#reminds me of a seminar in which only one student was willing to discuss themes surrounding sex in Lysistrata while the rest sat in silence

[pikahlua]

sooo glad you're a) talking about the VERY present themes of sm in MHA, but also b) not making yourself overly available to explain that stuff to strangers on the internet, since it's a kind of thing that is kind of uhh up to personal interpretation. like a ton of anime and manga have strong sm themes/images, and half the time its just because the imagery is just plain FUN for the artists to draw, and half the time because there's a lot of like. religious/moral themes being explored in (particularly long form graphic novel) stories AND s&m uhhh practices and lots of that stuff has absolutely nothing to do with sex and also a lot of it does. trying to make any calls about authorial intent where those themes overlap is suuuuch nebulous territory and probably need to be explored by the reader for themselves. also: how many authors talk about 'i love my little guy, I need to put him through the horrors'- that's the sadomasochism babes!!! it's how a lot of people engage in story telling, we need to call it what it is without attaching moral value to it because that's just a facet of normal regular human engagement with the world ✌️

Thank you. And look, I'm just out here saying a lot of the best climactic manga moments people love involve their favorites getting tortured in one way or another. And I think such themes are present in all sorts of media aimed at even like elementary school kids (or sometimes superficially censored TO BE "suitable" for such ages). And even if MHA in some ways takes some things a step further than its contemporaries, it's faaaaar from the first manga to do anything like this. In fact I'd even call some of its themes in this regard tame.

But also MHA do be having some kinky shit [/pos] sometimes and it's shocking to me that we're on chapter 396 and this is still news to some people given it shows up pretty blatantly in like the first chapter.