#my hero academia is ruining my life one character at a time

[sweetest-florida-blue-peach]

Izuku Midoriya is the type of boy that I would have a childhood crush on for years because look at him:

Look at this little bean. He's too precious for this world. How could you not think he was adorable?

However, I think that as we enter high school, I'd start trying to move on because "he'd never see me as anything more than a friend" but then OUT OF NOWHERE HE BE LOOKING LIKE THIS:

AND SUDDENLY I'M THE BIGGEST SIMP OUT THERE.

PUMP THE BRAKES, 'ZUKU. MY HEART CAN ONLY HANDLE SO MUCH.

[linkspooky]

DOOMED SIBLINGS: THE TODOROKIS VS. THE FIRE NATION ROYAL FAMILY

I received an ask in my inbox about how Zuko doesn't owe Azula any forgiveness. Truthfully I wasn't even going to respond because this isn't an avatar blog, but then I watched this video.

Not only do I disagree with the basically everything in this video, but I am going to make the argument that both Zuko' and Azula's arcs are both incomplete with the way the show left the two of them in the final showdown.

In order to make my argument I'm going to compare Azula and Zuko's relationship in avatar to Shoto and Toya's relationship in My Hero Academia and use the latter as a more positive example.

Unnecessary Redemption Arcs

The common fandom opinion I want to argue against is this idea that Azula's ending is a perfect tragedy, and therefore doesn't need to be expanded upon. There's also a sentiment that redeeming Azula would somehow ruin the impact of this perfect tragedy.

I'm about to argue against both of these points.

Azula's arc doesn't work as a tragedy.

Because of this her arc is unsatisfying and unfinished.

I'm going to address the first bullet point but before that let me add another disclaimer. The reason why I think Azula's arc isn't an effectively written tragedy isn't because I like Azula.

Before we even get into the My Hero Academia comparison let me bring up something completely different. I do like Azula, but I like Terra Markov from Teen Titans a lot more and I would not change a thing about her tragic end.

AZULA'S ARC IS NOT A WELL-WRITTEN TRAGEDY

Terra in the comics is what a lot of people accuse Azula of being. She is stated in the text and by her creators to be an unfeeling sociopath. She was also never intended by her creators to be redeemed.

[About Terra] The very first time we see her, she’s trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty. It’s just that all the fans assumed because we went out of our way to make her cute — but not too cute, with the buck teeth and everything — everyone would assume that she was gonna become good by the end and that was never the case. First thing, we made a promise that day that we would never renege on our view that she’d never become good. It’s sometimes hard to do that with characters you like. You want them to become good or something like that. But we never liked the character enough—because we knew what we were doing with her—we never allowed ourselves to fall for the character. Because that’s bad. That’s bad storytelling. You’re doing what you want as a fan at that particular point, not as the creators. T

Now let me clarify, both creators of New Teen Titans say some nasty things about Terra and don't recognize her sexual abuse, but here's the thing. You don't have to read a story 100% the way the author intended, sometimes the story says one thing and the text says something different.

I am going to use Judas Contract as an example of a story where the character from the start was never intended to be redeemed and why that's a positive in this case.

Terra is a teenage girl, the bastard daughter of the king of Markovia and a random American woman who presumably has had no stable home her entire life because she's working as a mercenary at fifteen. She teams up with a man that is in his mid fifties and even starts a sexual relationship with him (this is statutory rape she cannot consent) and Deathstroke uses her to infiltrate the Teen Titans and learn as much as possible.

Terra is sent to live with the team and spy on them for several months. The whole time she only ever engages with them in a fake spunky persona, and never shows her real cutthroat self. She leads Beast Boy on in a fake romance to make him trust her and secure her place on the team. The way you'd usually expect this arc to go is that Terra would grow fond of the team and be torn in her loyalties.

Yeah, that never happens.

Terra loathes the Titans. In fact she's developed a superiority complex about her meta human abilities and she doesn't understand why anyone would use their powers to help others. She despises the concept of superheroes in general, and because of that never bonds with any of the Titans. Her feelings never change from start to finish, because her creators intentionally wrote her as a character that can't be redeemed.

Terra is written to be a psychopath, but even with that intention in mind there are scene that shows a greater range of emotions. She has what could amount to a trauma flashback when Beast Boy too aggressively flirts with her and tries to kiss her and she reacts violently, trying to bury him under the earth.

Let's go ahead and interpret Terra as what is used as the fictional definition of a "sociopath" that is someone who feels no bonds with other people, someone with shallow emotions and someone devoid of guilt. Even if we interpret her that way, her story is still meant to be read as a tragedy.

Terra succeeds in her mission of infiltrating the Titans. Slade captures most of them, and the only remaining member Dick Grayson goes missing. Dick Grayson then unites with Slade's son Jericho, and the two of them team up in order to rescue the rest of their friends.

Even after all she's done the Titans try to make pleas to Terra during the final battle, which she not only rejects but responds to with violence. Which only confirms what I said above, Terra never grew to love them, she never regretted her actions, she only ever engaged with them with lies.

(Terra always lies, Terra always lies, Terra always lies).

Terra is declared by Raven to be devoid of emotions: "Her thinking is unlike ours. She feels no true love or hate. Her soul is corrupt. What she does is done without remorse."

Even after Raven declares this, however she still pleads with Terra to stop because she's going to hurt herself. Terra feels Slade betrayed her because he favored his son Jericho over her, so she decides to take both Slade and the Titans down. As the Titans fight her she begins to mentally fall apart ignoring their appeals to her and lashing out at everything around her. Eventually she makes one last attempt to everything around her, but the Titans escape and she only manages to bury herself.

At no point in the fight do the Titans give up on trying to reach her even as she's loudly screaming how much she hates them. Even after she's buried and it looks like she's dead, Gar and Donna both try desperately to dig her up on the slim hope she's still alive. When they find the body they even give her a funeral afterwards, even though they all think that Terra was beyond redemption.

Even the prose narration that accompanies her death is incredibly melancholy and bemoans her fate, at the same time as it calls her a outright sociopath.

There's no reasoning with her now. However slim, whatever sanity Tara Markov possessed is gone. Now there is only primal hatred! Hatred born, nurtured, and fanned. Hatred that festers and grows without care, without feeling, without plan. her pursed lips part and the sounds which echoes force are garbled and inhuman. Hot, boiling blood gushes wildly from the earth's open wounds, its skin fractures and cracks, and if a world could cry, it surely would. Her name is Tara Markov and she is little more than sxiteen years old, and due to the fault of no one but herself she is insane. No one taught her to hate, yet she hates without cause, without reason. No one taught her to destroy, yet she destroys with glee, with relish. Don't look for reasons which do not exist, plainly Tara Markov is what she is, and she has taken a great power and made it as corrupt as she. Hers was the power over the earth itself she could have brought life to deserts, hat to the frozen tundra, food to sraving millions. She could have damned raging rivers, and tunneled water to packed lands dry and dead. her powers were limited only by the mind which controlled them. A mind which sought not hope, not love, not life, but death.

If you go with the text that she is just a sociopath beyond redemption who hates and hates and hates for no reason, the narrative still mourns her because a sixteen year old with her whole life ahead of being consumed by hatred and then dying because of it is in fact sad.

If you read into the subtext then you can argue that the events of the story, contradicts what the narration is telling us. Terra is being sexually groomed and groomed as a child soldier by a man who is much older than her, even if she thinks he's a partner he clearly has all power in the relationship.

If you think about it that way then Terra is the ultimate bad victim. She doesn't cry and call for help as a victim of sexual abuse, instead she tries to claim power for herself, she manipulates, and she destroys any chance she had for a genuine relationship because she only sees all relationships as transactions she can gain or lose from.

Even if you only go with the first interpretation, the narrative still remains tragic because the Titans themselves did not want to give up on her, they did not want to watch this sixteen-year-old girl destroy herself. They never stop reaching out for her and it doesn't work, because there was no way out for Terra but death.

Here's the thing I don't think Terra's status as a sexual victim automatically means an ending where she dies is offensive. It reflects a reality that victims like Terra often go unseen because they don't present their victimhood in palatable ways, and by the time anyone notices it's far too late. Sometimes tragedies are meant to reflect a reality where many people do not get saved.

There's two reasons that Judas Contract works as a tragic story. Number one the creators planned Terra's ending right from the beginning. Which meant they never gave her any moment where she shows that she's redeemable. There's no genuine bond between her and the titans, no wrestling with the guilt of her actions, nothing.

Number two, Judas Contract is Terra's story from beginning to end. It begins with her betrayal of the Titans, and ends with her death. The death is also brought upon herself by her fatal flaw her hatred, which is what makes her the protagonist of a tragedy. Tragedies are stories where heroes are undone by their flaws. Terra also goes out on her own terms. She buries herself underneath her own rocks. Her death is a direct consequence of her inability to let go of her hatred. Terra's not fridged for anybody else's arc, she retains her agency until the exact moment of her death.

To simplify into bullet points, Judas Contract works because:

The creators thought out what they wanted to do with Terra.

Judas contract is Terra's story.

Now, getting to the part where we actually talk about Avatar, and I start complaining about that awful, awful video.

AZULA'S ARC IS NOT WELL THOUGHT OUT

I just went on a long tangent on how Terra, a character written to have no redeemable qualities can still be tragic. How the creators marked her as clearly doomed from the start, and how she brought about her end on herself, how there no redemption for Terra. How this girl had no real chance, and how regardless of the fact Terra is a lil baby sociopath her fall is still tragic because of how well structured the tragedy is surrounding her.

It's awful to kill off a sixteen year old victim of sexual abuse, but the ending just fits because Terra represents a certain type of bad, unsympathetic victim who doesn't get saved.

Azula's arc isn't as well structured. The ending does not fit. I'm going to start by refuting some points in the awful, awful video I did not like.

"Maybe it's okay if Azula's story ends where it does in the series we would separate how we would treat a real 14-year-old girl from a villain in a series, ad that's why any redemption arc isn't need i a story after all. A character needs of deserves a redemption arc when it becomes the most meaningful way to explore their character and place in the story, but a character deserving redemption usually comes before the story really needing it, and I don't think Azula's done anything to deserve it yet. They've got to exhibit some willingness and action to change..."

So the main reason I'm using Terra as my first example is because Terra is the kind of character that Hello Future Me is describing. Terra was written with the specific intention she'd never experience a change of heart, all of the friendships she makes with the Titans are fake, she very loudly experiences no remorse, or even self-reflection over what she is. Terra's pretty proudly a monster and she never experiences any kind of self-doubt or regret over what she's become.

I can disprove right away Hello Future Me's blanket statement (with no actual cited examples, just trust him guys) that Azula never did anything to hint she may deserve redemption. That suggests Azula is an entirely selfish character who uses, manipulates and thinks she's right and worst of all is comfortable being the way she is, and therefore incapable of doing the self-reflection necessary for change.

Azula does show the capacity to do selfless actions several times in the narrative, and even consider the feelings of others. There's the apology scene with Ty Lee and the way she interacts with her friends in general with the Beach where when she's not fighting in a war or trying to complete a mission for her father Azula 1) interacts with her friends in a normal way and 2) seems to express a desire to experience normal relationships not the hierarchical ones she's experienced all of her life.

However, that's not the example I'm going to use as her save the cat moment. I generally intend to interpret that as a sign that even though she treats Mai and Ty Lee as subordinates and that power she holds over them eventually leads to them leaving her, their friendship isn't just Azula abusing them and lording her authority over their heads 24/7.

No, Azula's save the cat moments all revolve around Zuko. Which is funny, because the entire fandom seems to regard Azula as Zuko's evil little sister who exists to do nothing but torment her.

The first and biggest is Azula deciding to bring Zuko home in Ba Sing Se, and telling a lie to her father that he was the one to slay the avatar.

Ozai: I am proud of you, Prince Zuko. I am proud because you and your sister conquered Ba Sing Se. I am proud because when your loyalty was tested by your treacherous uncle, you did the right thing and captured the traitor. And I am proudest of all of your most legendary accomplishment: you slayed the Avatar.

Zuko: [Shocked.] What did you hear? Ozai: Azula told me everything. She said she was amazed and impressed at your power and ferocity at the moment of truth. [Inspired partly by this post]

Now the show seems to regard this action as Azula being an evil temptress who is there to tempt Zuko back to her side with everything he thinks he ever wanted.

That's only if you regard it from Zuko's perspective.

Think for a moment from Azula's perspective. Number one, Azula is someone thoroughly indoctrinated into Fire Nation propaganda who measures her self-worth based on 1) military achievement and 2) her father's approval and assessment of her talents. In Azula's own logic (wrongheaded as it is) she's helping Zuko. She's bringing him back home with his place in the line of succession restored and his father's approval.

Azula doesn't benefit from this gesture at all, in fact if her father discovers the lie she has as much to lose as Zuko does.

Now Zuko insinuates that Azula only brought Zuko along and told her father that he was the one who killed the avatar so she could let him take the fall if the avatar turned out to be alive.

However, if you look at the actual order of events that doesn't make sense. Azula saw the avatar die, she didn't know about the spirit water, and therefore had no way of knowing Aang could come back. In fact, it's Zuko who 1) knew about the spirit water and 2) decides to keep the spirit water and the fact the avatar might have survived a secret that is throwing Azula under the bus. After all she has as much to lose as he did and instead of sharing that information with her he decides to keep it all to himself.

Now Azula does imply that if the avatar were to turn out to be alive all of Zuko's glory would dry up, but this is only after Zuko 1) throws accusations at her and 2) makes it's pretty clear he's lying to her putting her on the defensive.

This is also a scenario where Azula doesn't have much to gain by bringing Zuko back, if you look at it from her perspective. If Azula just lets Zuko rot in a ba sing se prison, then her claim to the throne is secure. With Zuko back he's restored in the line of succession. She also, when making the decision to invite Zuko to her side probably didn't need him for her plan to succeed.

There is a dramatic moment of Zuko choosing to side with Azula over Katara which turns the tide in Azula's favor, but Azula can't see into the future and therefore wouldn't be able to predict that happening. If you look at it from Azula's perspective she 1) successfully infiltrated the city, 2) already had the Dai Lee in her pocket. She likely already thought she had the city secure at this point so her decision to extend a hand out to Zuko is therefore likely motivated by selflessness instead of self-interest.

That's important because usually when Azula usually only gives her help to others if it also benefits her in some way. Azula might genuinely see her recruiting Mai and Ty Lee to her side as a member of the royal family extending her favor and giving them status and security in their positions but it has the underlying motivation of 1) she keeps them in a position to beneath her and therefore in her complete control.

Azula will interact with Mai and Ty Lee like friends on the surface, as long she maintains control over them, but if they do anything to something that displeases her she'll do anything to regain her control.

Mai: I thought you ran off and joined the circus. You said it was your calling. Ty Lee: Well, Azula called harder.

This is set up in Azula's very first interaction with Ty Lee. Azula greets her like an old friends, Ty Lee even seems happy to see her, but the second Ty Lee tries to say no to her Azula goes to extreme lengths to "persuade her". Azula's friendship with Mai and Ty Lee is an abusive friendship because there is a power differential and even if Azula feels genuine affection for them both it's clear they're not allowed to say no. Mai and Ty Lee are put into positions where it's in their best interest to please her, and live in fear of the consequences if they don't do just that.

Here's the thing, I'm not arguing that Azula didn't deserve any consequences for her actions. I'm arguing that the setup doesn't match her eventual ending. Azula is set up to have Mai and Ty Lee leave her from the very first scene that Azula interacts with Ty Lee. It's satisfying because the set up matches the pay off.

It's also tragic because it's Azula continuing the chain of abuse. The video isn't entirely wrong (which is why they came to the wrong conclusion frustrating).

Azula's fall is about how differenting parenting styles can a child. Ozai's affection is exchanged for being useful. Something Azula would go on to repeat with her friends, whereas Iroh's affection is something freely given with patience for imperfections and failures, something Zuko goes then on to repeat.

It's like... there it is it's so close. Here's the thing, Azula is set up for a tragic falling out with Mai and Ty Lee (and one she deserves) but the set up is different with Zuko. Azula's save the cat moment revolves around Zuko, and her genuine attempt to bring her brother home.

Yes, the first time Azula interacts with Zuko in season 2, she tries to take him home by force. However, by the ending of the season Azula's perspective on the matter has obviously changed because she begins by trying to bring him back as a prisoner, and by the end of the season invites him back as an equal.

There's no moment in Season 3 where Azula treats Zuko the way she does Mai and Ty Lee (unless Zuko provokes it first and puts her on the defensive) in fact most of her interactions are either them interacting normally (such as when Azula goes to find Zuko at their old beach house because she knows he'll be there and advises he leave instead of dwelling on their depressing memories) or Azula deliberately trying to look out for Zuko such as when she advises him not to go visiting with Uncle because it'll make others suspicious.

On the other hand, Zuko never at any point looks out for his sister the way Azula is demonstrated looking out for him. He doesn't say, try to tell her where he's going on the Day of Black Sun, or try to convince her the fire nation is wrong. There's a scene in the later part of Season 3 where Zuko is watching Azula fall to her death while sitting on a flying bison and not only sits there and does nothing about it, but sounds disappointed when she doesn't hit the ground and become an Azula Pancake.

That's pretty much the opposite of a save the cat moment. It's a "let the cat fall to their death" kind of moment.

Yes they were enemies at that point, but Zuko's the one who's supposed to learn that affection is something freely given with patience for imperfections and failures, something Zuko goes then on to repeat.

How exactly is he doing that in this scene?

The thing is... this setup doesn't have to be bad. Of course Zuko has trouble has trouble empathizing with Azula, he doesn't even think about sending a letter to Mai, Zuko's shown at this point to be like a healing abuse victim who's understandably focused on himself.

This in fact could be excellent set up with step 1) learning what genuine love and forgiveness is and 2) demonstrating those two things by applying it to others.

However, that's not where we got. We got Zuko watching his sister have a complete emotional breakdown, crying and screaming while chained to a grate and looking somewhat sad.

And once again to bring Terra into this, Terra is what Stay at Home and parts of fandom argue that Azula is. Terra screams at the top of her lungs how much she hates the Titans, how much she was always lying to them, and the Titans STILL try to reach Terra with words, try to de-escalate the conflict, when she's about to bring the rocks falling down on herself warn her she's going to hurt herself, and then when she's buried under rubble try to dig her out begging for her too still be alive.

Terra who's intentionally created by her writers to be as hatable as possible, is shown more compassion by the heroes in her ending than Zuko ever does to Azula. They also give Terra multiple opportunities to change until literally the very last minute, which Zuko doesn't do either.

What's set up is Azula has this save the cat moment with her brother, that Zuko is pretty much the only person she doesn't treat like a subordinate in the story (because she just like Zuko has a craving for familial love she tries to earn from her father). However, her ending with Zuko just taking her down doesn't fit that setup.

Azula's ending only fits if you consider her arc entirely from Zuko's perspective, which is the underlying issue. Azula's not the protagonist of her own tragedy, she's a plot object that's used to benefit Zuko's arc.

Azula's is written to have a downfall, the same way that Zuko loses everything at the ending of season 1 b/c of his inability to give up on the obsessive search for the avatar (and his father's love with it). Azula is written to be left by Mai and Ty Lee (this is the strongest point of writing when it comes to her since it comes from the beginning).

However, she's not written to be left completely alone and insane with the only empathy being shown is that her brother looks kinda sorta sad. That's only good if you view her as an object to further Zuko's arc, because isn't the ultimate culmination of Zuko beating his sister who has always been ahead of him at life? Azula needs to torn down completely without even some small glimpse of a hope of recovery so Zuko can be built up even moreor at least the writers of avatar seem to think so.

However, even Azula just existing for Zuko's growth and character development doesn't have to necessarily be a bad thing. This is where we get to MHA, which does the tragic siblings and the final Ag Ni Kai about 1000 times better with Shoto and Dabi.

THE GOOD

The comparisons between Shoto and Dabi to Zuko and Azula are made pretty often by the fandom. Shoto has a scar, Dabi has blue flames. Shoto has an arc about healing and learning what it means to be a hero, Dabi's arc is about self-destruction.

Dabi's not the center of his own story, he exists to foil Shoto and help Shoto reach the endpoint of his character development however that's not necessarily a bad thing. These are both two pairs of tragic siblings, the main difference is that MHA doesn't feel the need to tear down one sibling in order to build up the other. In fact, the final step to Shoto's arc is HELPING Dabi, not PUTTING HIM DOWN.

Not only that but the decision to help Dabi is a decision that Shoto makes on his own, and him going against the tide of a society that has already given up on Dabi and would much rather have Shoto shoot Dabi like a mad dog. Which makes the decision to do so even more powerful and emblematic of Shoto's growth.

Now you could say that Shoto and Zuko are too different to compare their arcs, Zuko has a redemption arc, and Shoto has what most people would probably term a healing arc. Shoto starts out the series as a hero.

However, this is what annoys me about the redemption arc debate. A redemption arc is really just a normal character arc. However, calling it redemption drags things like morality and forgiveness into the debate. if you take remove the discussion about moral philosophy both Zuko and Shoto have character arcs where they start the story defined entirely by their home situations and their father's abuse (hence why they have big obvious scars on their face), recover from their trauma, and go on to find an identity outside of their father and form healthy non-abusive connections with others.

In fact I'd see the theme of both arcs are the same, to literally find balance within themselves. Shoto is divided quite literally into right and left sides, fire and ice, and even seems to view himself as half of his father and half of his mother. Zuko is someone who's permanently marked and dishonored by the burn scar on his face. He suffers from an internal imbalance as well. Iroh says that Zuko is the descendant of both Roku and Sozin and therefore both pathways are open to him (but wouldn't that apply to Azula too). Zuko says to his father that the fire nation has destroyed the balance to the world and he's going to leave to assist the avatar in order to fix it.

Shoto's balance isn't just about fixing his internal trauma though, it's also about finding a balance between his family which has defined his entire life up until this point, and his desire to become his own hero not the hero his father groomed him into.

It's why the culmination of his arc is Shoto reaching out to save his family member Toya, because it's the ultimate balance in wanting to heal his family, and also the kind of hero he wants to be, someone who saves and brings peace to others instead of just violently putting down villains. He can bring peace to his family and become his own hero in one action.

However, let's go back to the beginning of Shoto's arc, because saving Toya as an endpoint to his arc is set up pretty early on.

Shoto's arc begins with Deku, a stranger breaking down Shoto's walls as an outsider in order to allow him to look past his own trauma and recall for the first time what he wanted outside of his resentment towards his father. This sets up the idea early on for Shoto that sometimes you need outside interference, help you didn't ask for, especially when you can't see outside of your own problems.

What Deku brings about ultimately is a change of perspective, Shoto's so hurt by the memory of his mother throwing boiling water in his face and everything that came after that he can't recall the memory of her telling him he could be who he wanted to be.

But, you want to be a hero right?

Shoto takes away two things from this arc, sometimes you need help even when you're not asking for it, and sometimes a change in respective is required in order to take the first step forward.

He goes to demonstrate these things multiple times, but here's two exaamples. The first Shoto demonstrates immediately after the tournament arc. When Iida is about to go down a dark path and commit a revenge killing on Stain. When, as a result of that IIDA is paralyzed and about to die in an alleyway, it's Shoto who both notices Midoriya and Iida are missing and shows up in the clutch. He's practicing the same thing that Deku taught him in the last arc: Giving help that's not asked for is what makes a true hero.

He even mentions the second idea, that a small change in perspective can be all it takes to save someone, and he wants to do for Iida hat Deku did for him. His words are the one who convinces Iida to stand back up again when he's paralyzed.

If you wanna stop this, then stand up. Because I've got one thing to say to you. Never forget who you want to become!

However Shoto's arc doesn't end here, because one of the major conflicts in MHA is that heroes don't pick and choose who to save and a true hero will give help even to those people who don't ask for it.

This is a point which further develops when Shoto's abusive father starts to show a change of heart at the end of the Pro Hero Arc. Shoto still holds his father accountable for what he did in the past, but he also acknowledges that if he had the capacity to change then so does Enji. This isn't about whether or not Enji is forgivable, this is an extension of what Shoto learned. Shoto originally believed he was controlled by the circumstances of his birth, that his fate was set in stone, but a change in perspective allows him to realize he can determine who he wants to be. So, Shoto is just applying what he's learned, Enji has the capacity to grow.

There's one final piece of setup that I want to cover before showing how these separate dies all culminate in saving Dabi. Shoto's not only someone who has to find balance between his family and his desire to be a hero.

The theme of balance is written into the quirk itself. Enji basically practiced eugenics to create Shoto as his masterpiece. He noticed a flaw in his own quirk where he could only make his flames so hot without overheating. So he arranged a quirk marriage with Rei who possessed an ice quirk to create a hybrid ice and fire quirk that he could use to cool himself off to prevent him from overheating.

Enji only ever cared about the fire half of Shoto's quirk. His ice quirk only exists for his flames to grow stronger. This is shown when Enji is trying to force Shoto to learn all of his signature moves, because he only cares about Shoto's flame quirk. Shoto was created to carry on his father's legacy, and surpass him with an even more powerful flame quirk. Part of his character development is him learning how to use his quirk in his own way.

This is a theme that continues in the class training arc where Enji is still repeating the behavior of trying to force Shoto to learn his signature moves instead of considering what he wants at all, because still Shoto only exists in Enji's mind to carry on his legacy.

This all culminates in Toya's decision to save his brother. The first is his action in choosing to identify with his brother. If Shoto believes in his own capacity to change, and even his father's, then why would he deny Toya that same chance to change?

The foiling between Shoto and Toya isn't supposed to reduce the two of them to "Shoto is the good one, and he's the bad one", but instead Shoto and Toya were both in a point where they were consumed by hatred and couldn't see any other path in life. Therefore if Shoto was able to change because someone gave him help when he didn't ask for it, then Toya not only has the capacity to change - but in order for Shoto to stick to his stated beliefs that the smallest of things can bring about a change in people he has to be the one to give his brother that chance to change.

It's not about whether Dabi is worthy or not, it's about the themes in Shoto's arc finally being paid off.

Shoto's identifying with Toya, and even parts where he tells Bakugo he'll make Toya sit down and make Toya tell him his favorite food indicate that from the beginning Shoto's intention was to find a way to stop Toya without killing him (which is what several of the adult heroes were encouraging him to do).

@stillness-in-green does a more succinct summary of this plan.

Just me?

Because, like, Shouto had a plan. He spent the time between the two war arcs specifically developing a brand-new combat technique that he planned to use to shut down Dabi's combat advantage without killing him. He convinced his dad not to change the plan like Endeavor was hesitantly sounding him out about[1]; he went out and talked and asked questions, and even if they weren't the right words every single time, he did his best and he did it with intention. If Dabi proves to be dead, it won't be because of anything Shouto did to him; it'll be because Dabi himself chose to stand back up, take a warp gate across the country, pick a fight with the guy who doesn't have the power set to shut him down without unduly hurting him, and trying to replicate an Ultimate Move specifically tailored for someone with a balanced power set Dabi doesn't have. And if Dabi lives, it's still going to be because Shouto booked it across the country and used that same technique to stop him again.

Shoto's decision to save Shoto is also a continuation of his decision to help save Iida from Stain. It's not enough for Shoto to experience a change of heart about his own life, he's got to take what he learned about people's capacity to change, and the importance of connections and then put that into practice and help others the way he was helped.

However, it also further develops the theme of giving help that's not ask for from Iida because Shoto's not saving a mostly heroic kid, he's saving Toya to help break a familial cycle of abuse (because murdering the abuse victim isn't how you end the cycle of abuse... actually).

Shoto's last lines to Dabi are also a refutation of this idea of destiny that he once thought he was ruled by. It's once again, Shoto teaching someone else the lesson he learned. Toya says a warped rail can never mingle with a straight and narrow one! In other words Shoto can never understand or get along with Dabi, because Dabi will forever be defined as the failure because of the circumstances of his brith, whereas Shoto will always be the success.

His final action is a decision to break the cycle they were born into: no, we're gonna mingle whether you like it or not.

Shoto's ultimate move Phosphor is not only a move he designed far in advance to take down Dabi non-lethally, it also is a rejection of his father's teaching method. Toya says he only ever taught me how to turn up the heat. Enji only valued both Shoto and Toya for their flame quirks. Developing his own quirk and breaking away from what his father wanted, specifically in order to save his brother. It's Shoto rejecting what his father created both of them for (a successor to his quirk) and finding his own path. By using that move to take down Dabi he's not only teaching Dabi their flame exists for more than just destruction, he's also by letting Dabi live giving Dabi a chance.

From a conversation with @class1akids

Dabi was the last push to unlock Shoto’s full power. Until then he was on the track of mastering flashfire like Endeavor planned for him (except for his own reasons) but realising the fighting Dabi with fire was gonna kill them both and also he’s simply no match fire only helped Shoto to fully take control of what his quirk is Like his quirk development goes parallel with how he faces each member of his family and finally meeting Toya is like the last piece of his puzzle to find his own full power and identity.

It's not just Shoto decides to save his brother because he's just that nice, his arc is literally incomplete without it. The act of creating phosphor a move specifically to save Dabi is both him unlocking the full power of his quirk (by balancing the fire and ice sides of his quirk) but also achieving balance between trying not to leave his family behind while at the same time becoming his own person and hero outside of his family circumstances.

Citing my conversation with class1akids again:

Toya is endangering everyone at Gunga. Endeavor has no means to stop him and when he tries to murder suicide Rei interrupts and his “hero way out” is taken. All he can do is watch helplessly as his family is about to burn to death with a bunch of strangers he tried to protect. But it would do Shoto dirty to use his heart technique to kill his family and the strangers so he comes in a clutch and I see that confrontation as the power trauma vs the power of healing in the family. With Shoto who is a true hero, they can put the fire out and save the family and strangertoo. Shoto become a balanced hero and bring relief and reassurance, Endeavor was completely helpless, and Toyas inner child got the attention he wanted, plus depending on how you read it, he may have become less suicidal.

Shoto also, and I want to point this out desires to stop his brother not to take him down but because he doesn't want him to hurt any more people. He's again finding a balance between two ideas 1) Shoto needs to stop his brother in order to stop him from creating more victims and 2) Shoto needs to find a way to stop him that's not just putting him down because Toya himself is a victim.

Shoto also, and I must point this out for the comparison between Zuko and Azula goes out of his way to engage Dabi in conversation, ask him why he didn't come home and what happened to him in the years after he died. This is especially poignant because unlike Zuko and Azula who grew up together, Shoto basically had no relationship with his brother (and the rest of his siblings really) before Toya died because Enji purposefully kept Shoto separate from all the "failures."

So yes, the act of saving Toya is more for the completion of Shoto's arc than any redemption arc for Toya but Toya's not just a plot object to move around for Shoto's arc, Toya has his own agency all throughout. In fact it's the fact that Toya resists being saved every step of the way that provides the challenge that Shoto needs to grow in order to be able to save him.

Toya's not just after revenge against his father that's the surface reason, Toya is also just blatantly suicidal. Toya's birth is marked as a failure, his death wasn't even acknowledged by his family and everything stayed the same in his absence, so he created Dabi while praying at his own shrine in order to mourn Toya. Dabi can't find any meaning in his life where he was born as a failure, so he'll use his death taking revenge against Endeavor for having been born in order to give his life meaning.

What makes Avatar look especially bad in its treatment of Azula in comparison to how MHA treats Dabi, is that Dabi is way, way less redeemable than Azula. For one Azula has clearly proven affection both her friends and her brother (and I don't think she even deserves Mai and Ty Lee's forgiveness they had every right to walk out on her and want nothing to do with her again.)

Dabi is probably the ugliest victim of the League of Villains. The rest of the league have far more moments in their bonds with each other. Toya is the outsider to the league even if there are some subtle hints to his affection (he tries to show up to save Twice, and also burns down Toga's family house to comfort her). The villains are mostly shown to be redeemable by their positive friendship with each other, and Dabi at several points denies the league's bond (he pulls a Terra and yells out loud at the top of his lungs none of the league matter to him). Unlike with Terra you can argue this is most likely Dabi trying to cover up his real feelings. However, the fact that he feels the need to hide his affection from the league shows he's purposefully distancing himself from any bonds whatsoever.

Unlike Azula who has gone out of her way to help her brother in one major way, and also shows hints in early season 3 of having that sibling bond with him Dabi just straight up wants to murk Toya. Azula also tries to murk Zuko, but that's only when Zuko leaves on the day of Black Sun (one without telling her, and two something that probably left her alone to deal with the consequences of lying to her father for his sake). Either way, Azula's behavior in early season 3 is setup for the fact that their sibling bond can be salvaged.

Dabi is way worse to Shoto in comparison. Dabi in the first part never saw Shoto as his own person, just a puppet of his father (puppets have no autonomy or personhood). His feelings towards Shoto only went so far as Shoto was someone who could kill in order to upset Enji. Dabi also doesn't particularly care for the rest of his family as well (only calling out Natsu's name when his brain is literally melting), they're either ways to hurt endeavor, or he wants to drag them in hell with him. Heck his last words after being saved is telling everyone to die and go to hell.

Dabi doesn't bother to make bonds with the league or have any lingering affection for his family because Dabi's determined to seslf destruct. He's given up on life the moment he saw that he died and nothing changed in that household, now all that's left is for him to create a meaningful death by dragging his family to hell with him.

Dabi is also even as a child made out to be an unpleasant victim. He attacks baby Shoto with his flames early on out of jealousy (even though he later admits that he was being unfair to Shoto). He makes the situation in the house worse by loudly screaming and demanding his father's attention. He screams at his mother and throws her complicity in Enji's abuse in her face.

This is in comparison to Shoto who in childhood flashbacks we are only ever seen either 1) crying, and 2) trying to comfort and protect his mother. Toya's even made out to be difficult to empathize with as a child - which like flew over half of the fandom's heads because he got accusations of somehow abusing his father and the rest of his family in that chapter at 10 years old. However, that in a way illustrates my point.

The fact that Dabi is so disliked by a certain portion of the fandom is because Horikoshi paints such an ugly portrait of Toya in the way he expresses his victimhood. It's done deliberately too, because number one Toya by resisting Shoto's attempts to save him and trying to self destruct instead retains agency as a character. He makes decisions even though they're bad self destructive ones, he's not just a prop. Number two, the fact that Toya is intentionally portrayed as such an ugly victim makes Shoto's decision to break the cycle of familial abuse by saving Toya and not leaving a single family member all the more poignant.

Toya is an uglier victim than Azula, actively trying to kill himself in a way that Azula isn't, and treats Shoto way worse than Azula ever treated Zuko and yet Azula isn't shown the sympathy or given the salvation that Toya is.

Because once again, the writers didn't think about the ending of Azula's arc or of Azula as her own character. Shoto defeating Toya is the culmination of his desire to break the cycle of abuse in his family. Zuko putting Azula down is just to make Zuko look better. It's in service of Zuko's character instead of both of their characters.

THE BAD

Avatar isn't setting up some gritty ending where the bad guys can't be stopped, they can only be killed. In fact it's pretty close in tone to MHA.

Season 3 especially is the season that really begins to hammer in on the themes that even the people on the enemy side are still human after all. The headband shows that Fire Nation children are indoctrinated into the war, but they are in the end still children. There's the story between Avatar Roku and Sozin, and once again Iroh saying that Zuko has both options becoming like Roku or becoming like Sozin available to him (but not Azula I guess). There's Zuko joining Team Avatar, even after he betrayed Katara in Ba Sing Se and should have burnt that bridge then and there. There's Zuko working to earn their trust again when no one on the team really owe it to him.

The main character of the show is a pacifist, who deliberately learns a way to stop Ozai without killing him before the final battle because he doesn't want to break the values taught to him by his culture.

If the entire theme of season 3 is redemption, healing and that the fire nation are not inherently evil then why does Zuko's sister and character foil end the last shot of the series screaming and crying with no one comforting or even attempting to sympathize with her. Why is this one character marked for tragedy in a show that is about redemption and healing and showing compassion to your enemies and very specifically not a tragedy.

Toya literally burns all of the flesh off of his body, and somehow he has a gentler ending than Azula, because at least Toya's arc ends with all the members of his family showing up to try to cool down his flames, and when he's on the ground burnt to a crisp his father finally apologizes to him. Toya is a skinless burnt chicken wing, my boy has no skin, and somehow he's better off than Azula.

I don't think the writers gave Azula such a cruel ending because they don't like her, but rather because they just didn't think about her ending outside of what it meant for Zuko. Which is why you get moments like Aang who is apparently a pacifist who doesn't want to kill the Firelord, watching his daughter fall to her death while sitting on a flying bison and doing absolutely nothing to save her. ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS (except for Azula I guess).

It's not bad because a victim doesn't get saved, it's bad because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the story.

Not only is Zuko saving Azula a very natural conclusion to his arc, but there's far more setup for Zuko reaching out to his sister and saving her than there ever was for Toya and Shoto. Both Toya and Terra are screaming at the top of their lungs "I HATE EVERYONE, YOU SHOULD ALL JUST GO TO HELL." They're both making decisions and committing to their self destruction while Azula is a 14 year old girl having a mental breakdown.

Anyway, time to quote the bad bad video again.

"When does a villain deserve a redemption arc? When do we deserve a redemption arc? I know this is gonna hurt, but characters are not people. They are tools. They are represetations of people. They can be used to say other things. They can be symbolic representation of other ideas. Azula's story is not just about a fourteen year old defeated by her brother for the throne, Azula is Zuko's character foil, where she is ruthless and practical, Zuko is empathetic and emotional. Where Azula's a prodigy, Zuko has to work hard to earn eve a fraction of her power.

I specifically chose to cite MHA, because of how differently it decided to use Shoto and Toya's character foiling. Shoto recognizes himself in Toya, and how different their paths were in life. This is explicitly motivates him to save Toya. It's also the culmination of everything that Shoto has learned because Shoto is a hero who believes that actions speak louder than words. It's not enough for Shoto to resolve his own inner struggle, he also has to help Dabi with his because that's showing Shoto has grown rather than telling us.

I think that is where the major difference lies between Shoto and Zuko, we're told that Zuko has chosen the path of empathy and healing, that he's learned to give people love and patience like Iroh has but instead of showing that the culmination of his arc is having a fist fight with his sister in a denny's parkinglot.

Azula is Zuko's character foil, where she is ruthless and practical, Zuko is empathetic and emotional. Where Azula's a prodigy, Zuko has to work hard to earn eve a fraction of her power.

If Zuko is empathic and emotional and that is why he's gained friends while Azula is now alone after having lost her friends due to the way she treated them, then like... what a great opportunity for Zuko to SHOW that quality of empathy.

However, Zuko doesn't do anything that Shoto does in the final fight. He's not even here for Azula, Azula's just an obstacle for taking back the crown. He doesn't talk to Azula, engage her in any way, try to de-escalate and avoid the fight.

If you want to make the tragedy that Azula and Zuko have taken such different paths in life that that Zuko fighting with his sister is unavoidable you could um... at least show Zuko being sad over the prospect of fighting his sister or being reluctant in any way.

(Before you come in here with "Zuko doesn't owe Azula anything take" this isn't about whether or not Azula is a terrible sister to Zuko, this is about the story that avatar is attempting to tell. Shoto and Dabi's fight is tragic because Shoto doesn't want to fight Dabi, he wants Dabi to come home and for their family to be complete. Zuko never expresses anything like that so where does the tragedy come from?)

If it were 100% committed to a tragedy like Terra's death then I wouldn't mind. if it were 100% committed to a story of redemption like Shoto reaching out to Toya then I wouldn't mind. My issue arises from the fact they want to have their cake and eat it too.

They want to give this tragic end to Azula, and use it to illustrate how Zuko has grown as a character. However, you can't have both.

If Zuko's growth is about learning that his father's love based on achievement and 2) learning he needed to get lost in life in order to find himself then why doesn't any of Zuko's actions demonstrate this lesson Zuko has learned about love, and about how you can be your own person outside what your father expects from you.

If Zuko has grown as a character he should be able to show those actions. He does show his new understanding of love and friendship to Team Avatar, but as I said that's easy mode. That's Shoto's attempts to save Iida, it's a step in the right direction. It's also not really Zuko demonstrating a selfless love, because he's also at the same time trying to earn their trust and earn his way into the group.

It's also not Zuko breaking the cycle of abuse in their family in any way. Shoto is trying to break free from his role of his father's masterpiece, and at the same time helping Dabi break free from his view that he's the failure.

It's also such a natural ending for Zuko's arc, to take the lessons he learned from Iroh and give them to his sister who needs them so they can both break away from their father's parenting. As I said Zuko does solve the internal conflict within himself, but he doesn't really demonstrate that by helping someone else find their balance.

If you wanted the tragic end, then it would have to be about Zuko's failure to reach out to his sister, because he hasn't learned how to reach out to her. Or because he tries and is unable to. The writers don't seem to understand that though, they think the tragedy is about Azula bringing it all on herself, and not the inherent tragedy of a fourteen year old girl being unable to be saved.

The set up is right there too, because number one avatar is about balance. So, wouldn't the true ending be finding balance between the siblings, not having Zuko rise and Azula fall. Number two, Azula being alone and friendless because of her own actions is again a parallel to where Zuko was in early season 2 at his lowest point. Except Zuko can be the better person in this situation by reaching out to her.

Zuko doesn't break the golden child / scapegoat dynamic, he just flips it so now he's the success and Azula is the failure.

While Azula's fall comes from cruelty and rejection from friends and allies it is Zuko's humility and kindness and friendship that ultimately wins the day. Him sacrifcing herself for Katara and her bringing Azula down and then her healing him. Azula ending up imprisoned isn't something happening to a real person, it's a deliberative narrative choice by the author to say something about how people like this isolate themselves and end up alone. "

As I've stated above, I'm not saying Azula didn't deserve to take a fall. Her fall is actually set up from the first moment she met Ty lee. However, there's no set up for her fall being permanent.

Azula's given way more humanizing moments than characters like Terra or even Dabi. Which is why Azula being in an insane asylum for the rest of her life doesn't fit as an ending at all.

Azula is one link in the chain of abuse. Her father only gives out affection in regards to her usefulness. No matter what Azula is an asset first and a daughter second. Azula then repeats the cycle and treats her friends the same way. She has been shown through an improper model of parenting of using fear to dominate others with power and control and she replicates that in her other relationships.

Therefore, Ty lee and Mai leaving her is not only deserved, it's the perfect opportunity to pull the rug underneath Azula and to show her that her understanding of how relationships work is completely wrong.

This also mirrors Zuko's arc, because part of Zuko's arc is realizing just how wrong Ozai is for making both children earn his love, and that he doesn't need to measure his self-worth based upon his father's approval. He also learns about healthy expressions of trust and friendship from the gang.

Azula loses in part due to her own inability to form healthy relationships is losing people rapid fire, her brother leaves and joins the enemy side, Mai and Ty Lee betray her in favor of her brother, then her father in one action of leaving Azula behind and throws the title of Firelord to her after it's become completely meaningless reminds her of her place. Azula learns in about five episodes what Zuko had in 3.5 seasons to process that her father's love was always conditional and no matter what she did she would never truly "earn it."

People leaving Azula isn't exactly the problem, the problem is that Azula ends up alone permanently without being given the same chance that Zuko is. Terra, and Toya both get opportunities to turn back. They both refuse the hand that's reaching out to him. Mai and Ty Lee leaving is caused by Azula's own choices, but her ultimate end isn't. She's not even given the chance to turn away being saved like Terra and Toya do because Zuko doesn't even bother to try saving her. Her ending is not entirely brought about by her own choices, because the writers need her to take a fall to uplift Zuko.

Azula ending up imprisoned isn't something happening to a real person, it's a deliberative narrative choice by the author to say something about how people like this isolate themselves and end up alone.

I think once again it comes from the author's misunderstanding things because they don't want to look at the story from Azula's perspective, only Zuko's.

Stay at Home almost had it when he said the tragedy of Zuko and Azula was there to show how two different parenting styles affected these children.

The tragedy is that Zuko and Azula started in the same place, but Zuko had persistent guidance and someone who modeled for him a healthy kind of love. The difference is that Azula has never experienced any kind of healthy love or support on the level Zuko has, so she models all her relationships on the way her father treats her. It's not that Azula is offered some chance for change and rejects it, it's that Azula isn't even aware of the fact that there's another way because no one is there to show it to her.

Which is why I said once again, Zuko being the first one to show Azula the lessons he himself was shown by Iroh is such a natural place for his character to end.

Azula also even while completely alone and with no idea what healthy love is, knows that there is something wrong with her and is troubled by that fact in a way Dabi and Terra aren't.

Azula: I can sit here and complain about how our mom liked Zuko more than me. But I don't really care. My own mother... thoguht I was a monster... She was right of course, but it still hurt.

Then there's the famous mirror scene:

Ursa: I didn't want to miss my own daughter's coronation. Azula:Don't pretend to act proud. I know what you really think of me. You think I'm a monster. Ursa: think you're confused. All your life you used fear to control people, like your friends Mai and Ty Lee. Azula: Well what choice do I have?! Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me. Ursa: No. I love you, Azula. I do.

Both of these scenes indicate that Azula thinks of herself as a monster and is deeply uncomfortable with the idea. Considering Ursa is a voice in Azula's head and not a ghost, it also shows on some level Azula knew what she did to Mai and Ty Lee was wrong and feels conflicted over it.

Once again she's much more in conflict with herself than Toya and Terror ever are, and who's someone who's constantly warring with himself? Who's someone who could help resolve her inner conflict... Zuko (too bad the way the show's written he never does).

Azula doesn't choose to self-destruct the way that Terra and Toya did. Azula's ending isn't brought about by her choice not to change, because she's never given the chance to change in the first place. Her tragic ending would make sense if it was entirely of her own choices, but Azula doesn't retain her agency in the end it's literally taken away from her. She loses control of her mind, and her ending is being chained to a grate screaming and then thrown into an asylum.

I'm not arguing against Azula's ending because she's my favorite character and I don't want bad things to happen to her. It's because her tragedy isn't about her it's about Zuko, and her ending actively takes agency away from her where at least Toya and Terra both retain their agency up until the end. It's not good writing because the tragedy doesn't fit in with the rest of the story which is about balance and healing - and it's also ableist as hell.

THE UGLY

Azula's ending is unfitting to the tone of the story she's in, makes her and Zuko's arcs feel incomplete, and also is ableist as hell.

Here's yet more evidence that Azula's tragic ending is poorly thought out. Azula's mental breakdown doesn't exist in service of her character, but Zuko's.

Azula's issues pop up out of nowhere after episode 15, and take place over the last 6 episode of the series. The idea of Azula having a mental breakdown isn't necessarily a bad concept, but it's executed poorly.

The first way it's executed poorly is just how rushed it is. There's basically no hints of any mental instability beforehand. Of course people can have mental breakdowns spontaenously like that in real life, but this is a story and stories require foreshadowing. Azula spontaneously developing mental issues doesn't feel like it's planned as a part of an arc. First off, because the writers don't seem too sure about what Azula's symptoms even are. Hallucination, paranoia, manic laughter, but apparently she's still able to bend lightning just fine. Secondly, the writer's intentions for giving Azula a mental breakdown are pretty transparent.

The writer's room needed to come up with a believable reason why Zuko would suddenly be able to fight on equal terms with Azula, so boom sudden mental illness. The intent was not to create a sympathetic portrayal of a young girl struggling with both paranoia and delusions. The intent was to nerf Azula because they couldn't think of any other way this plot could end, other than Zuko and Azula fighting in a denny's parkinglot.

As I said they use mental illness as a plot device to take Azula's agency and choices away from her. It's not done with the intention of humanizing her, and in fact except for one small scene with her talking to her mother in the mirror it's a pretty negative and unsympathetic portrayal of mental illness. Not because the writers hate mentally ill people, but because they needed Azula to have a mental breakdown in order for a plot point to happen. Which is why they didn't think of the potential implciations of such a writing choice at all.

Now, people are going to argue about me so I'll use one final example. Azula's ending may be controversial but it's universally agreed upon that the Game of Thrones Ending was bad, right?

Game of Thrones uses mental illness as the exact same plot device, to explain why Daenerys Targaryen turns from a hero to villain in the last few episodes with absolutely no foreshadowing. In fact, the all of the show director's interviews about that choice are just blatantly ableist.

Rant from @hamliet

This quote is (likely unintentionally) gaslighting, ableist, terrible logically, and downright offensive. 

First, ableism: why, why, why are we conflating madness with evil? She was driven to madness so she killed a bunch of people and had to be put down? And you think this is a great message in the year of our Lord 2019? [...] Additionally, while good writing is to an extent subjective, there are general consensuses on what make good writing--and Game of Thrones hit all the general consensuses for bad writing, from bad pacing to confusing character assassination. Critics are like, pretty united on this front. No one thought Dany’s turn made sense, even the ones who expect Mad Queen in the books. Maybe if people love a character who is meant to be evil you're not writing them correctly... or maybe they aren't meant to be evil. 

Daenerys and Azula are incredibly similiar characters. They're both dragon themed, alligned with the element of fire, they're both colonizers they both represent the warrior princess archetype.

I'd say Daenerys is more of a tragic heroine though, because while Danerys is essentially doing the same thing as Azula, waging war in a foreign land and a culture that's not hers, for the purpose of then bringing back soldiers to her home continent so she can wage war again - while she is definitely a war mongerer she has good intentions. Daenerys for all of her faults, genuinely wants to break the chains and help out people.

I think Azula definitely sees herself as the hero for winning the war for the fire nation's sake, but she's completely uncritical of her own culture and she doesn't really have the good intentions that Dany has. She does it more out of a sense of duty, and her belief of divine right, not because she wants to break people free.

Daenerys's problem is that she doesn't understand the culture she's invading and the complicated world she lives in and despite all good intentions, is as I described above, invading a foreign power so she can go back and wage a war to reclaim the throne. Even if Daenerys would then proceed to go on to be the bestest queen ever that wouldn't change the fact her methods to get to the throne were incredibly violent, and she's sort of failing to break free from the cycle that led the Targeryen rule to fail in the first place.

Azula's problem is she sees herself as the hero and is therefore uncritical of fire nation values. She doesn't have any nobler intentions either other than service to her country, she just like Zuko is just trying to fulfill her duties as daughter and believe her birthright puts her above others. (I mean Dany does too but digressing).

Azula's more of a tragic villain who plays the antagonist role in the story, Danerys is one of the three heroes. However, she's more of a tragic villain in the sense that she's first season zuko pre character development just way more competent.

However, while Daenerys is a much more heroic character than Azula, here's the thing. I still think she's going to die. She is foreshadowed pretty heavily to die, and fail for her quest for the throne, because her entire story is a deconstruction of the warrior princess and the liberator archetype.

However, the story that GRRM is building throughout his books with Dany as an incredibly flawed heroine is different from what we got in the show, which was Daenerys going crazy and starting to murder people. That's because Daenerys turn to darkness wasn't about her character at all, it was just making her into a plot device to move their bad idea for a plot forward. That's why the turn is so unnatural and makes little sense with her character, that's why it's so rushed.

That's also why it's ableist, because it's using mental illness as a plot device to make a character unsympathetic and monstrous and give the other characters a reason to put them down.

The same for Azula, outside of one scene where he's talking to her mother, Azula's mental illness manifests in her screaming, maniacally laughing, looking like the joker did her makeup, and her instability also makes her violent and dangerous to be around. (Ignoring the fact that most people who experience delusions in real life are harmless, and more likely to be the victims of violence).

Her sudden mental illness isn't even used to make her more sympathetic in say Zuko's eyes and make him realize she's a victim, no it's just there to nerf her so she can be violently put down. The way she's drawn, the way she acts, it's to paint her as monstrous as possible. Her last action is like sobbing and screaming while being drawn as ugly as possible. She's not even given a small hope for recovery, because it just ends there. That's a pretty great message to send people that experience delusions, not only will you not recover or be shown sympathy, you'll also get sent to a mental asylum for the rest of your life. The choice for both Azula and Dany is not to portray any kind of mental illness in a respectful way, but to make a plot point happen.

As I said I expect Dany to die in the books, but there's a difference between dying as a tragic hero succumbing to your flaws but still having your good intentions acknowledged and just turning into a villain for no reason and being put down like a rabid dog.

(This is a quote I stole from a Shigaraki post but): "Why does she need to be put down in the first place, she has trauma, not rabies."

The problem isn't bad thing happened to my favorite character, the problem with the ending is it doesn't take Dany's setup into consideration.

Stealing from @hamliet again:

The thing about tragedies is that you have to manage expectations and clearly show that your tragic hero is doomed from the very early on–ie you have to show them making steadily worse and worse decisions (see: Eren Jaeger in SnK), if not directly tell your audience at the very beginning that this is a tragic story (ie see Greek choruses and Shakespeare, the prequels from Star Wars because everyone knows Anakin is Vader–plus I’d argue Anakin’s arc only works because we know he comes back to the light in the end. Audiences don’t like reversing on set up/undoing structure. To make Dany a tragic villain is to go against the structure of her arc in both show and book. That’s why people don’t like it, even if the books makes it seem more believable.

Kate then goes onto describe a character that's much more comparable to Azula's. Honestly Arianne is closer to Azula than Daenerys is.

You know who is set up as a tragic heroine destined to descend and die because of her flaws in the books, whose arc has almost certainly been combined with Dany’s in some sense in the show? Arianne Martell. (and another character known as f!Aegon) In the books, Arianne is incredibly ambitious, and especially resents her brother and his quest for power. Like Margaery (another tragic character), Arianne seeks power and is intelligent and manipulative in her quest for it. But Margaery’s fatal mistake is that in seeking power and prestige, she’s become more a pawn than anything else for a villain (Cersei). She chose to play with lions, and she’ll be torn apart; that’s not surprising. Arianne, as her chapters hint, is going to almost certainly marry f!Aegon, playing with fire, and die burning for it.   Arianne’s grasping for her own power is never portrayed as cruel or stupid like the main human villain (Cersei); on the contrary, we empathize with a girl who truly cares about her people, but resents her father’s preferential treatment towards her brother. That’s the difference between Arianne and Cersei: Arianne cares. She is not cruel. But her pride is still going to get her killed.

There's a lot of game of throne females you could compare Azula to because GOT is full of queens, but like. Azula may be a tragic villain firmly on the side of the antagonists but she's not Cerseie. She's not queen, she doesn't wield the power that Cersei wields. In fact one of Azula's downfalls is finding out she doesn't have as much power as she thought she had, and ultimately was just a tool of her fathers.

She's not Rhaenyra or Alicent, because yes she may be grabbing for power but her character isn't affected by misogyny. Because once again, the writers simply didn't think about misogyny except for a really surface level "girls can be just as strong as boys" way so we really have no idea how women are seen in the fire nation. The show doesn't really explore if being a woman makes things harder, or makes people treat her differently than Zuko because the writers just didn't consider Azula's perspcetive on that matter.

Azula is alike to Danaerys in several ways, but as I said I think her ultimate end comes from Azula understimating her own importance in her father's eyes, and quickly realizing when her father is her only family left she never had his love or loyalty in the first place.

But Margaery’s fatal mistake is that in seeking power and prestige, she’s become more a pawn than anything else for a villain (Cersei). She chose to play with lions, and she’ll be torn apart; that’s not surprising.

Azula's most famous quote is about how Long Feng isn't even a player, only to find out her father considered her a pawn from the beginning and be broken by the revelation.

The difference being of course that Avatar is not Game of Thrones and it won't even kill the evil fascist dictator so it doesn't make a lot of sense to hand Azula the ending that Arianne got. They have the same fatal flaw.

Anyway, I made this big post but I can explain why Azula's tragic ending down't work in one sentence.

AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER IS NOT A TRAGEDY.

Maybe the reason Azula should get redeemed is because THE SHOW IS ABOUT F&%CKING REDEMPTION.

[autumnmobile12]

My Hero Academia AU: Living Ghost

A little bit different than my other comics; I've never done a time lapse before.

In the Ambush Simulation notes, I mentioned that Dabi has a canon divergence in this AU where he returned home after the three years he was missing/presumed dead, but nothing in the household changed and he was still an unhinged mess.  This is the AU comic behind ‘unhinged mess’ and the partial reasoning behind his antagonistic behavior in The Summer Camp Ambush Simulation.

…

All right, so canonically Dabi is a walking, half-dead, Lovecraftian nightmare of mental and physical health issues who's keeping himself going through sheer willpower/hatred.  Ujiko says that after waking up from the three year coma, he should not have survived longer than a month as a result of the injuries he sustained from the fire.  So even in an AU where he was reunited with his family after the fact, that’s still the reality of his situation.

Enter Endeavor: In this scenario, at that point in his character arc, I think he would have retreated back into his usual pattern of refusing to face the issue. The Todoroki family got Touya back, but they also learned that he wouldn't be with them long. If a missing/presumed dead child turns up after three years, they're immediately going to a hospital to establish mental and physical condition, so the health issues resulting from the fire would have been discovered almost immediately.

From the point of view of Endeavor, Touya's return was cause for celebration and was initially viewed as a second chance/an opportunity to repair some of the damage he'd already done to his family...but then the severity of Touya's prognosis becomes apparent and they're told he has weeks to live. In Ambush Simulation, Endeavor takes the coward’s way out and leaves the problem for everyone else to deal with so he doesn't have to face Touya.  He told himself it was a way of not getting attached and so on, and no matter how much he tries to deny it, the avoidance is his guilty conscious.

The same goes for Rei. She refused to see Touya after he came back just so she wouldn't have to say goodbye to him a second time.

But Touya doesn't die.

Despite what the doctors predicted, he survives '...albeit with complications, various emergencies, experimental treatments to delay the inevitable, no clear answer on how the hell he was still breathing, and no promises that he would ever live a full life...' And now, just like in canon, he has 7-8 years of simmering resentment with the trauma of a near-death experience, the realization of having lost three years of his life due to the coma, the fallout of terminal health, and the crushing disappointment of what should have been a heartfelt reunion turned into a second abandonment.

In this AU as a vigilante, Touya has the Pandora’s Box of being an outrageous public menace and a potential family embarrassment because he figured out the only time his father pays any attention to him is when he’s ‘acting out’ and he decided he’d rather be the problem child than the invisible child.  And unfortunately, this mentality has also ruined his relationship with Natsuo.

In some respect, canon is a happier outcome for Touya because at least in canon, the poor bastard has a purpose instead of reduced to a living ghost.

…

The piano panels are him rehabilitating his hands.  Technically after a three year coma, he should not have been walking and talking as quickly as he did.  Not with that kind of atrophy.  So I’m balancing that inaccuracy out with the headcanon his fine motor skills were likely completely ruined.

Plus, if your life is a train wreck, have at least one positive hobby.

...Yomaha...

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group F Round 4: Talentless Nana vs Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun

#F6: Talentless Nana (Munou na Nana)

Normal school until stuff happens

#F8: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun (Marimashita! Iruma-kun)

Young boy gets sold to a demon to be his grandson

Details and poll under the cut!

#F6: Talentless Nana (Munou na Nana)

Summary:

Fifty years ago, horrific creatures dubbed as the “enemies of humanity” suddenly appeared around the world. To combat these threats, teenagers gifted with supernatural abilities called “Talents”—such as pyrokinesis and time travel—hone their powers at an academy on a secluded island.

Nanao Nakajima, however, is quite different from the others on the island: he has no Talent. With many “Talented” teenagers around him, Nanao is often a target for bullying, but even so, he still strives to complete his training. Soon after, two transfer students, the mysterious Kyouya Onodera and the mind-reading Nana Hiiragi, join the class. But just as everyone starts blending as comrades-in-arms, mysterious disappearances begin to threaten the class’s entire foundation.

Propaganda:

I’d like to start off by saying that this is NOT a copy of My Hero Academia, even though it sounds as such. It’s kinda hard to explain the show without spoiling a major plot point, but it’s pretty much as the summary says. Honestly, if you want to watch this, don’t look up anything about it—you will get spoiled right away, and it does ruin the experience. I started this without knowing anything about it and I think that’s for the best because it’s plot twist after plot twis,t and you’re not sure what to expect next. That’s honestly something I really liked about it because you don’t know where the story will take you. Anyways, highly recommend because more people should know about this series.

Trigger Warnings:

Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Graphic Depictions of Cruelty/Violence/Gore

There’s a Nazi-coded character who does eugenics, and he’s also the reason for the child abuse tw

Sexual assault attempt on main character

Necrophilia (there’s a character who controls another person’s corpse and act like they’re dating)

#F8: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun (Marimashita! Iruma-kun)

Summary:

Fourteen-year-old Iruma Suzuki has been unfortunate all his life, having to work to earn money for his irresponsible parents despite being underage. One day, he finds out that his parents sold him to the demon Sullivan. However, Iruma's worries about what will become of him are soon relieved, for Sullivan merely wants a grandchild, pampering him and making him attend the demon school Babyls.

At first, Iruma tries to keep a low profile in fear of his peers discovering that he is human. Unfortunately, this ends up being more difficult than he expected. It turns out that Sullivan himself is the chairman of the school, and everyone expects him to become the next Demon King!

Iruma immediately finds himself in an outrageous situation when he has to chant a forbidden spell in front of the entire school. With this, Iruma instantly earns a reputation he does not want. Even so, he is bound to be roped into more bizarre circumstances.

Propaganda 1:

The main character, Iruma, is very kind and wholesome, and you really just want to see him succeed throughout the series, especially after knowing everything he’s been through. He was neglected and used by his parents, but now he gets to live out a nice life despite being surrounded by demons, as his new grandfather spoils him. The demon that adopted him, Sullivan, is an extremely powerful figure in the demon realm, but through most of the series, he looks like an egg. The side characters are also well-designed with interesting personalities. The main two, Asmodeus and Clara, become almost inseparable from Iruma after they become friends, and the three of them are very cute together. There is also a canon nonbinary cat person, who is technically Sullivan’s servant, but he is treated as part of the family, and he’s a disaster bisexual.

Propaganda 2:

It’s really good in terms of art, plot, and characters. There’s nonbinary representation in the form of Opera, and there’s friendship galore with very poly undertones. It’s so sweet and good, and it’s just rahhhhh. Everyone is silly but also realistic and well-developed. There are reasonable arcs, and there’s a well mix of plot-driven growth and character-driven plots. I love every person who appears onscreen, even for like two seconds. The world building is lovely and so bright and colorful.

Propaganda 3:

You should vote for it because it is genuinely one of the best animes I’ve ever seen. It has good character development, mysteries, focuses on the cast well, and it is not a harem anime. The plot is also really good and is suitable for all age groups.

Fun fact: the main character crossdresses three times in the first three seasons

Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse (mild)

When reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

If you want to criticize one of the shows above to give the one you’re rooting for an advantage, then do so constructively. I do not tolerate groundless hate or slander on this blog. If I catch you doing such a thing in the notes, be it in the tags or reblogs, I will block you.

Know one of the shows above and not satisfied with how it’s presented in this tournament? Just fill up this form with your revisions, and I’ll consider adapting those changes.

New: Starting round 5, screenshots will be included in the poll post. You can submit screenshots through the form linked above, or through here, via ask or dm.

Guidelines in submitting screenshots:

No NSFW or spoilery images.

Pick some good images please. Don’t send any blurry or pixelated ones.

You may send up to 9 screenshots, but not all may be used.

[sarahjtv]

Thank you, My Hero Academia

Today, August 4th in the West and August 5th in the East, the My Hero Academia or Boku No Hero Academia manga has finally ended after 10 years of serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump with 430 chapters total.

It still doesn't feel real, but it is. I finished reading the final chapter a little over an hour ago and I can say that I am very happy with this ending. The only real complaint I have now is that I wish Horikoshi gave us more chapters for the epilogue to give us more content. The 5 chapter epilogue we got was definitely rushed in some parts, but we should still be blessed we got those 5 chapters at all because I cannot tell you how many times mangaka shortened their epilogues to 1-2 chapters, and then that's it. Apparently he has a lot of pages left in the final Volume to fill in, so we’ll see if Horikoshi will expand on things when it releases in early December. For how it was as a final chapter, it's was near perfect.

Having Izuku become a teacher at UA was a great alternative to becoming a Pro Hero after the embers of OFA faded away. Teachers inspire their students to strive forward and follow their dreams. If he wasn't going to be a Pro Hero, being a teacher at his Alma Mata is a great consolation prize. Thankfully, that dream of Izuku's didn't die.

Izuku did so much for the world and the people around him for that 1+ year that it was going to give something good back to him somehow. Though it took 8 years, thanks to his friends supporting him all the way through, he is able to continue living his dream as a Hero with his friends by his side. Considering the fact that All Might's Iron Might suit cost most of his fortune, I gotta wonder how much it cost to make Izuku's support suit. Shoto, Momo, and Iida are all rich thanks to their family's inheritance, but I'm sure everyone else had to save up a shit ton of cash to get this project done ESPECIALLY BAKUGO! I'm glad they got there in the end anyway.

And seeing our beloved kids as adults (I think they're 24-25 now) leading the way for a better world is so satisfying to see. I love all their upgraded looks and outfits too! I hope we get more details about them in the upcoming Fan Book and Art Book next year! Honestly, I'm going to miss this entire cast even Mineta of all people. Horikoshi clearly put a lot of love and care into each one of his characters no matter how small of a role they played. I saw these kids and even adults grow into amazing people and heroes for the better part of the last decade and saying goodbye to them is like saying goodbye to a good friend.

Despite its problems, this story will always hold a special place in my heart. It was a beacon of hope for me over the past 6-ish years and I'd argue that it saved my life when my life was in the pits. It still is today in a way. I can't give My Hero Academia an honest rating without bias kicking in hard, but I think this is one of the best manga that Shonen Jump had to offer. I'm so glad Horikoshi got to end his story on his own terms and ended up being one of THE most successful mangaka in modern WSJ. He deserves everything good that ever comes to him. Please don't ruin that for us, sir lol.

Regardless, thank you, Kohei Horikoshi. Thank you for telling this incredibly special story of a young boy who became the greatest hero and how everyone can be a hero Quirkless or not. I will forever be grateful for what you brought to me and I will cry happy tears as I say goodbye. I hope you take a long, deserving break for now. I look forward to whatever you have in store for this world next.

[dylawa]

Being engaged to All Might, of all people in the world, is nothing short of an improbable miracle. The love you and Toshinori Yagi have shared for the past half of a decade has carried you through numerous times of peace and trouble, joy and heartache, and life and death. Having saved the world a mere year and a half ago, you're nothing short of a miracle to the people of Japan and beyond, and as your wedding with the man you love fast approaches, it feels as if almost nothing can ruin your brilliant momentum. That doesn't mean threats do not still loom; the knowledge that Toshinori's life is likely on an inevitable timer always presses down on your heart, and even beyond the shadow of All for One, there are still dangerous villains waiting for the perfect moment to strike the public at large for their own gains. When a mysterious entity appears whose seemingly only purpose is to sow chaos and fear, how can you combat against them when they can use the weight of past, present, and future to crush you and All Might so heavily? And how can you manage the return of a demon from your own past at the same time? If you cannot overcome the fear within yourself, you may fall to it-- as will the Symbol of Peace.

At long last, the "Having Lived and Loved" series continues! Comet and All Might are back as they prepare to spend the rest of their lives together. Old characters return, new make their debut appearances, and new internal and moral dilemmas will be faced.

Will our heroic lovers make it "to death do us part?"

[earthtooz]

hi hi! so this is one part of my 5k event where i am accepting only EIGHT requests (so i don't burnout) from my followers for fics! to make this easier for me to write, i'm going to provide you all with a list of characters i'm willing to write for and some prompts + tropes!

please read the guidelines and rules if you are going to request!! happy requesting, hope to see u in my inbox ;>

˗ˏˋ EVENT MASTERLIST ´ˎ˗ THE CROSSED OUT MATERIAL MEANS YOU CAN NO LONGER REQUEST FOR IT

PROMPT LIST + TROPES: you are allowed to request more than one prompt/trope so go wild! the more material you give me, the more motivated i am to write it!

FLUFF: • 'i love every part of you, even the parts you don't' • 'i can't imagine a life where i don't adore you' • 'wow... you look... amazing' • 'sorry for the 7395 calls, i was worried' • 'you didn't ruin anything. actually, you made it better by coming.' • 'can i get a kiss? i think i deserve one.' • 'can i kiss you?', 'there's people watching!', 'let them' • 'go on a date with me and if you don't feel the same then i'll drop it, i promise' • 'you're not fine. c'mon, let me take care of you' • 'are we on a date right now?' • 'don't make me spell it out for you pretty, you know i want you' • 'am i your lockscreen?' 'you weren't supposed to see that' • 'when can i see you again?' (fluff or angst lol) • 'you came to my room at 4am to cuddle?' • 'i've waited so long to hear you say that' • 'stay with me. be it only for the night or forever, just please stay with me' • 'if there's really nothing going on between you, you won't care if i ask them out on a date, right?', 'no don't do that!'

ANGST: • 'i'm not going to kiss you- you broke my heart' • 'you're in my head, even when you're not supposed to be' • 'walk out that door and we're through' • 'please come home.' • 'you lied. you lied!' • 'if they even touch one strand of hair on your head, they're dead.' OR 'i don't want one strand of hair on your head damaged, do i make myself clear?' then taking the hit for them. • 'it's okay to leave me. please leave me.' • 'who could ever love someone like you?' • 'of course it was a lie the entire time. i was just pretending!' • 'don't fucking touch me!' • 'delete my contacts, we're done. don't ever talk to me again' • 'this is your favourite, isn't it?', 'was' • 'take what's yours then leave. i don't want to continue this anymore'

TROPES: • fake dating • dating for a bet • pining • forced proximity • accidental confession • soulmate!au (you can specify which version of the trope :D) • rivals to lovers • there's only one bed OR there's only one seat • 3+1 (my beloved) • enemies to lovers • or any trope you would like me to write!!! no dark content or i will kick you out >:( jk but no dark content!

CHARACTERS I'LL WRITE FOR:

from haikyuu!!: kuroo tetsuro + oikawa tooru + suna rintaro + miya atsumu + miya osamu + kageyama tobio

from blue lock: itoshi rin + nagi seishiro + michael kaiser + reo mikage + isagi yoichi + itoshi sae

from boku no hero academia: todoroki shouto + bakugou katsuki + kirishima eijiro + shinsou hitoshi + midoriya izuku + hawks

from jujutsu kaisen:gojo satoru + geto suguru + kamo choso + fushiguro megumi

aot: levi ackerman + eren yeager

RULES:

001: please do not give me your whole story!!! an ideal format would be something like this: 'can i get levi ackerman with 'it's okay to leave me. please leave me' and 'you're not fine. c'mon.' with the soulmate!au? this way i still have some creative liberty but you can still have some aspect of a story engrained in your request!

002: no nsfw, no dark content

003: i'm sorry, but i will not write for the requests that i can't see a storyline shaping. with that said, i might change up your ask a lil to see if i can get something going, so if your request isn't the original version, i'm sorry!

004: be nice. that's all !! ^-^

[deusvervewrites]

All For One vs Principal Asano

It's been too long since I've compared All For One to a better written antagonist so I've been struck by the mood to do another meta.

By coincidence I'm once again comparing AFO to an antagonist written by Yūsei Matsui, because that man knows what he's doing. I've already compared All For One to Sicks, so it's only fair that I hop over to his other work, Assassination Classroom.

Today I'm going to talk about Principal Asano Gakuho.

(Pictured: father-son bonding)

Now I don't have time to summarize all of Assassination Classroom's themes and how it handles them, and we would get wildly off topic, so I'll quickly summarize. The series uses an elite private school as a metaphor for societal classism, run on a philosophy of social darwinism.

If you're in A Class, it's because you were simply better. You are the virtuous elite being rewarded for your birthright and destined for greatness. If you are in E Class, you are a slacker and a parasite feeding on your betters, and the higher classes should treat them as such. Look I never said it was a subtle metaphor.

The reason I want to highlight Principal Asano is because he's a character second, and a metaphor first. He is not just the principal of this school, he is social darwanism. Every act he takes furthers that ideology in some way or is meant to crush the opposition of that philosophy. His students are not to be educated but broken until they parrot his beliefs. His son notes that his home life is much the same.

He will lie, cheat, ruin, steal, or even kill if that's what it takes, because he is a one-note character with no depth.

Except that's not quite true.

Principal Asano is a character with depth and tragedy. He does care about others. But this is the master stroke. Principal Asano's backstory is given at a very crucial moment.

Let's quickly summarize. The End of Term exams in Assassination Classroom are meat to be a public slaughter of E Class in terms of grades, but thanks to Koro-Sensei, E Class has started fighting back and proving the flaws in Asano's philosophy. And in the final major exam of the year, E Class dominates. In response, A Class acknowledges that Asano's methods do more harm than good, and that cooperating with E Class will bring all of them to greater heights than his method of using E Class as an example to be feared and ridiculed.

Asano responds the way he always does. He does whatever is necessary to validate his philosophy. He challenges Koro-Sensei to a rigged game in an attempt to kill him (If you aren't familiar, Koro-Sensei is a literal inhuman creature threatening to blow up the earth if he isn't assassinated, shit like this happens all the time).

Not only does Koro-Sensei win the game, but the way Asano rigged it, he will either have to take an action that will kill him, or stand down and admit defeat--not just for himself, but his entire philosophy.

Checkmate.

This is when we learn Asano's backstory. Not a moment sooner. It's only when Asano is defeated, when the series has made it's point that classism is not only bad for the oppressed but hurts the oppressors, and only through collaboration and camaraderie can humanity truly shine, that Asano stops being a metaphor and becomes a character.

For the purposes of this meta, the details of his backstory are unimportant. He was a good man and teacher until tragedy befell one of his students and he spiraled into the madman he became to prevent something like that from ever happening again, in the process becoming the very thing he hated.

So why did I give this long-winded meta of another character?

Because All For One isn't a metaphor. He doesn't represent the main themes of My Hero Academia. And I can prove that because literally every single other Villain does. They are all in some way harmed by Legacy, Hero Worship, Governmental-Instituted Classism (oh hey look at that) or some combination of all of them.

Shigaraki was failed because the people were waiting for a Hero to act. Toga was abused until she snapped because she didn't fit the mold. Spinner couldn't find work because of his appearance. Twice was illegally fired because of nepotism and had no resources to bounce back from that or his resulting trauma over the him civil war. For a man who hates Quirks, Overhaul is obsessed with them. The MLA are correct that Quirk Regulation is too tight.

I can just point to Dabi.

But AFO does not represent a flaw in society, nor was he in some way hurt by society. He's just a fuck. And because he's just a fuck, he drags down the legitimate criticisms baked into every other Villain associated with him.

All For One is not a metaphor.

The real representation of My Hero Academia's themes is the HPSC. Hawks would've made a more compelling final boss because even this late in the series, we have only barely seen Hawks the Hero, but Hawks the Soldier has once again ordered Twice to be murdered.

All For One adds nothing to the themes except as a way to make All Might retire, furthering his themes of Legacy and Hero Worship.

[roleplay-today]

hey guys! i'm sylvie, she/her, and i'm just on the cusp of being 21.

i come looking for a fellow advanced literate - novella writer to indulge my crazy ass in a story or two.

what's included in the package?

: at least one reply a day, sometimes a little more & sometimes a little less! : ooc communication, plotting, Geeking completely out if you will : characters of all orientations. female mun, but i'm just as eager (if not more so tbh) to write male characters. i do lean ever so slighty towards queer pairings, but i don't discriminate! : canon/canon or oc/oc. will double once a fortnight. : plotting!!i love character driven stuff too!! all i ask is that you work with me and don't be passive! : so so willing to write casts, bg chars & mumu (essentially where we write multiple ships whose stories may or may not be entwined).

what/who do i write??

harry potter : james potter, remus lupin, barty crouch jr., george weasley, xenophilius lovegood, lily evans, m!halfvamp!oc. have & will write many others. we'd be here all day. my hero academia : sir nighteye, midnight, fuyumi, f&m!ocs. itching and scratching to write against a shiggy. stranger things : only steve for canons, but i do love this verse & would be so down to do something og / au in it!

originals:

i'm not crazy about high fantasy ! i tend to opt for more supernatural, light sci-fi, dramatic sol, etc. i fuck with historical big time. i mean i will love you forever. whether it be old hollywood, war, medieval, victorian, cheesy 80s horror, ghost hunters, the outsiders-inspired, music scenes, wild west, holy shit. anything.

word bank:

enemies / rivals to lovers, reconciliation, reluctant partners in crime, lovers to enemies, co-dependency, found family, opposites attract, moral greyness, spies, double agents, forced proximity, time travel, anything that will ruin my life.

if this interests you, feel free to drop a like and i will get right to you <3

[cantripwilltrip]

royal approved anime?

*cracks knuckles* Oh this ones gonna take a bit.

Oddtaxi: Watch oddtaxi, just do it, enhance your life.

86: Oh my god 86 might be my favorite mecha anime...ever? Lena is babygirl and I love watching an anime that actively tries to hurt me, Sawano soundtrack too

Re:creators: SPEAKING OF SAWANO DROPS, what if the most popular characters from fake shonen jump like, appeared in the real world, what if guts showed up in japan and hunted down his author for all the suffering he caused people. Damn dating sim protagonists are op and so many other amazing plot points that I can't even tell you about because it'll ruin things, watch recreators

Fate zero, unlimited bladeworks, heavens feel: Yes they really are that good, fuck FGO

Re:zero: if you're here you know about re:zero, it's art, one of the best isekai on the market (positive) crusch karsten stan account

Reincarnated as a slime!: I started this as a joke but it ended up shaping me as a person, it's so fucking good and fun and I love rimuru and all of his friends.

Jujutsu kaisen: dude

spy x family: dude (but lighter this time)

CHIVALRY OF A FAILED KNIGHT: VERY IMPORTANT, no one fucking watched this show but me, you have to watch this show, you have to join me, it's cinema, it's actually so good, it has one of my favorite written romances in anything its characters are so fun I love chivalry of a failed knight it only got one season

noragami: I feel bad reccing this one, I love it to death but it's just, it's not finished and studio bones is trapped in the mid hero academia mines now

The first two seasons of my hero: I know what i just said, it's got a really good start though

Utena: (utena)

Mob psycho: FUCK I STILL NEED TO WATCH S3

Everything by ryohgo narita

[imagine-knb]

Welcome back Neon! I’ve actually come back to Tumblr semi-recently as well for about the same period of time. I’m getting back into fandom content and it’s been really fun reclaiming a part of my life back! I hope you have fun returning back here like me :)

Other than KnB, has there been any other series you’ve gotten into while you’ve been away? ☺️

Thank you! I'm really glad to be back! ヾ(☆▽☆) I've been having a lot of fun rediscovering old and new fandoms to follow on Tumblr. Like you said, I feel like I'm reclaiming a part of myself that I had shelved for years.

As for what I've currently been into, I'll post that under the cut! I kind of went overboard again and typed a lot.

Here are some fandoms that I've recently entered! You can basically thank these fandoms for me returning to Tumblr. σ(*´∀｀*)

My Hero Academia

This isn't a new anime in the slightest, considering its multiple seasons, but it's new to me. I watched it years ago with my ex, but only got halfway through season 2. Now I'm rewatching it with my bestie and my current partner, having a blast with it! I forgot how funny season 1 was! Favorite Character(s): Kirishima Eijiro, Bakugo Katsuki

Sk8 the Infinity

I once saw an ad for Sk8 on YouTube and ever since then, I have been hooked! I really hope season 2 will come out, because I need more Reki in my life. Please someone talk to me about Sk8 because I love those boys so much. I need it like I need air. Favorite Character: Kyan Reki Fun Fact: I'm currently working on a multi-chapter fic that's Reki x OC and it's gunna be so sweet and fluffy because that boy deserves the world. (˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )

Food Wars

I literally just finished watching the final season not to long ago! I hated the animation, but the story was so good! I felt like the last season was just a little silly, but it wrapped up the story quite nicely. Favorite Character(s): Yukihira Souma, Hayama Akira, Tadokoro Megumi

Welcome Home

This was the first fandom I entered when I came back to Tumblr! I thought the concept was so spooky and interesting, so I just fell into the hole that is Welcome Home. I find all the AUs people are making for it so creative too, but I really can't wait to figure out the real story behind it. Favorite Character: Wally Darling Favorite AU: Killer!AU

Stardew Valley

Okay, so I owned this game for literal years, but I never played it because it was gifted to me by my ex (never let an ex ruin your fun, kids). Then one day my friends asked me to play a multiplayer savefile and. I. Got. Hooked. Now I'm already planning on starting my third, personal modded save and with Update 1.6 sneak-previewed, I can not wait to play again! Favorite Character(s): Shane, Sebastian Fun Fact: It's thanks to Stardew that I started writing again. I'm going to shamelessly self-promote, so here (or here) is where you can find the fics I've been writing recently.

And that's really about it. Other than that, I've been slowly easing my way back into old fandoms I was a part of like Kuroko no Basket and Haikyuu!!.

- Admin Neon

[linkspooky]

Superman vs. All Might

Hello, this is a post comparing My Hero Academia to the comic books it was inspired by. Despite the title of this post, this is not going to be about the power levels of the individual characters. Rather, a comparison between what kind of heroes Superman, and All Might are respectively, and how All Might compares to the all-American super hero.

1. With Great Power

It's pretty obvious All Might takes his influence from Western / American ideas of superhero comics. He studied in the USA before returning to japan as a part of his training. He wears red, white and blue and shouts the names of American states before his attacks.

Before we begin have you heard about Superman? Really, never? That's kind of unlikely. If you want to read more about him though, there's this post with several recommendations of short comics that help you get the idea of his character. I personally recommend "All Star Superman" which is only twelve issues and is it's own self contained story.

There's also "Superman the Animated Series" which I believed watching just the first few episodes will give you everything you need to know about his character. I also recommend watching the Justice League episodes "Patriot Act", "War World", "Hereafter" and "For the Man Who has Everything" to get a glimpse of his character. I'll be referencing a line from the series finale of Justice League later on in this post, though I don't reccomend watching that because all the above are one shot episodes and the finale has spolers obviously.

So, All Might like Superman the single strongest superhero in his country. The only one of them that could truly be called "Superhuman", to the envy and amazement of others. There's an arc in My Hero Academia Vigilantes, where every single hero struggles only to fail to save a building full of people from collapsing. Only for after an entire arc of more minor heroes completely failing to stop the building from falling down, across the street All Might hears about it and arrives at the last second saving everyone inside and a couple of cats too.

The basic concept of All Might and Superman is basically the same, they are both the respective strongest heroes in their world's, and they are both defined by the fact they use their great power entirely altruistically. They work themselves to the bone saving other people.

In fact, in comparison to Superman All Might overowrks himself so much it can be considered a flaw. It's shown in the overhaul arc that All Might used to have a sidekick who was devoted to him, who quit and left him entirely because he could not stand to see how much All Might was ruining himself to help others.

I wouldn't say Superman doesn't work himself to death, or risk his life just as often, because he is a character with a long history, there are times he's been overworked and in crisis, heck he's even died before (Google: The Death of Superman), but working himself to the point of self destruction is not really a character flaw of superman's the way it is for All Might. I wouldn't say it's because Superman is any less selfless than All Might, though.

Rather, it has to do with the underlying difference in their motivation is. Now I said above, they are both people who use their powers to the best of their ability to help the others around them, but that's their actions not the internal motivation that drives those actions.

I've been calling him "Superman" so far, but that's not really his name. Everyone, meet Clark Kent. (This is from Superman: Secret Origin).

Wholesome geek from Smallville Kansas. He was adopted by Ma and Pa Kent, and raised on a farm, with no clue that he was an alien orphan from outer space until about his teenage years when he began all of a sudden to develop superhuman powers. What was his reaction to learning he has those powers? That he's something stronger than any other human?

He didn't want them. Clark Kent didn't want to be different from everyone else, and he never saw himself as better than them. He only comes to term with his identity, when he realize that these abilities are a gift, the same as any other gift, like being a fast runner, or being good at math, and Clark can use these gifts to help others.

This is essential to understanding Clark's character, he sees himself as gifted yes, but he's never seen himself as superhuman, or better than others. Clark is not superman, Clark is Clark.

He's a reporter at the Daily Planet who helps the city by writing expose articles with his colleague Lois, and who occasionally hears about disasters and puts on his pajamas to save people from a burning building, or catch Lois when she's flying out of a window. Being superman is community service for Clark. Clark never makes himself out to be a savior.

This all comes from Clark's fundamental desire, to be normal, to be a part of the planet that adopted him, and to feel connected to the world. Clark, unlike All Might values both parts of his identity (This is from Superman: Birthright).

There's a lot of things I can tell you about Clark Kent, he's a farm boy, he has a home life, a wife, however I could not tell you anything about Toshinori Yagi, both his past, and what he does when he's not being All Might.

The quirkless Toshinori Yagi may as well have stopped existing the moment he inherited One for All. As for why he has no identity outside of the costume he puts on, and why he devotes everything to being a superhero, it all falls back to that idea of motivation and origin again.

Superman never wanted to be a savior or a symbol, but that's exactly what Toshinori wanted to be, to become what the world needs him to be at the expense of everything including his own identity. Toshinori is not allowed to be human, because he needs to be superhuman. Once again, that makes it seem like Toshinori is more selfless, after all he sacrificed everything. They're both gifted with powers yes, but Toshinori doesn't let himself have anything resembling a normal life because he must be what the world needs him to be.

However, this is where I want to point out, that self-destruction is never a good thing. It's you know, destructive, hence the name. I think one of All Might's greatest flaws is not just that he's "So nice, and so selfless that he always hurts himself helping others", but that he genuinely began to buy the fact that having superhuman powers made him superhuman. He didn't overextend himself just because he was genuinely that selfless, but because he believed HE was the only superhuman with the power to do so and therefore HE had to do it.

We see shades of this in the Dark Deku arc, where this complete selflessness ends up veering into egoism. "I'm the only one in the whole world who could possibly do this, you all are too stupid and slow to catch up."

All Might is known for always flying solo, to the point where he only ever had one sidekick who quit on him because he refused to accept help. Clark cooperates with other heroes all the time, watch literally any episode of the Justice League cartoon.

All Might believes he has to become a superhuman symbol in order to help people, but then he starts to genuinely believe he is superhuman and that's where all the differences between them start to branch out. Superman wants to be a part of the world he wants to be with everyone, All Might wants to stand above everyone as a superhuman symbol. Yes, his motivations are still altruistic, he does it because he wants peace for the general population, but it's still a toxic attitude on his part.

Superman is a character who grapples with his own ability to help everyone too, because someone with his abilities should be able to do just that. (Superman: For all Seasons)

However, unlike All Might who pushes himself further and further away from his own humanity, when Superman reaches his limits, he instead goes back to his humanity instead. Superman's friends and family remind him, he may be strong, but just like anyone else in the world he's not capable of doing anything.

Clark's the kind of guy who when facing a crisis in the big city, comes home to talk with his small town parents, and then is deeply touched and learns a lesson from his father talking about growing corn, because to Clar, his father's efforts at growing corn are the same as him being a hero. They're both just trying to do the best they can do with the skills they have. That is the difference, Clark is rooted in the people around him, and his community, and is basically human in everything but biology.

Toshinori crumples under the expectations of being the perfect symbol that he places for himself, because he has no connection to the world outside being a hero. For Clark, what makes him a hero is the farm boy raising and the good values that his mother and father gave him as a child. For Toshinori, for a long time in the manga at least, he genuinely seems to believe that powers are what make him a hero. (Superman: Brainaac Action Comics #866).

Somewhere down the road, All Might began mistaking power for morality. You know, "All Might Makes Right." This could be partially because All MIght's not entirely based off of superman, Horikoshi has gone on record saying that My Hero Academia is like an exploration of two kinds of heroes, Spiderman and Goku.

Goku being the kind of reassuring hero who always wins a fight. So, All Might himself has two different distinct images, he's someone who's powerful enough to always beat the bad guy, and he's also someone who shows up to save everyone. All Might never really reconciles those two sides of himself though, and because of that he ends up representing a lot of Hero Society's Toxicity.

2. All Might Makes Right

So, I hope the lengths I went to establish "Superman does not think he's superhuman, All Might does, or at least expects himself to be..." have convinced you, because now we're moving onto the more toxic parts of All Might's nature.

All Might set out to do good, yes, but he also inspired a lot of the toxic parts of quirk society, the idea that the only people who can be heroes are people with strong and flashy quirks, the idea that defeating evil is just brutally punching a villain in the face. All of this because, at some point down the line All Might seemed genuinely convinced it was his superhuman powers that made him capable of saving so many that made him the hero.

Hence why we get scenes like All Might whining in front of his All Might Statue that he can't be ahero anymore, because he's too injured to continue fighting on the front lines.

Stain even compares himself to a god, that has now fallen upon the earth and became mortal. Superman was never superhuman or above anyone else, Toshinori can't really cope with being stripped down to having the same powers as everyone else, because he thinks his power lies in showing up to fight the villain.

The one time he's called upon to stop Deku from the same self destructive spiral that he went on, he can't, because All Might hasn't really overcome his own self destructive mentality that being a hero requires him being superhuman.

It's not just self destructive though, All Might clearly believes in the ideal image of a hero that the rest of hero society supports of an overly strong hero, bashing the brains in of a completely evil villain. He never stops to question himself, or the other people who imitate him. To quote League of Legends Arcane of all things, he's so busy worrying about greatness that he doesn't stop to ask himself if his actions are good. Every time we see All Might fight a villain, no matter who it is, it's a complete and absolute beat down.

"A hero's always ready to smash his way through trouble, tell me villain do you know the meaning of, plus ultra?"

All Might himself might have brought in AFO alive despite him being the worst villain ever and kept him in prison without executing him, but he's inspired an entire society of top heroes who are in fact, totally cool with brutalizing villains. Heroes who when they hear the only way to fight the Nomus is to kill them, and killing them is completely okay, are actually excited and find it fun.

"Oh wow, we can kill them? Cool, that's way easier!" All Might himself might not kill, but the attitude he promotes that a hero is someone who punches his way through a villain no matter what, promotes this line of thinking.

I could go through the manga and nitpick All Might, like how he never had any reaction to finding out his close personal colleague abused his own family, how he called Dabi the child Endeavor abused a maniac right in front of his brother's face, I bring these up but they're nit picks, I don't think they're in the spirit of the argument. Horikoshi is not trying to say that All Might is cool with child abuse, I'm nitpicking inconsistencies in the writing there. However, the dual nature of All Might's influence on society and the double nature of heroes themselves has been a long running plot thread.

All Might is completely unaware of the toxic influence he has on others, and also refuses to self-evaluate and look at his own flaws because as I stated above he mistakenly believes that All Might needs to be Superhuman in order to be a hero. Therefore, he can't have flaws. All Might seems to believe it's his ability to perform superhuman deeds that makes him a hero, unlike Clark Kent who's greatest ability is his sense of right and wrong.

Clark also, does not support the brutalization of villains in any way. If you want to watch the animated series, there's an episode called "When there's Smoke" where Superman meets a villain who's the victim of government experimentation, and spends most of the episode trying to talk her down, and de-escalate the fight.

Clark: Don't do it volcana. I can help you. Volcana: No thanks. These days I can help mysrlf. Clark: Listen, nobody will blame you for what you've done, but the stealing has to stop, now. Clark: You have to trust me, Volcana. Volcana: DO you know how many times I've heard that? From my parents before they shuffled me off to the institute? From the institute just before they turned me over to the feds. And from the government just before they took away my life.

At the end of the episode, he doesn't even hand her over to the feds or the government because he knows they're going to experiment on her.

Superman usually attempts to de-escalate first, whereas All Might always skips step one. In fact, one of Superman's most legendary animated scenes in the DCAU is a scene where he shows just how much he always holds back in a fight.

"That man won't quit as long as he can draw breath. None of my teammates will. Me, I've got a different problem. I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone, never allowing myself to lose control even for a moment, as someone could... die. Now, you can take it can't you big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose, and show you just how powerful I really am."

Clark is constantly concerned that if he doesn't hold back perfectly he might hurt someone more than he intended to, even a bad guy, whereas All Might is always going Plus Ultra on those purse snatchers. When Shigaraki brings up the possibility that All Might might be just as violent as the people he fights, he just laughs it off and pounds Shigaraki into the pavement.

Here's another clip where superman disavows violence. Quoted Here:

"Yes, they did see. They saw the ugliness as a solution and it frightens them. It frightened me too when I decided to cross that line and do what you do. It's so easy, anger, vengeance. *Fake punch* Luckily, I'm not you and I never will be." [...] "You think that's it. It's not over you poncey twit. If you think I'll just go to jail and rot you're living in a dream world." "Good, dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us into something better. ANd on my soul, I swear that until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice are the reality we all share I'll never stop fighting, ever..."

Clark deliberately holds himself back from violence, because he knows he's a role model other people look up too and he doesn't want them imitating him.

Clark does not think his powers make him a hero, which is why he is so mindful of them. While I don't think All Might is convinced that powers make you a hero, to the lengths that say Endeavor absolutely seeps convinced that being a strong hero, and having strong powers should make him good.... I do want to compare how Clark and All Might act when they're called to save someone in a situation where their powers don't help.

Shigaraki Tomura, the villain of the manga is the grandson of All Might's mentor Shimura Nana. At her request, he never looked for her son after Nana decided to abandon him for his own safety, so they could remain hidden. As a result, when Shimura Tenko lost control of his own quirk and killed his family, no hero came to save him. Not only was All Might unaware of the situation because he was keeping his promise to his old mentor, but in the society that All Might created, Shimura walked the streets for days and not a single person stopped to help him.

Tenko is the child that All Might cold not save. However, upon learning of his existence, that All For One kidnapped the grandchild of his mentor, and then raised him for years into a villain and twisted him as a pawn to use against All Might... learning those circumstances All Might still doesn't try to go after him.

When All Might learns there was someone he did not save, someone he also has a personal connection too because his grandmother abandoned her family in order to raise him up as a hero, his reaction amounts to "Shucks, what can you do?"

"Shucks, what can you do?"

To compare All Might's dilmena with Tenko, the child he could not / did not save, there is a superman comic called "Superman: Up in the Sky" a six issue self-contained story, about Clark as he attempts to save a single girl who was abducted from earth and taken to space.

It examines the morality of such an action, Clark leaving the earth and going out of his way just for the sake of one person. After all, Clark is the most powerful hero. If Darkseid, or Brainiac shows up, you're going to need Clark fighting on your team.

The comci doesn't brush over the fact that Clark leaving just to save one little girl's life means he won't be there to help whatever natural disaster people need saving from, in fact Clark himself said it was a reason he shouldn't go, and Clark during the comic has constant hallucination and fear sequences of someone on earth dying because they needed his help and he was off saving a little girl.

Clark even has the option of leaving the search of the little girl up to the Green Lantern Corps, who are basically the universe's police with magic rings that let them fly practically anywhere and far more members than Clark, but he doesn't.

And his reasoning is simple. "No, I can't save everyone but maybe I can save her."

Superman even has a crisis of conscience with the two halves of himself, while hallucinating on an alien planet, the human half of him that wants to save one little girl, and the superhero sdie that's responsible for guarding earth from threats.

The alien himself says he only kidnapped her because she was a nobody, because she's someone who would never come after, because she's not worth that effort.

This is the defining scene which makes Superman, Superman. He came to save her, because superman isn't a set of powers, superman isn't a guy who fights bad guys, superman helps people.

Which is why I think All Might is just too different a character from Clark to really be comapred to him in the end, he's too wrapped up in his society's toxic ideals of heroism and too unwilling to bend from it. After all, if All Might had learned something, wouldn't his final stand be doing what Superman did in this comic? Giving everything he had left to save the child he failed to save? Instead, what do we see him do? Go to fight All for One in a giant robot suit.

The child who most needs to hear "I am here" is Shigaraki, but All Might's essentially already given up on him. "Shucks, what can you do?" Indeed. I want to point out in this same chapter though, All Might gives a very touching motivating speech to Todorki, reminding him he doesn't have to beat the big bad All for One, and it's okay for him to go after Dabi, and reassure his family and everyone else as a hero. THAT is the hero All Might could be, even without his powers. THAT is the hero who could try to talk to Shigaraki and bring him down, who could make an effort to be there for him now because he wasn't in the past. All Might's genuine altruism, and his moments where he uses his words and idealism to inspire people shows us what he could be, if he just divorced himself from this toxic notion that being a hero means standing up against a bad guy and beating them up.

However, we have not seen him do that yet. Because in the end All Might is no Superman. And he's DEFINITELY no Clark Kent.

[chibiranmaruchan]

There's something that's been on my mind about the fandom scene, that's kinda bugged me for about as long as I started taking tumblr more seriously for posting art and taking part in fanzines, bangs, gift exchanges etc. quite a few years ago now. Sometimes in fandoms that are older than Gen Z, (which in the majority of these fanbases, people would at least be in their late 20's, usually the majority are in their 30's and 40's) there's a lot of resentment to younger fans, particularly the Gen Z's. Now I'm not saying, with Gen Z, there aren't problems specific to our generation when it comes to fandoms; however from what I've observed, (this might be in the older fandoms that I'm specifically in) a lot of the issues come from the original fanbase themselves and Gen Z's are just the scapegoats to blame, instead of actually fixing the fanbase those issues, which I find come from rigidity to keeping the fandom the same way it was 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Sometimes older fandoms do feel gatekept by older members, which is a shame, because more fans, means more exposure, more content, more creativity, more joy. I've definitely felt talked down to and know others have, just for giving an opinion or suggesting something, like a headcanon, often with good natured intentions to bounce around ideas and as prompts, just because it doesn't fit what the fandom olds have decided to be canon (which isn't always canon/word of God or act like they personally are the director/writer/mangaka etc's mouth pieces delivering upon us, the holy gospel). If you're older than me, I don't need you to take me under your wing to teach me what's right and wrong for a fictional piece of work, just because one generation decided it's one way and another likes another way better. You aren't my parents, so please don't talk to me in a strict tone like you're correcting my bad behaviour; it's personally insulting and infantalising. In fact, I believe this phenomena is so common, the term 'fandom mom' was coined because this happens a lot.

I've heard a lot of older people in some fandoms blame Gen Z for ruining things, but a lot of the things that I've heard them being accused of, I see the older members fight with each other on, such as rules established by the older generations themselves like "If you don't like X ship, character, franchise, tropes etc, move on to what you do like and don't stay around to hate on X thing". It just comes off as hypocritical to me if you're going to instruct young people on established fandom ettiqute, but break them yourself and make excuses for other fandom olds when they do something wrong, but would crucify a younger person for doing the same thing.

Another thing I've seen, is envy towards the talent of Gen Z, especially when it comes to their fanart and fanfic output and the technology available to them with digital fanart. I understand wishing that you had that technology when you was younger and more energy and time now to contribute to these fandoms, as you're in a different stage of life to most Gen Z's, but it's not our faults that we're the ones that exist in the time for technology to be really good to create art with. I've seen this cause a divide between older and younger fans, by older ones trying to keep up the younger ones, to an obsessional level and half the time, we're not even seeing it as some competition, we do it for fun.

I keep seeing younger fandoms such as My Hero Academia, Miraculous Ladybug and Steven Universe, as well as rebooted/alternate versions of older fandoms like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Voltron: Legendary Defender, be used to justify treating Gen Z fans a certain way and projecting this image that every Gen Z is this frothing, cringy mess of a person who will rip others to shreds. While some people are like this, I think it's unfair to say the majority are, especially when comparing it to older fandoms or the original version's older fanbase, since the young people in those fandoms will eventually grow up and mature over time. You can't judge people who are mostly in their teenage years, as if they'll all be like that forever, especially not when I've seen some people pushing 40, say and do a lot worse over fandom.

The fandoms especially where the original source material is old, but still around and continuously aimed at children, just to name a few that I personally still enjoy, such as My Little Pony, Transformers, Pokémon, Sailor Moon, Kingdom Hearts etc. I don't understand when the older generations of fans get so possessive of keeping it gatekept from Gen Z, to the point they forget first and foremost, that it isn't even aimed at older people anymore, but children. If a lot of these kind of franchises were going to age up in accordance with the original fanbase, then they would have in the majority of their future installments; I could then understand this hold to gatekeep a little bit more. But a lot of them haven't and the companies making and selling them, still want to primarily focus on being marketed towards kids, but just of a new generation. No one's stopping older fans from liking older franchises aimed at kids, which they grew up with, but please let kids have things that are aimed at them and more than likely always will be, without this struggle to keep it just as it was when you were younger. You can dislike the direction something is going in, criticise it and prefer an older version, but you can't expect it to cater to you as an adult.

At a certain point, you have to accept that things change over time, including fandom. Demographics will naturally change, as more younger people come in and will eventually become the majority and fandom olds get older, eventually becoming the minority. With this change, generally, Gen Z are not trying to pry fandom out of your hands; we're just trying to co-exist and like the same things older fans do. Generally, we're not trying to antagonise older fans, by having a different opinion or different way of doing things. The Simpsons puts it best, "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with, isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you". It's ok to feel out of your depth with younger people, who seem better at something than you with more charisma, energy, time, followed and engagement with their socials, but please don't project that on us as if we're undeserving or we're doing something wrong. I don't want to feel like any time I draw, it's a competition, I just do it for fun. I don't want me giving an idea, to be shot down, because you don't want to think of something in a different way. I just want to share inter-generationally the things I like and interact with like-minded individuals, but only if they're not going to do these things that I've grown weary of seeing and personally experienced.

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group F Round 1: #F3 vs #F6

#F3: Daily lives of tiny forest women

Hakumei and Mikochi are two tiny gnome-women who live together in a house built into a tree in the middle of the forest. The show is a slice-of-life about them meeting and talking to other gnome-people or animals of the forest.

#F6: Normal school until stuff happens

Fifty years ago, horrific creatures dubbed as the “enemies of humanity” suddenly appeared around the world. To combat these threats, teenagers gifted with supernatural abilities called “Talents”—such as pyrokinesis and time travel—hone their powers at an academy on a secluded island.

Nanao Nakajima, however, is quite different from the others on the island: he has no Talent. With many “Talented” teenagers around him, Nanao is often a target for bullying, but even so, he still strives to complete his training. Soon after, two transfer students, the mysterious Kyouya Onodera and the mind-reading Nana Hiiragi, join the class. But just as everyone starts blending as comrades-in-arms, mysterious disappearances begin to threaten the class’s entire foundation.

Titles, propagandas, trailers, and poll under the cut!

#F3: Hakumei and Mikochi

Propaganda:

It really is super adorable, and the art is gorgeous. Every bit of the world is rendered lovingly with a great level of detail, from the characters to the environments. The anime has this really cool effect where they use paneling to emulate the manga’s style while also making the characters visually smaller on-screen, which works because they’re tiny.

For a slice-of-life show, there’s a good amount of continuity. They introduce the swamp necromancer Sen in one episode, and she keeps showing up later on, helping rebuild their house when it explodes, then Mikochi repays her for that by designing and making a dress for her. The show gets really into the intricacies of everything, like how dying fabric is a multistep process that is similar to chemistry, or how soap is made with aromatics.

Every character is well-realized, with their own set of quirks, profession, the tricks and tools they use in that profession, and they make pretty consistent re-appearances. And the writing is very dry and witty despite the whimsical setting. It’s cute, but it feels very adult, all the characters are adults with jobs who get drunk sometimes. Everyone is very professional and responsible, and it’s a nice change of pace from teen shounen.

Trigger Warnings: None.

#F6: Talentless Nana (Munou na Nana)

Propaganda:

I’d like to start off by saying that this is NOT a copy of My Hero Academia, even though it sounds as such. It’s kinda hard to explain the show without spoiling a major plot point, but it’s pretty much as the summary says. Honestly, if you want to watch this, don’t look up anything about it—you will get spoiled right away, and it does ruin the experience. I started this without knowing anything about it and I think that’s for the best because it’s plot twist after plot twis,t and you’re not sure what to expect next. That’s honestly something I really liked about it because you don’t know where the story will take you. Anyways, highly recommend because more people should know about this series.

Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Violence (not heavy), Necrophilia.

The abuse part is mostly implied instead of shown. There is violence, but it’s not graphic, though it may be a little disturbing.

If you’re reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

[ao3feed-izuku-midoriya]

I'll Always Pick You Up After You Fall

I'll Always Pick You up After You Fall by ItsJustPickles

He stands on a ten story tall building, watching as the sun sets for the last time in his life. Just hoping to escape everything, he falls, with a smile, a real smile that hasn't shown itself in years. One hero manages to ruin it though, but does he actually ruin it, or does he end up helping in the end?

Words: 405, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen, Other

Characters: Takami Keigo | Hawks, Midoriya Izuku

Relationships: Midoriya Izuku & Takami Keigo | Hawks

Additional Tags: Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Quirkless Midoriya Izuku, Hurt Midoriya Izuku, Suicidal Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku Commits Suicide, Protective Takami Keigo | Hawks, Abandoned Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Inko's Bad Parenting, Parental Takami Keigo | Hawks

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46918414

[ao3feed-hawks]

I'll Always Pick You Up After You Fall

I'll Always Pick You up After You Fall by ItsJustPickles

He stands on a ten story tall building, watching as the sun sets for the last time in his life. Just hoping to escape everything, he falls, with a smile, a real smile that hasn't shown itself in years. One hero manages to ruin it though, but does he actually ruin it, or does he end up helping in the end?

Words: 405, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen, Other

Characters: Takami Keigo | Hawks, Midoriya Izuku

Relationships: Midoriya Izuku & Takami Keigo | Hawks

Additional Tags: Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Quirkless Midoriya Izuku, Hurt Midoriya Izuku, Suicidal Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku Commits Suicide, Protective Takami Keigo | Hawks, Abandoned Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Inko's Bad Parenting, Parental Takami Keigo | Hawks

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46918414