beautiful, richly saturated focal points, letting the stylized designs of the magic and characters shine. The use of distinct silhouettes is insanely good. Honestly, complex backgrounds might run the risk of making everything too visually busy in this case. It's just, augh, so GORGEOUS.

Another bit, take a look at this page (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-28/):

It's not quite as evident here as it is in the next page, but this one does some other fun things so I'm grabbing it. Points:

Once again, using different colors to represent different character actions. The "WHAM" of Kendal hitting the ground is caused by Dainix's force, so it's orange (and kudos for doubling the word over to add a shake effect). But we see blue layered underneath, which could be an environmental choice, but might also be because it's Kendal, whose color is blue.

And speaking off, take a look at the right-most panel on top, where Kendal grabs the spear: his motion is, again, illustrated in bright blue, versus the atmospheric screened-on orange lines that point toward him around the whole panel (I'm sure these have a name, I think they might be more of a manga thing though and the only experience I have in manga is reading a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist). Those lines emphasize the weight of the spear being shoved at him, and their color tells us Dainix is responsible for it.

One of my all-time favorite effects in this comic is the way cracks manifest across Dainix's body to represent when he starts to lose control; it is utterly gorgeous and wonderfully thematic. These are more evident in the page before and after this one, but you get a decent idea here. I love the way they glow softly, the way the fire juuuust flickers through at the start and then becomes more evident over time, and the cracks feel so realistic, like his skin is made of pottery. Additional points for how fire begins to creep into his hair.

A small detail that's generally consistent across the comic, but which I want to make note of here because you can see it pretty well: Kendal's eyes glow about the same as the jewel in his sword, mirroring his connection to said sword and calling back to how the jewel became Vash's eye temporarily and thus was once Kendal's eye. You can always see this connection (though there might be some spots where this also changes in a symbolic manner; I went through it quickly on the first time around, so I'll pay more attention when I inevitably reread this), where Kendal's always got that little shine of blue in his eyes the same as the jewel. It's a beautiful visual parallel that encourages the reader to subconsciously link them together, especially since the lines used to illustrate character movements typically mirror their eye color. It's an extension of Kendal.

Did I mention how ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL the colors in this are?

Also, the mythological/legend-type scenes are illustrated in familiar style often used for that type of story, a simple and heavily symbolic two-dimensional cave-painting-like look. They are absolutely beautiful on many levels, employing simple, lovely gradients, slightly rougher and thicker lineart that is nonetheless smoothly beautiful, and working with clear silhouettes (a major strength of this art style, but also a strength in the comic overall). But in particular, I wanted to call attention to a particular thing (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-12-4/):

The flowing symbolic lineart surrounding each character. This is actually quite consistent across characters—see also Life's typical lines and how they curl:

What's particularly interesting here is how these symbols are often similar, but not the same. Vash's lines are always smooth, clean curls, often playing off each other and echoing one another like ripples in a pond. You'd think they'd look too similar to Life's—but they don't. Life's curl like vines, and they remain connected; where one curve might echo another but exist entirely detached from each other in Vash's, Life's lines still remain wound together, because vines are continuous and don't float around. :P

Tahraim's are less continuous, often breaking up with significantly smaller bits and pieces floating around like—of course—sparks, and come to sharper points. These are also constants: we see the vines repeated over and over in Alinua's dreams of Life, and the echoing ripples of Vash are consistent wherever we encounter him. Kendal's dream of the ghost citizens of the city of Vash in the last few chapters is filled with these rippling, echoing patterns, to beautiful effect (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-14/):

They ripple and spiral, often in long, sinuous curves, with smooth elegance. It reminds me a great deal of images of space and sine waves and the like. This establishes a definite feel to these different characters and their magic. And the thing is, that's not something that had to be done—the colors are good at emphasizing who's who. But it was done, and it adds a whole other dimension to the story. Whenever you're in a deity's domain, you know whose it is no matter the color.

Regarding that shape language, I wanted to make another note, too—Vash is sometimes described as chaotic and doing what he likes, which is interesting to me, because smooth, elegant curves and the color blue aren't generally associated with chaos. So while Vash might behave like that on the surface, I'm guessing he's got a lot more going on underneath; he's probably much more intentional in his actions than you'd think at a glance, and he is certainly quite caring with his city. The other thing is that this suits Kendal perfectly. He's a paragon character; he is kind, virtuous, and self-sacrificing, and often we see him aiming to calm others and keep them safe. Blue is such a good color for him. There is… probably more to this, but I'm not deep enough in yet to say.

And here's the thing: I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much more here I'm not covering (color palettes! outfits! character design! environment! the deities! so much more!) and a lot more I can't cover, because I don't have the experience; this is me as a hobbyist artist who happened to take a couple design classes because I wanted to. The art style to this comic is so clever and creative and beautiful, though, I just had to go off about it. <3

...brownie points for getting all the way down here? Have a cookie.

[3-aem]

ive had enough of dating bring me back to my yaoi-dom

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

…. could you talk more about the document leak in pez? if you can’t talk about it in the fic, because of how unrelated it is to the main plot, would you be cool with talking about it on tumblr a la battle of yokohama? your world building is so fantastic, i always want to know more, even if it’s not technically necessary

I’m fine talking about it here because it truly will have little to no function in pez itself. The most it does in the actual fic is add to the reasons why the entirety of Japan is so unreasonably fixated on Izuku. It will barely have any mention in the fic itself.

Dabi in the background of pez is fumbling his way through a redemption arc. he and the league are bitter fucking divorcees who still blame the other's in law for the break up. its messy and complicated between them right now okay. everyone's crying and refusing to admit that they're crying. societal collapse is being delayed because shigaraki won't stop crashing out over his ex with the piercings and the scars. dabi refuses to fucking admit he misses them (he fucking misses them)

Effectively, one day, Dabi donned his shitty fucking Matrix coat and went out to get a strawberry danish and listened to some lady sobbing to her mother on the phone about how she was scared to let the kids go to school and scared to go outside now because of how bad it was getting, about how she knew three people who had been attacked by villains in the last month when she used to not know any, and how afraid she was every single day that she'd be the next one. Money was tight, they'd lose everything if she ended up hospitalized or worse, the baby was sick and she couldn't get her to a doctor because the entire street got shut down for another goddamn villain attack, and she's scared every day.

And he didn't feel good about it. He didn't feel good about it at all.

In fact, it reminded him a lot of being five years old and being afraid to wake up every morning because he didn't know what his dad would do to him that day. It reminded him a lot of hiding in his closet with his hand clamped over his own mouth, listening to the creaks in the house to try and figure out if his father was angry.

Anyway, it was an intolerable amount of self reflection. couldn't recommend it less.

It ended up making him go back to the league and being like "okay are we really being true to stain's message" to see if maybe they should do a bit of a rebrand.

Except they all have the communication skills of a half-deaf wolverine with a hormonal imbalance, so it quickly devolved into a lot of "fuck you and your daddy complex" on both sides and "you just wish stain fucked you huh" weirdly also on both sides and spinner ended up crying in the back room because it reminded him of his parents divorcing. shigaraki's been listening to a weird amount of taylor swift since and all for one just isn't sure what to do with. that.

Now Dabi Is Rebranding And He's Going To Be Like The Cooler Stain Stain 2.0 The Stain That Kills His Fucking Dad. No He Doesn't Just Wish Stain Fucked Him Shut The Fuck Up Shigaraki.

He has admittedly suffered some setbacks. His own sister kidnapping him was not ideal. The fact that he can't go a week without getting in a public and embarrassing screaming match with the rest of the league that usually involves at least one person crying is also not ideal. That one time he accidentally got caught up in some mission involving Quirkless Tin Tin and his baby brother's pet psychopath and now they keep insisting that he's their CI now and he keeps telling them to fuck off before he kills them because he's not going to be their fucking CI and he made the mistake of complaining about it to fuyumi and now she won't stop crying tears of joy because he's bonding with the boyfriend shouto hasn't figured out he has yet?

So not fucking ideal.

But after much trial, much error, he managed to get this fucking rebrand on the rails. He found a computer nerd for the HPSC who had the right kind of dirt on him to make blackmail a dream and threw in a "i'm going to set you on fire if you don't do what i say" for good measure and He Fucking Did It He Got It Stuff To Strike At The Heart of This Society's Corruption Fuck You Shigaraki He Is Not A Washed Up Wannabe With Daddy Issues Shigaraki's The Washed Up Wannabe With Daddy Issues He Doesn't Miss Them Every Day Fuck Off.

He was hoping for shit on his dad but the computer nerd mostly got him all the shit about the HPSC buying boy slaves or whatever which was ultimately disappointing so he made a bunch of copies of the data at a shitty gamer cafe that he did not run into shigaraki at absolutely not no one cried at all and then mailed a flash drive to every single major and minor news network and called it a fucking day.

he uh.

the package.

he forgot to sign it.

so the credit. he didn't. get it. exactly.

And he could make an announcement that it was totally him but 1) like 97 different villains and criminal organizations and vague dissidents living in their moms' basements who didn't put in the fucking work immediately took credit and 2) how the fuck does he like. take credit for things. does he make a twitter account. does he tweet it. there are 17 fake twitter accounts pretending to be him how does he even authenticate this shit.

he immediately started lying to himself about how he was planning to do this anonymously from the start and called it a fucking day. great job, dabi, 100% according to plan, he's killing this anti-hero thing.

Hawks woke up one morning and oh, look at that, his entire life was ruined. It was already on the rocks and now it's at the bottom of the sea. Funny how he missed that bit.

The computer nerd had grabbed a fuck ton of HPSC's worst and most corrupt things that they'd ever done and, haha, a lot of them were done to him. So. So fun. That.

As it turns out, the press has Multiple Field Days when they get their hands on the invoice for the actual government buying you. That time they hired a therapist to literally gaslight him because he started to question his training? Haha, there. All those times he was hospitalized while being raised as their boy slave?

Haha. There.

He knows this is his situationship's fault he fucking knows it dabi you son of a bitch--

It's not all about him. There's a bunch of scattered bullshit bad things the HPSC had done. But, weirdly enough, the other guy that featured prominently in this data dump was All Might.

The HPSC had apparently set a standard of backing the fuck off of anything All Might so much as looked at. There's a weird number of memos over the years hurriedly canceling whatever shady project they were involved in and making sure every single thing was above board if All Might so much as sneezed in the direction of something. The HPSC had set a policy of ducking for fucking cover every single time All Might became more than passively aware of their existence.

Because All Might was the kind of guy who could go up against the system and win.

The HPSC had only grown as powerful as it was because of All Might, in a way. They rode his fucking coattails the entire path up to relevance. All Might's career revolutionized modern heroics, and well. If you have a revitalized heroics system, then you need to give more power to the agency watching it, right?

The HPSC was disturbingly aware of the fact that All Might had, in a way, brought them into the world and could take them out of it again. They were afraid of him in a way they were not afraid of any other hero alive.

Because they had nothing on him.

The man was a fucking ghost. He was legally required to give them his real information and that still gave them fucking nothing to work with. They could find no scandals attached to his name. They could dig up absolutely no personal ties or links. Yagi Toshinori had no family, no social media, and had barely any paper records associated with him outside of his schooling. He was as squeaky clean as he appeared, maybe, or maybe he was just good at hiding dirt. The HPSC found out that he was injured at the same time as everyone else, and that fucking terrified them. They had nothing to keep him in line with, and they couldn't figure out if it didn't exist or if he was just better at the game than they were.

So they watched themselves if All Might took more than a passing glance their way.

They got scared.

Hawks learned, for the first time, that he was a little bit of an answer to All Might. Which was a weird revelation this late in the game. He thought he'd managed to dig up most of what the HPSC had on him, but apparently not. He wasn't exactly designed to replace All Might or beat all might. He was meant to do what All Might did, just for the HPSC.

They made him to be a young, popular, attractive hero. They could have raised him to operate from the shadows and have more freedom and less scrutiny, but they pushed him into the spotlight early, and they did it to try and replicate the threat that All Might posed to them.

All Might was so dangerous because the public loved him. The public trusted him. The public would tear down the government if he gave the word. So if they were able to manufacture a hero that the public loved, then maybe the public would protect the HPSC at that hero's word.

Hawks found out some things about himself from that data dump right at the same time as the rest of the world. He wasn't thrilled by it.

Anyway he woke up after a sixteen hour shift to 732 emails and the police at his front door.

The Japanese government freaked out, see, because press had been sort of shit since All Might retired, and society had sort of been on the verge of chaos for a while, and quite literally the biggest thing standing between them and the total collapse of the yen for the past year and change has been the fact that the entire world developed a parasocial relationship with twenty random fucking japanese teenagers. And those twenty teenagers were borderline inaccessible because their teacher threatened to bomb government buildings if anyone so much as suggested allowing a camera to exist in their vicinity. And they can't fucking push their luck with it either. One of the kids is all might's secret son. All Might will look at them.

So instead, the Japanese Government said, "WE ARE TAKING THE BOY SLAVE ALLEGATIONS VERY SERIOUSLY. WE THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT ARE AGAINST BOY SLAVES AND DO NOT HAVE ANY. HERE IS A GOVERNMENT WATCHDOG PANEL WE ARE ASSEMBLING TO INVESTIGATE THE BOY SLAVE CLAIMS."

And the HPSC said, "WE ARE FULLY COOPERATING WITH THE BOY SLAVE INVESTIGATION. WE DO NOT HAVE ANY BOY SLAVES. THAT IS CRAZY TALK. THESE ARE OBVIOUSLY FABRICATED FILES. WHY WOULD WE HAVE 2398 TOP SECRET MEMOS TALKING ABOUT HOW AFRAID WE ARE OF ALL MIGHT SEEING WHAT WE'RE DOING. WE LOVE ALL MIGHT. HUGE FAN OF HIM AND HIS SECRET SON. LOOK THE PERSON WHO DID THIS DIDN'T EVEN SIGN IT. OBVIOUSLY FAKE NEWS."

And then they went to Hawks, their boy slave, and they said, "you better fucking tell that government watchdog that you aren't our boy slave"

And Hawks stared at the ceiling for an extraordinarily long time.

When he was done, Hawks said to the government watchdog, "I'm not their boy slave," But He Was.

And the government watchdog said, "We have 827 pages of reports that are just the team of psychiatrists they hired trying to figure out the best way to make sure you would say that if anyone ever asked and frankly some of the methods they were using violate the Geneva convention so we low key can't believe you"

And Hawks, who knew that happened, because it happened to him, said, "That never happened."

And the government watchdog said, "We can't believe you about that either."

And Hawks said "that's fair" and went home to scream into his pillow.

And the government watch dog had told the HPSC, "please do not talk to hawks for the duration of this investigation" and the HPSC said to them "of course we would NEVER" and then they immediately texted Hawks 73 times about how he better fucking make this government watchdog investigation go the fuck away.

Hawks doesn't actually believe this is going to save him. He's not going to inspect whether or not that belief is the product of the years and years of careful manipulation and abuse that were apparently religiously documented and are now archived on the fucking new york times website.

The thing is that He Had A Plan To Stop Being A Boy Slave. It Had 923 Steps. He Was Going To Fucking Do It Okay. He Was Going To Get Out And Go Be A Fisherman Or Herd Sheep Or Whatever The Fuck Former Government Boy Slaves Did After Attaining Freedom. It involved an extraordinary amount of blackmail and political maneuvering and he was going to fucking manage it, okay? And--and this is fucking key--it did not involve his tragic backstory becoming publicly available information.

He is in hell right now. The HPSC won't stop blowing up his phone. The government watchdog people won't stop asking him if the HPSC is blowing up his phone, which they told them not to do. they keep trying to send him a government therapist to try and unpack what, if anything, happened to him, and he has a profound distrust for therapists and particularly government therapists for No Particular Reason. Teenage girls won't stop making sad edits of him on tiktok. Podcasts are now dedicated to him. Not that he's a topic covered by the podcast in an episode or even a season--entire podcasts are dedicated to going through and unpacking government records discussing how they should better torture and condition him, their boy slave, to do exactly as they say. Too many people have his medical documents about all those times the real life government gaslit him in childhood to think it was normal to have the real life government beat you. Fucking Buzzfeed wrote some article about him and some American government heroics training program fuck up and it was still the number one trending article 24 hours after Midoriya Izuku's cosmically bad luck kicked in and landed him on the globally trending page of twitter. All Might's secret son trended twice and separately in like a thirteen minute span and it was still not enough to dethrone that fucking article.

Anyway this has been going on for like a month and a half, two months in pez and Hawks is fucking miserable. Izuku and Tokoyami actually have little to no idea what is in the HPSC document dump out of respect for Hawks, because they both have violently confronted their own fame on multiple occasions and determined that they hated it. They were not going to read another man's medical records, especially not one that they knew.

This came out when they and Miruko ended up at Hawks' apartment in the immediate aftermath, eating takeout and listening to Tokoyami's halloween ambiance playlist, because Hawks has no other friends. Following a profoundly uncomfortable three hours and Mr. Aizawa texting them multiple times to confirm if they were actually engaging in approved activities under the UA internship guidelines (he refused to believed that Izuku was able to exist outside as long as he had without causing massive property damage or ending up on the news and also was under the correct impression that Hawks was on leave to deal with the fallout so what the fuck was tokoyami interning for), Izuku and Tokoyami confirmed for Hawks that they had no goddamn clue what happened because they had decided to avoid it unless Hawks told them otherwise. They set up filters on their social media accounts wherever they could and just didn't click on any goddamn links. This made Hawks cry and once again confirm that Izuku and Tokoyami were some of his best (only) friends.

The weird side effect of all of this has been an added focus on Izuku, strangely enough.

Because society doesn't want to deal with the mess that is reforming the HPSC. They want a return to normal. They want All Might back. All Might apparently had the HPSC diving for fucking cover with a glance, and so surely, Deku can manage the same.

He's the next All Might, after all.

[recent-rose]

intrigued by the idea that jayce dooms viktor to become the herald because he loves viktor too much to let him die. but mage!viktor could also choose not to save jayce from the storm in order to save himself from that fate, and yet he too loves too much to let go of jayce. endless cycle only broken by their choice to go together.

[charmac]

I have rearranged the episode links on the blog by airing order (as opposed to production order) now that we can accurately deduce the order based on the info we have!

[pseudophan]

extremely important question do any buffy fans here actually like angel (the series not the character) because i swear all i see lately is people saying it sucks and they couldn't get through it and it's like you can't ALL be that wrong

[aromacaque]

I have a question for you: Do you think the narrative treats wukong and macaque unfairly when it comes to Consequence or their actions ?,like mistakes they make in the series story,how characters treat them,like how wukong got called for the samdhi fire and not macaque that hurt Mei and tang,when he forced tang to Release it.

TLDR: No.

Macaque does get called wrong for what he does?? I've seen a lot of takes and stuff that get annoyed at him for having a redemption without him apologizing first and stuff floating around, but I honestly can't even understand those because he hasn't fully redeemed himself yet. His character arc isn't over. He hasn't even gotten enough time to develop that direction yet. He's very much an anti-hero narratively, always has been, and he's only just now starting to stray from that but I'm not sure by how much.

If he apologized at all in season 4 that would've been awful, out of character, and so forced. In season 5 not only would it still have been out of character and forced, but there was no time for that with everything else happening. I do not want to see him do that unless he works his way to it properly, which he hasn't.

He's a really morally grey character and the show isn't even trying to hide that narratively because he's always treated as his own unit separate to the others. That is only POSSIBLY starting to change after season 5 since he's getting more involved with the whole group, but we'll find that out in season 6.

But also I wouldn't be surprised if he never apologizes. I think the entire main cast has started to see him as "the weird emotionally repressed monkey who doesn't know how to talk to people normally and is a little bit of a freak about it" which like, y'know. Not a conventional forgiveness by any means. It's acceptance of him being there at best. I also think his actions are meaningful too. Red Son has also never apologized, and yet his actions have pretty much done it for him. Red Son feels easier to forgive because his antagonism was always on the more comical side, but I think that point still has standing.

I think there's an unbalance in how much of Wukong's side we see, but I don't think that's a narrative issue either. For one, I think they've been building up to it. These two aren't the main focus of the story (which only has 10 episode seasons with 4 episode specials) so it's gonna take a while. They're a B-plot at best, realistically probably more of a C-plot. Macaque is more willing than Wukong is to talk about what happened between them, too. Wukong tends to shut down when he's faced with things about his past that genuinely upset him. He doesn't talk about the pilgrims because he still grieves them. He isolated himself on his mountain for 600 years after imprisoning his last "friend" (DBK) that was still alive and came out of that isolation in hopes to "retire."

There are a lot of visuals and hints/clues to Wukong's sides of things and his feelings. With the rock of their painting still being there after all these centuries, knowing that Macaque is implied to be a large part of what he was getting stronger for (and what he sees as his worst mistake), the way he treats Macaque in general which is an exception to how he treats everybody else, etc.

I think, if anything, how closed off he is regarding information about Macaque reveals a lot about Wukong as a character because he's really avoidant. Which speaking of...

The main issue the others have with Wukong has always been his lack of communication with everyone, generally. Which is only made a big deal in seasons 2-3. He had a tendency to handle things on his own if he felt like nobody else could, but he does that without telling anyone what exactly his plans are. He shoulders way too much responsibility in season 2 and 3, which ironically makes him irresponsible.

Mei's issue with him in season 3 is that he was leading them into a very dangerous plan without telling them exactly what was going on, and also while withholding information from them. On top of his negligence in season 2 causing MK a lot of issues. Both are understandable things for Mei to get upset at him for. He makes up for it by apologizing to MK and being more communicative. Their relationship seems fine after season 3.

Pigsy is the only other one who had genuine issue with Wukong, which makes sense. He's MK's dad. He also feels like Wukong let MK down in season 2. He's the first to find out Wukong is withholding information in season 3. He still treats Wukong with respect, Pigsy is just like that and is protective of MK. He also doesn't like Macaque so it's not a Wukong specific thing.

Same with everybody else, his relationship to Wukong seems fine after season 3. They all help him with his house after it gets destroyed because he's their friend and they care about him. They wouldn't do that if they had a big issue with him still. Well, Sandy would, but more importantly Pigsy and Mei help with it. Tang gives .. moral support? But he's also there.

Wukong gets mad at Macaque for what he does during the samadhi fire, but Tang stops him because there was a part of him that felt compelled to do it, which is really important because it's part of establishing Tang's powers and connection to the golden cicada (reincarnation, descendant, whatever all of them are) but also Wukong attacking Macaque there wasn't gonna help anyone in that situation. On top of being in character for Tang to stop him, he doesn't like conflict much. He also learns a bit about Macaque in Benched and I think Tang is smart enough to know Macaque is a little more complicated than just being a villain because he attempts to talk Macaque out of hunting them down because he realizes that he'd have a better shot at defeating LBD with everyone. Which Macaque literally can't agree to because he CAN'T switch sides without getting killed, but I digress.

Not to mention, I think all of the characters are aware Macaque is on his own side. MK is immediately because he knows Macaque. Tang figures it out. There's always room to work with him if the right cards align, unless he's being forced on a specific side against his will.

I personally think it's made obvious enough that Wukong has good intentions with his mistakes. The fandom villainizes him a lot for some reason. Genuinely don't know how because the show certainly isn't doing that. It's also pretty well established, in my opinion, that Macaque is an unreliable narrator and what happened between him and Wukong is more nuanced than he makes it out to seem. That's PROVEN in season 4!!

Also not sure how Macaque is always characterized as the more mature one in the fandom. In the past? Macaque was more mature. Seasons 1-3? It was Wukong. Season 5? They're kinda starting to get on equal footing more... sorta.

In season 4, the brotherhood brings up a lot of Wukong's past mistakes, because that is what gets him imprisoned by heaven, but it also makes it really obvious how much he has changed over the years. To me, the way it comes across, is that the writers are putting emphasis on how guilty Wukong feels for his past behavior. They are not telling us that he's a bad person. Wukong constantly feels like he's making up for the person he used to be before he met Tripitaka and he spends the entire series trying to mitigate any possible hurt he can cause. That's why he keeps pushing them away at first and why he doesn't want MK responsible for LBD whatsoever.

And, to be honest, A Lifetime of Past Mistakes was largely about his and Macaque's relationship more-so than it was about the other things. It just reaffirms and pushes into the viewers face that the brotherhood is in the wrong with only a little grey area.

Azure shows up claiming to help, then pulls the rug out from Mei and MK's feet because he was manipulating them the entire time, and the only reason they didn't know is because Wukong literally was not able to tell them. A Lifetime of Past Mistakes basically just shows that Wukong became too power obsessed (anybody who has read jttw already knew that) and it reinforces that the brotherhood's intentions had been misguided from the start and Azure was the main contributor to that. Wukong played a roll, but it's not like Wukong lead the brotherhood astray. They were already doing that to themselves. Wukong was the only one to break out of that and change for the better.

Azure's issue with Wukong is unfair to him too! He blames Wukong for everything wrong that has happened, but MK is the one that points out how unfair that is by verbally telling them to his face, "None of this was Monkey King's fault." Because it literally isn't. Wukong isn't responsible for his past enemies mistakes. Any of them.

Even Macaque himself acknowledges that he believed (past tense) Wukong was a bad guy because Azure wanted them all to believe that, but when Wukong "betrayed" the brotherhood he was imprisoning them most likely for what they were doing to the land. Like they literally killed the entire land around them. They're not good people they were killing the land. Macaque doesn't even like these people even remotely. The brotherhood wasn't good at all, even though Azure had good intentions.

I SEE SO MUCH MISCHARACTERIZATION ABOUT THIS IN THE FANDOM IT DRIVES ME INSANE BECAUSE THIS ISN'T EVEN SUBTEXT THEY VERBALLY TELL US ALL OF THIS INFORMATION. I usually don't bring that up in more analysis-type posts but I have never been in a fandom where I'm constantly wondering if I'm watching the same show as everybody else. I remember there was a joke a couple years ago about like "lmk fans have never watched the show" but sometimes I don't know if it's a joke ..... How are people villainizing Wukong and not Azure. I don't think either of them should be fully villainized, but if either of them are going to be how would it ever be Wukong I feel like I'm going insane over here tbh.

Also even in season 4 they are all (bar MK and Wukong, who have a dif relationship with him) still scared of (or unsettled by) Macaque, and in season 5 nobody interacts with him enough for us to really know how they feel about him. None of them really interact with him though, besides MK and Wukong. MK still has his own hold ups about Macaque, but MK is also the same guy who saw good in Macaque, because he's always been an anti-hero narratively, and convinced him to help them fight LBD.

Nobody even announces concern for Macaque after he sacrifices himself except MK and Wukong. Nobody announces concern over him when he uses too much of his power except Wukong. Nobody thinks to look back for him or include him at the end of the world except Wukong.

Macaque also shows a considerable amount of concern for Wukong in season 5 as well. It's very balanced, they just have a very complicated relationship.

Sandy includes Macaque in the group hug, but this is Sandy we are talking about. He sees the good in everybody.

Macaque did help them save MK though, it's obvious that he's trying to be better (even if he hasn't verbally apologized to anybody yet), they all are at the very least vaguely aware he was working with LBD against his will, I'm not sure if they even fully know what happened during Shadow Play, and MK has been the center of most of what Macaque does. Wukong is on better terms with him so of course they'd let him celebrate with them.

There's a lot of different relationships and it's a lot to balance in the short runtime this series has. I don't think the writing is perfect and I wish some character dynamics got more time to have focus put on them, but overall the narrative is doing it's thing and I don't think it's doing it poorly.

Macaque is an anti-hero who is slowly starting to better himself and establish himself more into alignment with the protagonists. None of them have fully forgiven him, necessarily, but they are able to understand him well enough as a person and have relationships with him that are in depth enough to know he's not irredeemable or inherently awful. Narratively he is established as his own party, clearly not a great person, but we can also see that potential in him and see it grow as the series progresses. We can also sympathize with him, he's had a rough life and it's what leads him to making some poor decisions.

Wukong is a protagonist who is well-intentioned despite mistakes he may make along the way, is doing his best to be what MK needs, is able to realize when he needs to apologize and change his behavior if he's done something wrong, and is trying his best to do justice. We can see that he cares a lot about MK and his friends and would do anything to keep them safe while being non-violent and fairly level-headed, rational, and non-confrontational unless the situation seriously calls for it.

[martyrbat]

[ID: Bruce Wayne and Minhkhoa Khan breaking up in the rain. Bruce is in normal civilian clothes while Khoa has a white cloak on and a mask that hides his eyes. Khoa persuades, “We'll start in a small city in Southeast Asia, and systematically dismantle its criminal underworld. Out all the corrupt politicians. And then we'll go to the next, and the next. We'll build a high-tech base of operations that moves with us. We'll live well off the coffers of the gangs we dismantle. We'll expand from there. In time, maybe we could even tackle a city like Gotham. Not like boys, but like men at the peak of our skills.” Bruce simply tells him, “No.” Minhkhoa points an accusatory finger at him as his angry response has been edited to be a post by @/egirlbutternubs that reads, “But babe you love being gaslit.” END ID]

[samsblades]

the fact that almost every fic (specifically x reader bc i haven't seen anything else so far) for sinners as i scroll through the tag has been for remmick is so crazy and insane and you guys really missed the point of the movie i think. i fear. you missed the point. of all the characters to blorbo-ify you really chose the white man huh