#the only conclusion ive been able to come to is that it was that hero has the kiss the cook apron in sweetheart's castle?

[tsukasageorge]

cursed with thought up an incredibly specific detail for my au and didn't write it down so i forgored

[heartpascal]

or is it loneliness?

▹— (eventual) spiderverse found family x platonic!reader

▹— summary: you need closure, and information. two visits kind of give you that.

▹— a/n: guys idk what im DOING. i have things planned for atsv but not how we’re gonna get there … rn im just yolo-ing. im not a big fan of this one but im gonna start writing the next one asap, which will hide fully be more found family-ish lmao arachnid is gonna start warming up to them all some day i swear

▹— warnings: angst, injuries, not good thoughts, dead parents, sensory issues, explosions, violence, fighting, blood?, damaged hearing for a good minute, peter b parker eating burgers deserves its own warning, food, mention of throwing up / nausea, insecurities about being good enough, refusing help, idk what else, if ive missed anything let me know!!!

▹— taglist: @rhymingtree (everything taglist) @justmare @uniquemonstrosity @lacunaanonymoused @erensbbg @dulceteris @noxxing @escherichiacolli @ray-rook @i-3at-kidz @miwagila @stoneforests (is it freedom’verse) — also i only tagged those who explicitly asked to be tagged!

MASTERLIST , part one

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

You spend a long time sat on the edge of the open window, staring out at the traffic below after getting back from Spider Society HQ. There’s a tangible relief that comes with returning to your dimension, like a weight being removed, a tension that is finally released from where it had been pulled taut. Your shoulders feel just as heavy as they did when you left, but you try not to think about it. You try to be happy that you’re back.

While you wouldn’t say it aloud, and you hate to even have the thought, you don’t think anybody had noticed you were gone. But then again, who would? You have no reason to be so upset about such a thing.

Time slips by as you diligently sew up the tears in your suit, frowning as you hold it up once you’re finished. It looks nothing like it used to, but then again, neither do you. Things have changed, it only makes sense that your suit would, too. You wonder if travelling through alternate dimensions can alter your perception of things. You’d swear that your suit had been a different shade before you left, lighter, maybe, but you have nothing to compare it to.

At least now, this time, when you put on your suit there is evidence of damage that Gwen Stacy had caused. The stitching along your the material where she had tore into you is a tangible thing, physical, and you run your fingers across it as if it might disappear. It’s almost a relief, to be able to feel where she had caused you pain, as opposed to the invisible ache she had left within you after fighting her the first time around.

Alongside the scar raised on your body, the fight with Gwen had left you with a sort of paranoia. An uncertainty in the back of your mind that has you glancing over your shoulder, has you messing up simple manoeuvres as you panic, thinking you hear her voice.

It must have been your third day back from the HQ that you come to the conclusion that you have to visit Gwen Stacy in her prison.

The decision doesn’t come easily. It comes slowly, torturously so, a realisation that deafens you as you glare through squinted lenses at the city around you. You won’t be able to go on like this, getting yourself hurt in stupid ways all because you’re not certain that she’s back in her prison. You’re meant to be a hero, which means that messing up, despite whatever paranoia that lingers in the back of your head, is unacceptable. It has consequences.

Seeing her in the flesh will likely be the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Except, maybe, not killing her when you caught her in that other dimension. You keep your mind on the fact that she won’t be able to touch you, that she’ll be walled away, to reassure yourself that there is no risk of either of you hurting the other — at least, physically.

But seeing her isn’t the only difficult part.

No, the hardest part is stepping back into an identity that you had lost your grasp on, long ago. You wear your old clothes, clothes that you hadn’t put on in months, and try to remember how it felt to be you, rather than Arachnid.

“Hi, Mrs. Stacy.” You say, when the door to an all too familiar apartment opens just a slither, and you catch sight of her wrinkled eyes. There’s a noticeable change to them when she realises who you are, and she’s slamming the door shut, undoing the chain, and reopening it before you can say another word.

She whispers your name like she can’t believe it’s you — and you can’t blame her.

You had disappeared, months ago, after the death of your father. Going missing was far easier than being placed in a foster system that would only hold you back. It had been so much easier, not having to face anyone, not having to speak at his funeral.

“Hi.” You repeat, when her stare lingers in the silence for far too long. The sound of your voice once again breaks her out of her trance, and she’s rushing forward to pull you into her arms as if you were her child. You suppose, in some ways, it was quite a lot like that. At the very least, your presence will remind her of the daughter she had lost.

“Where have you been? Oh, honey, I was so worried.” Mrs. Stacy says, her voice trembling by your ear as she squeezes you tight, unfazed by your lack of reciprocation. “Come inside, please.”

You follow her through the doorway, closing the door behind you as you had done so many times before. Not looking around at the apartment is near impossible, but you’re not sure how much familiarity you can take. Even just seeing Mrs. Stacey’s aged face makes your chest ache, your legs feeling shaky.

“Sit down, honey, let me get you a warm drink.” She says, a tremor to her voice as she bustles towards the kitchen which is adjoined to the living room. The news plays on the television, and you’re glad to hear a weather report, rather than some city-wide attack. Mrs. Stacy is quiet as she goes through the process of making your favourite drink, but with your enhanced hearing you listen to the telltale clink of a spoon against ceramic. You listen closely to her hitched breathing as her footsteps pad back into the room. “Here.” She hands you the warm mug, and you don’t comment on the way her hand shakes.

“Thank you.” You say, though it feels stilted, wrong, too formal. It’s hard to be normal in this setting, to be whoever you used to be, especially as she stares at you like she’s seen a ghost.

Mrs. Stacy stares at you for a long while before she speaks again, as if she’s still not sure that you’re real. “Where have you been? After—After your dad… we didn’t know what happened to you. Are you safe? Do you need help?” She asks, frantic once she’s gotten started on her questions.

“Mrs. Stacy, I’m fine, really.” You lie, smiling tightly over the rim of the mug as you hold it towards your face. Before, you would’ve burnt your tongue drinking it too fast, but you’re hesitant to drink it at all. The last thing you want is to become too familiar to your old life. “I’ve been staying with some friends, downtown. It’s been good.”

She raises a brow at you, and stares for a moment longer. “Honey… you don’t look well.” She tells you, and raises the back of her hand to press it against your forehead. Her frown only deepens when you flinch away from the touch. You try not to curse yourself too much, but can’t help reprimanding the way you hadn’t anticipated such an action.

The skin on your forehead is clammy, but that’s just the anxiety, the nerves at being back here. Arachnid can’t get sick.

“Listen, I… I was hoping I could ask a favour from you.” You say, hesitantly, gripping the warm mug tight between your hands, but loosen your fingertips against the ceramic when you hear a minute crack.

Mrs. Stacy furrows her brows, looking more concerned by the second, but nods. “Of course, anything.” She tells you, and places one of her hands against yours on the mug.

“I was hoping I could visit Gwen.” You voice, after one last moment of hesitation. The way her face immediately crumples at the request doesn’t give you much hope, especially as her hand withdraws from your own. “I—I know you don’t get to see her very often, and maybe it’s selfish, but… I don’t know. I wanted some kind of closure, I guess.” You ramble on in response to her silence, glaring down at the liquid still swirling in your mug.

“Honey,” Mrs. Stacy interrupts, her voice soft in contrast to the way yours was growing in volume. You quiet immediately, your gaze drawn up to where her tearful eyes stare at you, her expression almost mourning. “I would never deny you that, but you should know… I haven’t visited Gwenny since she was put in there.” She admits, her stare dropping to her lap, almost ashamed.

“Oh,” You voice, softly, in response. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed— I—I mean, I can’t even imagine—”

“No, don’t be silly, how would you have known?” She replies, raising her eyebrows at you strictly. “Now, I can get you that visit. I’ll call my attorney first thing tomorrow, but… really, honey, do you need me to call someone for you? Who are these friends?”

Her voice is familiar, and it’s kind, which makes it all the more painful. It’s strange, seeing the resemblance between her and the Green Goblin, and it makes a part of you ache. Your life wasn’t the only one torn apart by Gwen. In fact, her mother probably faced the worst of it. With her husband being long gone, her oldest son away at college, youngest withdrawn after her daughter became a homicidal maniac, who did she really have left? Who was looking after Helen Stacy?

You smile at her, as best as you can without tearing up, and reach out to grasp her hand, which she readily accepts. “I’m okay, Mrs. Stacy, I… It’s just a few friends of my dad, from his home town. Their kids, too. It’s better than being put in the system.” You tell her, and can only hope that she believes you. You have no way to back up these lies, knowing those friends of your father don’t exist.

“You could’ve stayed here, you know?” She says, teary and squeezing your hand so tightly you can hear your bones creaking. You smile sadly at her.

“You’re a much stronger person than me, Mrs. Stacy. I couldn’t even face my dad’s funeral, let alone be around the memories of somebody I lost. This place, it—it reminds me of her.” You explain, voice shaking as you hold back your own tears, swallowing them down and trying to breathe through the ache in your throat.

The way her heart breaks is almost loud enough for you to hear it, but she nods her head understandingly, regardless. “Of course,” She says, nodding still, “But know you always have a place here, okay?”

“Okay.” You respond, heart clenching so tightly you’re not sure it can pump your blood any longer.

“Now, what’s your number? Your old phone was disconnected.” She says, shaking her tears away to pull out a pad and pen from the coffee table. She sets the notepad against her knee, looking expectantly toward you.

“Oh, right,” You stutter, teeth chattering as you comb your mind for the number of your burner phone. “There was a mixup, because it was in my dad’s name.” You explain needlessly, still searching your mind for the answer. Finally, you remember it. You listen to her ballpoint pen scrape along the paper as she writes the numbers as you say them, and then she clicks the pen off after writing your name beside it, underlining it twice.

“How about I give you a call with the details of your visit, okay, honey?” She asks, nodding with a pleased hum at your affirmative. “Good. Stay for dinner, okay? I’ve missed you.”

Who are you to deny her that?

Though, even as you try to pretend that you help to set up the table for her benefit, and as you hug Gwen’s little brother tightly when he comes home for his, you know, deep down, that it’s for you. That this is a moment of selfishness that you’ll let yourself have, because god, you deserve it, don’t you?

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

It’s thirteen days post Spider Society discovery, and you’re starting to regret the way you discarded that watch so carelessly. Not because you want to be a part of some cult of superheroes, but because you wish you had asked some more questions.

Surely Miguel O’Hara must’ve known a way to stop these villains from appearing in other universes? And if he did, had he already implemented whatever it was to stop Gwen escaping again? How exactly did she escape the first time? Was it a coincidence? Is there somebody out there, working behind the scenes, helping her get out?

You, unfortunately, have no way to answer any of the burning questions nagging at the back of your head. While a part of you hopes that you never see any of the Spider Society weirdos again, you also desperately want answers. Especially if it meant you could call off your visit to Gwen Stacy.

But the day arrives as any other does, and you spend every moment before the drive over to the prison desperately hoping that one of the Spider-people will show their face. None of them do, and you’re left to get into Mrs. Stacy’s car and simply brace for the journey ahead.

You’re pretty sure that swinging would be quicker, or easier, but you had no way to explain that way of transport to an interrogating Mrs. Stacy, and so you had to relent to her insistence on driving you. Now, you sit here, shifting in the seat of the car, uncomfortable without your suit underneath the clothes you used to wear on a daily basis. Even the knowledge that it’s stuffed into the bottom of your tattered backpack in the boot of Mrs. Stacy’s car doesn’t bring you any comfort.

Instead, the rough material of an old jacket has your skin crawling like you were being bitten by a thousand mosquitos, and the trousers on your legs itch like you’re allergic to them.

You suppose, really, that the spider bite that gave you so many powers had to have more drawbacks than just destroying your life. It only makes sense that your heightened senses would extend to the receptors on your skin. It makes every movement in these clothes torturous, and you wonder if it had always been this way, or if you were just so unused to wearing your old style of clothes. Either way, you hope that you won’t have to wear them for much longer.

If it all goes to plan, you should be in and out of the prison, just ensuring that Gwen Stacy is actually in the cell as she’s supposed to be. Then you just have to endure the fifty minute drive back to the city with Mrs. Stacy, and you’re free. You won’t have to wear these clothes again, won’t have to use your name, no — you can just sink back into the half life that is being Arachnid. It’s better that way.

“Okay, honey, here we are.” Mrs. Stacy says at last, having shifted her car into park. She pointedly avoids looking at the looming high-security prison ahead, instead focusing on you as you wipe your sweaty palms against your trousers. “Now you take as much time as you need in there, alright? I’ll be just out here, if you need me.”

You smile tightly at her, nodding with what you hope is more of a grateful expression rather than a grimace. “Thank you, Mrs. Stacy, really. I appreciate it, more than you know.”

That much was true — after all, it wasn’t like you could tell her that she was allowing the vivid paranoia you had been experiencing to be put to rest after her daughter escaped to another universe. Mrs. Stacy, from what you could gather, didn’t even know that Gwen had been missing for any amount of time. She had no idea what Gwen had done, how many more people she had hurt, but you assured yourself that it was better that way. Mrs. Stacy already had to deal with plenty, and that knowledge surely wouldn’t help.

She was already dealing with her own grief and feelings on the situation, as well as trying to support her two sons in the matter. Given what Gwen’s little brother had asked of you when he found out about you visiting her, you knew that he hadn’t been to visit Gwen, either. It seemed that he wasn’t coping with it all very well.

“Of course, you’re family. You should know that by now.” She says, smiling with teary eyes, reaching across the console to grasp your hand tightly in her own.

Her words take a stab at your chest, especially considering what had happened to everybody else who had seen you as family. Dead parents, villainous best friend — it really didn’t bode well for your loved ones. You just reassured yourself with the fact that you’d be able to disappear as soon as the two of you returned to the city. You couldn’t put her in any danger, that way, or her remaining kids.

“I’ll—I’ll see you after, okay?” You respond, squeezing her hand in return before quickly letting go and throwing open the car door, getting out and catching a slither of Mrs. Stacy’s surprised reply before you shut the car door.

There are guards waiting for you at the gates, checking you are who you say you are, scanning you for weapons before you even get in the building. They’re satisfied after their searches, content that you weren’t stupid enough to bring a weapon into a highly secure prison. You keep your focus on your breathing as they walk you in, handing you clothes to change into as well as a box to put all of your belongings in.

The scrub-like clothes they give you are even worse than your own, sending shivers up and down your spine at the feeling of each fibre scraping against your skin. You just try to breathe through it. Luckily, the rest of the security checks blur by, which means less time spent on agonising over this visit. You barely hear a word of the statement they read to you before you go in, and your hand cramps as you write your signature against a dotted line of a waiver. All of the other legal things were sorted out by Mrs. Stacy’s lawyer, which you are more than thankful for.

Instead of having to deal with that, you just have to wait.

You think that the waiting might be the worst part of it all. With the scrubs making your hairs raise and promoting uncomfortable shivers up and down your body, as well as the cold metal seat that they sat you on, you’re far too aware of everything around you. You can hear the hundreds of heartbeats in the buildings, the beeping of security doors, the footsteps heading your way. You can smell the coffee that the head guard in the adjoining room to the one you’re in is drinking, as well as the day-old sandwich in his desk. Worst of all is the way your own heartbeat is thrumming in your throat, padding harshly against your chest, so loud in your own ears that it slowly starts to drown out everything around you.

Gwen’s footsteps are heavy, accompanied by the clinking of the chains she’s shackled in. You can practically hear the maniacal laughter that had come from her whilst in that alternate dimension, even though she’s completely silent as she enters the room.

She smiles at you when you look up, and for a moment you’re fooled — it’s soft, gentle, kind. But then you see the glimmer in her eyes that was distinctly not Gwen, and you feel the scar along your side throbbing with phantom pain.

You smile tensely at the guards, who regard you with looks of gentle concern and caution, before they attach her chains to a link on the floor beside a chair three metres away from where you sit. They nod at you, which you return, and you watch as they go and take their positions beside the door before you move your eyes back to the elephant in the room — which is Gwen Stacy.

“So, you missed me?” She asks, baring her teeth in a grin that has too much teeth to be anything friendly. Gwen regards you closely as you stare at her, watch for any signs of flickering, any signs that this isn’t real. Her brows raise slowly, the longer you’re silent, but you’re in no hurry to talk. “No? Is that not it?”

“Sure, I miss you.” You respond after another stretch of silence, tilting your head to study her more closely. You don’t acknowledge the way that your voice shakes as you speak, the way it comes out in something closer to a croak before you swallow harshly against your dry throat. “Thought I’d come to check in.” You add, brows furrowing to make sure she gets your true meaning.

“Ah,” She voices, then laughs, shoulders shaking, chains clanking loudly against her metal chair. “I get it, now.”

Gwen doesn’t add anything else after that, even though you suspected that she may take this opportunity to loudly claim that you were Arachnid, outing your identity once and for all. Apparently, if she does want to out your identity, she doesn’t want to do it like this, as she stays silent until you speak.

You sit forward on your chair, ignoring the way the guards at the edges of the room shift uneasily at your movement. “Your mom arranged this for me, you know?” You say, eyebrow raised. She probably knows what you’re doing, or what you’re trying to do, but she doesn’t voice it. Instead, she just shifts to lean backwards in her own chair, sighing as if relaxing.

“Hmm, so she can visit.” Gwen says, nodding her head as if it’s all making sense now.

“She can, she just doesn’t want to. Neither does Georgie.” You respond, and find satisfaction in the way her eyes flash at the mention of her little brother, the nickname that the two of you both used to call him. She recovers quickly, but you can tell that she knows it wasn’t quick enough. The Green Goblin cracked, right in front of your very eyes. It’s proof that, if anything, her little brother has some meaning. “He wanted me to tell you something.”

Her head tilts across from you, though she doesn’t move from her laid back position.

You clear your throat, and look at the words you’d written on your skin. She tilts her head forwards the slightest amount, and you shift uncomfortably in your seat, glancing at the guards who look just as uncomfortable as you feel. “He said that he misses his Gwenny, but he doesn’t want you coming home.” You stare at her as you repeat his message, the one he had told you nervously, as if he was truly afraid that Gwen would escape and come back. Her eyes twitch as she focuses on keeping her expression cool, but you know that the words have hit something in her, even if it’s part of the Green Goblin. “Looks like you even ruined your own family.”

You’re up on your feet as she lurches forwards, flung backward from where she tried to go against her chains to rush toward you. The guards are in front of you in mere moments, but you weren’t in any danger. Not as long as she stayed in here.

It’s almost satisfying, to see her chained up. It’s so different to seeing the Green Goblin on the outside, where she could be your Gwen Stacy. Whereas in here, bound by chains of heavy metal, clothed in uncomfortable looking prisoner scrubs, she was nothing but the Green Goblin. It was reassuring, almost, to be able to pick apart something physical between the two.

She bares her teeth at you, animalistic in a way that Gwen never was, and glares at you as you follow one of the guards out of the room, the others closing in on her, ready to take her back to whatever cell she came from.

The clothes you wear become less overbearing as you keep your focus on the guards taking Gwen away the whole way back through security, only switching back to your surroundings when they hand you the tray of your own belongings to change back into. You’re relieved for many reasons, and you try to focus on that feeling as you approach Mrs. Stacy’s car rather than the way your jacket itches.

Mrs. Stacy looks as if she wants to speak as you get in the car, as if she wants to ask about your visit, but she seemingly can’t bring herself to do it. You keep your mouth shut.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

Not a month later, your daily activities are back to normal, uninhibited by the daunting idea of Gwen being free. Still, though, you think about her more often, as much as you did in the time after she was put away the first time.

Mrs. Stacy had tried to call you more than once since, and at the two week mark you’d had to invest in a new burner phone. You just couldn’t risk anybody getting a hold of it and seeing her contact, or the ringer going off and exposing your position in a fight. No, it was better for her not to have your number. Besides, you had hers memorised if you needed to call her.

It was better if you tried to reduce any connections to Gwen Stacy. You’d be much better off, the less you thought about her.

Despite knowing that, you couldn’t help it. And despite seeing that crack in the Green Goblin exterior at her little brother’s words, you didn’t have much hope for her. You don’t think they’d let her out of prison even if you could find a cure, somehow. The fact of it was that Gwen Stacy’s life was over. She had no hope of a future in this world, the Goblin had destroyed that. All you could do was remember her and hope beyond anything that in one of those alternate dimensions, you and Gwen were happy together.

The thought of it played on your mind every day, a lingering pain that stung at your eyes. You thought about it so much that you had even imagined the world where Gwen had never become the Goblin, where you and your Gwen were happy. It was a suffocating image, one without any hope of being true, but you couldn’t help thinking about it.

Even as you fought villain after villain, petty criminal after petty criminal, you thought about it. Even now, as you were swinging around a bridge, dodging all the debris this villain was throwing your way, it played on your mind.

It was a distraction, and it was one you needed to get rid of.

That much became certain as the villain you were facing, Tombstone, managed to get a hit on you, sending you flying across the bridge. You landed on a car with a groan, the windshield cracking below you, and you rolled your eyes as the person in the car held a hand on their horn until you managed to climb off, a distinct Arachnid-shaped dent left in the bonnet.

Well, that would be aching tomorrow, that much was for sure.

He grinned where he was stood across the bridge from you, showing off his filed teeth, as if trying to intimidate you with the pointy edges of them.

“You’ve been a formidable foe, Arachnid,” Tombstone says, his voice barely a whisper above the wind, but you can hear him perfectly. You suspect he knows as much, and that only makes you nervous. “But I think it’s time for our battle to come to an end.”

“I actually agree.” You respond, stretching your aching back and feeling a bone shift when it definitely shouldn’t. You can’t help but wince, gritting your teeth and glaring over at Tombstone across the bridge.

You’re getting tired of these villains, of their constant spiel about how the world should be, about how everything should be how they wanted it to be. What was so wrong with the human population that everybody couldn’t just get along? Surely, if everybody got along, listened to each other, the world’s problems would be solved. But then again, this is New York, and it’s a city in which greed is bred.

A light press against your webshooter has you slinging high up on the bridge, staring down at Tombstone as he watches you intently. You’re planning your next move, considering all the variables, when a burst of orange manifests into the air behind him. He looks confused as you falter in your web slinging, dropping slightly before you catch yourself, and he turns around just in time to receive a curled fist to the face, courtesy of a familiar man in a red and blue suit.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” You murmur, lowering yourself to the bridge to approach this Spiderman, glaring at where Tombstone stands, straining against a red barrier that had materialised from the device Spiderman had placed at his feet.

“I hate that guy!” The familiar voice of Peter B. Parker says, shaking his fist as he hops slightly from one foot to the other, his lenses squinted before he finally turns to acknowledge you. “That guy sucks.”

Your brows are furrowed, eyes squinted behind your lenses as you stare at Peter, confused. This Tombstone guy isn’t an anomaly, is he? While you hadn’t faced him before, you knew that there had been a battle between him and another vigilante down in Hell’s Kitchen. And he knew your name, hadn’t been calling you Spiderman like the last anomaly. So why was he here?

Peter sighed, as if he was disappointed to be met with your confusion. “You got a place, kid? Or a burger joint, maybe?”

With that same amount of confusion, you nodded, brows furrowed as cops came to collect Tombstone, who was still in a fit of rage. You can just barely hear him swearing to get you back, both of you, through the barrier. Peter gestured a hand forwards for you to lead the way, and with slight hesitation, you swung off with him following.

Now, the two of you are sat in a Shake Shack, despite you wanting to head back to the offices you were set up in. Peter had ordered two burgers, one for you and one for him, though you had decidedly rejected the one he pushed towards you. He had only shrugged, and accepted it onto his own plate.

“My wife’s pregnant, can’t even stand the smell of these.” Peter groans, stuffing what must’ve been at least a quarter of the burger in his mouth. You just nod at his statement, though you had to admit you were slightly surprised that this guy was going to be a dad. But then again, you’re pretty sure you can remember your dad scoffing down his favourite food in a similar way. “Now listen,” He continues, speaking with his mouthful and paying you no mind as you cringe at the sound. “Miguel wants to strike a sort of… deal with you.”

“Okay?” You respond, brows furrowed. You look around the place, uncomfortable with all the people staring at Arachnid in a booth beside an old man stuffing his face. The lenses of your mask squint with you as you look at Peter, waiting for him to add anything on to explain his statement. “Then why’d he send you?” You ask, at last, when Peter makes no move to speak of his own free will, too engrossed in his second burger.

Peter held up a finger, gulping down a sip of his strawberry milkshake. “Said something about this being good practice for me,” Peter eventually answers, flashing you a smile. “You know, being a new dad and all.”

He seems to realise quickly that that was the wrong thing to say as your eyes narrow further, visible only through the shift of your lenses. The last thing you need is some random guy trying to father you. Even just the idea of it irritates you, makes the very blood rushing in your veins feel hot with anger. You had a dad, and look what good that did you. He’s gone.

Not to mention the implication of you being a child! You’re far from being a kid. You’ve been looking after yourself for some time now just fine. Whatever deal Miguel wants to strike with you is because they need you. Not the other way around. You knew that you shouldn’t have let that Spider-doctor fix you up.

“I’m not some kid. I don’t need you lot, you need me. Don’t get it all twisted, Peter.” You respond as he continues to look like a deer in headlights, clearly kicking himself for revealing what Miguel had said. You keep your voice low, fighting to stay unheard with the quietened air in the diner. “Now hurry up and tell me about whatever bullshit deal you want to strike with me, so I can say no and we can go our separate ways.”

“Kid,” Peter sighs, before immediately wincing as he realised he just directly disregarded your statement about not being a kid. “Sorry, Arachnid,” He corrects, settling his hands on the table in front of him, finally taking a break from his almost-finished food. “Nobody’s saying you can’t do this.”

“Sounds like that’s exactly what you’re saying.” You mutter, averting your eyes from Peter and instead narrowing your lenses at the people still staring in your direction.

“All we’re saying is that you shouldn’t have to do this alone,” He continues, ignoring your interruption with nothing but a quirked brow. “It’s a tough job. Everybody needs someone to look out for them, you know? It’s in our nature to feel responsible for everything around us, as Spider-people. But you can’t carry the whole weight of the world on your shoulders, it’s too much!”

You stare blankly at him, remaining unimpressed with his whole speech.

Peter sighs once more, looking at you with hesitant hope that you’ll come around. Unfortunately, you’re not about to let these people think that you’re incapable. If anything, Peter’s little speech was just adding fuel to your fire. You liked proving people wrong — it’s what you thrived on. You needed to prove them wrong. Because if you didn’t, what did that make you? You couldn’t let people be right about their assumptions of you. If you couldn’t prove everybody wrong, then that meant some of the things people said about you were right. And with the amount of people who accused you of being responsible for more deaths than you saved, who portrayed you as a menace rather than a vigilante, who said you weren’t worthy of your powers, who said whatever divine intervention had given them to you was wrong, you couldn’t let them be right. You wouldn’t.

“I already told you people. I’m not interested.” You spit out at him, feeling your frustration brimming over the edge. Why would nobody just trust you? Was that so much to ask? You understand that you had made mistakes, that you had cost people their lives, but you were trying. Why couldn’t that just be enough?

Peter says nothing as you slide out of the booth, stomping your way out of the Shake Shack as if you were some kind of grumpy teenager. He could only hope that his unborn child was a less grumpy teen, but then again, he was pretty sure you had every right to be miserable. Correcting himself, he could only hope that his unborn child never experienced your reasons for being so miserable.

You make your way towards your office building, swinging through the streets whilst doing your best to keep your heightened hearing down. You really didn’t want to have to deal with anything else, tonight. All you wanted was to get back, to put on the only clothes other than your suit that didn’t make you want to crawl out of your skin. Even if it was just for an hour, you’d take it.

While you had gotten used to how quiet it was in the building a long time ago, you couldn’t help but think that tonight, it felt almost… eerie. There was something tingling, buzzing at the very base of your skull, but even as you strained your hearing, your sight, everything, you couldn’t detect anything out of place. Everything seemed normal, so you couldn’t understand why you were so on edge! It couldn’t just be Peter’s presence, surely, because he posed no threat to you. So what was going on?

Picking up your backpack filled with belongings, you stared around at the empty office, the breeze that flowed through the open window sending a shiver down your spine, even though you weren’t feeling cold. Something wasn’t right. You just couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Hello? Anybody there?” You call out, straining your hearing once more, trying to listen out for even the slightest sound. A movement, a breath, anything, even as you couldn’t help but think that this was the most cliché horror movie like moment that you had experienced to date. Still, you heard nothing, but that nagging feeling didn’t dissipate, and you quickly lost all desire to change out of your suit.

The unease you felt only grew stronger as you stood there, unsure what to make of the feeling. It was quickly growing towards being overwhelming, but you didn’t know what to do.

Luckily for you, you didn’t have to make a decision.

Unfortunately, the decision was made by one of the very people you were trying to prove yourself to.

Peter B. Parker — or at least, you were pretty sure it was him — swung through the very same window you had, only to grasp a hold on your arm and pull you out of the window as he jumped straight back out of it.

Now, you had been Arachnid for a long time now. You had gotten used to the swinging, to the way your stomach dipped and your throat tightened, but you had never experienced it where you weren’t the one in control. Finally, you understand why people you brought to safety had, on occasion, thrown up immediately after you set them down on their feet again. The feeling of falling, of having no choice but to trust somebody else to catch you, it was terrifying.

But what was infinitely more terrifying was the way that the very floor of the building you had just been stood on exploded.

The blaze was blinding, even with your lenses protecting your eyes, but the noise that came moments later was much, much worse. And sure, you had been around explosions before, but never one that big, never so close. And never so unprepared for one.

Your ears were ringing, and you vaguely realised that you had become dead weight in your shock, with Peter struggling to keep his grasp on your arm firm. After a moment, you had the sense to grab his forearm in return, trying to assist him in holding you up. He didn’t seem as effected by the explosion in comparison to you, and you wondered if he’d had the time to put earbuds in his ears as you had sometimes done before a fight. Either way, you were insanely envious as the pain in your ears increased, leaving you struggling to focus on holding on to Peter.

When he set you down, which couldn’t have been more than a minute after he had grabbed you, considering you could still see the office building smouldering, you had to hold a hand over your mouth even over your mask, trying to rid yourself of nausea. Smoke was leaking into the darkening sky, and you saw the flash of sirens below, but heard nothing other than the distinctive ringing that felt like it was melting your brain.

Peter’s hand was squeezing your shoulder, and after a moment in which you didn’t acknowledge him, he was gripping your other shoulder with his spare hand, shaking you the slightest bit. You looked up at him with a groan, squinting past the floating lights in your vision to see that his mouth was moving, no sound coming out. You shook your head, trying to get rid of that incessant ringing, but it didn’t work. You dropped your chin to your chest again, hands bracing against your ears as if they could ease your pain, and you didn’t make a move as Peter removed one hand from your shoulder.

Mere moments later, the same tingling you had felt before the building you were in exploded returned, stronger, more intensely. Your head snapped up, frantically looking around, paying Peter no mind as he spoke into the orange-glowing watch on his wrist. You breathed through your nose, trying not to cough at the smoke permeating the air, and you just managed to push Peter over the edge of the roof of the building, with you diving after him, as another explosive went off.

That explosion was smaller than the last one, and the only reason you had managed to avoid it was because you knew it was coming. You knew what the alarm bells in your head were trying to tell you now, and you spotted the projectile just seconds before it reached your feet.

Part of you was glad that your senses were dulled from the first explosion — your hearing, especially, as it meant you were less effected by the close-range on this one. You saw Peter’s eyes widen as he looked up above you at where the explosion had just occurred. You just about managed to web him before shooting a web towards the next building, feeling something in your shoulder pull sharply with his extra weight and the suddenness of the move.

You squinted down at him as he gripped the web attached to his chest with one hand, his lips moving more frantically as he spoke to a hologram projected by the watch on his other hand.

“Shit, what is going on?” You asked, though mostly to yourself, but the only way you could tell you had even voiced the words was by the way they rumbled out of your throat. That explosion had messed up your hearing, for the moment, anyway, and you quickly realised that with your slow healing and the ringing in your ears, this fight was going to be majorly difficult.

You only had a moment to think that, before something snapped the web that was holding you to the building, sending both you and Peter falling through the air. Embarrassingly, you’re pretty sure that you let out a yell of some sort.

All the air was knocked out of you the next second as something hurtled into you, sending you careening towards the windows of the closest building. Peter, for a moment, had a shocked expression on his face, before he seemingly realised what was going on, smiling and letting out a string of words that you didn’t hear. You groaned as your sore back collided with the window, smashing upon your impact, and you were sent sprawling over a desk, a monitor breaking underneath your sudden weight.

Yet again, there was a hand against your shoulder, and you paid it no mind as your head dropped back, thudding against the desk. You couldn’t help but groan, the duress that your back had been under today was certainly taking its toll, leaving your whole spine throbbing with pain. On top of that, you were struggling to catch your breath, and with the sudden adrenaline provided by the spider-sense fading, the intensity of the pain in your ears was increasing.

Finally, you managed to peel your eyes open to see a concerned Peter B. Parker looking at you, with Miguel O’Hara stood beside the shattered window, staring out menacingly, as if daring whoever it was to attack again. Peter said something else, squeezing your shoulder, and all you could do in response was hold up one thumb.

Miguel seemingly barked out an order over his shoulder, and a moment later, you were squinting against the bright orange light of a portal.

Peter was hauling you to your feet, leaning to hold one of your arms over his shoulder, practically carrying your weight towards the portal looming ahead. “No, no, wait,” You said, and you felt the way your words slurred as you became slightly delirious with a mixture of pain, adrenaline, and desperation. “Stop, I gotta—”

He only shook his head, before tipping the two of you forward until you both fell into the portal.

The dizzying feeling of inter-dimensional travel definitely didn’t help the pounding in your temples, nor the nausea you had previously been feeling, and you had no choice but to try and focus on Peter’s grip on you as you squeezed your eyes shut. When the world finally stopped spinning, or feeling like it was falling away around you, you opened your eyes just enough to take note of where you were — which was back in the Infirmary of the Spider Society HQ.

You shook Peter off, standing on your own weight and waving him away when he tried to assist you as you swayed once more. You glared, eyes narrowed, and turned to head straight back through the portal you had come from, only to see it close before your very eyes.

The same Spider-Doctor from the last time you were here snapped a band around your wrist, and you squinted down at the red and blue band. It made you feel lighter, even slightly, which felt good on your aching bones and muscles. You opened your mouth to speak as the Spider-Doctor led you to sit down on an empty bed with white sheets, but you vaguely saw the way his mask shifted as he presumably spoke. You couldn’t tell what he was saying with his mask on, but a minute later, you felt a sharp prick against the inside of your elbow.

You just about had the lucidity to murmur “You fucker—” before you succumbed to the weight of your eyelids.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

When you woke up, it was to a throbbing pain in your forehead, that only got worse when you tried to open your eyes. At the very least, you were glad to have your hearing returned to you, albeit slightly muffled, which you were only aware of because the sound of voices across the room was the reason for you waking.

“I’m just saying, maybe knocking the kid out wasn’t the greatest idea!” Peter B. Parker’s annoyingly loud voice says, slightly high pitched in the end. Who he was saying it to, however, you couldn’t say, not without opening your eyes. And that didn’t feel like a good idea, the lights even with your eyes closed feeling like too much.

Instead, you just groan, bringing your hand up to rest over both of your eyes. “It wasn’t a great idea.” You say through gritted teeth, more than annoyed over the situation you found yourself in. Honestly, what did these people have against leaving you be? Why did they think they had any right to tell you what to do, or how to handle things, or to overrule you when it came to your own treatment?

“Hey, kid!” Peter responds, drawing the letters out in that typical oh shit voice. From the snippet of the conversation you had caught, at least he was seemingly trying to advocate for your consciousness. However, that didn’t change the fact that he was there when that Spider-Doctor knocked you out. No, you were still pissed. And when you got your hands on that doctor? He was in for it.

Any other thoughts or feelings on the matter were overturned when you realised that your hand was resting over your eyes, not the lenses of your mask.

Who do these people think they are?

You open your mouth to jump into a rant on that exact subject, on the audacity that they all have, but find yourself silenced by somebody grabbing onto your free wrist, and seemingly dropping your mask into your hand. You feel it until you’ve got it the right way around, and then pull it over your face.

The lights are much more bearable with your lenses back over your eyes, but it’s still painful, and still worsens that pounding in your head. But it does mean that you can see who’s around you; Peter, Miguel and the Spider-Doctor. You have half the mind to leap at that doctor, but Miguel is raising placating hands in your direction before you can make the move to do so.

“Let’s all calm down.” Miguel says, placing his hands on his hips when your eyes only narrow at him.

“What is wrong with you? Who gave you people the right to—to take off my mask? To knock me out? Hell, to come to my universe and get in my business!” You practically yell out, swinging your legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the way your back hurts with the movement and glaring when the three of them step forward to help you.

“If Peter hadn’t gotten there when he did, you would’ve died.” Miguel responds plainly, seemingly aggravated by your irritation. One of his arms is raised in a gesture towards the man, who smiles almost guiltily, as if helping you was a crime. Which, in your mindset, it might as well have been. “There was an anomaly, a villain from another dimension targeting you.”

“I can handle myself.” You spit out, though the way the room spins when you stand is almost a direct contrast to your words. Your blood is rushing through your veins, and you realise that there’s a machine beeping next to you, increasing in frequency. As you look, you realise it’s measuring your heart rate, and you yank wires off of you that you hadn’t even noticed before, as if they were exposing you somehow. “And that doesn’t give you the right to take off my mask. Who does that?”

Spider-Doctor raises his hands, as if surrendering, though seems unintimidated by the way your glare switches to him. “It was necessary. Your hearing was severely damaged by the explosion, you needed treatment. You have dampening-buds in your ears now, while your healing catches up.” While that sounds reasonable, it only makes you angrier. Why did these people even care if some anomaly killed you? If your hearing was damaged? Why did they insist on bothering you?

Miguel sighs, pinching his nose, before he lifts his head up to speak to you again. You just about stop yourself from making a snotty comment about his attitude. You didn't even want to be here, and here he was, acting like dealing with you was such an inconvenience to him. It was frustrating. “Your universe seems to be at some sort of epicentre of anomalies, and we don’t know why. Yet.”

“We’re just trying to keep you safe. You can’t deal with all of those anomalies alone, nobody can. Sometimes, you need a team.” Peter says softly, like he could convince you of the matter. “Believe me, you don’t want to learn that the hard way.” He adds on, smiling almost hesitantly, as if there’s a memory he’s thinking of connected to his own words.

You’re sighing through your nose, your teeth gritting together as you regard them. “Okay, fine, you want to come take out your anomalies, or whatever? You do that. But anything more than that isn’t welcome.” You say, at last, your eyes narrowed towards them as you wait for their responses.

You still don’t really understand it, any of it, but it’s becoming clear that you have no choice but to deal with these people. Apparently, they were not budging on all of this stuff, which — fine, so long as they stay out of your way. The last thing you need is a bunch of Spider-people stepping on your toes, or making you seem incapable in front of the citizens of your own dimension when in the end, they’ll all up and leave.

After all, you can remember your mother telling you how important it is to do things yourself. The moment you start accepting help, you relax, and when they decide they don’t want to help you anymore? You’re screwed, your sense of independence reduced to ashes. And as Arachnid, there’s far too much at stake to risk that happening.

“Here,” Miguel says, only nodding his agreement — or at least, that’s what you assume the nod was for. He throws a watch towards you, and you catch it with some confusion. “In case you see any anomalies before we do.” He explains as he watches you fiddle witht he watch in both hands, glaring down at it as if it was offensive. He’s relatively satisfied when you relax at that explanation. While Miguel doesn’t voice what else it’s for, knowing you’d only get irritated and refuse the watch, he’s silently hoping that you’ll understand. It’s so you can come to them, if you need them. They can only hope that they’ll be able to tell you that, one day, before it’s too late, without the offer scaring you off.

“So, I’m good to go?” You ask, looking between the three Spider-Men still staring at you and the watch you hesitantly clasp around your wrist. They nod, or, Peter and Miguel do, while the Spider-Doctor throws his hands in the air, exasperated.

“That dimension is yours,” Peter says, leaning over to see the screen of your watch. “The button at the bottom will input this dimension as the destination. Just press that,” He points to another button, “To open the portal to whichever dimension has been typed in.”

You nod, still pissed that he’d let the Spider-Doctor knock you out, but at least you didn’t give him a snarky comment. Instead, you just pressed the button to go back to your own dimension, and stepped through the portal the moment it was big enough for you to go through.

You didn’t expect for him to follow you through.

“Hey, listen,” Peter says, almost reluctantly, as if he doesn’t want to upset you. When you turn to him, he raises his hands, as if to further prove that sentiment. “I am sorry that he knocked you out, I didn’t know he was going to do that.”

“Okay, fine, apology accepted.” You say, flatly, turning to survey where exactly you are. It doesn’t take you long to notice the remains of the building you had been camping out in, the building charred and the air still thick with all the smoke that had been produced.

“I wasn’t done,” Peter sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose momentarily. “I also wanted to say that I’m sorry about your building. And I wanted to ask, well, mention about how when Doctor-Peter took off your mask, he noticed you don’t have anything protecting your ears, like other Spiders with your level of enhanced hearing do.”

You turn to stare blankly at him, while mulling through where exactly you’re going to stay in your head. If you’re being honest, you’re not paying his words much mind. So what, you don’t have anything protecting your hearing? Sure, sometimes you had stuffed earbuds into your ears when you knew you were going into a rough fight, but you didn’t know when some psycho exploded your building right in front of you. Plus, it’s not like you have unlimited resources to figure out some way of protected your ears under your mask while also letting you effectively use your hearing.

“Okay? And?” You ask, voice edging on the side of boredom. In all honesty, you just want to be left alone. You want to put on your comfy clothes, curl up into a ball and go to sleep so you can dream of a world where everything is okay. The likelihood of that happening is small, but not impossible, right?

“Well,” Peter hesitates then, which piques your interest the slightest bit. “Here, I had these made back when my hearing was crazy sensitive, but it’s not anymore, so I got no use for them!” He says, holding out two blue and red earbuds in a clear case. “You gotta wait until your ears are healed up to use ‘em, but I figured they’d do you more good than me.”

For a moment, you’re ready to deny him. To glare and insist that you don’t need his help. But then, he had said that they were originally for him, and he didn’t need them any longer, so really, would it be so bad to take them? To accept this one thing? To allow yourself to be saved of this tiniest bit of pain?

“You’re sure?” You ask, likely the least aggressive you’d spoken to him, though that’s not to say that it was asked softly. You were still firm on not accepting their help, on doing your own thing, but you could accept this much, surely? It couldn’t hurt.

Peter smiles, a short laugh leaving him, and he waves the box towards you. “I’m sure!”

“…Thanks.” You say, shortly, as you accept the earbuds offered to you. He also hands you the backpack that you had lost track of after the attack, and you accept that far more quickly. You’re glad that it feels the exact same weight as it did the last time you held it, before you shove the earbuds into the opening and zip it back up.

There’s a portal still open on the rooftop the two of you stand on, and Peter backs up to go towards it almost reluctantly. “Also, if you need somewhere to stay—”

“Don’t push it,” You respond, quickly, cutting him off before he could finish what he was saying. He doesn’t take offence to your abruptness, and smiles with a nod, before he disappears into the portal. You stare out at the city around you, looking in the direction of another building you had been very reluctant to return to. “What is my life?” You ask yourself, rhetorically, because you don’t know how you’d even answer that.

You glance behind you to ensure the portal is closed, before jumping off the rooftop, freefalling, relishing in the way the cold wind soothes the pain in your back. Before long, though, you have to shoot a web to catch yourself. You head towards the only place you know will be suitable for you, but can’t shake the way the thought of it chills you.

All you can do is hope that this multiverse stuff will be over with, and soon.

[pikahlua]

Katsuki Bakugou and the most unpredicted predictable plot twist

Okay, I was a little obnoxious recently, I’ll own that. But what the hell else was I supposed to do? It’s been a while since Horikoshi gave us such a wink and a nudge! I want to savor this so much.

But let’s talk about the new fantasy AU art. In case you’re unaware, we’ve had three up until now. What’s notable about the first two is that the sword All Might sports in the first...

...makes an appearance in the second as a sword split between Izuku and Katsuki.

And you can take that how you will. The easiest conclusion to draw is that both Izuku and Katsuki have inherited a piece of All Might’s legacy and won’t be able to realize the full power of that legacy without the other’s help. That’s a fair interpretation. I will allow you that one.

But then we get this:

Yeah, you can keep the same interpretation with this. But come on! What am I supposed to think about Katsuki pointing at the completed sword (that he’s apparently also put his own spin on)? While Izuku’s sword is hidden and not showing if it’s completed or still just a half? And why did Katsuki have a hunting knife in the second art but only one sword now? And why does Izuku have an extra sword now which he didn’t have in the second art? What the hell am I supposed to think!?!?!?

You know, anon, that (allegedly) happens in both the second and third art pieces, and now I’ll never unsee it.

Okay, so am I 100% certain this is a hint that Katsuki gets OFA? No. I have never been 100% certain about any of my theories. But here’s the thing: as a fandom, we really haven’t considered this possibility enough. It’s actually brilliant if you think about it. We’re all so convinced it won’t happen because it happened in Heroes Rising, which throws us off Horikoshi’s trail. BUT I CONSIDERED IT AND I REALIZED SOMETHING CRUCIAL.

What happens in Heroes Rising is its own set of events in which Katsuki ends up with OFA. There are other distinct possibilities that could lead to the same outcome, and they are immensely different from the Heroes Rising movie.

Let’s explore them.

THEORY: Katsuki Bakugou will receive the One For All quirk (or something).

Table of Contents I. Heroes Rising II. Transcendent Katsuki III. A New One For All? IV. An Explosively Petty Heart V. Good Ole Parallels

I. Heroes Rising

So Horikoshi claims Heroes Rising included some of his original ideas for the MHA ending, but now he has come up with a better ending. But we don’t know what it is about this “better ending” that will supposedly be different from Heroes Rising. If we just assume the part that was meant to be the original MHA ending is “Katsuki gets OFA,” we’re really just jumping to conclusions.

But what else could he have been talking about if not that?

Well, he could have been talking about the circumstances in which it happens.

What really happens in Heroes Rising? Izuku, in a desperate gambit to defeat the enemy, passes One For All willingly onto Katsuki so that they can both use it to fight, and then Izuku uses up the power and ends up quirkless, leaving Katsuki the next heir of One For All (until it gets undone).

So what if the part that changes in the “better ending” isn’t the fact that Katsuki gets One For All. In other words...what if Izuku doesn’t give it to him? How else could Katsuki then end up with One For All?

The answer may be staring us in the face.

II. Transcendent Katsuki

First of all, we must acknowledge that Horikoshi has been setting things up for something to happen with Katsuki. I won’t rehash my entire theory here about how Katsuki is about to awaken as a transcendent one. But of all my theories I’ve ever crafted, I have never been more certain about any than that. And if I’m correct that Katsuki is becoming a transcendent one just like Tomura is, then the major consequence of this will be that he becomes a suitable vessel for multiple quirks. Ain’t no worries about One For All sapping his life away at that point.

There are other hints about legacies Katsuki is to inherit. Heck, aside from just the All Might vestige visiting Katsuki as he dies, we do have this interesting sequence that ends with Katsuki on-panel.

And what drives me nuts about this sequence is how Edgeshot and Jeanist and Mirko are all there essentially passing their legacies onto Katsuki as well. With the OFA vestiges being numbered as they are, the pro heroes’ rankings suspiciously resemble a similar line of progression. Were I to mention the quirks of the “Third, Fourth, and Fifth,” you would be entirely justified to read that as the OFA vestiges Izuku has met...or Jeanist, Edgeshot, and Mirko. Is it a coincidence? With all this talk about legacy and chains connecting people?

But since these are not characters connected with the real OFA, what does that mean? Is Katsuki somehow gonna create his own OFA? One that’s separate from the one Izuku has?

I mean, maybe???

III. A New One For All?

I don’t know what Horikoshi ultimately has up his sleeve, but there’s one particular Chekhov’s gun that still hasn’t gone off, and I AM WAITING.

Neito Monoma, that beautiful bastard.

Wayyyyy back in the Joint Training Arc, we had a nice little expo from Monoma that ABSOLUTELY CANNOT HAVE BEEN A ONE-OFF THING.

“Some [quirks] have effects that last and linger.” (And also “Be careful of the supporting role’s dying breath,” because that one is just hilariously ominous.)

What I’m getting at is that this arc went well out of its way to establish what would happen if Monoma copies OFA, which for him is a whole lot of nothing. But the “some have effects that last and linger” IMMEDIATELY made me wonder about: what happens if he copies All For One and steals a quirk? Or gives a quirk to someone else?

So here we have a character who really could move quirks around or even DUPLICATE them. If he copies AFO, can he pass a Copied quirk to someone else...and the effect lingers indefinitely? Or maybe he just copies OFA itself and passes it onto another person. Will that other person still have the Copied OFA when Monoma hits his time limit? Or can he just hold Izuku’s and Katsuki’s hands and give Katsuki OFA for as long as they hold hands plus 10 minutes?

Now, that last one is a bit iffy because Copying OFA by itself doesn’t do a whole lot, but the fact that there’s still the potential for it to happen should not just fly under the radar. Horikoshi can make all manner of things happen in his story to turn this seemingly useless ability into a big game changer should he so desire.

IV. An Explosively Petty Heart

Before I go into another possibility for how all this could go down, I’d like to point out another series of suspicious potential hints that Katsuki will end up with OFA--because we’re coming off the subject of Monoma, and he and Katsuki are both infamous fourth wall-breakers, with all their talk about supporting characters and extras.

You see, Katsuki has a habit of lampshading the story with irony.

“I’ll last longer in battle than you, wimp!! [promptly dies]”

Because of this, anything and everything Katsuki says should automatically become suspect. He gives so many hints about the story proper by just sneezing. This is a major part of why that new fantasy AU art was so conspicuous with his pointing at the sword. If that gesture really is a clue, it’s a clue that once again breaks the fourth wall.

I’m just saying, we really still have no idea what happened to Katsuki’s heart. Did it get hit? Or did it explode from the inside?

Given what I said about Monoma before...maybe Katsuki already has OFA???

V. Good Ole Parallels

So we’ve got a new OFA legacy being formed, we’ve got Monoma pulling some shenanigans, we’ve got Katsuki already somehow having OFA before the battle, but what other possibilities are there?

There’s one that just won’t stop haunting me.

It’s time to extrapolate Star’s fate to Katsuki.

Look, New Order did its damage, and it’s still making its mark on the current story. I am convinced of several things, those things being: (a) Star and Stripe has way too many parallels with Katsuki Bakugou, and (b) this bit above with AFO’s quirks turning on him is coming back again.

Probably the most ironic defeat AFO could suffer would be for his stolen quirks to cause his downfall. We’ve seen them rise up in rebellion against him before, but they seem to need some help to do so. New Order got them riled up. Now somehow Jirou managed to trigger them. They are just itching to fight back.

So what could One For All do to help those stolen quirks rise up? The vestiges have their own wills. Perhaps they could LEAD the rebellion.

Which means...All For One (either version) is going to steal One For All.

So here’s a concept: All For One (probably the Tomura version of AFO, let’s be real) steals the OFA quirk successfully. However, the vestiges inside OFA turn on AFO and get the rest of his quirks to attack him. OFA becomes a poison to AFO just like New Order did. So what does AFO do when that happens?

He has to offload the OFA quirk onto someone else.

But where could he safely store OFA until he can find a way to get control over it?

His best bet to make sure OFA wouldn’t be used against him would be...an unconscious person.

(Or you can mess with this formula a bit as you like. Maybe AFO Prime steals OFA, but because his AFO quirk is a duplicate his authority/strength over the vestiges is weakened--and THAT’S why the OFA quirk is able to get all the other quirks to turn on him. So AFO then offloads OFA onto unconscious Katsuki until he can find a way to get TomurAFO close enough to transfer the quirk to him, because the heroes will be doing everything in their power to keep TomurAFO away at that point).

But do you see how Izuku isn’t giving OFA to Katsuki in this case or any of the others? See how Heroes Rising was possibly throwing us off the trail?

And, well, there are more iterations of possibilities I haven’t listed. I’ll admit as much as that too.

Like...I don’t know, maybe Katsuki doesn’t receive OFA in the end.

Maybe somehow he actually ends up with the All For One quirk instead? 👀

[mike-conti]

The Return of a Classic: Our Hopes for Diablo 4's Storyline and World Building

The Return of a Classic: Our Hopes for Diablo 4's Storyline and World Building

The Importance of Story in Diablo

The Diablo series has always been known for its deep and immersive storytelling. From the epic battles with the Prime Evils to the tragic fall of the heroes, each Diablo game has a unique and compelling narrative that draws players in. As we await the arrival of the coming Diablo 4, we can't help but wonder what kind of story we'll get to experience.

According to the developers, Diablo 4 will take place many years after the events of Diablo 3. The world has continued to suffer and is now on the brink of annihilation. The return of the demonic forces threatens to plunge the world into chaos once again. This sets the stage for a classic story of good versus evil, but we hope that Diablo 4 will take the story in new and exciting directions.

World Building: A Key Part of the Diablo Experience

One of the things that sets Diablo apart from other RPGs is its immersive world building. From the gothic architecture of Tristram to the sprawling cities of Act 5, Diablo games have always had a richly detailed world that's full of secrets and dangers. Diablo 4 promises to continue this tradition by offering players a massive open-world to explore.

We hope that Diablo 4 will feature a world that's not only bigger but also more dynamic than previous games. Perhaps we can see villages that grow and collapse over time, or dungeons that change depending on the player's actions. We'd also love to see more variety in environments and locations. Maybe we can explore the frozen tundras of the Barbarian homeland or dive deep into the underworld beneath Sanctuary.

Multiplayer: The Heart of Diablo

While Diablo games can certainly be enjoyed solo, the series has always been known for its multiplayer aspect. Diablo 4 promises to take this to the next level by offering a shared open-world experience. Players will encounter each other organically in the game world, and they'll be able to team up to take on world bosses and other challenges.

We hope that Diablo 4's multiplayer will be seamless and fun. We'd love to see new ways for players to interact with each other, such as collaborative quests or guilds with shared bases and resources. We're also excited about the possibility of PvP battles in the open world.

Conclusion

As we eagerly await the arrival of the coming diablo 4, we can't help but feel excited about the future of the series. With its immersive storytelling, rich world building, and engaging multiplayer, Diablo 4 promises to be a true successor to the beloved franchise. We can't wait to see what kind of adventures await us in Sanctuary.

Reference:

Diablo IV Quarterly Update—September 2021

Diablo 4 Guide: Story, Classes, Release Date

Article by None

[sqlointinator]

I read back through the notes and I feel like you guys may have overreacted with the pile on response?? It's okay if anon misinterprets or misses things on a FIRST watch through - especially if their attention had been split if they were doing something else while listening - because most people need time to REFLECT on a piece of media before they start being able to draw important connections. I myself wasn't MAGICALLY bestowed with a perfect interpretation of the text: I had to reflect on it, watch it over, and engage in discussions to get a better picture. In fact, I STILL find new things I missed when I rewatch it now, because that's just what engaging with a piece of media is like.

I understand your feelings completely (I'm sick of bad interpretations online too!), but these reactions were SO extreme I had to look through the reblogs off my account to see if there was some mysterious, hidden response that I was missing the context of.. But no!! You guys just projected your general frustrations about media illiteracy on some random anon who wanted to talk about how they're feeling!!

Imagine if you were going through your first watch of Apotheosis, wanted to offer a liveblog of your thoughts, and THIS is the backlash you get from other fans for just speaking your mind:

#ok. um. did they LISTEN at all ??? #media literacy is dead #this is definitely the worst take ive even seen in my entire life #not to be like chronically online but media literacy is dead #my god EVERYONE is clowning on this guy #good. #head in hands. have u even watched apotheosis #anon block me as soon as you see this PLEASE

I feel like I'm being too harsh on you guys, and I don't want to upset you because some of you are my mutuals, but I would personally find this response so damaging and degrading!

Also!! It's not a crime to just find a character annoying?? Rumi is a favourite character of mine but what I like in a character isn't what everyone likes in a character, you know?

BUT ABOUT RUMI...

I'm not going to say anything about the character because I don't want to assume anon can't come to their own conclusions about that. But instead I want to point out something that everyone seemed to miss, which is the point:

Only on episode 11 rn so maybe there’s some character development I’m missing [...]

If you feel characters are missing character development throughout the campaign, that is NOT a mistake of the campaign, Apotheosis is just a different kind of story. You are NOT meant to find the 'heroes' noble, you are NOT meant to see them develop, you are NOT here for a feel good story- Apotheosis was BUILT to be a tragedy. It's a tragedy with the most dramatic twist of fate, something that should have sealed its fate ending up the gateway for love to prevail. You are being pulled on a journey you KNOW the horrible destination of, but then the story subverts your expectations.

If you listen to the Rolleds, it's interesting to hear the players all say in their own words that they don't think their characters are capable of getting better. Bizly, Grizzly, and Charlie all say they don't think Thanatos, Rumi, or Exandroth respectively have the capacity to change. Hell, Peter says about himself that he can't do what the others do, and Charlie notes that Peter won't change unless there was something to prove he could be more than what he felt he was.

Apotheosis is a campaign you have to watch in full if you want to see characters development, because it's only with certain plot points (some quite far in I should add) that the world views of these characters is seriously challenged and they stop dwelling in their ego long enough to change.

BUT I DO WANNA POINT OUT..

Episode 10 has a really integral point in Rumi's character development where they apologise to Exandroth, which is sooo fucking important. There was also the scene where Rumi returns to the room they got the blade in an earlier episode!! Which I'm not going into the details of either, because I've been typing this point for a while, and I'm avoiding spoilers, but go rewatch everything from the point where they arrive at Ranz and episode 10!! (these are like my favourite episodes btw lol)

So yes, I do think anon was missing some crucial points that point to changes in Rumi's character, but that's the main issue I have with this ask. I don't think you guys were being very cool when you called them media illiterate. Anon, I doubt you're gonna see this, but I hope you're doing well and you might find this analysis to be interesting or more relevant to your ask.

Okay, that's all I gotta say.

Rumi is my least favorite jrwi character ever I think. Only on episode 11 rn so maybe there’s some character development I’m missing but OH MY GOD is he annoying. He’s so full of himself. Hate that guy. His relationship with Peter is cute tho I’ll give him that

-

[s0fter-sin]

i think a cool ending could be midoriya forcing one for all into shigaraki/afo and bc of the amount of power from unlocking all the quirks, it causes the quirk singularity theory to come true and the quirks all destroy themselves, leaving shigaraki and midoriya quirkless

[mydekuacademia]

Can I request Izuku or katsuki finding out they’re dating Aizawa’s kid? Through some angst like reader gets injured badly and they go to visit them and Dad’s there and he just says I’m their father?

Ooooof I'm here for this

I did Midoriya, but if you want a Bakugou too, lmk!

They/them pronouns used :)

Warning: blood and injury mention, cussing

Problem Child

Midoriya had no idea your work study agency was going to participate in a raid against a criminal organization in northern Honshu. He had no idea you were being put on the front lines due to your quirk's usefulness in the short range. He had no idea the danger you were in. That is, until he saw the news.

One of his classmates had turned on the national news in the common room, and everyone had crowded around the tv, elbowing each other to the side to get a better look. Midoriya couldn't quite catch what the anchors were saying, and just as he was about to ask his friends to quiet down a bit, the room fell silent.

You were on screen. Your hero costume was torn and dusty and dotted with blood stains - from you or the villains, Midoriya couldn't tell. Your face was screwed up with concentration and exhaustion. If he didn't know you so well, Midoriya wouldn't have been able to spot your underlying terror, but he saw your pinpoint pupils, your slightly trembling fingers, the way you bit your lip to distract yourself from the fear. An ice cold chill enveloped him. Why were you there?

His fear decreased slightly when he saw the pro you were working for a step in front of you. Okay, so you weren't just caught up in an attack, you were meant to be there. For a moment, he was hurt that you didn't tell him about the raid, but then he remembered the Shie Hassaikai raid and how he couldn't talk about it to anyone but the other participants. He supposed it made sense that you couldn't tell him, even if he was your boyfriend. He sincerely hoped you'd had someone to talk to about it - he remembered well how scared be was before his raid.

"Oi, Deku!"

Midoriya snapped out of his reverie and turned to face an annoyed Bakugou. "Y-yes, Kacchan?"

The blonde scowled. "Your muttering is fucking annoying. Cut it out before I blow your ass up."

Midoriya bowed his head. "I-I'm sorry. It's just...(y/n)-"

"I'm not blind, Deku. I can see that that extra is fighting. They may not be as strong as me, but there's no way they'd be a total embarrasment on live TV. So shut the hell up."

Was that his way of being encouraging? Midoriya didn't know. He didn't know a lot of things, like if you'd be okay, or if you'd be home by that night. He hadn't felt that lost in a long time.

Uraraka dragged her eyes away from the screen and locked Aizawa, standing just behind the group. "Sensei, did you know (Y/n) was going to be part of the raid?"

Aizawa's tense eyes remained glued to the screen. "No," he said in a near whisper. "Raids are often top secret affairs. They probably couldn't say anything to anyone."

Before Uraraka could answer, a thunderous boom emanated from the television. Every eye the room locked onto the screen just in time to see your unconscious body splayed across the ground, then the video feed cut out.

Chaos erupted in the common room, disjointed cries and frustrated yells echoing through Midoriya's mind. He was frozen. He was...he was scared. Aizawa managed to corral the students and order them to calm the hell down. When he reached Midoriya, he led him by the shoulder to a couch and urged him to sit. Was it just Midoriya, or was Aizawa trembling almost as hard as him? Before he could ask, Aizawa's phone began ringing. He stepped to the side to take the call, the hung up and offered a hand to Midoriya.

"Come on, problem child. We're going to see (Y/n)." His students complained at the news that they would have to wait to see you, but Aizawa silenced them with a glare. It was only natural for your boyfriend and teacher to get to see you before them.

---------------

You felt like shit. Your head pounded, your body ached, your ears rang, and you were too nervous to eat that morning, so you were hungry on top of all that. The only consolation was that the mission was over and you had won. You wanted so badly to see your loved ones, but you had only arrived at the hospital a short time ago. It would take time for anyone to get to you.

Or so you thought. Not a moment later, Midoriya and Aizawa entered your room. Upon seeing that you were awake and alert, they rushed to your side. Your boyfriend reached you first.

"(Y/n)! Oh my god, you're okay! You are okay, right?" You chuckled and nodded. "Thank god..." He grabbed your hand and, careful of the IV in your arm, lifted your hand to kiss your knuckles.

Aizawa stepped up to your other side. "I spoke to your doctor on the way here. You got lucky." He paused to clear his throat. "I know you had no control over this but.....don't do this again. I already lost your mother, I can't lose you too."

Midoriya's head shot up. What???? Had he heard his sensei correctly? He turned a questioning gaze on you and Aizawa.

You gave him an unreadable look and said nothing. Aizawa turned his eyes to the floor, then your bruised face. "I'm their father."

When Midoroya managed to pry his jaw off the floor, he swallowed dryly and turned to you. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"We thought it best to keep it to ourselves. Otherwise, you'd all think he was going to give me special treatment," you explained quietly. "I'm sorry, Izuku. I wasn't trying to hide it from you."

After giving it some thought, Midoriya came to the conclusion that he would've done the same thing. He told you so and kissed your cheek, mindful that your father was right there.

"You looked so cool on tv, (Y/n)! Especially when you-"

Aizawa smiled down at his beloved child and their boyfriend, glad that you had chosen the problem child. Although, he thought, maybe he should call you the problem child instead.

[scripttorture]

I have a character who was a slave but was rescued and freed after about 2 years in slavery and eventually goes on to rescue other people in slavery. While in slavery, he was punished often with denial of food as well as being whipped and beaten when he refused to work. He also had his tongue partially cut out as a punishment. I already have a good idea about the psychological effects he is going to have, but I’m struggling with the physical effects and how long it would take to recover

Part of the answer here depends on this character’s age because while adults can generally make a good recovery from periods of starvation the effects on children (especially young children) are a lot more long lasting.

 The best places to start for the effects of starvation on adults are probably the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and the World Health Organisation (WHO, general link here, 1999 pamphlet on malnutrition in all ages here).

 Recovery is generally pretty quick unless someone’s at the point where they’re near death.

 Refeeding syndrome can be an issue in some cases (especially famine or forced labour camps) but it doesn’t have to be one here. If the character is eating normally (as opposed to being fed by IV for instance) then refeeding syndrome is less likely. My understanding is that this is because the body suppresses appetite during starvation so that it only takes in what it can manage (appetite recovers quickly as the patient regains weight.)

 There’s a detailed NHS guide to refeeding in adult here. It should give you an idea of how at risk your character is and how much food he’ll be able to handle in his first few days of recovery.

 A physical recovery period of around 1-3 months depending on the degree of starvation is reasonable. In this case by ‘recovery’ I mean being able to do normal physical activity, a return to previous healthy weight, or higher weight, return to normal appetite and nutrient levels.

 Recovery can be delayed by additional illness: it’s easier for starving people to contract diseases or infections and it takes longer for them to fight them off.

 There’s also a difference depending on whether you’re talking about a character who is consistently under fed and forced to work versus a character who is usually provided with enough food but sometimes denied food completely/on very reduced rations for periods of a few days. Consistent starvation and malnutrition is much more usual in slavery and… much more likely to be fatal.

 A character that has short periods where food is denied them (no more then two days) and is then allowed to eat as much as they want is probably not going to need hospital supervision/treatment for starvation. If that doesn’t sound like your character then the procedure is usually just to let the person eat as much as they want of whatever they want. The difficulty for people at this sort of stage is more about organising giving out food then it is about keeping doctors on hand to monitor them.

 Now I know less about this but I think there is some evidence that this sort of pattern of intermittent starvation (ie periods where the character is starved, then allowed to eat and this is repeated) can cause some pretty serious health effects. It can also make disordered eating behaviour more likely.

 On a cosmetic level it’s also linked to weight gain.

 Which ever option you’re picturing the following effects are all likely:

loss of muscle mass

lack of coordination

weaker bones

higher chance of hypothermia or heat exhaustion

fainting

poor circulation

higher chances of disease and infections

longer recovery time and more difficult recovery from disease and infections

 A survivor can get to a point where they’re no longer at immediate risk before they’re back to full health. It takes time to recover bone and muscle mass. It takes time for the internal organs to get back to normal. It takes time for enough fat to build up so a person’s body can regulate heat properly.

 There’s also a difference between someone being at peak physical fitness and getting back to average. My understanding is that if someone’s survived significant periods of starvation they’re… unlikely to reach peak physical fitness. If this character was an athlete or a super hero or otherwise had a physically demanding profession, they’re likely to notice a difference even when they’re ‘better’.

 They could improve with time and practice but they may never get back to their prior ability level.

 There’s evidence of epigenetic effects; the children of people who recover from starvation are likely to be shorter then the children of people who have never starved.

 The Minnesota Starvation experiment theorised that after a successful recovery there were few long term effects of starvation. There’s some evidence now that this was an optimistic conclusion but it’s difficult to get a clear picture because of the ethics around studying starvation.

 For young children starvation results in an adult who is:

physically weaker

less intelligent

more prone to illness

less able to fight off illness

has a shorter life expectancy

is physically smaller

 Starvation of children represents a blunting of potential: they will never reach their full strength or intelligence even if they may be stronger/smarter then some individuals. And there is really nothing that can be done to treat that. They needed food over a crucial period and did not receive it. The damage is done and can not currently be treated or healed.

 Beatings over a long period of time and forced labour both have a tendency to cause chronic pain in the joints. Shoulders and knees seem particularly common.

 There are a lot of possible causes for this sort of chronic pain. Ligament and muscle damage s possible. Beatings with objects can cause bone fragments to uh break away and lodge in soft tissues. Soft tissues around joints can be damaged.

 And there are also psychological causes or combinations of both physical damage and psychological causes.

 For instance this is something I saw in an account from a survivor of child abuse. The survivor had been punished using standing stress positions and he found as an adult that he got shooting pains in the backs of his legs while stressed at work. With the help of his doctors he found that when he was stressed he leaned forward on to his toes, mimicking part of the stress position he’d been subjected to as a child. This put more strain on his legs and caused the pain.

 These kinds of responses can be very difficult to stop.

 What I’m trying to illustrate here is that disabling pain is really common in survivors and you don’t necessarily need to know a specific cause for it.

 Chronic pain can cause long term problems to do with mobility and performing everyday activities. Most often it means that survivors need to rest more often, they may have less stamina and they might need to do things in ‘odd’/unusual ways in order to comfortably perform the activity.

 For instance someone with chronic pain in their shoulders might struggle to hang wet clothes on a line that’s above their heads. So they might get in the habit of lowering the clothes line, attaching the clothes and then raising it by pulling on the cord at waist height. They might have trouble moving their shoulder to put on jackets, so they could use their body weight to ‘flip’ the arm joint to the correct position without involving the muscles of the shoulder.

 Someone with knee pain would probably be more particular about the height of chairs in their house. They may stop keeping things in low drawers or shelves.

 Consider where your character might have pain, what activities might make it worse and life style adaptions you can work in to your story.

 These can actually be a great world building/character detail. Especially because healthy people have a tendency to assume these adaptions are eccentricities rather then necessity, prompting conversation between characters.

 There is one part of this scenario that worries me: mutilating the tongue.

 Cutting out tongues is one of those things that comes up a lot in fiction and is generally… less survivable then people assume. Tongues are not just for verbal communication: they’re a pretty essential part of how we swallow food and water, not to mention detecting whether said food/water is edible and they contain a lot of blood vessels. There’s a reason things like tongue splitting and tongue piercing don’t tend to show up as traditional body modification practices.

 The process of partially removing a tongue is life threatening in and of itself. Victims can drown in their own blood. Inflammation can block the airways causing suffocation. Infection can make breathing, eating or drinking impossible (increasing the chance of death from infection.)

 If the victim survives (some definitely did) they’d have trouble eating and drinking for the rest of their lives. This means malnutrition is likely, leading to shorter life expectancies and higher chances of disease (apart from the conditions malnutrition itself causes.)

 It also means recovery from starvation would be significantly longer. Which means a longer period when the character’s more at risk from infection and disease as well as the general uh ‘problems’ starvation causes.

 I’m not saying you’ve created an unsurvivable scenario. We know from history that some people have gone through stuff like this and survived.

 What I’m saying is the survival rate is low. Those survivors (and your character) got lucky.

 Keep that in mind when you write this scenario.

 In terms of long term recovery I honestly have no idea how a removed tongue is treated, I’m not a medic. I can guess at some lifestyle adaptions though.

 Because it makes eating more difficult I think it’s likely a survivors would have smaller meals and more frequent meals rather then large portions that might be cold/unpleasant by the time they’ve finished eating. They’d probably learn to cut their food into smaller pieces and might avoid tougher foods that require more chewing. Their sense of the taste and texture of food would be impaired which might effect their enjoyment of food which could in turn effect their motivation to eat and their recovery.

 Overall I think the take away message here is that while most of the physical long term effects of slavery are not immediately life threatening they have a massive effect on long term quality of life.

 A lot of survivors of modern slavery come out of similar time frames to this disabled by a combination of chronic pain, joint problems and untreated injury or disease.

 One of the recurring themes in Kara’s interviews with slaves is that slavery physically ages people. The combination of extreme distress, physical abuse, overwork, sleep deprivation and malnutrition makes survivors appear much older then they are.

 But the reasons why, the injuries and marks of abuse are often not immediately obvious.

 I hope that helps :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[padawanlost]

Hey love your content.

Just wanted to ask you something. There's a claim I've seen coming up in fandom a few times now that Obi Wan knew Luke would bring his father back to the light and redeem him. That he even planned as much and this is supposedly evidenced by his not killing Vader in A New Hope and telling Luke to face Vader but not kill him in Return of the Jedi

I'm not convinced, but can you offer a more conclusive answer rebuttal or whatever.

I’ll be honest with you, this is the first time I’ve ever heard such theory so I’ve no idea where it came from or what arguments are being used to support it. All I can show you is the OT itself. The movies make pretty clear that Obi-wan and Yoda were preparing Luke to kill Darth Vader, and that Anakin’s return was something considered impossible until that point.

Because I don’t keep track of DisneySW, all the evidence I provided is strictly based on the original canon, as developed by George Lucas. So if Disney retconned something, I won’t be able to help :)

That being said, that theory doesn’t make much sense to me, sorry. For Anakin’s redemption to be part of some Obi-wan’s master plan, the character would have to have an impossible foresight into everyone’s involved past and future. For Obi-wan to be able to manipulate people and events to push Anakin’s into going back to light, he would first have to understand why Anakin fell in the first place. And if there’s one thing Episode III makes painfully obvious is that Obi-wan was nowhere near Coruscant when Anakin made his fatal decision, nor was he aware of the circumstances that led him to it. Everyone who knew what truly went down were either dead or his new worst enemies.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at Obi-wan’s (alleged) ‘master plan’:

In Episode IV, we have Obi-wan openly lying to Luke about where he came from and dueling Vader (literary to the death). Not exactly the actions of a man who wants the son to save the father’s life.

In Episode V Obi-wan tells Luke not even Yoda had the power or skill required to see into the future of Han and Leia. Considering they were captured by one of the most even being in the galaxy, it wouldn’t be that hard to guess their future did not look pretty.

Luke: But, Han and Leia will die if I don't. Obi-Wan: You don't know that. Even Yoda cannot see their fate.

The idea here is tied to an important concept in SW: free will. The characters are fundamentally free to make their own choices. Anakin, despite being manipulated by Palpatine, ultimately made his own bed. This is true to all of them. Palpatine’s ‘master plan’ wasn’t about controlling people into doing what he wanted, it was using their own nature against them. He nudged them into the making poor decisions, he never stripped them of their agency.

Obi-Wan: It is you and your abilities the Emperor wants. That is why your friends are made to suffer. Luke: That's why I have to go. Obi-Wan: Luke. I don't want to lose you to the Emperor, the way I lost Vader. Luke: You won't. Yoda: Stopped, they must be. On this, all depends. Only a fully trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor. If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil. Obi-Wan: Patience. [...] Obi-Wan: If you choose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere.

Unless you see Obi-wan as a manipulative, cruel person who wants an untrained Luke to face two of the most powerful beings in the galaxy alone for his own personal, secret plan, I’d say the movie is pretty clear in showing us that neither Yoda nor Obi-wan want Luke to face Vader at that point. If the plan was to get Luke to going, wouldn’t have been easier to just let him go instead of creating an huge argument about it? Hell, they are willing throw Han and Leia under the bus to keep Luke from leaving. If that wasn’t shady enough now we are supposed to believe that was part of an even worst scheme involving pretty much everyone?

Yoda: Told you I did. Reckless, is he. Now... matters are worse. Obi-Wan: That boy is our last hope. Yoda: No. There is another.

Yeah, it doesn’t sound like using Luke to redeem Vader was their ultimate goal here.

There are some pretty big holes in that theory in terms of character development and narrative structure. I know everyone loves the idea of Vader and Obi-wan having some badass duel in ANH but the truth is Vader had spent the last 20 years training and killing pretty much all kinds of enemies imagine while Obi-wan mediated on Tatooine as grew shockingly old for his age.

As proven on Mustafar, raw power only takes you so far. Anakin has always been much, much more powerful than Obi-wan but in the end Obi-wan won because of skill, training and discipline. Unfortunately, for Obi-wan, he didn’t get much training in his isolation. He couldn’t have because he was in hiding! If that wasn’t enough, the EU confirms that Obi-wan sacrificed himself to allow Luke to scape. There was no secret plan.

Obi-Wan risked a glance through the hangar’s open doorway and saw four stormtroopers guarding the Falcon. He also sensed that Luke was nearby. Hoping to cause a distraction that would allow Luke to board the Falcon, he attacked Vader more vigorously. The noise of clashing lightsabers echoed into the hangar, attracting the stormtroopers’ attention. With his peripheral vision, Obi-Wan saw the stormtroopers leave their stations beside the Falcon and run toward him and Vader. He continued his attack on Vader, and several exchanges later, he sensed Luke’s movement and knew his plan had worked. He risked another glance into the hangar to see several figures racing for the Falcon’s landing ramp: the droids, Chewbacca, Han Solo, Luke, and — Leia! Obi-Wan hadn’t known that Princess Leia was on the battle station, but he recognized the girl in the white dress from the hologram that R2-D2 had displayed. Obi-Wan did not believe in luck or coincidences, and seeing Luke unwittingly reunited with his twin sister, he knew that it was not a tractor beam that had brought him to the battle station, but the will of the Force. His fleeting glance also registered that Luke had paused behind his friends. Luke stood a short distance from the landing ramp and was staring straight at him, gaping. Obi-Wan realized there was only one way Luke, Leia, and the others would escape the battle station alive. He smiled as he looked away from Luke, then closed his eyes and raised his lightsaber up before him. Darth Vader did not hesitate to strike. [Ryder Windham. The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Imo, this theory ruins the character of Obi-wan by making him pretty much omniscient and way more powerful and manipulative than he was in canon. Obi-wan wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t palpatine level of manipulative either. He had no ‘grand plan’ beyond using Luke to kill vader and save the galaxy in a desperate attempt to save the galaxy.

On top of that, let’s remember that Obi-wan had no hope left for Anakin. He did not believe Anakin could be redeemed after Mustafar. If you do not believe md, believe George Lucas.

After the first complete take, Lucas and McGregor discuss when he should say each line: “As you watch Anakin slide down, how about if you take one step forward,” Lucas Suggests. “For a moment, you think about it. Your first impulse is to save him – but then you realize you can’t”. As the takes multiply and the actors find their rhythm and emotions, the scene becomes more and more powerful. Christensen yells “I hate you!”. McGregor says, “I love you. But I will not help you”. Lucas explains that what Obi-wan’s really saying to Anakin is: “Your were our only hope and you blew it. Now we don’t have any hope”. Take. After Anakin implores Obi-wan to save him, George asks Ewan to say “I will not…” softer, almost to himself. Take. “After he burst into flames,” Lucas directs, “it’s as if you’re talking to a dead person. To a piece of toast”. He suggests, to drive home this point, that McGregor change the words in the script to the past tense, “I loved you.” The actor acquiesces, but points out that his subsequent line would have to change to “But I could not help you.” Lucas agrees, and Tenggren alters the script accordingly.[ The Making of ROTS]

Another thing that George is very clear about is that Luke is the one who redeems Anakin.

It really has to do with learning. Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can’t be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he’s caused. He doesn’t right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person [Luke], regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I’ve grown to love - primarily the Emperor - and throw away my life, to save this person. And I’m doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I’ve done. I broke his mother’s heart, but he still cares about me, and I can’t let that die. Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it is: the prophecy was right. Anakin was the chosen one, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son. [ GEORGE LUCAS - THE MAKING OF REVENGE OF THE SITH; PAGE 221.]

This brings us back about what I said earlier about narrative structure. This is Luke’s story. Obi-wan is the mentor, that’s it. It’s Luke’s actions, Luke’s choices. To suddenly reveal that everything happened was the result of Obi-wan’s plan would be narrative equivalent of a slap in the face. We watched Luke’s hero journey only to find out his journey was a lie and his choices weren’t really his own. How disappointing!

Not only that but redemption comes from within. Even if Obi-wan had planned for everything, Anakin would need to WANT to change. and knowing it was Luke’s selfless actions that drove Anakin into killing Palpatine, suddenly finding out an ulterior motive behind Luke’s actions (beyond the character’s own goodness) would diminish the weight of Anakin own choices.

But, again, Obi-wan couldn’t have planned for Anakin to return to the light because he didn’t even believe one could be redeemed after such evils.

Obi-Wan’s spirit was invisible but present when Luke arrived in the Endor system, where the Empire had constructed a new Death Star battle station. When Luke surrendered to Darth Vader on the Endor forest moon, he listened as Luke maintained his belief that a remnant of Anakin Skywalker remained within Vader and had not been entirely consumed by evil. Luke urged his father to let go of his hate. Vader said, “It is too late for me, son.” Then he signaled to two stormtroopers to escort Luke to a waiting shuttle that would carry them to the Death Star. As the stormtroopers moved up behind Luke, Vader added, “The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your Master now.” Luke stared at Vader for a moment before he said, “Then my father is truly dead.” Obi-Wan’s spirit wished he had convinced Luke of this fact earlier. [Ryder Windham. The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Even as they fought, Obi-wan didn’t believe Luke could save Anakin. It was only after witnessing Palpatine’s demise he started to realize what it meant.

Obi-Wan knew that Vader would never help, and he felt almost overwhelmed by a sense of dread. Luke would soon be dead, and Vader would remain the Emperor’s puppet. In fact, Obi-Wan was so convinced of Vader’s nature that he was stunned by what happened next. Vader grabbed the Emperor and lifted him off his feet.  [Ryder Windham. The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Had Obi-Wan’s spirit not witnessed Vader’s action, he never would have believed it. Vader, the same monster that Obi-Wan had left to die on Mustafar, had sacrificed himself to save his son. And suddenly Obi-Wan realized where he had failed. For unlike Luke, Obi-Wan had not only believed that Anakin was completely consumed by the dark side, but had actually refused to believe that any goodness could have remained within Vader.  [Ryder Windham. The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Btw, in ROTJ, Obi-wan doesn’t try to talk Luke out of killing Vader. In fact, the oppositve of that happens:

Luke Skywalker: There is still good in him. Obi-Wan: He's more machine now than man. Twisted and evil. Luke Skywalker: I can't do it, Ben. Obi-Wan: You cannot escape your destiny. You must face Darth Vader again. Luke Skywalker: I can't kill my own father. Obi-Wan: Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope.

Star Wars, at its core, has a very simple message about love and the power it has over people. in the end, the good guys won because they were good, not because they were being guided there by some powerful guy. In the end, it was love that won the war and saved the day. Everyone’s love. Luke’s love for Anakin, Anakin’s love for Luke, Han’s love for Leia, etc. Selfless love makes better people and good people do good things. It’s not about manipulating actions, people or even knowing everything. In fact, I’d say it’s the appositive.

Luke didn’t know he could save Vader, but he tried anyway and that’s what makes him a hero. It’s the not knowing but having faith in someone out of love, faith they can be better than they are. That’s what saves the world. It’s not knowing everything and still acting out love and compassion.

Anyway, I honestly don’t know where this idea of Obi-wan knowing Anakin’s future and planning for it came from. But I do know it’s not supported by the movies, the EU or George himself.  

[drabblily]

Bad Confessions

Pairing: Bakugo Katsuki x Reader

Warnings: Cursing, of course. Fluff. 

Word Count: 2.1k

Synopsis: Y/N seems to have fallen in love with a certain hotheaded blonde, might as well confess and get rejected to move on with it, right?

A/N: First Post! Hope you enjoy <3

------

Falling in love was scary.

There was nothing gentle about it, hence the “falling” part of it. You were either all in or not in at all. You could be pushed, you could take that jump, or you could accidentally take one certain step and fall to your impeding doom.

And it was so, so fucking terrifying to you. When you fall in love there is supposed to be someone waiting for you at the bottom to catch you, that was the fortunate option. The unfortunate side was that when you fall in love, that person could move at the last second to let you splat to the ground.

You guess, that’s what made you so scared of it. That someone would move to let you die. To be manipulated. To be used like that. It scared the hell out of you.

That was probably why you never noticed the signs when you were in it. The constant checking of a text message to see if he texted you, the sweaty hands and speedy heart whenever he walked by, the overthinking about him, trying to grab his attention by looking pretty.

It was torturous and you thought nothing of it, perhaps you were going crazy, though. Because you definitely should not be feeling like this.

So, you visited the school nurse, Recovery Girl, in hopes that she would cure your unknown disease.

“Hello? Recovery Girl?” You knocked on the open door to alert her that you were there before stepping in.

The old woman turned towards you with a smile on her face, “Hello, Y/N, are you hurt?”

You gulped, fiddling with your fingers, what if she weren’t able to help you? What if it was a fatal deadly disease and you couldn’t be cured no matter what??

“Well…actually, not really. I just think I might be feeling sick and wanted to ask you for your advice on how to help me out with it?”

She patted the hospital bed she had, implying for you to take a seat, so you did.

Recovery Girl silently grabbed her thermometer, going across your forehead to see if you had a temperature. You didn’t, normal temperature. She grabbed a stick and told you to open your mouth and say, “Ahhh…” With her gloves, she felt around your throat to see if there was anything that could hint at you being ill.

Unwrapping her gloves and throwing them out, she finally spoke with that constant smile of hers, “Well I did the minimum and it doesn’t look like you are sick. You don’t have a fever or any signs of a sore throat. Are you sure you feel sick? What are your symptoms exactly?”

You furrowed your eyebrows, there was no way you couldn’t be sick. Oh my god, what if you were right. What if you were uncurable!! Leg slightly bouncing in anxiousness, you told her, “W-well, actually, I think my mind is all fuzzy. I’ve been getting urges to check my phone when we are out of class…I sometimes get really feverish around people and it feels like my stomach is twisting when around somebody…do you think a villain could’ve used their quirk on me to make me feel like this?”

Your elder slightly chuckled, as if she knew a little secret, smiling even wider with a slight tint of pink to her cheeks, “Oh dearie,” She patted your bouncing leg to calm you down, “you sound like you’re in love.”

Your eyes widened, blood rushing throughout your entire face, “What! With who?”

“With whoever you want to be around, or whoever you think about most.” She clasped her hands together, nodding her head to convince you further. You couldn’t believe it though. You? In love? Doubtful, you were a future pro-hero! You had no time for love!

The bell rung, hinting you should be at your first period class soon, “Well, dearie, you better get to class now. You know how your teacher acts when you are late.”

You numbly nodded, jumping off the hospital bed and walking out of the nurse’s room. On your way to class, you felt heavier, your mind racing with ideas of who exactly you could be “in love” with. No one came to mind. It was torturous.

Finally, you made it to class, opening the door—luckily Aizawa-Sensei wasn’t here yet—and walking to your seat. Eyes scanning the chatter filled room, you made eye contact with mean crimson eyeballs, your heart picking up pace and your tummy feeling nauseated again.

“Got somethin’ to say, damn extra!?” His rough voice asked you loudly, looking to pick a fight.

Your bottom lip quivered in realization, breaking eye contact and sitting down in your chair. You put your head on the table between your arms, “No no no no no no…him?? Really? That cannot be true, he’s an asshole for crying out loud, what is wrong with you??”

You felt a loud slam on your table, “Hey! I’m fucking talking to you, dumbass!”

Your head jolted up at the suddenness, your big eyes staring up at your crush and classmate, Bakugo in confusion and sudden fear. Your cheeks flushed and you licked your lips, feeling thirsty out of nowhere now, “I…”

You noticed a deep red dust his ears as he opened his mouth, “Nevermind.”

Heart skipping a beat at his unexpected calmness, your eyes trailed his body as he stomped away to his chair with a slouch in his posture.

You felt a tap on your right shoulder, your close friend, Mina leaning over to whisper to you, “Bakugo’s never that nice to anyone, he’s totally got the hots for you!!” She squealed in excitement.

You choked on your air, sputtering out words, “N-No! I doubt that’s it, he probably just didn’t want to deal with Aizawa-sensei, he could’ve walked in at any second after all…”

The pink alien playfully punched your shoulder whilst giggling, “Hah! Yeah right, he doesn’t care if he gets in trouble, he totally has a crush on you, I can tell!”

You opened your mouth to respond when your teacher walked in with a ‘dead inside’ expression plastered onto his face, the entire class going silent so they wouldn’t get in trouble.

----

Ever since you found out your crush on your hotheaded classmate two weeks ago, you’ve done your best to avoid him as well as possible. No eye contact, no walking near each other, no talking—which meant also doing your best to not piss him off so you wouldn’t have an excuse to talk to one another. You did whatever you could in hopes of your stupid crush on him to fade away.

But nothing was working. So, you could only come to one reasonable conclusion.

Confess to him. You knew rejection was coming and you just wanted to get it over with so you could wallow in self pity instead.

Maybe that’s why you were here, standing in front of Bakugo Katsuki’s door, a rather large lump caught in your throat as you raised your hand to knock on the door. Swallowing it down, your fist quivered, hesitating to actually knock.

You couldn’t do this. It was way too nerve wracking and you were too much of a coward to actually do it. Placing your hand back down to your side in defeat, you pressed your head on the wall next to his door with a sigh.

“Why can’t I just tell him…” You murmured to yourself, looking down at your hands, imagining his rough ones holding yours. Which was stupid, considering it would never happen, you told yourself, pushing the silly daydreams away.

“What the fuck did you just say, damn extra?”

The sudden voice made you yelp, jumping away only to trip on your own foot and fall straight onto your ass. You groaned at the impact your palms and butt just got, both in extreme pain. You brought your hands up to your line of sight, inspecting how they were red and felt like it burned.

The man above you clicked his tongue in frustration before offering you his hand, “Dumbass. How did you hurt yourself from that?”

“I...” You started, grabbing his hand hesitantly; staring at your hands connected made blood rush to your face, “You scared me. I didn’t see you there.”

The blond snorted, “Idiot. How are you going to become a hero if you just jump from hearing my voice.” He mocked, narrowing his eyes at you before tugging you up and off the ground.

You flushed, reluctantly pulling your hand away from his to cover your face in embarrassment, “Shut up…”

“What the fuck are you doing in this hall anyways?”

“I just, um, you see…”

“Spit it out already, idiot.”

You peeked through your fingers, making eye contact with him, and taking a deep breath, “I just…wanted to tell you something.”

Bakugo crossed his arms—which you couldn’t help but admire how his muscles tensed and moved—raising one annoyed eyebrow at you to signify to continue.

Okay. You had to do this now or never. If you didn’t do it now, youd be a failure, a disgrace. Maybe rejection was what you needed! Maybe if he rejected you, your feelings for the hothead would dissipate and you could focus on more important things, like being a hero. Not fantasizing what kissing your classmate would feel like in the middle of a test.

‘Okay, just spit it out. You can do this’ You told yourself, putting your hands together and gulping.

“Alright, just listen,” You glanced towards him, seriously, hoping he wouldn’t interrupt you until you got your words out so you wouldn’t feel like a fool midway, “I, well to put it simply, I think…I think I like you, a lot. And its terrifying because ive never felt this way about anyone before. But I know you don’t feel the same way, so…please—”

Before you knew what was happening, Bakugo pushed forward, uncrossing his arms to grab ahold of you.

This was different. A lot different than how you expected.

Soft lips captured yours, passionately. You froze up, your mind going haywire trying to figure out what the fuck is happening right now. You noticed two things, does this mean he liked you back? It had to be right? That thought made you dizzy, there was no way this man liked you back. Bakugo fucking Katsuki, no way.

The man in question pulled away, taking note of your flustered expression, smirking at it waiting for you to speak again.

You reached up to touch your lips, still unbelieving that just happened. The second thing you notice was that his lips, oh god. They were heaven. You expected them to be chapped, rough, but it was far from it. Of course! This man would be perfect like this, after all he did seem like one to take care of himself.

Suddenly snapping up to your senses, your eyes widened, “W-what was that!? I said not to interrupt me!”

Katsuki snickered, “Seriously? I just fucking kissed you and you’re thinking about how I interrupted your stupid confession?”

“N-no! The kiss was nice!” His smirk widened. “No! It wasn’t nice, that’s not what I meant! Well, it was nice, I mean I liked it of course! B-but—”

“You’re stupidly cute when you ramble, you know?”

Your breath hitched before reaching over to smack his arm for teasing you, his strong hand catching your wrist and tugging you into his arms, his free hand coming to grip your waist.

“Stop teasing me!” You whined, struggling against his grip to leave your embarrassment.

“Hell no. Its fun to see your expressions when I do.” Bakugo grinned, his grip tightening for a second, “Your confession was ass though.”

You placed your head on his chest, squeezing your eyes shut. You knew it was bad, but he didn’t have to point it out for crying out loud!

You felt the pressure on your wrist disappear only for it to show up on your chin, “Hey, look at me.” His vermillion eyes surprisingly gentle, his tongue coming out to lick his lips.

You were the one to lean in this time, tilting your chin up to kiss him, after all, you didn’t exactly reciprocate it when he did. However, Bakugo immediately responded, his mouth moving against yours with a passion.

After what seemed like an eternity to you—which in reality was about thirty or so seconds—you pulled away, speechless and breathless.

His forehead leaned against yours, his eyes snapping open to make eye contact with you, “I like you too dummy, don’t forget it.”

[transhawks]

Hawks and the Trolley Problem

I. What is the Trolley Problem?

The Trolley Problem is an ethical thought experiment, mostly testing outcomes and methods of achieving them. It goes like this:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. 

You have two options:

A. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. B. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

What is the right thing to do?

There are schools of thought that attempt to explain this problem. A common response is to divert the trolley, actively making the choice to kill one person to save five. In this scenario, you are making an active choice to kill someone for the ‘greater’ outcome, which assumes that the best outcome is to save as many as possible. We will call this choice the Utilitarian option.

The second option is to do nothing and let the five people die. Why? Because then it’s a matter of letting the trolley do what it intends to and not actually pulling a lever and condemning a person to death. By choosing inaction in order to not murder anyone, you could stay true to a moral of never killing anyone. This is the Kantian option.

Of course, the Trolley Problem is customizable - people add all sort of features, like instead pushing someone in front of the trolley to stop it, or including knowing someone in the line up of potential dead. It doesn’t even have to be a trolley - all it asks is what is the right thing to do? And, of course, what is the value of a human life.

II. What is Hawks’s Dilemma? 

Hawks has infiltrated the Paranormal Liberation Front and managed to manipulate Twice into befriending him and providing him with information leading to a preemptive strike by the Heroes against the PLF. However, he feels that Twice is a greater harm than just an information source and thus has used his friendship to kidnap Twice, keeping him and his quirk away from a battlefield where he would easily be able to overwhelm the hero forces. Without Twice, the villains are far more easily beatable. 

BNHA 263 ends with Hawks threatening Twice with his feather-knives and asking himself the question, internally: What is the right thing to do?

Let’s break the options down:

A. Hawks kills Twice to effectively ensure he cannot escape and help. The villains are not able to use his clones in the battle, leaving them vulnerable. Hawks ensures heroes survive the battle (assuming no unexpected things happen), and that the status quo the PLF want to topple is maintained. Low amounts of civilian casualties, hero casualties. The problems that caused this issue in the first place continue.

B. Hawks lets Twice go. Twice uses his clones to defend the PLF, ensuring more casualties for both the heroes, and possibly the PLF. Eventual massive civilian casualties. Status Quo is broken, system is broken - the problems that created this are addressed, either by further perpetuation or reduction.

There are also other factors.

Hawks knows Twice. Heroes are not typically supposed to kill villains. Hawks has referred to Twice as ‘good-natured’, and reflected it made it easier to accomplish this, yet he also seems surprised by how much Twice genuinely likes and trusts him. He also knows, on both sides, many of the people likely to die from this.

Miruko in 262 mentions that heroes hold back fighting villains - killing is not usually an action heroes are allowed or suggested to take.

And, lastly, Hawks’s choice is not solely his - up to now he has performed his duty as a tool to the Hero Public Safety Commission.  

III. How the Hero System Would Tackle the Problem?

Let’s talk about what it means to be a hero.

From what we’ve seen in the manga and spin off Vigilantes, there’s an actual calculation, maybe even algorithm in how heroes get paid. It is a clearly a numerical one.

The question is how exactly should anyone looking at a catastrophe begin to count the worth of human life? We don’t have exact confirmation, but it’s likely the ‘Specialty Organization’ is none other than the HPSC, or the Hero Commission as fandom likes to call them. 

From previous encounters, we know that they are utilitarian in outlook, hence the way they sent Hawks to infiltrate the League. To the HPSC, the consequences of an action matter far more than the morality of the action itself. As a organization that, then, depersonalizes choices in terms of numbers and metrics, a simple calculation that five people over one intended casualty is acceptable.

Remember, the HPSC also comes out with ranks. Heroism is numbers to their system and they got the calculation.

In Japan, Professional Heroes are officially ranked by taking in account several factors such as the number of cases solved, general popularity, and level of social contribution. (bnha wiki)

In their view, Hawks would choose A. There’s no option for him otherwise. The HPSC continues to exist as long as everyone accepts their metrics and calculations. Lives, to them, have an internal quantifiable logic. So do hero actions.

Villains do, too, but only in ‘resolving’ them. As incidences. 

IV. What are Lives Worth, Anyway?

The more factors we include in this problem, the more complications. A kantian viewpoint might come from someone in the Liberation Front - Twice’s quirk is amazing and far more valuable that most quirks. If we put Twice in the Trolley Problem, it’s unlikely that the five other people would have comparable quirks. Thus, simply on that basis, Twice’s ‘worth’ would be more than the others and no lever would be pulled.

For Hawks, it would be the action itself. Heroes do not kill, and while he has been conditioned into taking the HPSC’s metrics into the forefront of his decision-making all his life, the active choice to kill Twice would have consequences.

Hawks has already shown to struggle with guilt - besides the words he said after the Jeanist incident, manipulating Endeavor into coming with him just to use him as a shield against whatever the League had did disturb Hawks, just from facial expressions. He does even question that he has to perform immoral actions in order to do as the HPSC wishes. At the same time he has generally gone along with the idea that the ends justify the means.

It’s very obvious what would happen if any of us ever encountered a “trolley problem” in real life. We would panic, do something rashly, and then watch in horror as one or more persons died a gruesome death before our eyes. We would probably end up with PTSD. Whatever we had ended up doing in the moment, we would probably feel guilty about for the rest of our lives: even if we had somehow miraculously managed to comply with a consistent set of consequentialist ethics, this would bring us little comfort.  ( Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs. 2017)

As I wrote this, someone mentioned The Good Place, a show that showed explored the Trolley Problem in depth. One of the conclusions it came to is that nevertheless of the circumstances it is horrifying. No matter the ethics, faced with such a problem, most people would not come away of it well. Hawks included because he is not a machine and is capable of feeling guilt either way.

If he kills Twice, he kills and betrays a friend, and saves the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions, and betraying people he has gotten to know over the course of months. But that’s a weight he’ll have to bear for the rest of his life, if he manages to survive. He’ll have to know he did what Heroes are avoidant to do; kill. 

If he doesn’t kill Twice, Twice will help lead a revolution that, while addressing many of the issues Hawks sees with society, will kill Hawks’s thousands of colleagues and many innocents in the crossfire.

V. A Different Question?

The issue then is not what Hawks does, but why he has to ask this question of himself in the first place. The thing is that there are rarely only two options in any given situation.

The thing is situations are created. And so are choices. They do not come out of thin air. They are not in a self-contained vacuum. Twice was created, and so was Hawks, and so was the Commission. The choices Hawks faces right now are not removed from hundreds of years of other decisions, and powers that enact them.

If I am forced against my will into a situation where people will die and I have no ability to stop it, how is my choice a “moral” choice between meaningfully different options, as opposed to a horror show I’ve just been thrust into, in which I have no meaningful agency at all? Let’s think a bit more about who put me here and how to keep them from having diabolical power over others.  ( Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs. 2017)  

The thing about ascribing morality, too, to individual actions is it misses the powers of institutional forces upon our lives. What does that look like in BNHA?

It means we see Ujiko and not an Empire AFO has been building for at least a century to make sure there are systems in place creating noumus, and people like Shigaraki who exist in this world. 

It means we see Endeavor and his heroism and brilliant record and not a system ignoring that a man who bought a woman to force her to have children in a genetic experiment is now the symbol of Peace and Stability for that system. 

It means we see Twice as a regrettable casualty of society whose only option for acceptance was among murderers fulfilling a murder-empire and not a consequence of both AFO’s system and the Hero System to make sure people like him have no safe place in the world.

It means we see Hawks poised to kill Twice and not the organization that bought him as a child and raised him into a soldier who has to decide whether to kill one or many.

And once you realize that none of these questions, none of these options are fair or right in these terms - not the one for many, not the sparing to absolve personal guilt, you can ask the question what is right thing to do.

What I mean is maybe there shouldn’t be heroes or villains. None of that conflict should exist. There’s no rights in either view. Yes the hero system should be eradicated. But the lack of future Shigaraki envisions, and the dystopian plans AFO and Ujiko actually have, and the Liberation Army plan for, are also wrong. 

Neither of the systems proposed have the right answer or the right to posit one. 

The real answers are not in the right or wrongs. They’re in every other sentence. They’re in Jirou’s encouragement of Kaminari, in Shigaraki telling the League he wants them to be happy with what they love, in Keigo’s unsure smile as Jin looks at him and tells him he’s a good person for caring for his friends. The answers are in the love that ordinary people have for each other, that no manufactured conflict and institution can quantify or destroy. And that hopefully, someone will voice this.

VI. What will Hawks Answer?

The thing about this is that we aren’t sure if Keigo will fully make a decision right now. There’s a likelihood he will be interrupted. Or he will put off his decision-making and spare Twice for the moment, delaying his choice. And that’s just ignoring the fact that there isn’t one choice to make here; no, lots of them. 

However, Keigo has made one personal life-changing decision in before; the HPSC has taken that choice and removed free will from it. 

Self-sacrifice, after all, is both the will of the HPSC and Hawks’s true nature. If quirks are to show us the nature of the person, why not Hawks’s feathers, deceptively soft but deadly, maneuverable and revealing, and yet, ultimately consist of him breaking his only ability to fly free until he no longer can? What’s more self-sacrificial than breaking off pieces of yourself to save others?  

The Good Place has an answer to the problem that accepts that no matter the options, and the questions, someone will lose something. Die maybe. The solution is that if someone must die, why not yourself?

The one comfort is that for all the lack of choices Hawks has been given in this situation - this is the one solution he can come up with on his own.

[a-crimson-lion]

“It Makes Me Wanna Keep Him At Arm’s Length” An Overview On Katsuki Bakugo’s Development

[I should by no means be the one writing this analysis, but here we are. Obviously it’s an overview on Katsuki’s character development, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Keep reading if you want the details.]

Table of Contents

i) Prologue

I) A Brief Explanation

II) The “What The F*** Is Your Existence” Phase

II.A) Breaking The Barriers

III) The “I Can’t Let You Get Ahead Of Me” Phase

IV) The “Why Don’t You Care About Yourself” Phase

V) Final Address+Conclusion

Word Count: 4415

[Warning: Contains manga spoilers up to Ch. 284. Will also include spoilers for the movies and OVAs, as well as the special Deku & Bakugo: Rising two-shot manga. Reader’s discretion is advised. Not scared off yet? Good. Let’s do this.]

i) Prologue

Alright, no beating around the bush, I guess.

We all know this has to deal with Ch. 284, and the milestone that came with it. We got a rare look inside Katsuki’s perspective, and we saw firsthand how much his perspective has changed from the start of the story. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten such an in-depth look into Katsuki’s psyche since Deku vs Kacchan 2. It’s honestly impressive.

...which is why I’m so confused by a certain kind of response to it.

When you look past the swarms of tumblr posts absolutely losing their s*** over Katsuki getting further character development, you come across an… admittedly troubling response. The idea that “Katsuki always cared.” The idea that as early as the Battle Trial, if not middle school, Katsuki was secretly keeping an eye out for Izuku in their tumultuous relationship.

...no. Just-. No, what the-

I’ll get to why this particular response pisses me off in a bit, but before that, I wanna give a run down of Katsuki’s development, according to the narrative. Anyone who’s been around my blog long enough knows that I don’t exactly hold Katsuki in good graces. (Pretty much the opposite, actually.) However, in light of recent developments, that’s not what this post is gonna be focusing on. And as such, I’ll keep the snark and branch conversations to a minimum… to the best of my abilities.

So… how are we gonna do this?

I) A Brief Explanation

After we finish this brief “tutorial” section, the next three segments of the post will cover the various time frames of Katsuki’s development. I’ll be going through a general rundown of Katsuki’s perspective and the various evidence points that lead me to my conclusions. It’s essentially a glorified retelling. Sound good? Alrighty then!

II) The “What The F*** Is Your Existence” Phase

Time Frame: Ch. 1-Ch. 116 [Sludge Villain Arc-Late Provisional Hero License Exam Arc]

In case the Prologue didn’t make things clear, let me spell it out: Katsuki didn’t always care.

At least, he didn’t “always care” in the positive sense.

To clarify, this isn’t just 3rd Year Middle School Katsuki to UA Katsuki. This is all the way back to the River Incident. Katsuki has had this mentality for that long and then some when you shift out of backstory territory. We’re talking about the same kid who nearly murdered Izuku in the Battle Trial, blasted Izuku to kingdom come in the Training of the Dead OVA, and decked Izuku during the Final Exams. So…

The following hinges majorly on the line Katsuki stated in Chapter 284, and the title of this analysis: “It makes me wanna keep him at arm’s length.” Contrary to popular belief, this does not just apply to the idea that Katsuki wants to stick around Izuku to keep him from destroying himself.

...it’s also a major contributor to the reason Katsuki bullied Izuku in the past.

So let’s backtrack to the River incident. Katsuki takes one wrong step on a log, slips, and falls down into the river below. Izuku is the only one that goes down to help him. This infuriates Katsuki because he was fine, as was said by him and everyone but Izuku that was present that day. This is also the first time Katsuki becomes aware of something he echoes in the Ch. 284 flashback:

“He just… Deep down, he doesn’t take himself into account, y’know?”

This is Katsuki’s first run in with Izuku’s inherent selflessness. Initially, he takes it as pity; in his words, Izuku is “looking down on him.” And this bothers him a great deal. Then when it comes to Quirks, Katsuki gets one and Izuku doesn’t. This assures Katsuki of something he shortly discovered previously: Izuku isn’t all that special.

It’s a brief comfort. Because Izuku hasn’t taken the damn hint and stopped hanging out with him and his friends. The Quirked kids. The normal kids.

And worst still, he’s willing to get in Katsuki’s way just because someone else is in his line of fire. In the back of his mind, it’s the River Incident all over again, though he’s not being feared for; he’s being feared of. It’s all wrong. Deku isn’t strong like the rest of them. Deku can’t be a hero. Deku knows that.

...he knows that he doesn’t stand a chance, right? He knows how the world really works. Is he… is he putting on an act?

One of the few remarkable traits Katsuki has right from the get-go is his disdain against dishonesty. So, when he sees Izuku putting on a brave face and acting like a hero, and Katsuki decides that Izuku’s just “pretending,” Katsuki takes the matter into his own hands. He’ll get Izuku to show his true colors in due time. That’s what heroes do, right? Take down the bad guys? And Izuku faking about caring for others when everyone else clearly puts themselves first and foremost sounds pretty bad guy-like, at least at the time.

So, Izuku keeps on trucking, occasionally trying to join back up with Katsuki’s group on a near frequent basis. Even when that fails, he tries his damnedest to catch up.

But what many people forget is that at some point, Izuku stopped following, at least actively.

By Chapter 1, he’s making sure to keep from drawing attention to himself. He’s not as enthusiastic as everyone else in the class, he tries backing away from Katsuki and shrinking down on himself, tries defusing the situation. That doesn’t sound like Izuku’s still trying to keep up. Even in the special two-shot manga dedicated to Heroes: Rising, Izuku isn’t the one to draw attention to Katsuki’s presence. And even when he does go after Katsuki and the villain, his attention is more so focused on the villain, thoughts of staying out of Katsuki’s way to not offend him likely somewhere in his mind.

So then why does Katsuki keep antagonizing him in the first chapter of canon proper? And even before that, most likely?

“It makes me wanna keep him at arm’s length.”

...Izuku didn’t stop being Izuku. Izuku didn’t stop being selfless.

And his selflessness is what pisses Katsuki off to no end. So, he keeps pursuing Izuku, keeps trying to get him to “drop the act.” Makes him a “punching bag,” as Izuku states in Chapter 8. Because the way things work, Izuku should not be trying to be a hero. He should not be trying to put on a brave face when he’s scared s***less. He should not be sticking his neck out for others when he doesn’t (or rather, didn’t) have anything to stick up for himself.

Katsuki was born with something that made everyone consider him prime hero material. Izuku was born without that, and was considered the opposite… and yet, he still tries.

And this character trait, this selflessness, it drives Katsuki insane. And it continues to do so well beyond the Battle Trial Arc. Even when Katsuki is able to begrudgingly accept that Quirkless Deku has a Quirk now, somehow, his selflessness continues to bring Katsuki grief. While it’s never inherently brought up, this is the dividing factor between Izuku’s fight against Shoto in the Sport’s Festival and Katsuki’s fight with Shoto in the Sport’s Festival.

Izuku was willing to go all out at the cost of himself just so Shoto could accept what was his. Katsuki just wanted a good brawl, to be the undisputed first place.

This even continues well into the Final Exams, though the fact that Katsuki is running high on arrogance and anger does nothing to soothe matters. It takes a deck to face and later an explosive kabedon wall smash to get Izuku and Katsuki working together, and let’s not forget that when Izuku was trying to get Katsuki to realize they were still fighting All Might, regardless of whatever handicaps he may or may not have, he gets decked in the nose for his efforts. While it’s technically a subtler play on Izuku’s selflessness and concern for others, Katsuki likely took it as further mockery, another attempt for Deku to try and get under his skin and throw him off.

In any case, throughout this time period, Katsuki cares f*** all for Izuku or his philosophy, opting to brute force things up until the very end of the time frame. But what causes the eventual shift?

II.A) Breaking The Barriers

A number of things, actually.

None of the proceeding events ever do a clean cut on Katsuki’s worldview. It’s more like chiseling through a wall than breaking it down with a hammer.

The Sludge Villain is the first hint that Izuku might not be faking and Katsuki might not be at the top. While many claim that Katsuki leaves Izuku alone because he feels indebted to him but doesn’t want to admit it, it’s more than likely that he’s more focused on his own self-loathing. This incident is what defines him for a good chunk of the series, to his chagrin.

The Battle Trial is just another nail in the eventual coffin. Katsuki thinks he’s finally got Izuku right where he wants him, only for Izuku to pull a 500 IQ play and prioritize the exercise over his and Katsuki’s squabbles, taking the brunt of Katsuki’s attack and attention while giving Ochako the opportunity to capture the bomb. That look of frustration is Katsuki realizing that not only did Izuku get ahead, he got ahead with the very thing Katsuki despises. Needless to say, it f***s with him well until the aftermath outside of UA’s gate.

Shoto refusing to use his flames is another chip off the marble that is Katsuki’s pride. It reinforces the idea that Izuku is doing something that Katsuki isn’t, something that Izuku shouldn’t have in the first place, beyond a Quirk at least. So, Katsuki rages, because he can’t understand why it’s such a big deal, in both Izuku’s and Shoto’s cases.

The Final Exams just hammer the point home further. Katsuki’s one-track minded attempts to bring down All Might are met with no results. He would have failed that exam if it wasn’t for Izuku’s selflessness or Katsuki “lowering himself” to cooperate with him. Had Katsuki not gotten decked in the face and dragged off or got saved at the last minute while he was knocked out, he definitely would have failed on account of becoming a liability.

The Training Camp attack is an odd mix of Katsuki’s current philosophy and the next stage in it. He knows Izuku’s gonna go and save his ass, and he wants no part of that because hasn’t he made him suffer enough already? Hasn’t he already proved time and time again that he’s getting better, despite the fact that Katsuki doesn’t want or believe it? Despite the fact that it shouldn’t even be happening if things were right in the world? Izuku does recognize Katsuki’s wounded pride, however, which is instrumental in getting him out of All For One’s clutches during Kamino.

If we briefly direct our attention to the Make It! Do-Or-Die Survival Training! OVA, Katsuki is pretty adamant on claiming he only got the power back on in the underground mall to complete the exercise. And I don’t think that’s Katsuki’s “tsundere” talking, either: I genuinely believe that Katsuki’s only thoughts at the moment was getting the exercise done. Everyone else was just secondary. And remember, Katsuki hates dishonesty, which is probably why he doesn’t take credit for “saving” Izuku and Shoto. While his actions did save the two of them and everyone else in the mall, that wasn’t his intention, which is an interesting flip on Izuku’s performance back in the Battle Trial. Couple that with the fact that Katsuki is injured (and therefore weak, and in need of help), and it’s no wonder he’s in a sour mood towards the end of it all.

And this sour mood carries over to the final nail in his coffin: the Provisional License Exam. He only gets by the first half because other people had the sense to tag along, but the second half regards his undoing because he still doesn’t get the whole selfless aspect of saving people in the second half of the exam. This was also foreshadowed back in the aforementioned OVA with Katsuki’s excessive animosity towards the victim dummy. Whether they be real or fake, Katsuki’s disregard of either victim doesn’t grant him his hero license.

This is the straw that breaks the camel's back for Katsuki. And ultimately, this sparks the start in his shift to the second phase of his development.

III) The “I Can’t Let You Get Ahead Of Me” Phase

Time Frame: Ch. 117-~Ch. 257 [Late Provisional Hero License Exam Arc-Early Paranormal Liberation War Arc]

Since this is only the second phase of Katsuki’s development (and given that this is Katsuki we’re talking about), don’t expect to get much of an upgrade with this shift.

Essentially, it boils down to two things: Katsuki stops viewing Izuku as an annoyance, and starts viewing him as an obstacle. Simultaneously, he starts seeing the viability of saving, at least as a tool in a hero’s kit.

Let me explain.

While Deku vs Kacchan 2 is the first time Izuku and Katsuki have attempted to talk out their issues… not much gets addressed. Sure, Katsuki becomes aware of Izuku not looking down on him, but Izuku is never made aware of the deeper issues regarding Katsuki’s loathing beyond that. It primarily serves as a half-barebones narrative checkpoint, a segway for Katsuki to get in on the secret of One For All.

...let’s also talk about that, shall we?

So Izuku’s been getting better as a hero and with his Quirk. Then Katsuki finds out after he gets kidnapped and rescued that Izuku is the successor to their mutual idol. And that’s after essentially being told he can’t be a hero in his current state due to the PLE. And what is his usual response to adversity? He decides to get ahead of it.

He’ll surpass Class 1-A so there won’t be another Battle Trial. He’ll surpass Izuku and One For All so he can truly claim that he’s the best of the best.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see more of this development until the Joint Training Arc. However, keep in mind that this is only the second stage. Katsuki wants to prove that he’s the best, so of course he’s gonna step up his game. That means taking advice from the LITERAL (former) #1 HERO, and making the victory as flawless as possible. After all, Katsuki himself said in Chapter 208:

“I’ve decided! We’re gonna win this match with a perfect victory! 4-0, with everyone unscathed! That’s the kind of victory there is for the strongest guys out there!”

...it might be a slight exaggeration when he says he’s hardly changed at the end of that chapter, but then again it is a stretch to even call it an exaggeration.

That aside, Katsuki also makes it part of his agenda to keep tabs on OFA. This would fit into the “Katsuki secretly cares” agenda, but we haven’t reached that point. Right now, in these moments, Katsuki figures that if One For All starts getting freaky, he wants to know about it so he can get a leg up. And maybe part of him still wants to call Izuku out.

He was minorly ticked when Izuku allowed himself to make a mistake during their unauthorized fight. And he constantly reminds Izuku to not forget that he’s supposed to surpass him (or the other way around).

Taking off the rose-colored glasses for a moment, it does make sense for Katsuki to say this beyond the context of positive motivation. We are talking about the same Katsuki who lashed out at Shoto for holding back. It’s reasonable to assume that he doesn’t want Izuku to do the same, and lagging behind more or less equates to holding back.

And Katsuki still isn’t completely invested in Izuku’s training for Izuku’s sake. After the Joint Training, Katsuki tries getting Izuku to manifest Black Whip again, and nopes out shortly afterwards when nothing comes of their sparring sessions in Chapter 217. This still isn’t the Katsuki we see in the 284 flashback. He’s still got a ways to go.

Yes, this even rings true for Katsuki during Heroes: Rising. While the film might be the ultimate Bakudeku dream come true, there really isn’t… much depth in regards to Izuku and Katsuki’s past. Y’know, the thing that most people are hoping gets resolved? It only gets referenced a few times in the film, but doesn’t overall factor into anything meaningful. Most of the time when Izuku and Katsuki team up, Katsuki only gets to the fight because he wants to throw hands with villains on an island where (if the status quo had remained unchanged) was likely selected because it had little to no serious villain activity. It just so happens that protecting and working with Izuku is an unintended byproduct of these fights. Katsuki even drops the infamous “lowering myself to work with Deku” line just before the big climax. And even with the transfer of OFA to Katsuki, it strikes less as overcoming a longstanding obstacle and more as plot convenience, especially since by the end of the fight OFA nopes back into Izuku so hard that Katsuki gets mind wiped about the whole thing.

Even during the Endeavor Arc, we don’t see much growth beyond the Ending fight, where Katsuki prioritizes saving Natsuo over throwing hands like he usually would, learning to take saving as more than a tool. This is significant considering it’s Katsuki, but unfortunately, there’s not much else thereafter. The entire arc won’t get referenced as an overall stepping stone until Ch. 284.

And thus, we head to the final phase.

IV) The “Why Don’t You Care About Yourself” Phase

Time Frame: ~Ch. 257-Ch. 284 [Early Paranormal Liberation War Arc-Paranormal Liberation War Arc (Present)]

So here’s an interesting tidbit: Katsuki can’t handle nonphysical confrontation.

Leave him with the fact that his kidnapping could have gotten most of the class expelled because they decided to go rescue him or avoided such while knowing of the operation? He’ll pay back Eijiro for the expensive night vision goggles and make Denki suffer Quirk overuse so he doesn’t need to be reminded.

Get stuck in the middle of a Todoroki Family Drama scene? He’ll try bragging about how he did better than the current #1 Hero to attempt curbing off the situation.

Put him in a discussion with Izuku where they address his additional Quirk manifestations and the full weight of his potential/legacy? Katsuki will brag about having a skill already in his toolkit to ignore the fact that he has the potential to fall behind.

This defines the earlier days of this phase. We don’t see what happens in the timeframe between that and the start of the War Arc until the Chapter 284 flashback. I believe that during the gap between 257 and this flashback, Katsuki allowed himself to process the full weight of what he and Izuku were told during that meeting.

And this marks one of his biggest revelations to date.

Izuku’s selflessness is no longer something annoying. It’s a potential fatal flaw.

For the first time, it’s hitting Katsuki that Izuku is no longer an obstacle, or just an obstacle. Izuku is a person who is working himself to the bone and past that, who would die at the drop of the hat if he thought the payoff was well worth it. He’s finally starting to see that what Izuku is doing to himself is dangerous, and he wants to know what he can do to prevent the serious ramifications.

This is a big phase in his development, no doubt, but um… it’s not the last phase.

If I’m being honest, we’re nowhere close. Why? Well, two reasons:

A) Katsuki still has yet to properly take a loss.

Any and all of Katsuki’s losses are either in his head or narratively negated. And his disproportionate win/loss ratio doesn’t do him any favors either. He’s culminated a philosophy that he can’t and shouldn’t lose, but losing is a crucial aspect of improvement and being human in general. In the case of the story, Chapter 275 suggests that Katsuki wants to face off against Tomura as payback for Kamino. He essentially wants to extend the narrative and treat that loss like a delayed win, as if the loss hadn’t happened yet. Many people claim that this is a bluff he used to cover his true intentions of keeping an eye on Izuku, but I don’t think that’s the case. While sticking by Izuku is a contributing factor, getting a win is equally so, because Katsuki hasn’t properly adjusted to a loss. His strategy for dealing with any kind of loss is just to bulldoze through it like nothing happened, instead of taking the time to understand why he lost and to apply that knowledge for future encounters.

Be aware of your surroundings during the Sludge Villain.

Focus on your priorities and communicate with others during the Battle Trial.

Don’t ignore the situation just to focus on your own intentions during the Training Camp attack.

HELP PEOPLE during the Provisional License Exam.

There are so many lessons Katsuki could have learned sooner if he had taken the time to properly digest his losses. But he didn’t. He still doesn’t. He might have learned some of them eventually, but the fact remains that he nearly ran head first into a suicide mission just because he couldn’t take the loss and was dead set on getting even.

And keep in mind, Katsuki was lamenting on struggling to keep up with Izuku earlier before their encounter with Tomura, and how he couldn’t afford to stay a loser, so this is likely less far-fetched than you think.

Okay, so then what’s the second reason Katsuki’s development is far from over?

B) He hasn’t fully connected the dots on what he did to Izuku.

So far, Katsuki has recognized that he was off-put by Izuku’s selflessness, and that he bullied him over that.

What he hasn’t recognized is how much of a role he played personally in that part of Izuku’s personality, or at least it’s present day incarnation.

Let me clarify a bit. Katsuki is aware that he was distrubed by Izuku’s selflessness. He is aware that bullied him and that, at some degree, was wrong. But I don’t think he’s quite connected the dots on how his intervention has led to Izuku’s current brand of martyrdom.

At the start of the series, Izuku just cares about others. After making sure he gets down to the river safely, he’s willing to lend a hand to Katsuki, who fell from a pretty concerning height ig we’re being honest.

But this unnerves Katsuki. And it leads to his physical altercations with Izuku from time to time.

Remember, Izuku followed Katsuki at the time, but somewhere down the line he stopped. But he never stopped being Izuku, so Katsuki continued to pursue him. Izuku had already been willing to give up in some degree on ever keeping up with Katsuki the way he used to. He knew, at some level, that he wasn’t accepted.

That he wasn’t worth as much as everyone else.

Katsuki bullied Izuku because he was selfless. But Katsuki’s bullying, coupled with the rest of society’s ostracization, twisted and warped that selflessness with low self-esteem, low self-worth, and self-destructive tendencies. Katsuki wasn’t the sole bully of Izuku, but he was a primary perpetrator. And his actions only made the very thing he despised so, so much worse.

...and until he can recognize THAT aspect of his relationship with Izuku, his journey is far from over.

So yeah, Katsuki’s making progress, but we’re still not out of the woods yet.

V) Final Address+Conclusion

So now for the obvious question: why did I write all of this?

I said it at the beginning, about how some people claimed that Katsuki cared all along. I brought up a bit about how it pissed me off. Why, exactly?

Because when people insist that Katsuki threatening Izuku to not go to UA comes from a place of concern, they disregard Chapter 1 Katsuki’s gigantic ego and utter disregard for others, much less so for Izuku.

Because when people insist that Katsuki’s shocked face at the end of the Battle Trial was because he was upset with how he hurt Izuku, they disregard the fact that Katsuki was willing to almost murder Izuku, and if not that then brutalize him, and that at this point Katsuki absolutely loathes getting shown up, which is what Izuku inadvertently did.

Because when people insist that Katsuki always cared from the very beginning, they (un)intentionally undermine one of the few things that draw people to Katsuki’s character: his character development.

On his own, Katsuki is an prodigious, antisocial and angry teen looking for fame and fortune in the industry who grows into a dedicated source of confidence and understanding as he finally allows himself to branch beyond his initial handicaps. If you insist that Katsuki always had the awareness and concern he displayed in 284’s flashback, what do you get instead?

A selfish, self-centered, fickle, emotionally-constipated asshole whose growth is more comparable to a ramp instead of a mountain.

...not as impressive, is it?

While I’m pretty sure this is just a minor trend, that doesn’t excuse the lack of care it demonstrates. If you aren’t willing to admit and live with the fact that Day 1 Katsuki is the worst of the worst and that he did progressively get better through trials and tribulation, why bother? When you insist a character like Katsuki was fine from the start, you take away part of what makes that character so endearing. If they were never an ass to begin with, then what the hell was their problem at the start, or even now? Why the hell would we condone that? It’s important to recognize character flaws and to give them their due, because seeing a character grown out of them is far more self-fulfilling and relatable than insisting that they were always in the right place from the start.

...but then again, that’s just me. Thanks for reading.

-Crimson Lion (20 September 2020)

[jerryb2]

In my ongoing quest to create the ultimate Expanded Universe® Grand Master® Luke Skywalker® Lightsaber® (shut up, that’s totally my latest quest 👀), here we have some side-by-side pics of the ROTJ Luke V2 & V3 sabers, as well as the MK1 for scale and reference.

I’ve just recently added the blade plug to the V3, as well as replacing the original D-Ring on the pommel with one that has a more rounded shape, which I personally think looks better. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. 😎

Breaking character for a moment though; ever since I learned about the different versions of Luke’s Lightsaber I’ve been sort of mulling over a metanarrative that I’d like to share (this’ll take a while, so strap in):

For those that might not know, Luke’s lightsaber from Return of the Jedi has a complicated history, to say the least; there are actually multiple screen-used lightsaber props for Luke in ROTJ. If nothing else, this simple fact serves as a testament to the sheer disorganization of the early Star Wars films. In general, movie scenes are rarely shot in sequential order - in fact, they’re shot in an order that’s the most cost-effective. Pressed for time, and shooting the climactic throne room duel with Darth Vader early in the production, the prop department was forced to re-purpose several "stunt sabers" and turn them into on-camera props. These were originally FX/stunt sabers for Ben Kenobi (the MK1) in ANH, and that had since been repurposed so that the actors could practice with them. There’s some really neat footage out there of Mark Hamill and Bob Anderson (Vader’s stunt double) practicing the fight from ESB where Mark is actually using the V2. This led to the V2, V3, Yuma and later, the Hero versions of the same (technically) lightsaber. This also goes a long way to explain why Luke & Ben’s sabers have such a similar profile. How did no one notice this for literally decades? Well, when you take into account that there was no such thing as a high-definition picture, as well as the fact that most kids watched the OT on VHS tapes in the late 80′s and early 90′s, you can start to see why the filmmakers weren’t too worried about smaller details like that. 

It was a different time - and in that way - worse. 

If we look at the V2 (that is, the one with the gaffer tape around the neck and the overall aesthetic of ‘let’s just get this over with’) we see something that fits the part it played in ROTJ; a weapon made by a burgeoning Jedi Knight, who was probably just glad that it didn’t blow up in his face when he hit the activation plate. For my money though, I’d say that this is Luke’s saber for only a few days to a week, at most. 

For anyone who hasn’t read Shadows of the Empire, here’s a brief aside; Luke built his lightsaber using plans he found in Ben Kenobi’s Hut on Tatooine, hence an in-universe reason why the sabers look so similar. After losing to Vader on Cloud City, Luke and his allies spent the next several months recuperating and making plans to rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt. During this time, Luke was able to scrounge the parts necessary to build his new lightsaber; a high-energy reflector cup, diatium power cell and a focusing lens, etc. The only thing he needed to complete his blade was the main crystal. Due to a lack of resources (thanks to Old Palpy himself), Luke was forced to use a synthetic crystal. After a solid month of work, he finally completed his saber and it’s here where we more-or-less meet the narrative of the film. There are dozens of pictures that depict Luke fighting on the sail barge, on Endor and on the Second Death Star - and in the vast majority of them, he’s holding the V2.

So where does the V3 come in, within the context of this story? 

Well, after the conclusion of ROTJ and the events of the next several days as depicted in The Truce at Bakura, I would imagine that Luke took some time to reevaluate his saber. Maybe it had begun to malfunction? Maybe the insulation wasn’t properly protecting the power source from the superconductor after all? Or maybe he was just slightly embarrassed that his (not-so) shiny new Jedi weapon had a strip of tape holding it together? The point is, I would imagine that he probably made a trip or two down to the ol’ hangar bay and had a chat with one of the chief mechanics, who was then able to procure some slightly higher-quality components.

The gaff tape is outta there; it doesn’t provide proper insulation and it just doesn’t befit the only Jedi Knight left in the whole galaxy. After the insulator was properly (re)installed, it’s conceivable that Luke took the neck to a milling machine and polished it to expose the metal underneath, revealing its copper-brass color. For that matter, Luke probably gave the whole thing a good once over with some steel wool. Now at least it doesn’t look like a Bantha shat it out after an evening meal. And as it turns out, with proper dimetris circuitry, he doesn’t need the nipple on top of the emitter to stabilize the blade, so he just removed it.

That’s the way it probably stayed for several years; it looked more polished and was properly functional. It would still have the long clamp lever and the unique circuit card over the activation plate, as well as the cone knob and mystery chunk, but we’re already starting to look more like the V3. Then we get to the Thrawn Campaign and shortly after, Operation Shadow Hand with the reborn Emperor. After these threats had passed, we do know (via The Jedi Academy Trilogy) that Luke spent some time contemplating his place/role in the galaxy - it was shortly after this that he decided to establish the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin IV, after all. 

By now the clamp lever is getting a bit sad; probably more trouble that it’s worth to replace just the clamp lever, so why not replace the whole thing? And that clamp card is pretty grotty, so it’s time to fix that. And I would imagine that he would be a bit tired of having the cone knob & mystery chunk cutting into his hand (I can relate, fam) so let’s just rework that booster. What we come away with is something that looks almost bang-on like the stock Rudy Pando V3; no emitter nipple, copper wind vane, new activation card and clamp, and no extra greeblies. 

From then on his saber stays pretty much the same for a couple of decades....until he recovers it from UnuThul/Lomi Plo after The Dark Nest crisis. 

Now, because we know that Luke did build a replacement after UnuThul confiscated his first saber (one which apparently looked almost identical to his OG saber - sure, okay, Troy Denning), I think this is where the Hero saber enters the narrative. Most likely only a short time after he claimed the title of Grand Master of the Order (around the time when the Jedi were preparing to launch an all-out attack on the Dark Nest and thus the newly minted GM would need a functioning saber), I’d like to think that Luke let his natural mechanical ability and technical knowhow run a bit wild - he builds a very close facsimile of his saber, but this time with a proper control box and indicator lights, better basic construction, etc. Once he recovered his original saber, I don’t think it would be out of the question for him to carry over a few design tweaks he had just made with the Hero. Notably, he added back the nipple on the emitter - in the long run, it’s just better to have it since it prevents power bleed-off (or something - lads, I’m literally pulling all of this out of me arse) and more than anything, because it improves the overall profile. And on top of that, it looks like he added some mesh coverings to some of the heat venting ports(?), probably to prevent grime or dirt from building up over time. Smart man, that Luke Skywalker.

And at last, we have arrived at the construction we see in the pictures above; this is (for me) Luke’s saber as he carries it in his duels with both Darth Cadeus & Lumiya, when he goes into (more-or-less) self-imposed exile and through to when he confronts Abeloth and eventually becomes one with the Force.

This has been my TED Talk. Thank you for coming. 😅

Oh, and because I suspect that some of the more eagle-eyed readers out there will be wondering - where does the Yuma fit into all this? Well hey, this is my metanarrative. Go make your own. 😉

[arcticdementor]

Other possible Holocausts: why pro-lifers are lying to us, and why thats a good thing

…

Ive had a running argument over the past few years that the raw lack of anti-abortion terrorist action proves no one really thinks abortion is murder, ie. intentional 1st degree murder of a life equal to yours or mine.

Ive always gotten pushback to quote WillyWang:

The "revealed preference" of those that oppose abortion but don't firebomb clinics and kill doctors? It won't help, you'll be made an example of in the negative sense, and civilized norms are more important than a useless symbolic point. One clinic destroyed won't end abortion, after all.

From which this Effort-post got its Genesis:

Would you say the same about those who participated in the french resistance or Warsaw Ghetto rising to Nazi Germany?

Everyone of those claims applies there: they were likely to be made examples of, they were damaging civilized norms, and any given action had relatively little to no impact.

Yet the same people who insist abortion is murder, and thus that America is committing a holocaust, yet denounce any of the people who employed violence against abortion doctors or clinics, and can’t distance themselves fast enough from any call for violence... none of those people apply the same logic to the first holocaust. None of them say the frenchmen who bombed german police stations where dangerous terrorists who deserved their executions, none of them denounce the Warsaw ghetto rising as an attack on civilization.

…

If anti-abortion advocated genuinely believed a fetus was a equivalent human life to yours or mine or the little kids they see walk to school, and that this was an ongoing holocaust of American Children at a scale possibly 10x or more what was done to the jews... they wouldn’t need to come up with ad hoc reasons why they don’t resort to violence, their mind would be screaming at them to take bloody vengeance 24/7 in righteous outrage, demanding that oceans of blood and fire be unleashed that it might wash clean the horror, that nuclear fire would be be an acceptable emergency shut off to end such wanton and cruel slaughter... and if thinking through all the logic they concluded that no violence wouldn’t help and they must pursue some peaceful negotiation to stop the slaughter, then their minds recoil and call themselves cowards and the moment of coming to that conclusion would be an ongoing trauma they’d carry with them for the rest of their life, even if they knew they were 100% right. They would meet the “pro-choice” and barely be able to conceal their desire to see them dead or imprisoned... they would meet women who had had abortions and scream bloody murder at them and tell them they deserve the death penalty, the way many of the same people react when presented with women who’d murdered their children, but after their children had left the womb.

The people who were jailed for assassinating abortionists, or fire-bombing clinics would be folk heroes lionized in songs and crowd funded hagiographic documentaries and folk traditions, like John Brown, or John Wilkes Booth, or Louis Reil, or Saco and Vancety, or Huey Newton, or Malcolm X, or David Koresh, or Levoy Finecolm... or hell even just Jesse James, or Killdozer.

Americans abort on average 1 million plus babies a year... that means if abortion is murder and those are human lives, then the 50 years since Roe vs.Wade has been a worse crime than the holocaust, slavery, or the crimes of Stalin, and we’d have to consult a historian to see if they were worse than Mao (on a per capita basis, certainly)...

This would be the worse crime ever commited, the greatest mass slaughter ever perpetrated in human history, and 50 years later our society would remain committed to repeating it in the next 50 years.

If that does not demand violence, then nothing in human history ever has, no even defensive war has ever been justified, and only Jainists and Jehovah’s witnesses are morally acceptable actors. An extreme unexceedable pascifism we know the vast majority of anti-abortion advocates do not endorse, since they overwhelming supported or at-least did not conspicuously oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (over a mere 3000 Americans dead, and a less than a years abortions worth of Iraqis killed by Saddam) and continue to conspicuously “Support our troops” troops that exist to carry out violence, despite their moral commitments saying they can apparently never in human history be justified.

.

When i say this proves “Pro-lifers” clearly do not believe a fetus is an equal human life, thats me being incredibly charitable. That is me extending a overwhelming large olive branch, that is me expressing a stupendous care and concern and sympathy and brotherly love to rival the best 19th century dinner host, the dearest of friends, a benevolent older sibling, a lover, a parent, a mother who on hearing the taped confession of her son to serial murder, doesn’t hesitate once before screaming “you monsters you’ve drugged and tortured him! What threats have you made to my grandchild! He would only say such things to save his daughter’s life!”

My claiming they are full of shit and lying to themselves, to you, and to me, is an expression of love and faith in my fellow man which until now I did not realized I possessed nor was capable of...

Because if I merely took them at their word? If I believed that they believed what they say they believe? They would be monsters.

.

Lets play a game called “Other Possible Holocausts”. Approximately 800,000 babies where aborted this year.

Lets imagine the US government has just announced that crime has gotten to cumbersome and that over the next 3 years it plans to execute every single one of the 2.4 million people in US prisons jails and Jeuvenile detention centres.

Lets imagine that to reform education, the US resolves to kill the bottom 1% of all 80 million students in the country based on an age adjusted standardized test every year.

Lets imagine hatred of the obese takes off, and a policy is passed to resolve America’s 30% obesity rate by the mass instituting of bounties on hunting and killing the obese... that every year 800,000 to 1.5 million tags will be issued for a fee to allow the hunting of the obese in return for monetary rewards on successful hunts and getting to keep the carcasses for meat base animal foods and the manufacture of fuel, or fat based household products. These bounty hunters become known a “whalers”.

Lets imagine the US announces its done with African Americans... if the problem hasn’t been solved since 1619, its not going to be... and so they’re going to genocide all 40 million African Americans at a rate of 2% a year, for the next 50 years.

Lets imagine opposing extremists get in charge and decide the racists rednecks have to go, and so they’ll be forming death squads to roam the South, Appalachia, and the rust belt, with the objective of killing 800,000 poor whites a year, “until the problem is solved”... with many happily stating 50 years of this would be acceptable, while others state it’d be perfectly fine to renew it another 50 years after that.

…

These are all American lives, and according to pro-lifers of equal moral value to the babies aborted every day, no better, no worse.

By saying this and by saying violence is not and cannot be justified to resist it, they are saying that their reactions to any one of the above eventualities would be to continue to live their lives as they have lived the past 50 years.

I do not know how to respond to that. Even if Abortion is truly murder of an ensouled equal human life... The Pro-choicers committing the murders don’t think it is... hell the Nazis murdered 6 million jews and a further 5 million undesirables, but they didn’t think of them as human, they thought they were monstrous and “life unworthy of life”, like a burning man begging you to shoot him so he doesn’t suffer or hurt his fellows... a mercy in a way.

Pro-lifers on the other hand claim these are equal viable human lives of equal status to yours or mine or perhaps even greater.... They’re Children.

And their reaction to the greatest mass slaughter in human history, the reaction of almost half the electorate, who regularly talk about the need to resist tyrrany and defend the weak (as both left and right in the US do, in their way), their reaction is to vote every 4 years, and have it perhaps not even be the #1 issue if the economy seems bad, they have the opportunity to vote for the first black president, or the Orangeman says something crude about Mexicans... they won’t be single issue voters even when it comes to the greatest crime ever committed in human history?

.

I refuse to believe it. Even I, cynical as I am, have to believe we are not that far gone, and the age of men has not come crashing down... i would believe the US capable of such a crime, but to believe that a double digit percentage of Americans could look at that, recognize the victims as their fellow humans,recognize their state and society as committing mass murder of their neighbours, future friends, and relatives...to recognize that they have a moral imperative to act on this... and then just go “welp them’s the breaks, gotta be civilized” because 9 people in black robes said it wasn’t murder?

Holy fuck. No that is not how people work, that is not how humans behave, I cannot accept that, and leftists who spent the summer rioting in response to fewer than a thousand police killings of black men a year, who remember the civil rights and anti-war movements, who kinda vaguely recall that they’re supposed to remember Huey Newton, or Saco and Vanseti, or those Rossen...something people... who like to imagine they’d have been abolitionists in the 19th century. They’re right to call bullshit.

They’re right to call the pro-lifers liars who don’t believe their own messaging, and instead just want to control women’s bodies, after a lie like that to their face, they’re right to treat them with scorn.

…

Pro-life is rescuable as a sentiment and an activist movement...

But not while it claims a Holocaust is going on and somehow magically no violence could ever be justified to resist it, thus lining up all the arguments that will allow the next holocaust to be committed without resistance.

There have been a double digit, perhaps even a triple digit number of mass murders and genocides in the hundreds of thousands or millions of people, since the 20th century. America is enabling its ally Saudi Arabia to commit one against the Yemenis right fucking now.

We need to be very fucking clear about what it is justified to do to members of a regime that commits such a crime, and what it is definitely justified to do to the immediate perpetrators of the murder. And That we will back violent resistance to such a horrible crime by the state even if it serves only to make the resister a martyr we’ll praise, or it degrades “civilization” (what civilization could remain in such a regime?), or it ultimately has no effect (it is on the survivor to try harder)... The major members of the House of Saud deserve the Gallows under international law for what they’re doing in Yemen , as do their American attaches and core enablers... and if that comes from a Judge in the Hauge or from a convoy of irregulars in pickup trucks, or from lone assassins who manage to get through to them, It is justice, and i will praise it.

What we cannot do is pretend that genocides and mass slaughter on unconscionable scales are occurring and then come up with excuses for why we should do nothing and anyone who does resist is a criminal. Or else those excuses will be the ones that allow the next real genocide in the west or on US soil to actually happen.

If there is a genocide or democide or whatever you want to call mass slaughter. You must recognize the justice the violent resistance to it, even if you personally do not participate, or you must admit you were lying about there being such a crime... to say otherwise, to say a state can commit such a crime and still retain its right to your loyalty, to say a people up to and including its victims must obey such a thing, a creature made of bureaucracy that has set its sights on massacring humans by the thousands if not millions... it is to side against the human race in a war of extermination.

And as someone whose pro-choice as they come, I’d much rather, if the pro-lifers really believe its murder, I’d much rather they start a bloody civil war, than for it to become the norm that that is ethically acceptable.

[liyawritesss]

500 Follower Event - Meet The OC!!

Table of Contents

I. Celebration !!

II. Intro to Event

III. Meet The OC !!

IV. Event Rules

V. Conclusion

Yo, yall fr? 500 followers? My mind is still shocked we made it anywhere past 100.

I swear that I never thought my writing would make people happy, would have people coming back for more. What has been my coping mechanism for years has now become a passion that I can share with the world with little fear. To think, I started out on wattpad yall! And now I'm on Tumblr making content for people to enjoy, in a space with friends im comfortable with and happy to be around.

Thank you all so much for the love and support, and I promise to continue to work hard to provide quality content that you guys will love!

So I had been thinking about this for a while...

I've been creating original characters for books, tv shows, anime, cartoons, and movies ever since I understood how to use my imagination as a scapegoat from reality. So natural, when watching My Hero Academia, my brain instantly started turning gears on how could I project myself into this masterpiece of a show. After much thought, many drafts and written designing, my original character Magnolia was born.

For this event, I'll be introducing you all to my student oc Magnolia Rivers. In this event, you all will be able to ask Magnolia any questions you want (within reason), or you can ask myself about the process of creating Magnolia.

In the next section, you will be given a brief description of my OC.

MAGNOLIA RIVERS

Tap Here For The Picrew I Used For Magnolia!!

Name: Magnolia Rivers

Nickname(s): Mags, Maggie, Nola, Nokia(by father only), Rivs(primarily by classmates).

Age: 17

Grade: Second Year

School: UA Highschool

Hero Name/Alias: Yue (temporary)

Quirk: Total Water Control

Quirk Explanations: Magnolia is able to control water in any form, as well as any liquid containing H20 molecules. The more she trains this quick, the better she is at controlling liquid in stagnant forms or liquid contained in something, i.e. ice as a solid form, or blood within the human body.

Quirk Drawbacks: To weird water and other liquids containing H20, Magnolia has to keep a steady intake of water in her own body, as her quirk requires lots of movements and flexibility. She needs to drink half her weight in ounces every day, otherwise if she uses her quirk she will experience painful muscle cramps. This quirk also requires extensive training, as water has a mind of its own and will not bend to the will of a weak weilder, be it physically, mentally, or otherwise.

Personality: Quiet but never shy. Creative and critical thinker, and can always find a loophole in any situation. Observant, considerate, thoughtful. Very passionate on what she believes in. Extremely empathetic, which at times can do more harm than good. Will not hesitate to clock a bitch that comes at her sideways.

Rules of the Event

- This event will last from Friday, February 19th, 2021 to Monday, February 22nd, 2021. The event will start as soon as this post is posted,, and will end at 12pm Midnight on Monday.

- Magnolia and Admin are underage, so please keep questions appropriate. Nothing about sex, the use of drugs (outside of mary jane) and alcohol is to be asked of or talked about during this event.

- Questions about relationships (including platonic, romantic, familial, etc) are allowed, but if you have to question whether or not to ask it, then its probably best not to ask it.

- if anything that is not listed here comes up in the conversation that makes Magnolia and/or the admin uncomfortable, it will not be answered and it will be addressed to prevent others from asking anything similar.

- no -isms or -phobias in this space. Racism, classism, adultism, homophobia, transphobia; anything of this nature will get you an instant block and report.

- If this is successful, I may hold a monthly event like this, introducing different characters each time.

I hope to see you all during this event, and hope that everyone has a great time this weekend!! You may start asking questions for Magnolia: now!!

[excidium]

this post contains spoilers for the miraculous ladybug new york special/movie. trigger warning for abuse, so be warned of that if you keep reading.

okay so ive watched the new york special two and a half times by now, so ive finally had time to sit on and reflect what ive watched. the argument that happens between chat noir and ladybug is perfect, and is something that needed to happen for their relationship to become stronger. let me explain.

first of all, and lets get this out of the way -- ladybug had every right to be upset with chat. im not trying to devalue her feelings on the experience at all. he had made a promise to her that he would protect paris, alleviating the pressure she has on her as guardian to protect it. hes her trusted partner, and she was relying on him to keep his word. him failing to tell her that he was no longer in paris was a breach of their trust, and therefore damaged their partnership temporarily. she had every right to be upset with him, and yes. he should have (and did) apologize. it was an apology she deserved, and she was not out of line for being upset with him.

now here is where i get into why this is such a perfect arc for these two, and why this eventually was going to and needed to happen. really, it all comes down to chat’s civilian life as adrien. i think a lot of the time when discussing adrien and his flaws, the fact that he is literally abused, manipulated and consistently gaslit by his father is left out of the conversation. his abuse and lack of parental care is what causes most of his negative traits to bubble to the surface and become amplified, and thats the case here as well.

so why didnt chat just tell ladybug that there was a change of plans and that he wouldnt be able to keep his promise that he made? well, he said it himself. he was afraid of disappointing her. however, this isnt the normal “disappointment” that most people are afraid of. you need to keep in mind that adrien doesnt know how real/healthy relationships work, which is literally the main adrien conflict in this special as well. nino literally describes him as a “baby chick just emerging from his shell”, and he isnt wrong to make that comparison. hes still fairly new to the real world, and has up until now been stuck in a world entirely made up of his fathers control and creation.

now keep in mind that the only “close” relationship adrien really has is with gabriel (at this point). gabriel sets unreasonably high expectations for him, and punishes him harshly whenever he doesnt meet said expectations. for example in the episode “captain hardrock”, gabriel is disappointed with adrien’s piano playing progress, and so he prevents adrien from seeing his friends at band practice (after he had already said he could go) -- as punishment in direct consequence of his disappointment.

gabriel has also literally threatened adrien on multiple occasions by socially isolating him, as well as doing a bunch of other awful shit to him when he doesnt follow directions or live up to his expectations. that is what chat is afraid of/thinking of when he’s afraid of “disappointment”. he isnt thinking of a healthy form of it, but rather the distorted and cruel form that gabriel has shown/taught him. and so thats why hes so terrified of ladybug being disappointed in him, and is why it may seem irrational to some people.

it is irrational to think that ladybug would ever react as harshly to chat noir as gabriel does to adrien, but he doesnt know that. all hes ever known is unhealthy relationships and reactions, and so him jumping to the conclusion that she no longer wants to be partners with him after this mistake makes perfect sense.

adrien is not a bad person. impulsive? yes. bad and selfish? no. he knew he was wrong, and he knew that he deserved to be reprimanded for what he did. his reckless behavior (encouraged by plagg) nearly cost the life of an innocent hero, and he knows that. its why the entire time he was in new york, he was too busy monitoring the akuma app instead of enjoying himself. he feels bad about it. he knows ladybug has every right to be disappointed in him. he knows it was wrong, but he was so afraid to tell her the truth because of the unhealthy expectations he has in his head (set by gabriel).

he both feels guilty and also expects that ladybug will no longer want to be partners w/ him because of this mistake. so much so that he just preemptively gives up his miraculous to save her the trouble of asking for it. marinette is the guardian now, and therefore she has the power to revoke it if she ever feels he can no longer be her partner. ladybug is disappointed in him and says she no longer trusts him earlier in the special, and so he acts on what he thinks will be the consequence. this is something akin to what gabriel would do, and is why he just accepts it as is and runs away without giving it a second thought. this is his reality living with gabriel. this is the type of punishment/reaction hes used to when people are disappointed in him.

and thats why hes so surprised to hear that ladybug still wants him as a partner, because he genuinely believes that his mistake was unforgivable and justifiable in him losing his miraculous. this is how relationships have always been for him, and so why would his relationship with ladybug (when he disappoints her) be any different?

this needed to happen, because ladybug showed him that whats normal for him isnt healthy. that in healthy relationships and dynamics, disappointment doesnt automatically lead to the harshest punishment. theres room to grow, theres room for apologies. she doesnt know chats identity, and so she couldnt possibly have known that he would react the way he did to her saying she was disappointed in him (and that her trust in him was temporarily damaged). she has a healthy relationship with her parents, and so this was highly surprising and abnormal to her (as it was to a lot of people watching). when she said she was disappointed in him, she obviously didnt mean it as “i dont want to be partners with you anymore”. she meant it as “im disappointed and hurt by what you did, learn from this and be better. dont do it again”.

in order for them to become closer partners, chat needs to learn what healthy relationships are like. and ladybug needs to learn how to articulate her feelings better. before this, she didnt really tell chat how much he meant to her. that could been seen in the first scene of the special with the rose and how she was dismissive of his declaration of friendship (and how much he values it). when theyre reunited, she makes sure to tell him how much he means to her -- because she realizes that she hasnt really done that.

in that way, marinette and adrien’s arcs arent that dissimilar to chat noir and ladybug’s. adrien needs to learn to get out of his shell and experience relationships that are healthy, and marinette needs to learn how to be clearer about her feelings. adrien’s social inadequacy caused him to make a huge mistake and renounce being chat noir. marinette’s inability to express to chat how much he means to her (as well as to adrien), leads to chat feeling as though the only way to own up to his mistakes is to give up being her partner.

overall, it’s kind of really amazing that both of the character arcs for both their halves tied into each other. i dont know if im making much sense, but the conflict between the both of them was just really good and is the type of ladybug and chat noir dynamic i was hoping for. hopefully from here on out they continue to develop together as people. a lot of chat’s impulsive behavior comes from fear of consequence (as well as freedom from consequence), and so this argument kind of made him (uncomfortably) face the facts. now he has a lot to think about and reevaluate, since ladybug basically proved everything he thought he knew about the way people should react is wrong.

anyways thanks for coming to my ted talk, i hope this made sense.