#we get the first villain we can put through the law system and people are upset we can’t farm her for exotics

[thorough-witness-enjoyer]

Haven’t been keeping up with Revenant, but seeing people hold Eramis to a similar level of villainy as beings like Savathûn and Rhulk to argue against her treatment in the story (or even the fact we haven’t killed her yet) is so… I’m tired guys

[warsamongthestars]

One of the most interesting things about TCWs Rex's character arc struggles is that, he's constantly put into contrasts.

Rex, as we know him, stands to be the main representation of a Clone Trooper. He's the first major named CT Character, that isn't Commander Cody, who doesn't have any ties to the films (Unlike Commander Cody), and thus can act and be written with far more freedom to explore.

[ You can't write Commander Cody too much by the end of the day, because one, years of expectations weigh, and two, he still has to shoot Kenobi at the end of everything. ]

Rex has two major conflicts in his arc, that represent the three defining points of clone troopers:

Loyalty to their Brothers

Loyalty to the System

Loyalty to themselves

Let's have some examples.

Our first major touch up with this, is the exact Opposite of all three: Sergeant Slick.

He is not loyal to his brothers (And gets a lot of them killed, whilst blaming the Jedi), he is not loyal to the system (He's a traitor), and he's not loyal to himself (He will make a lot of claims... which are unsubstantiated, because he gets a lot of people killed for purposes of greed and perceived slights).

This one is your easy Villain. Its easy to see, via Slick, that Loyalty to Brothers, Systems and Self is very simple.

But TCWs takes it a step further into complication.

Cut Lawquane, a deserter, is not loyal to the system (because it certainly isn't loyal to him), is loyal to himself, but is neutral when comes to brotherly loyalty.

( I say neutral, because he was willing to slay Rex if it meant staying free and his family safe. He did stop, because he's true to himself, and the self he wants to be isn't someone who kills people... Its just that sometimes, what is wanted, and what it is needed, isn't always the same thing. )

This is the first major bang up to Rex's Character Arc, because now we have a decent enough brother who is absolutely Not Loyal To the System that Rex is. And eventually, Rex lets him go, showing that while Rex is Lawful Good--he leans more towards good, whilst still retaining lawful plausibility.

This step slapped Rex, but it was a surprise he could easily, just simply, file away and not think about too hard. Deserting is going to happen when you're in an army of millions, and if they're off to be farmers instead of soldiers, well that's okay and a very nice thought.

The real kicker was Umbara.

One could argue that the Lola Sayu Mission should've hit Rex, but instead of Rex, it hit Fives the hardest (And with good reason). It's probably why there was an implication of a fallout between Lola Sayu and Umbara ("Just like Old times, Rex.")

And Fives becomes a contrasting challenge:

Loyal to Self

Loyal To Brothers

Neutral to Disloyal to System

Fives would bend the system until it breaks if it meant saving his brothers and more. He's the Chaotic Good to Rex's Lawful Good.

Rex is painfully upright and loyal to the system, so when one of his best and closest brothers decides "fuck this", it shakes him up.

Especially when Rex is finally confronted with how rotten the System gets: by General Pong Krell.

To contrast the contrast, on other side of Rex is Dogma, who is Fives' opposite. The Lawful Neutral.

Loyal to the System above all Else.

Neutral to Disloyal to Brothers.

( It does not help that Anakin Skywalker only recognizes Lawful as being Obedient rather than "adherence and or comfort to a code or set of rules" and thus draws more parallels between Rex and Dogma, than Rex and Fives. )

The Umbara Arc throws Rex through the whole loop, with all its conflicts. Especially the challenges it would make to Rex's whole character and showing him how far things can go.

Until finally, Rex finding what lines to draw in the dirt when it comes to "Loyalty to the End".

... But not enough to save anyone.

Then comes the Conspiracy arc, and while we don't know Rex's side, we do have implication of the aftermath.

The coverup of Fives' death (Because it would've had to been), by brother no less (Another big thing), and with the chip arc, which Rex did look into--would've put Rex up against someone he could not and would not possibly be capable of working through or against: Anakin Skywalker.

( Obviously for narrative purposes, Skywalker can't be stopped less TCWs became an AU instead )

Rex finds that his closest and brightest was labeled traitor and terrorist for his attack on the chancellor, via the very same bulletin points that Rex's character lives by, and it would immediately put him up against Skywalker.

The reason being, is that Skywalker is close to the Chancellor, and likely told Rex to drop any investigation.

And through speculation based on aftermath episodes... and What we know by this point...

I bet that Rex did not want to lump Anakin with Krell as a "System Problem". Because Rex worked with Anakin, and Rex's character falls in line with Anakin, and to consider Anakin to be part of the problem would go against Rex's character--thus, it is "unthinkable" and much easier to simply... Believe that Anakin has the best intentions.

( Even if that came at the cost of Fives. )

( Even though it would come at the cost of the 501st in the future--Rex only did enough that it would save his Life, and Ahsoka's, but nobody else's. He pays dearly for that comfort in Anakin at the cost of Fives, and the cost of Everyone. )

Moving to S7... and the Bad Batch.

Rex comes up against his absolute Opposite once more--in Sergeant Hunter, and the various Bad Batchers.

We've hit full circle.

Hunter commands a small squad that he pretty much lets do whatever, whilst Rex hangs on commands and commanding. Hunter is Evasive, Rex is Honest; Hunter gets stressed by Command, Rex does not.

Hunter is endlessly snarky, whilst Rex is straightforward. Hunter loses his faith midway through Mission, and Rex does not. Hunter's appearance is against all regulations, whilst Rex is clean shaven.

Hunter wasn't made for command, he just wasn't the stronger personality in the Batch to cause problems, whilst Rex is trained and made to command.

The one thing they do have in common, is loyalty to brothers, and the difference is--Rex doesn't hang on to anyone in lieu of the bigger picture, but Hunter does, existing in the smaller pictures.

( That's the TCWs implication-- If I went into the TBBshow, Hunter would not be coming out nearly as good. )

With the other batchers, Rex comes up against each one being individually against an aspect of his character.

Tech is disloyal to the system, he's as far from any sort of clone soldier you can get, and he's not even dressed for it. Tech comes in as a research first.

Wrecker is disloyal to self, bolstering about his skills and making light of the situation before it crashes on him. His disloyalty isn't a case of selling out--its a case of simply not considering himself in any measure. He puts others above him.

Crosshair is disloyal to brothers. He makes it a point to start shit in the middle of a mission, question authority, making disparaging remarks, and attacking a sense of self. The difference here is that, instead of accumulating falsehoods (like Slick), or physically attacking--he attacks the comforting falsehoods that a clone trooper would take on out of loyalty to brothers, system and self. If you're a brother, why don't you act it. If you cared so much for this one guy, why did you leave him behind. If you were that good in your little system, why did the specialists get called in. ( Crosshair is also a dick, but one can understand why he does things. )

Each Bad Batcher serves as a challenge to Rex's character. They are as far from Lawful as possible--but they are Good.

And then there was Echo.

But Echo doesn't serve as a challenge to Rex's character. If anything, Echo might serve as the "reward" for Rex's character arc. He saved at least one Brother, and one of his closest.

...

Unfortunately, Rex's full character arc wasn't ever really fully realized, because he is, fundamentally, a satellite character for other characters to bounce off of, even if those characters are other Clone Troopers.

( hell, Rex serves to contrast Cody, and neither of those too really had full Arcs )

Its why Fives took more attention in Umbara than Rex. Its why Ahsoka gets off scott free at the end of the day but Rex doesn't.

Its why when certain points of Jedi pop up, particularly that even our main character Jedi aren't really all that Lawful Good and do fuck up and waste a lot of brothers' lives for it, that Rex does not intervene.

Because, his character was never given that development to step in and tell someone to "Hey, stop, you are going to get people Killed."

A full Arc would've allowed that, and he wasn't afforded one.

A post TCWs Arc for Rex to get that Development, to fully understand all he went through and implement it into a new character arc, was implied with Rebel's Rex... but is currently unfulfilled.

( Don't be shocked that I don't consider TBBshow to count. )

But there ya go, a nice sum Analysis on Rex.

[a-halo-for-you]

Hard Magic Systems - A Chaotic Understanding

(DISCLAIMER: I do not intend to come across like I know anything but there are some things I’ve learnt and tried to make sense of so here you go… Also, I have read books that helped this abstract understanding of this thing, not sure if I should write them here but if you’re interested feel free to message me, I should reply within 1-3 business days.)

A Hard magic system is a system that follows rules. It has clearer definitions of what is and isn’t allowed and what is or isn’t possible and the consequences when something goes wrong. 

An example I have come up with is from Leigh Bardugo’s ‘Shadow and Bone’ series. In her stories, Grisha are capable of ‘Small Science’ and fear the act of ‘Merzost’ which in Ravkan means magic. For her magic system, their abilities rely on drawing upon the components of an element in order to wield it, abiding by the laws of physics. Any that use Merzost are often villainised for it - it is very very bad and not allowed hence most villains use it. 

Having these rules in place can aid a reader in understanding how the system works, it adds stakes to characters and narratives and can be a creative tool in problem solving without audiences or readers feeling cheated by a cop out display of magic. For example if someone just wishes all their problems away and suddenly the world wasn’t ending - the only time this could be effective would be if the journey the characters went on was crucial enough to feel like it's an accomplishment to get that far. Like in Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters, we’re not miffed that Annabeth is rescued by the Golden Fleece because 1# We know her enough to love her and 2# They worked so hard to get to it in the first place. 

When something is resolved without any stakes, rules, limits, journey and growth it feels like a cop out, the way we watch when some writers accidentally put themselves in a corner they can’t get out of so they make the entire journey a dream by the end? Or hey, let’s just fix it with time travel! It feels kinda pointless because there are no stakes and even a soft magic system will have stakes but I’ll get to that in another post. 

When magic is used as a tool it becomes a part of the characters journey from Luffy and the GumGum Fruit to Harry Potter and being a Wizard. It becomes a part of and aids their problem solving like any other skill. 

If we look at Avatar: The Last Airbender, it takes place in a world where the audience understands people can manipulate the elements, it makes sense when Katara has her bloodbending experience because early on in the show it is established that waterbenders can draw from not just oceans and rivers but trees, plants and human sweat. Their abilities are practised, trained and developed on through the show, I mean, even Aang has to progress in order to become the Avatar and when we see him master the elements we feel kinda proud to see him kick ass and when Toph progresses to bending Metal or Zuko with his lightning- I mean excuse me?!! 

We love the magic because it's a part of their journey but it doesn’t just fix things or make them worse - it’s how they use it that matters. 

Predictability is an important part of a Magic System because if you want to keep things in order you’ll want to make sure that your Hard Magic always has a consistency to it that follows the world and story narrative. Like in My Hero Academia, the predictability would be that each character has a quirk that they are learning to control and train in order to become heroes, however they each have limitations from their personalities, physiques, mentalities, ages etc that hinder them along the way. 

‘Limitations are more important than powers’ Brandon Sanderson. 

Babe. This is for real though. I don’t care how powerful a character is, it’s not interesting if they don’t have a weakness, the more powerful they are? The more painful the weakness. You want them to lose that power or feel the consequences of their power, hurt their weakness. For fun. Anyway- 

-Once you’ve sorted the rules of your system you can look at the particular limitations, weaknesses and costs. Oftentimes I’d say strength is different from power cause someone's power could be fire but their strength could be their friends and as we know, their strength can also reflect their weakness. 

You could have a shape-shifting character but the longer they stay in their animal form the more animalistic they become creating disastrous long term effects on the group or like Nico from the Percy Jackson series, he uses shadows to travel so much that it quite literally becomes a danger to him, ‘as the more you do it, the more you lose contact with the physical world’.

Anywho, this is the end of my Hard Magic System rant - I don’t actually know if this is helpful but it helps me so maybe it will help some stranger on the internet idk. 

Don't blame me coffee made me crazy~

Next time I’ll post about the Soft Magic System and it will likely be as messy and chaotic as this one but hey-ho, 50% knowing what I’m talking about to 50% aimless passion seems acceptable.

[russianprotesters]

Vladimir Kara-Murza in interview with Meduza after release from prison:

I knew new even before my arrest that, according to international law , prolonged solitary confinement is equivalent to torture, cruel and inhuman treatment. Moreover, prolonged confinement is considered to be 15 days in a row. I sat in solitary confinement for almost 11 months non-stop. I admit honestly, before prison, before I went through this experience myself, I could not understand: what is torture in this? On the contrary, I thought, you sit alone, no one bothers you, you write what you want, read books - it is certainly better than sitting with criminals in a barracks. Only a person who does not know what prison is could think so. It is truly torture. When people talk about torture, many people imagine needles being shoved under their nails or being hit with an electric shock device. But moral and psychological torture can be stronger than physical torture. And I can say that complete isolation from any human communication is absolutely unbearable. Man, as Aristotle said, is a social creature. We need communication with each other just like food, drink, air. When you are completely cut off from this, then very quickly - I will say frankly - you start to go crazy. You lose concentration, your thoughts start to get confused, some kind of nonsense comes to mind.

I had a big plus when I was sitting in the special regime colony #7, in the EPKT. There was a bridge for the guards next to the bars, and cats would come there - I would talk to them. I'm just a big cat lover, so I felt very warm inside (we have two Bengal cats at home, I haven't seen them for two and a half years. I'll see them soon !). The cats were my only interlocutors in that prison.

A special anti-psychotherapeutic measure for prisoners - at any presentation, any written statement, you must indicate your term. The date April 21, 2047 will be with me forever, do you understand? In the sixth colony, some of the bosses still liked to come up and ask: "How much time do you have left, Vladimir Vladimirovich? 22 or 23 years, remind me?"

Often people who have not been through prison imagine prison guards as some kind of cartoonish villains from movies. But the vast majority of people in the prison system are quite normal. And this is also terrible, because evil in our world is done by the hands of such ordinary people who carry out orders and, as they say, "nothing personal."

Within the Russian penitentiary system, the city of Omsk is a household word. It has the most monstrous, the most hellish regime. I didn’t know that. I remember when I was being transported from Moscow to Siberia last year, first they put me in a sorting cell with other prisoners. We managed to chat for half an hour. And when the guard came and said: “Kara-Murza, Omsk,” everyone around suddenly fell silent and began to look at me with some kind of sympathy. I only understood what was going on when I got there.  I would describe the regime in Omsk as something between a concentration camp and a madhouse. It is a regime taken to the point of absurdity, absolutely hypertrophied. Everything is down to the last decimal point, down to the second, down to the last point. You have to keep your hands behind your back, even if you take two steps. A step to the right, a step to the left – no. An extra movement – ​​no. Constant searches, constant performances – it is very important to keep your emotions under control in prison, but, I admit, it is not always possible when you exist in this. Constant video surveillance. For example, a long documentary could be made about my stay in the EPKT in the seventh colony in Omsk. True, it would be very boring, because nothing happened there, I was just sitting in a solitary confinement cell. But it would be very long - in addition to the fact that two cameras were constantly working in the cell itself, all the employees also had video recorders turned on. Literally every minute was recorded. And you also need to psychologically disconnect from the fact that you are constantly under surveillance. By the way, you can disconnect from this, because it is impossible to live like that.  And of all this, the most terrible, even by Omsk standards, was the prison hospital, where I was sent last. I knew from literature that the camp hospital was perceived by prisoners as a rest. But I was not in the camp hospital itself, I was in a prison inside the hospital - there is also a PKT block for especially dangerous prisoners. The same solitary confinement cell, the same bunk attached to the wall from reveille to lights out. In the entire block, two cells were occupied - mine and another one. And this prison hospital is a separate little circle of hell.  - What makes it the most terrible place? — I don’t even know if it’s possible to describe it in words. The same thing was happening in the hospital, only on a completely exaggerated scale. There were constant searches at every step, literally every 50 meters. Hands behind your back. Face to the wall. You can’t look at anyone. Plus, as a bonus, there are all sorts of medical procedures, not the most pleasant ones - like gastroscopy, when they stick a tube into your stomach. I can't stand that since childhood. They did it to me again.

In prison, you lost 25 kilograms. In "The Steep Route," Evgenia Ginzburg, repressed in 1937, тold how after several years in prison, she looked in the mirror and recognized herself only by her resemblance to her mother. How did you perceive your reflection? .. To be honest, I didn’t notice it visually. But I noticed that it became painful to lie down because my bones were sticking out. And it was painful to sit for the same reason. And then I asked to be taken to the medical unit and have my weight measured. Speaking of historical parallels, I then remembered that Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn wrote in “The Gulag Archipelago” that he always found it funny to think about Soviet party functionaries who went to elite sanatoriums to lose one and a half to two kilograms. He wrote: “I recommend the Soviet Gulag. A couple of months, and you will get rid of the problem of excess weight completely.” I can confirm this from my own experience.

When did you realize that you were in for an exchange and not death? — At the very last moment, when they took me to the FSB bus in the Lefortovo yard. It all started last Tuesday, July 23 — it was the longest week of my life, as if a year had passed. Suddenly the doors to my cell opened (I, as an especially dangerous person, had two doors: an outer one, closed with several locks, and an inner one with bars). Two uniformed operatives entered and took me to the service office of the PKT building. On the wall was a large portrait of Putin, on the table lay a blank sheet of paper, a pen and a sample. They said: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, sit down and write.” I looked — and it was a petition for pardon addressed to citizen Putin: “I fully admit my guilt, I repent of my actions,” and so on. At first I thought they were playing a joke on me, and I laughed. But these people turned out to have no sense of humor. I said that I was not going to write anything. The operative asked why. I explained: “First, I do not consider citizen Putin a legitimate president, I consider him a usurper, a dictator, and a murderer. And second, I am not guilty of anything. I am here solely for my views, for my convictions, for my statements against the war.” They asked me five more times, and then took me back to the cell. Two days later, on Thursday, July 25, the operatives come in again. They take me to the same office, but there is another piece of paper there. The operative says to me: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, you allowed yourself to make a statement about our president, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. The conversation was recorded on a video recorder, transcribed in text form, and placed on the desk of the head of the institution, who demands that you write a written explanation." On this piece of paper I wrote everything I think - that I do not consider Putin a legitimate president, but consider him a usurper, that he bears personal responsibility for the death of Boris Nemtsov , for the death of Alexei Navalny and for the death of thousands of peaceful citizens of Ukraine, including children. And that I do not intend to admit any guilt, because the criminals are those who unleashed this aggressive war. I didn't understand what was happening at all. On the night from Saturday to Sunday, from July 27 to 28, at three o'clock, the doors opened with a bang, operatives and a convoy burst in, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, which I saw for the first time. The prison warden was standing nearby. "You have five minutes, get dressed, you are leaving us today." I was absolutely sure that they were taking me away to be shot, I asked: "What, in the nearest forest when trying to escape, as is customary with you?" They didn't answer.

They take me out into the courtyard, where a silver bus with tinted windows is parked. The luggage compartment is open, they tell me to throw my things in, and then they lead me into the bus. I see that it is filled with the same people in black balaclavas - and with each of them there are people I know very well. The first one I saw was my friend and colleague Andrei Pivovarov. The second was Oleg Petrovich Orlov from Memorial. And the third was Ilya Yashin, who said the phrase I already mentioned. And at that moment I understood everything! Were you able to talk to each other? — It was hard on the bus, but on the plane it became easier to breathe. Unfortunately, we have such a domestic tradition: foreigners get the best, and our own people get only the last bit. Even here they followed this: we sat in economy class, and the foreigners (Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, Alsu Kurmasheva and Patrick Schebel) were taken to business class. We flew for three to three and a half hours. When we landed, we saw several more planes and two buses from the windows. The FSB officers began to take us out one by one, also by the shoulder. I was the last one left in the cabin. My FSB officer looked at me and said: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, be careful eating there, or you know how it happens." These were the last words I heard from our escorts.

We get off the plane [in Ankara] and go to a bus with tinted windows — about the same as in Moscow. Our FSB guys are there, again hiding their faces behind balaclavas. And two representatives of the German government get on the bus. They have printouts with our photos, biographies, interviews in their hands. They approach each one and check whether it is really us, whether they have been planted with some doubles. It was quite difficult with me: I lost 25 kilograms during my arrest and I am very different from the photos they had. So at first they were very suspicious and started asking questions. But I passed the exam on the details of my biography.

As soon as they boarded the plane, the doors of our bus closed and we were taken to some building, apparently for receptions. There, an aide to the German Chancellor welcomed us back to freedom and told us that we would then be taken on two planes to Cologne/Bonn Airport, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz would meet us. At that moment – ​​and you remember, I was in absolute surrealism – a woman came up to me with a phone in her hands and said that she was a representative of the American embassy and that [American] President Biden would be speaking to me. At that moment, I realized that it was time for me to stop trying to understand anything. I hope that some of what I said was understandable. I have forgotten how to speak Russian - only "Hello" to the guards. And I have not used English at all for two and a half years. My wife and children were in the Oval Office, I heard their voices. It is impossible to describe in words, so I will not even try.

[the-darkness-does-not-bargain]

*sounds of a massive stampede* wn superhero au???? *blurry eyes emoji* beatrice lightning powers, ava frankenstein esque creature, lilith fire & claws, mary & camilla as batman, ga types, and shannon as superman type???? omfg all of this sounds so damn cool, i almost wanna put my fist through a wall but in like the best & most excited of ways (<- might just be a little obsessed w comics and superheroes)

pls do elaborate all about it, and on how ava does gain her powers 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

Bestie, you're really to blame for all of this because you put the seed in my head, so here we go.

What I'm imagining is a scenario where superheroes have been around long enough to receive some amount of regulation. Superhero teams largely act independently but are beholden to government bodies and have to abide by certain special laws. I'm picturing Supreme Court cases and federal bills outlining hero jurisdictions, how heroes are allowed to investigate crimes, and how the court system handles superhero activity (is evidence found by a superhero admissible? Do heroes have to respect Miranda rights? etc. etc. Including variations based on country of origin, so Spain's laws will be different from America's etc. etc.).

People who have superpowers have to register themselves with their local hero agency and either join up or sign a binding agreement not to use their powers. Violators are considered criminals and the local agency and hero team are responsible for apprehending them. Heroes can and often do use secret identities, and the law has a long list of rules for what they can and can't do out of costume, but some choose to hero full-time and have their living expenses covered by their local agency.

So you have your generic comic book city (I guess it could be Malaga or Madrid but idc) and the local hero team is the OCS, one of the most well-known. They've been around since the first generation of heroes revealed themselves to the public, and are currently led by Suzanne, a hero who retired after an ~incident~ 12 years prior 👀 and now oversees the current team, which includes all of our girls.

Ava is still in St. Michael's and quadriplegic after she and her mom were caught in the crossfire of a hero-villain fight 👀👀 and became collateral damage. Her mom died but she was found alive. There was and is an active media initiative to downplay the damage caused by superhero activity, and the hospital was given financial incentives to keep this seven-year-old alive at any cost so they could claim as few civilian casualties as possible. Horrible, disgraceful, and Ava rightfully holds some resentment towards superheroes even though she is glad to be alive.

The OCS girls are as follows:

Shannon (Star Girl) is a Superman-esque alien who arrived on earth and quickly became the most famous hero worldwide for her incredible abilities. Her powers include: flight, super strength, x-ray vision, ocular beam projection (laser eyes), and invulnerability to everything except divinium. Suzanne recruited her almost immediately after she revealed herself and she quickly became the face of the OCS. She helped recruit all of the other girls into the team, and she led most of their missions prior to her death (sorry, yeah, Shannon doesn't get to live in this one, not unless you do it like real comic books).

Mary (she has a hero name built in lmao, Shotgun Mary): is a human without any specific powers apart from being a badass with guns. Unlike canon, she can actually fight well hand-to-hand, but she's a master at all things firearms and explosives. She gives very mild Punisher vibes but it's mostly aesthetic. She was a vigilante who met Shannon by chance while taking down some crime syndicate or other, and Shannon convinced her to join up with the heroes. She often seems out of place among the OCS but she is invaluable to the team.

Beatrice (Maelstrom): is a human with control over lightning and electricity in general. She got these powers in an accident where a bunch of electricity was channeled through an alien space rock (maybe divinium) and she touched it. She was already on the outs with her family by this time, who basically told her to go die being a hero to elevate their family name. She was really angry and reckless when she joined the OCS, but Shannon and the others helped her overcome that. Now, she's a hero in good standing and loved by the public.

Lilith (Morningstar): a hybrid of human and uhhhhhhhhhh (?????) who controls fire and can grow claws (and wings eventually). She doesn't really know how or why she got her powers, only that they manifested suddenly in her teens and her parents also coerced her into becoming a hero. Suzanne took her in and trained her for several years before letting her officially join the team, so she still feels a lot of pressure to be the best and a leader, just not because of a family legacy.

Camila (Gambit): a human like Mary who is just more badass than normal. She's a prodigy at archery as well as a technical genius and hacker. Suzanne finds her trying to hack into the OCS computer system and immediately hires her. She's the newest member of the team and doesn't go out in the field often because she's still learning to fight, but her tech skills are often mission-critical.

So what happened to Shannon? This is where Ava comes in, along with the two scenarios where she gets her powers. Scenario 1: Frankenstein Classic. Shannon disappears on a solo mission to investigate some villain activity in the city, and winds up getting killed by Vincent/Adriel. They take her body to some secret lab along with Ava, who they might have bought from St. Michael's on the DL in exchange for more funding. Disgusting, and then it gets worse. They want to create a superhuman they can control for villainous purposes, and they do it by cutting off parts of Shannon's body and attaching them to Ava. We're talking limbs, guts, spine, one of her eyes, everything. Part of Shannon's alien biology is the ability to assimilate with foreign tissue as a survival tactic, so her bits just sort naturally graft themselves on, leaving only lines of scar tissue where the two ends meet. A consequence of this is Ava getting Shannon's powers to some extent.

Scenario 2: Frankenstein John Carpenter Edition. The OCS goes up against Adriel in a fight, and Ava (for whatever reason) gets caught in the crossfire again and dies. Shannon dies at the same time however, probably from a divinium bomb, and her body lands on Ava's. Alien biology comes back but Even Worse, and Shannon's blood (and probably CSF and other fluids too) basically becomes its own entity, oozing out of her corpse to occupy the closest organic mass and mount a full hostile takeover. So Ava comes back to life as her body is forcibly converted from human to alien.

No matter what scenario you pick, it's bad for her, because she either has to fight her way out of a mad scientist's lab using limbs that aren't hers, or she wakes up alone in the aftermath of the battle with no idea what's going on. To say nothing of the OCS being devastated by Shannon's death. Big Oof imagining them in scenario 1 finding Shannon's butchered body missing so many pieces. And when they find out later where those pieces are? It's bad, it's really bad.

They have to bring Ava in, which is fucked because Shannon was the world's most famous hero for a reason and now all of her power is in the hands of a scared 19-year-old who doesn't trust superheroes. Just finding her is a pain in the ass, and then they have to get close enough to incapacitate her. It probably winds up being Bea's job, which creates some excellent tension and mistrust for them to work through later.

That's what I've got so far in my slow contemplation!

[thequietmanno1]

TheLreads, Vigilantes ch 90, Replies Part 1

“Now, what was happening on Vigilantes- Oh yeah, blatant fuckery in the wordlbuilding department, the usual, then Number 5 showed up to the party.”- Number Hood just wanted to get in on the fighting action with the rest of the battle junkies.

2) “Ah, upstairs, in the picnic the police squad set up. Glad to see they are having fun frolicking around while everybody dies downstairs.”- There is some merit to be made that the Police become a bit too complacent in the heyday of All Might’s era, what with him running about all over the place doing their jobs tenfold before they could lift a finger. Still, some little more pro-active measures on their behalf would have been appreciated.  

3) “Yeah guys, what you think we are? law enforcers? Fuck that, let the pro hero handle it, he was the one that asked for in the first place. God knows why so many cops were needed for that.”-  If nothing else, I’d love to see a cop drama set in MHA’s world, with a young rookie wanting to be a good outstanding and efficient officer in the line of duty, dealing with a cynical mentor and the actions of heroes always bursting in and taking the credit, as he tried to work his way through the complicated system 4) “IS THAT WEED? NOW ITS TIME FOR THE POLICE TO ACT

LEAVE NO SURVIVORS, ANYBODY WITH RED EYES NEED TO BE EXTERMINATED WITH MAXIMUM FORCE POSSIBLE

you know, like in `murica”- AFO getting people hooked on drugs and illegal narcotics young, whether they want to or not. Truly, the most villainous evil that ever existed.

5) “Alright now, Furuhashi, you got the three best characters to be stuck working together, you absolutely must make sure to put them to good use, you got that?”- How about matching them up against the early-model version of one of the most interesting Nomus we’ve yet seen? That’d be a fight I’d pay to watch.

6) “Huh, I don’t know, this just looks like a normal punk rave to me, nothing out of the ordinary here alright”- 7) “And once again, we are faced with a place that is not up the fire safety regulations, smh… Although, unlike the sky egg, this one is deliberate, still I want to see AfO explaining that to the safety inspector.”- He probably happily outlined to him all the health and safety violations he’d deliberately included in the building because he wanted to make it as unsafe as possible for others to hurt themselves on for his idle amusement, before he stole his Quirk and killed him/repurposed the body for “materials”.

8) “I want to know where they kept those masks, because they are a bit too big to keep hidden under their clothes without gathering some unwanted attention.”- They pulled them straight from the plot hole dimension….assuming AFO didn’t have said gas masks stored in boxes over to the side somewhere. They are standing in front of a shelving rack, after all. 9) “Oh perish that thought Knuckles! Goodness gracious, what sort of lowly scallywag would ever dare to commit such acts?”- AFO is the type of man to commit all action of villainy, from dastardly, all the way down to just plain dick. 10) “Good thing you don’t expend a lot of oxygen while using your quirk and thus need to be constantly breathing in, even whilst inside a cloud of drug-laced gas, right Knuckles?”- Knuckles probably trained himself like a deep-sea diver, finding ways to ensure maximum lung capacity if he was ever in an environment where breathable oxygen was getting into short supply, to maximise his speed bursts 11) “GUNKLEDUSTER STRIKES AGAIN

WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE STAFF HAVE A FAKE GUN INSTEAD OF A REAL ONE? OR EVEN SOME TRANQUILIZER WEAPONS? YOU GUYS THINK A PROP WILL DEFUSE TROUBLE? THOSE GUYS WILL EAT YOU ALIVE, EVEN MORE WHEN THEY SEE THE GUN IS FAKE”- I can see AFO issuing unloaded firearms to his security staff just for the Lulz when they try to bring them to bear and find out they’re empty in a crisis situation.

12) “again, you guys think that those batons would stop a stampede of desperate brutes? you twinks there would be snapped in half, and not even the furry guy there would be able to stand there.

Just bring the heavy weaponry, nobody is gonna complain, the police is too busy making flower crowns for each other.”- Again, AFO wouldn’t want any good Quirks getting killed off by a heavy shot before he was ready to stealthily steal them in the chaos. These guys are here to look intimidating and act as a big distraction whilst he moves in the shadows doing what he wants, so if the sight of them brings the rioters up short just for a second, that’s long enough for him.

13) “Oh, really heroic of you Knuckles… Can you imagine if something had happened to them? You could kiss your hero license bye-bye, well, that is, four years before it actually happened I mean.”-  Knuckles already knows them well enough to know that A), they’re simple-minded and like a simple plan, B) they got no issues risking themselves, and C) they wanna fight. So let them fight.

14) “Wait, you are gonna give the signal? Wouldn’t be better for them to give a signal if they are in trouble? Knuckles I’m starting to think they are not just bait, but meat for the grinder.”- That’s assuming either of them can see danger and not go “awesome! I’mma fight that!”

15) “You guys need to ask? You know that kicking ass is not optional here. Go nuts, show those fuckers who’s the alpha team.”- Well, it is technically optional…as in, Rappa and Mirko are split over whether kicking or punching ass is better to proceed with.

16) “Bullshit Knuckles, and you know it. And you Rappa, keep quiet, Mirko got the gist of it, she just needs to promise that she won’t kill anyone and then kick people so hard their vertebrae pop out through their mouth like they are pez dispensers”- Arguably the main difference between them. Mirko knows when to play along before she can cut loose once she’s gained permission, whereas Rappa’s just too upfront and is entirely honest about his desire to fight to the death. Weird seeing the hero being the deceitful one, honestly.

17) “There go my two kids, they are always so happy when they are curb-stomping people into a mush…���- The joys of simple violence. Poetry in motion, to the chorus of breaking bones.

18) “Oh don’t worry Knuckles, they have no need for help. You should worry about who’s going to pay the medical bills of the people they are beating up tho, you said yourself they are ~civilians dosed without consent~”- I presume Knuckles made the police foot the bill, since they’ve contributed pretty much nothing else to this raid.

19) “THAT’S RIGHT GUNKLE! SHOT AT AfO THROUGH THE PORTAL, I THINK NOBODY ACTUALLY BOTHERED TO CHECK IF A HEADSHOT WOULDN’T SOLVE ALL THOSE PROBLEMS, WE DON’T KNOW IF HE ALREADY HAD THE ANTI-HEAD-CRUSHING MEASURE READY BY THEN”- Him still possessing his facial features is a sign that he still doesn’t have Hyper Regeneration specifically but from what we see of Hood, he’s already working on a pseudo-means of being able to heal injuries, presumably with the final product intended for his own use, but this research didn’t proceed far enough until All Might finally caught up to him and crushed his dreams along with his face. From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem to be that Hood is specifically ‘healing’ himself, but rather ‘fixing’ himself, using his unique construction as a modded human, rather than a healing Quirk outright, hence why AFO can’t exactly steal it if it comes down to the way his body’s been rebuilt rather than a power he’s using.  

20) “oh wow, a prop gun you said? Thank fuck they didn’t bothered to get a real one then, it would probably have the wield of a fucking nuclear weapon.”- I fully believe that Knuckles is the kind of guy to keep a few bullets on him in reserve in case he ever needs to shoot somebody, even if he doesn’t always bring an accompanying gun.

21) “HEEEY- THERE WE HAVE IT, OUR FIRST LOOK AT PRE-POTATO AfO, AND HE IMMEDIATELY GOES D:  HILARIOUS “- Honestly, it’s just nice to see something other than ‘smug satisfaction’ on his mug for once, even if it is only a minor victory at best.

@thelreads

[noodlenibblescribble]

Prison of Plastic Thoughts on Molly, Giovanni and Especially Lorelai (Spoilers)

I finally finished Epither Erased: Prison of Plastic yesterday and oh my freaking god omf I cant get my blorbos out of my head.

The way this series said the system failed Molly, that trusted adults failed Molly, that even her friends who love her and see her suffering first hand can't help her in a way that really matters. Fuck it broke my heart. Hearing Navan's thoughts about being unable to just. Take her away because *he's a pillar to his community* hurt because he's a good guy. He's shown to be an amazingly thoughtful and caring man but classes and occasional money is not enough to save Molly. She needed a wrecking ball and I'm so happy Giovanni didn't even need to be asked. He was already planning on taking her. He just saw a girl in need and he gave zero shits to laws or future ramifications, he was going to help her come highwater and hell.

Epithet Erased is so amazing and means so much to me. A kid forced to grow up gets to be a kid again. Not by any concentional methods but it doesnt matter because she's free now and with people that will actually care for her.

That was amazing.

.......

But as much as I loved the book, I have gripes with Lorelai's part of the story.. I don't feel a sibling relationship as volatile as this was done enough.... justice?

I don't wanna get personal but there's a reason sibling relationships get to me the most out of any other familial one. I was so excited to cry over Molly and Lorelai, and I did! But it definitely felt like their interactions, the progression of their fights and their thoughts on one another could've been polished better. To me, it never felt like Molly got to actually communicate her problems with Lorelai properly. She either apologized or suddenly lashed out, which I understand, emotions run high, but because she never got through to Lori-

Lorelai does not feel like she learned a proper lesson at all. Her takeaway from the whole ordeal being 'I can stand to lose a bit' coming from *playing* a villain and picturing herself playing with Molly as one instead of what it should've been, her recognizing that she really put too much on Molly's shoulders makes her arc (in this part of her story atleast. Since there was no resolution between the sisters, I HOPE we are getting that in tbe future) frustrating.

I also feel like, if one of the main points of congression against Lorelai's powers was gonna be that she can hurt people (to the point where she freaks out about so much a d even WISHES SHE NEVER HAD THEM, THAT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE. UP UNTIL THEN ALL WE SAW WAS HER ENJOYING AND ABUSING HER POWERS EVEN IF SHE WAS LONELY), we could've had most instances of them actually doing something to people in the past other than just her potentially having set the hojse on fire. I thought the story was setting up her loneliness and departure from her school friends as maybe after losing her mom, she became overwhelmed and actually hurt one of them while having a meltdown. It would've solidified to her that maybe she SHOULD be alone, and given her more standing in her mind to freak out about actually hurting people while in this book, not just because she POTENTIALLY killed her mom but because, like Navan said, she already had confirmation of what she COULD DO with another incident.

And on that note, maybe a sprinkle of having Lorelai flinch and be scared of hurting Vincent Murder only to have him insist he's a gargoyle he can't be hurt(!) could've been another cute point to her crush on him. (Not that I'm a big fan of that potential relationship, but hey, if there's a focus on that, then you gotta milk it through the book).

On the subject of Gio/Vincent, I feel like he went too easy on her after the 'revelation' of what she's been doing to Beartrap on the side while hanging with him. He just breezed through it and was still joking with her during the fight. I didn't expect him to be a complete shift in personality and to cut ties with her, but maybe a bit 'tougher love' would've been good to see. I was waiting to see a more serious side to him as a protector of Molly, but he instead of keept it lighthearted and it didn't feel right. Theirs wasn't a matter of just petty sibling squabbles, Lorelai was a big contributor to the pain and stress Molly felt daily.

Brushing it aside felt so. Bad. For a story that does so well with showing how people fail and the consequences of it, they really softened Lorelai's in the end. She is still with the mindset of a child playing a game. It disappointed me ^^"

But uh, anyways. Sorry for the sudden negativity. It's honestly the only major thing I had a problem with. I love Epithet Erased so much, I guess I may have expected too much out of the sibling side of the story. I still heavily enjoy the rest of the cast and their relationships (other than Giovanni and Lorelai because I think he could be a little harder on her. Again, not a lot! I just think that as the person she likes and actually wants to listen to, she'd learn more from him.) But ah well.

[redwingedwolves]

Waxing Gibbous, Waxing Crescent, Waning Gibbous and Blue Moon for Dabi and Keigo! -💙

Hiya, Ghosty! Thank you so much for the ask! ^^

Ask Game

Waxing Gibbous - What is a lesson you have taught your F/O? What have they taught you?

I think a lesson I have taught both Dabi and Keigo is that they are worthy of love. Keigo doesn't struggle with this nearly as much as Dabi does, but they both needed to learn this. I also think I've taught them that the world isn't always as black and white as it seems and there are some definite nuances that need to be considered sometimes.

One major lesson they have both taught me is how to love myself. I'm not at all ashamed to admit that, for numerous reasons, I am indeed one of those people who have come to hate themselves. Keigo has been working really hard to chip away at this for the past five years that I have known him, but hints have always been there. Once Dabi joined the picture he took a slightly different approach to it and I think that has been what has helped with the remaining doubts. For the first time in literal years I can honestly say that I can look in the mirror and be happy with the person staring back.

Waxing Crescent - You and your F/O have to leave everything behind and start over, with nothing but each other. How does that look?

I technically answered this for Dabi here, but I'm going to answer this as if in a scenario where it's the three of us instead of just me and Dabi.

For the three of us as a whole, leaving everything behind would probably be the result of Dabi being found out and Keigo losing his standing as a Hero because he was found to be 'harboring a Villain'. As a result, like with me and Dabi, we would be fugitives. And being cut off from the commission would definitely put a big damper on our money situation, but we'd have to deal with being on the run from the law before we could manage to deal with that. Because both Keigo and Dabi are really high profile people in Japan, I feel like one of the first goals would be to get out of the country, but that might be a little hard. If we can manage to do that though, I think starting in a new place wouldn't be extremely hard.

I can imagine during the first year or so, after we've managed to leave, as a means to try and hide his identity a bit dying Keigo's wings and hair to a different color. I think he'd have a preference for brown hair with black wings, but he would occasionally try other colors too.

It would take a little while, but I think once we got out of Japan finding jobs to do wouldn't be hard, both Dabi and Keigo would be willing to do odd jobs and various other things that other people would be turned away from or not willing to do. From there it would really just be about trying to save up for a new place to live and once we've done that I think we'd probably be able to settle back down again. This time probably even a little better now that Dabi wouldn't be living as a Villain and Keigo not being all but basically owned by the government. Starting over would be extremely hard, but I think, in the long run, it would actually be a really good thing for us in the end.

Waning Gibbous - What have you and your F/O brought to each other's lives that you are most grateful for?

That is a very good question... I think one of the biggest thing is actually a solid support system? It's actually not something any of us really had before hand but now that we all have each other we can know that we always have something someone we can count on to be there, through whatever. I will forever be grateful for the love and support my boys give to me and I can confidently say that I know they most definitely feel the same.

Blue Moon - Do you/your F/O believe in luck? Magic? Do you feel it favors you?

I also answered this for Dabi here, but I don't mind answering it again.

Keigo believes in both for whatever reason. He says that even though we have Quirks that can basically do almost anything imaginable, there are still some things that just can't be explained away with science and medicine. He also very heavily believes in luck and has said that more recently it's been favoring him but for a long time it didn't.

I believe in both sparingly. I think magic exist though I've never seen it, and I believe that luck is a thing that most people have but I don't really pay it much mind at all.

Dabi doesn't believe in either and honestly couldn't care less. Well, he doesn't believe they exist as their true definitions, he believes that if they do exist it would be the work of someone's Quirk.

[whatyourusherthinks]

The Front Room Review

*Walks onto stage in front of the mike* Ahem. *Looks left, then looks right*...A24, as a movie company, is overrated.

BOO! BOO THE HERETIC! BOO ME! I DON'T CARE! Half the A24 movies I've watched have been GOD AWFUL. Do you want to guess what The Front Room is, Buggnutz? Based on this opening, bad? Wrong, IT'S WORSE THAN THE EXORCISM. A MOVIE THAT WAS SO BAD I COULDN'T COMPREHEND WATCHING IT. HOW YOU ASK? I wasn't goin-

What's the Movie About?

This is a "psychological horror" movie about taking care of an old lady. Not an old lady possessed by a demon or she's a witch, or the characters have to do it while being chased by a monster. Just a regular old woman. She's incontinent and racist ooooohhhh spooky.

What I Like.

The ending made me laugh. Unintentionally, yes, and a major part of that laugh was bitter since I wasted two hours of my life watching this piece of shit. But I'm saving the empty 'What I Like Section' gag for something really special, so what do you want from me?

What I Didn't Like.

The scariest thing that happens in this movie is a dream sequence about an adult man being breast fed by an old woman. That sounds horrifying. ...Fair, but they don't get up close with any details to make it disturbing. It's just kinda gross. That's what a lot of the movie is. It never goes too far with anything so it's not like it's supposed to be scary, it's just like... Do you want to watch a montage of flushing toilets? Or see every character vomit at some point? Not really. Those dream sequences are bizarre, and not in a fun psychedelic way. In a "someone told us this movie needs to be scarier and this was the first thing that we came up with" way. 90% of this movie is the old lady (who has a ridiculously over-the-top southern accent, check "Roan complains about accents" off your Bingo Card) being overbearing or obnoxious on purpose. It doesn't help that the dialogue is possibly the worst I've ever heard. It's not just that it's unnatural, it all sounds like it went through Google Translate twice. That's not the only poorly made part of the movie. They somehow fuck up the continuity between shots of the same scene! Seriously, there's a part where the the main character is putting on two earrings, the shot cuts to her husband saying something, and then it cuts back to the main character getting up to leave and she only has one earring on. How the fuck did that happen? And AMAZINGLY, despite ALL OF THAT SHIT, this movie is pretentious. The villain of the movie is basically a Southern Baptist strawman, and the lead is a a wet dream for someone who believes that "woke culture" exists and is fully in favor for it. The first scene (Well, the first scene after a ridiculously long credit sequence. Seriously, I think the end credits are shorter.) is the main character teaching a bunch of bored Gen Z'ers about the symbolism in chairs is actually about "Goddess". Then she quits her job because they were boxing her out of classes because of racism. Like... On principal I should like all that, buck the system and this is the reality flack people have to deal with and all that. But the way the movie presents it is very unlikable. It gets even worse when the old lady in introduced. Every aspect of this character is presented as the worst a human being can be, and while yes, the old lady says and does some reprehensible things, there is a difference between faking being pushed over and telling the nurses your step-daughter-in-law pushed you, and hanging up a crucifix. There's literally a part of the movie where I said, "This seems movie really hates Christians." The movie hates the elderly even more. I think the biggest problem the main character has with the old lady is that she has lost control of her bathroom functions. Like, yeah, it's gross and a pain to deal with along with a baby. But they way the movie harps on about it is so needlessly mean. There is a scene when the old woman messes the bed in the night, and the way the couple reacts feels really cruel to old people. Christ, this movie is red-pilling me. Even Reagan didn't do that. But don't worry everyone, the movie has a happy ending. The main character smothers the old lady to death with a pillow.

This is how this movie is worse than the Exorcist. Because at least the Exorcist doesn't advocating for euthanasia.

Final Summation.

This might be the most half-assed movie I've ever seen. It's so half-assed that it might be more appropriate to say it's quarter-assed. Or one-eighth assed. Like there are some ideas here that could have been interesting or scary, but the movie makers were too lazy to actually make it such. Is A24 resting on their laurels? Like after Everything Everywhere All At Once was declared the best-movie-to-grace-this-sinful-earth, they just decided to stop trying? Why did they do that after I decided to do this stupid "watch every movie that comes out" thing!?

[whenimgoodandready]

Like the good book says, “….and a child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). Despite their youth, maybe they’ll grow to mature and gain experience from the authority they hold? Its happened before:Marie Antoinette was made Queen of France when she was only 18, King Tutanhamun “Tut” was King of Egypt when he was only 8 and the badass warrior girl Joan of Arc was in command of her army when she was only 16! Now a 14yrs spoiled little b*tch is mayor of Paris thanks to a supervillain terrorist who gifted her with an army of destructive force inducing robots. Is this gonna help her wise up and learn about authority!? Let’s see:

*Revolution-So Chloe is mayor now. Yeah, I know, they allowed that despite being against the law, but she had her robot army to enforce that (although there was the mention of a democratic election if any one were to run against her, so that’s still following the law) and her first decree was outlawing supers, heroes and villains alike. This is all being puppeted to her by Cerise through her ear piece. What is she (Cerise) up to?

Sadly, the dynamic duo can’t do anything to stop her as being righteous supers, they abide by the law (despite it being run by a tiny tyrant who can’t even pronounce the word “democracy”) and there’s no akumatized villain for them to fight against. However, they can still fight the system in their alter ego forms, so yeah, that’s cool. First Amendment baby! Except it does jacksh*t! Chloe rules over everyone who annoys her (ex.Andre the Ice Cream Man. Dude didn’t even have a permit to sell his products! No wonder his ice cream wasn’t magic! It wasn’t approved by the law! :P) more so than ever and it just gets worse from there.

Seeing an opportunity to defeat the heroes, Monarch approaches Chloe and says he can make her more powerful. Chloe, with coerces from Cerise (who sees her own opportunity for revenge against Monarch), willingly accepts and is akumatized, with her robot army, as Queen Mayor. Her 7th akumatized form and it’s at the bottom of the list now. Her 1st was Antibug and that’s🥇for me cuz it’s a evil version of her former idol, Ladybug, both being foils to each other and her “Lucky Charms” were deadly weapons over random (but useful) objects, 2nd was Queen Wasp which I place as🥈as well cuz it’s an evil version of her former superhero self, Queen Bee, 3rd was Miracle Queen and to me that’s #5 cuz it’s basically Queen Wasp with a crown :P, 4th was Queen Banana and it’s also listed as #4 for being a stupid look with a stupid power :P (the gorilla is fine), 5th was Penalty/Penalteam and it ranks🥉cuz it’s a cool soccer/football theme that clones an army! 6th (and #6) is Sole Destroyer cuz it’s just a ripoff of Zoe’s Sole Crusher. We already saw an evil version of her idol and superhero self, but one for her sister is too much. We know they’re foils to each other too, but don’t make it a supervillain look to emphasize it! If this is the third attempt then fine, but just stop there. Queen Mayor is low ranked for not being much (except for the miraculous powered gold painted robots). She looks like her normal self w/ a fur fleeced coat! She didn’t have that in her closet and had to be “magiced” on her! Ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! Her army was the real threat. They trapped people in a labyrinth “detention”! They also almost exposed the dynamic duo! Don! Don! Don!

(hisses through grind teeth) Yeah, maybe putting children in charge wasn’t the best idea cuz well, you know, THEY’RE JUST KIDS! Marie Antoinette spent her reign basking in the glow of her leisurely luxury never noticing how terrible the state of her country was going through and thus, the revolt and off with her head! Just like Chloe who, when she wasn’t bullying others, spent most of her time pampering herself and not giving a sh*t about the people or the problems Paris faced on a daily basis until they started their own revolution! King Tut died at the young age of 18 and since he was too young to do anything as a kid ruler, he had others doing all the work for him while he took all the credit. Much like Chloe who wouldn’t have been where she was had it not been for a lying con artist making her parakeet whatever she said to rise to high power! Joan of Arc had her army by her side to vanquish the English army and the poor thing was as brunt at the stake for “hearing voices”. Same with Chloe, she had her army of miraculous powered robots who did away with any one she deemed a “nuisance” and much like the leaders before her, it all came crashing down! Did she lose her head!? Did she die young!? Was she made barbecue!? Nope! Much worse then death! She ended up with nothing! Nada! Zip! Rein! After her defeat, she lost her adviser (Cerise), her power as a dictator and finally, (not mentioned, but implied through cut scenes from the previous ep) her father divorcing Audrey and gaining full custody of Zoe leaving Chloe banished from her hometown, along with her mother, to London (for us Americans, she said London not New York. Hmmm, could we be seeing them in the London Special as well as Felix and Miss Rose!?😉). Oh the irony, all this time the running gag of Chloe threatening to send Zoe away is now in reverse (Badum-tish🥁). Not even using the last arrow in her quiver of insults to strike at Marinette was effective cuz Marinette, like a badass, caught it with ease and threw it right back at her officially bringing her down…….to rock bottom💥. To some, this would be cathartic due to Chloe getting her well deserved comeuppance for being a heinous little b*tch throughout the show, but it’s also sad for those that sympathize with her (like Ladybug who this time wanted to personally give her an anti-akumatizing charm) and wished for her to get character development already. Perhaps in the future this’ll be the redemption she needs. I mean, yes it’s her fathers fault for spoiling her all those years after her mother left which made her the way she is and he’s part to blame, but she never bothered to change for the better either cuz she had everything. Well, she’s got nothing now! No authority with her father stepping down from office, both parents not giving a sh*t about her (her mother being the worse one she’s now stuck with), no friends to talk/cater to her and finally, no respect! This was her damnation arc, now we can see her redemption arc. Maybe this is the push she needs to accept change? Astruc! Don’t fail us now!😠🫵.

[welcometomy20s]

March 29, 2023

In mathematics, we define mathematical objects through their properties. In philosophy, this is called Leibniz's Law, and in terms of metaphysics this can cause issues, but not so in mathematics, because the reason we define objects as such is not to have a sense of what that object is, but to find a set of properties that induces a lot of theorems. 

And this extends to definition of other things, or at least that’s how I go about defining things, since ontology is a rabbit hole that goes straight to The Abyss.

I define Isekai in two ways - a broad mechanical definition and a narrow aesthetical definition. The broad definition goes as such - Our protagonist travels between two settings which are unrelated and broadly unconnected. This could be because of a portaling, or time traveling (slow or fast), or simply a bad storm or some other natural event.

You can really push this definition to its limits - a boy going to a closed private school? That could constitute an Isekai… A person turning into a young girl might not exactly be an Isekai, but it would share many of the features of what the Isekai would try to portend.

Is time travel isekai? Not always, since time travel stories have their merits, but there are stories where time travel merely is the conduit for an isekai. The intrigue of time travel is the ability to change the past, whether it be by going to the past, or going to the future in order to change the present. Since the cinch of the story is about external change, it has a different motive than what a mechanical isekai is trying to work here.  This is why I define Isekai in these broad terms. Because of this mechanical constraint, the focus of mechanical Isekai is about internal change, rather than external. The point of these stories are about seeing oneself in a different view. 

Now for the more aesthetical definition. The biggest thing that defines aesthetic Isekai is the natural commodification of everything. Mechanical power levels are what I’m getting at. Even though the story takes place in a medieval or post-apocalyptic setting, the metaphysical rules of the world conform these worlds into a capitalistic society. The goal of an aesthetical Isekai protagonist is to achieve goals by increasing some number or to perform certain tasks in certain order. One can embrace this, or subvert this, but not many go so far as to say this nature of the world is somehow morally wrong. Harry Potter is a really good example of this. The climax of the first book doesn’t happen with the encounter of the main villain of the story, but the headmaster single-handedly rigging the system so that the protagonist group wins a point-based ‘workplace’ competition that doesn’t really get them anything but prestige.

One can have an aesthetical Isekai without being a mechanical one. SAO is a famous example of this. SAO is probably the epitome of reification of commodification where the alternate world is simply a hard-coded reconfiguration of the modern world to make the protagonist the objectively kingly deity. It is not a mechanical one since the two worlds are deeply intertwined, which only brings its intense aesthetical approach even stronger.

Commonly, many people would put this notion of aesthetical Isekai as ‘feeling like a video game’, and this is a good point about the acceleration of capitalism in the last 50 years. Video games started to be a popular mode of entertainment in the ‘70s, right when neoliberalism and late capitalism started to take hold. Video games were a way to train our minds into the world of making numbers bigger. Video games were limited because computers can only emulate manipulation of numbers which can only be interpreted as other things. Therefore all goals had to be interpreted in getting enough numbers or the game cannot be made.

That’s why it is incredibly hard to create socialist video games, because socialism tends to stray away from the numbers goes up mentality, since that is the main culprit of all the problems with late capitalism. Only real way is to make the ‘number go up’ system so brutal to elucidate the notion that the construction of the game itself makes things vile. Papers, Please do this; Undertale does this by pitting the number-heavy action format against the number-light adventure/visual novel format to create a dialectical view regarding nature of video games.

Blue Archive presents an interesting notion in response to all these concepts, as their setting presents the natural conclusion of capitalism, a kind of a post-post-apocalypse where the final material destruction of the world is rendered moot. The killing sport has been nullified because only beings standing are supernatural ones which apparently cannot be killed. Blue Archive gives the most cynical hope possible to posit that only when capitalism has truly fully gone through its course is when socialism will remain.

Of course, all this is dressing, an excuse, to justify the story to adhere to the moe standard, which are girls in schools. This moe practice, as I explained a few days ago, is designed to present an alternative to capitalist hegemony. In such shows, girls are subject to schools where their numerical goals are kind of pushed to the sidelines, as we focus on socialistic virtues of community and self-realization. A collection of schools without rudders is a, perhaps cynical, concept of what people might consider a socialist future to kind of look like.

[helga-grinduil]

Well, technically Gentle and La Brava also were 'crabs' in the eyes of the law, so it's definitely not just those 3 crabs that will be saved out of the bucket. Anyway, not the point.

The thing is that this take is less about villainy and more about how some people think that League of Villains are self-sufficient (psychologically) and don't need anyone else beyond each other, which is not true. They are crabs in the bucket in the sense that the League of Villain is... kind of a suicide club (even though not all of them realise it). Or as another person from Twitter said, a drowning club. They came there to drown so they aren't going to stop or intervene in each other's drowning - one of the main rules of the club that each of them is free to do whatever they want, after all. And because not a single one of them is doing anything about the drowning, they are, well, drowning. If a crab tries to get out, the other crabs will pull that crab back into the bucket.

But back to the crabs and the bucket that you specifically was talking about.

We can't expect people to never fall through the cracks. It's impossible. Each system has it's own flaws, when you close one crack another appears, and people like Muscular or the rapist guy Stain killed in Tartatus still exist. Moreover, people aren't omnicient. Just a little misfortune, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or an accident no one was prepared for can create tragedies and criminals. A perfect utopia where things like that never exist is impossible to create even simply due to the human factor. The First Noble Truth (The Four Noble Truths - the essence of Buddha's teachings): Suffering is part of the world. Everyone suffer.

But, just because bad things happening and suffering is impossible to avoid, this is why it's important to try and understand each other. Transhawks is right, it is about reformation. Like. Obviously saving these 3 will be the start of it. No one is going to leave the other thousands of crabs in the bucket. They will just be the first ones to be taken out of it, proving that it can be done and should be done, that understanding the crabs and trying to save them is another thing true heroes should strive for, because crabs are just like us - they have feelings, and sometimes they fall into the bucket by accident, or are intentionally put there by someone else, or have something horrible happen to them that makes them jump into the bucket. That when a person is having a breakdown or lashing out in stress, you don't smack them in the face with a garden tool, you try to calm them down and help them.

And by taking those crabs out and by investigating how they ended up in the bucket society can find a way to minimise the amount of crabs ending up in the bucket. And, once again, it's impossible to put out the fire completely and it's impossible to stop *every* crab from falling in - but because heroes will know this new way of dealing with the crubs, these crabs will have a much higher chance of being taken out of the bucket.

This metaphor is getting out of control.

Honestly the best summation I think of an issue I've had with a lot of reactions is it's born out of people really invested in the LoV staying in the bucket. The boiling bucket of crabs. This tweet spells out clearly but for those of us twitter averse it's this:

It's nice to have other crabs in the same bucket, but they're still boiling to death. The League are the crabs. They can't tip over the bucket over the fire: they're dying. They also don't see a way out of the bucket. Someone has to turn off the fire or pull them out. Someone on the outside, who isn't boiling to death.

[rayylock]

tell me some of your dangerverse hcs!

alrighty ! i’m gonna section them off so that it’s easier to read .

henry danger ( kinda leaks into df sorry lol ) :

- ray is a trans man . captain man says trans rights fr .

- schwoz is trans too . he’s weird enough i don’t think i need to put him through more shit through future hcs ( affectionate ) .

- henry does NOT become a complete asshole in dystopia . i’ve seen one too many fics showing he does and he did not spend his entire childhood being somewhat of a moral compass to do a complete 180 . he is a dork who says he’s in a band but immediately backtracks because he knows lying is pointless and giggles when complimented , all in canon .

- charlotte , robot enhancements and all her glorious self , doesn’t become president , but becomes a prosecutor of the law instead . after her gap year in dystopia , she realized how corrupt the system is everywhere , not only in swellview . she is now studying criminal justice in harvard :}

- jasper has a major glow up . not a hc just a fact . he also learned to fight outside of sleeping so he could react faster without having to wait to be konked out by the gum .

- kris and jake hart do their own thing now , but are still married . they came to the conclusion that even though their kids are out of the house they would still eventually need a support system . by they i mean kris . they both also still love each other , but aren’t in love yk ?

- after graduating from uni and having felt success from her social media fame , piper moved back to swellview to help track down villains , and mika appreciates the extra help , because it turns out piper is actually really good at doxxing people . i will not elaborate . oh and also she scares ray so she got him to actually pay the df kids lmao .

danger force :

- mika is a bi trans girl . deal with it .

- chapa is nonbinary and still uses she / her . she’s also aromatic but is open to queer platonic relationships !

- miles is unlabeled . we love that for him , truly a king .

- bose is bi because have you seen him ??

- chapa always carries a taser to she can get away with zapping people outside of fighting crime without raising suspicion .

- when miles first started randomly teleporting everywhere , he was overwhelmed by the constant change in everything that he had to teach himself how to calm down , and now he’s excellent at teaching and helping others calm down .

- after joining df , they would all train together , and one day while training , ray threw a ball at bose and he started lightly crying . he caught it , he just was happy crying because he never got to play the whole father - son catch cliché game .

- mika used to go out into the desert to practice her super screaming , but after a while she started fainting during the day , so now she trains in one of the many rooms in the man’s nest that has been renovated by schwoz to be soundproof .

- as much as ray misses his original kids , in one of his rarest mature moments , he realizes that he shouldn’t compare them . he also decides to be more careful with them than he was with henry , causing that whole “ no powers = no crime fighting “ situation in canon . he can’t risk losing more of his kids , especially so young .

- I LIED MORE SCHWOZ . when the df kids lost their powers , schwoz didn’t sleep until he came up with an antidote he thought would work based on the gas clown’s gas . when it didn’t work he was devastated , but he wouldn’t show the full extent of it . he knew it would effect the kids and he knew he could try again . the following days he spent in his lab , running on illegal caffeine , and eventually passed out from exhaustion . mika found him and put a blanket over him that miles made , having wanted to apologize for how unfair they were being towards him , because after all , he’s only human .

[linkspooky]

THE TOP THREE HEROES ARE ALL FAILURES

In the sense that Enjdeavor, Hawks, and Jeanist all embody the failures of the hero system. The first clear sign that all three people who were set to inherit All Might’s Legacy would fail in doing so, is that none of them really understood what kind of hero was in the first place. 

Endeavor only ever saw All Might’s Strength, and thought All Might’s genuine desire to save people was just him playing to the crowd. Hawks thought Endeavor’s desire to surpass All Might was heroic, and what made him a better hero because he didn’t give up when everybody else said it was hopeless, but we the audience know Endeavor gave up early and took it out on his family instead. Best Jeanist thinks what’s most important of all isn’t saving people but rather “The Image” of Heroes to the public. Except, the only reason All Might was a hero obsessed with image is because he wanted even those he could not reach to be able to live in peace and save themselves. 

The top three heroes are all lacking in what All Might had, in that none of them actually believe that Heroes should save people. Enji believes in strength above all else, Hawks in sacrificing one’s self for the faceless masses, and Best Jeanist in the image of heroes to the public. 

It’s really showing that the option of “Saving Dabi” did not even occur to them once, despite the fact that they are completely willing to give a helping hand to the man who made Dabi.

The current number one, two and three heroes are all obsessed with All Might’s Legacy, however all of them are failures to All Might’s Legacy as well because they don’t understand the underlying ideal of heroes saving people. All three of them represent the failures of hero society, which is why they aren’t shown being overly concerned at hero society’s victims. Even when it’s revealed that one of hero society’s greatest villains Dabi, was actually one of hero society’s greatest victims too, created by one of their own, their beliefs barely change.

1. Enji Todoroki 

Enji was never concerned with saving others being the job of a hero. His one and only focus was just to be the strongest. He even has a shallow view of All Might’s ideals and goals because of this. He thinks the reason that All Might won number one was because 1) his all powerful strength and 2) his popularity with people. 

Enji never once mentions that All Might became the hero he was, because his number one priority in every situation was to save as many people as he could. Because, Enji doesn’t view it as the job of heroes to save others. 

Toshinori worked so hard because he genuinely wanted to be the shining light for others. He didn’t become the number one hero because it was his own personal dream, but rather because it was others needed of him. All Might isn’t a perfect hero either, but there’s still a difference between someone who wanted the number one spot because he genuinely thought it would save the most people, and someone who wanted the number one spot because he wanted to be the strongest.

Even after Endeavor’s supposed revelation where he saw Shoto being gentle with flames, rather than forceful and violence, Enji became the exact same kind of hero he was before. 

Think of the way Enji fought Shigaraki, burning him alive. He made several attempts to kill him during their fight, even though the rule is heroes absolutely must not kill, that’s what makes them different from villains. Heroes prioritize the safety of people, and saving civilians, except for Endeavor apparently. Endeavor as a hero is the exact same kind of hero he was before, and the flaw with that is if he had fought Dabi the same way he had fought Shigaraki.

He would have burned his own son alive. Enji isn’t even concerned in the least with saving people, even when the person most in need of saving is his own son. He sees villains as an absolute evil for him to punch and beat up in order to prove his own strength. The only way Enji knows how to be a hero is violently taking down crime and no one has ever challenged this, even though it’s the exact attitude that led Toya to his death.

Enji, only ever taught Dabi how to turn up the heat, because Enji wasn’t actually that concerned with his son’s well being. Toya was only worth something to him when he was strong, so Enji only ever taught Toya how to be the strongest hero and nothing else that a father should teach his son. Even now, Enji doesn’t let go of this idea of his that he has to be the number one hero, and being the strongest hero will solve all of his problems. 

Endeavor has used playing hero again and again as an excuse to run away. Now that Hawks is giving him another chance to be hero, he’s enabling him to run away again. 

It’s incredible how still even after the reveal, it’s always Toya who has to pay for the consequences of Endeavor’s mistakes. Toya is left alone to burn to death and spends the rest of his life covered in burns forgotten by his father, and it’s Endeavor who gets the unconditional support and love Toya needed as a child offered to him, just because he happened to be a hero. If he was a villain he would have just been locked up.

Endeavor is framed as the hero who does not give up, and yet, he very easily runs away and lets Toya take the blame for the majority of his actions. If Toya had been able to carry his dream he would not have abused Shoto. If Toya had not died that day he would not have doubled down even harder on Shoto. Toya’s the reason they could not come together as a family. It’s never Endeavor’s actions, it’s always, somehow, Toya who is blamed, and Toya who is burned as the consequence of Endeavor’s actions. Now, Toya is the one who needs to be stopped when Enji is just as guilty. 

I’m not saying that Enji should not be given a chance to get better, but why is the good side of Enji’s actions expressed over and over again and not Toya’s? Toya is trying to reform all of society. Toya is trying to hold his dad accountable for abusing him and neglecting him to the point that he died. That’s murder. Someone who lets their children die because they couldn’t be bothered to supervise them can be charged with involuntary manslaughter in a court of law. Enji has killed too, but rather than admit to his own flaws it’s must easier to cast Toya s the villain that needs to be stopped and himself as the hero that needs everyone’s support. 

Toya deserves the same chance that Enji got. 

2. Hawks

Hawks only saw self sacrifice in All Might’s actions. He saw someone harming himself over and over again for the sake of others, and that’s probably why he admired Enji’s pursuit of strength more because it was the opposite of him. 

If Enji is the extreme result of the attitude that villains can’t be saved, only stopped by putting themselves down with violence, then Hawks is the extreme result of self sacrifice. Hawks seems like the ideal hero on paper, he would do anything, and give up any part of himself to save a faceless stranger just like All Might. However, Hawks also has decided that he has the right to sacrifice others as well.

Hawks is self-destructive. That’s the extreme end of self sacrifice. However, unlike All Might who took the burden entirely on himself, Hawks will choose others to sacrifice as well. If Hawks sees himself as a tool for the greater good he will extend that to others as well. If Hawks sees himself as a bad victim who turned his back on their parents, he extends that to others as well. 

So basically, Hawks’ number one problem is with himself. He can’t reconcile his past. He feels guilty for being abused by his parents. He feels guilty for not forgiving the same abusive parents. He puts everything he has into being a hero, and yet, he doesn’t feel like he himself is a hero. Hawks’ only way he knows to feel good about himself is to continuously sacrifice himself for the sake of others. 

Because he learned when he was young the only way to be good was by sacrificing himself to protect others. He only received the help he needs because he showed he was “one of the good victims” but deep down internally he feels like he’s the bad one, for not being able to do anything for his mother, for not reaching out to her. 

Hawks can’t see himself as a victim and it messes with the way he sees other victims as well. He divides them into good and bad, and then tells himself that he’ll offer to help the good ones, the ones willing to improve. Hawks’ represents Hero Society’s own willingness to throw the bad victims to the dogs. 

It’s specifically Hawks who Twice calls this out on. So we have a number one hero who thinks the only way to deal with villains is to violently suppress them, and the number two hero that thinks the only people who deserve to be saved is the ones he deems as “Good” or “Trying to be better.” 

It’s all because Hawks has this really self destructive idea of what kindness is. That kindness is somehow destroying yourself for the sake of others, that it’s being overly forgiving and not holding any resentment at all. 

It’s like how Deku acts like forgiving his father is a kind act. However, at the same time implying that holding onto resentment would be an unkind one.

Even though the reason Natsuo won’t forgive is because Toya is dead, and Enji never showed any apparent remorse for it, and didn’t try to fix anything. Even though one son died because of Enji’s training, and then Enji just decided to train the one remaining son he had left a thousand times harder. Natsuo is attempting to hold his father accountable for his actions, but Deku acts like blanket forgiveness would be the kind thing to do.

Even though Deku himself is willing to overlook all of Enji’s past abuse of Shoto, and his murder of Toya, but at the same time stresses how unforgivable Toya and Shigaraki are. 

Deku just saves people in a self destructive way. He breaks his bones to save others, thus mirroring Hawks who just saves people without genuinely thinking through who needs to be saved. They save people, because that’s the way they hurt themselves to prove how useful they are. However, neither of them actually goes through the trouble of thinking who genuinely needs saving, and that’s why they’re able to carry such a false double standard. Enji needs help because he’s trying to be better, whereas Toya’s not trying to be better. Ignoring the fact that you know, Enji tries to be better by just, forgetting everything he did in the past and sweeping his past actions under the rug, whereas Toya is still suffering from the scars of Enji’s abuse, permanently on his body. 

However, between Twice a person willing to die to protect his friends and act of complete selflessness, and Enji who can’t even bring himself to think that maybe he should try to save the son he let burn to death on a mountain peak which one do you think was trying to be better? Enji who spent ten years, even after Toya had already died to his training, training up Shoto instead even harsher. Enji who referred to Toya as “a failure” and “almost perfect” when talking to Shoto about his death. 

“I’m going to help anyone trying to be better” is just an arbitrary line that Hawks draws.

That’s even the critique that Twice levelled at Hawks. Hawks doesn’t care because he never actually tried to see the good sides of the other people, but Toga was someone who comfotred Twice and understood him. Toga was someone who made the league feel like home. Hawks labels Twice as the only good one, because he just didn’t bother to see what was good about the other villains. Yet, at the same time he strains himself to see the good in Endeavor, to the point where he constantly apologizes for Endeavor’s actions and sweeps them under the rug. Endeavor is a good man who is just misunderstood in Hawks’ eyes, who just went wrong somewhere, but Hawks can’t ever offer up the same sympathy to the worst victims of society. Who lash out and hurt other people in the same way that Endeavor did, except Endeavor’s is excusable and there’s isn’t because...??? 

 Hawks is in denial, because he refuses to look at the good sides of the villains. Twice didn’t choose to accept his offer of help, so obviously he didn’t want to be better, therefore Hawks is perfectly justified in putting him down. Notice though how Hawks mentioned prison time for Jin, but not for Enji (neglecting a child to the point where they burn to death is... still a crime). 

Hawks is still in denial about himself. He thinks he’s offering people a helping hand. However, from Jin’s perspective we see how manipulative he is. Hawks didn’t offer Jin a hand, he held him at gunpoint and told him to surrender and betray his friends. Hawks is just lying to himself, because he didn’t go out of his way to save Jin, he ruthlessly manipulated him, and then betrayed him. He’s not framed as a hero trying desperately to save a villain, but rather a friend betraying another friend who trusted him. Because, Hawks does not just sacrifice himself. He’s the extreme result of self sacrifice. Self sacrifice turns into self destruction. Self denial. Hawks sacrifices other people. He forces himself to dirty his hands, because he believes this is the only way he can be a hero. He’s too weak individually, so he has to manipulate, pull strings, and even kill in order to achieve the results he thinks will save the most people. However, by doing that he ignores the suffering of the victims right in front of them.

Not only that, but he ignores what contradicts his simple black and white narrative. Enji was trying to be better so he deserves help and support, Twice didn’t want to be better so Hawks revoked his offer of support away. 

He’s willing to give support to a man who abused his family for no good reason, and who continues to evade any consequences or legal punishment for his actions, but then insists that Jin who was pushed to his actions by poverty and not wanting to starve to death just did not want to be better. He’s like, so unaware of what the problem actually is with society, he can’t possibly think why Enji leaving his own son to burn to death might have left his son a bit miffed. Enji is just a person who made a few missteps along the way but genuinely wants to be good, Dabi is just a selfish person who doesn’t want to be better, so says Hawks. 

Nevermind how hard Toya tried to be a hero, and how he never gave up on earning his father’s love. Nevermind how hard Twice tried to be helpful to other, and how much he loved the people around him he was willing to sacrifice his life. Twice’s last action was to save his two closest friends. Enji’s actions are always just to beat up villains to prove how strong he is. Enji is never concerned with anyone. Hawks does want to save people, but he never thinks about the people who need to be saved.

Therefore, heroes are always good. Even when heroes do bad things, Hawks contrives some way to not hold them responsible for it ever. Well, Enji isn’t like that now. Well, we don’t need to announce that Enji was an abuser, because that will just upset the public. 

The actions of Enji are apologized for over and over again. Because rather than holding him accountable for his actions. Instead of pushing him to actually fix his mistakes, it’s better to keep sweeping the problem under the rug. Because, as is repeated again and again heroes don’t save people. When a hero fails to save someone, rather than trying to fix that mistake it’s easier to blame the person who didn’t get saved. 

Even if it was your own son that you left to burn to death. That is somehow miraculously alive.  That has given you a second chance to save the person you should have saved that day by just, showing up, and actually acting like a father for once. 

Enji will just choose his job over and over again. Because heroes don’t actually have a responsibility to save people. Being hero is just a job. Enji, Hawks, Jeanist they consider it a profession, not a responsibility. Which is why all three of them are willing to blame Dabi for his own actions, but not Endeavor for his. Which, just proves Dabi right. 

Heroes aren’t actually concerned with saving people. Heroes don’t think about who is most in need of saving, and who the real victims are. Heroes just protect their own. 

Enji, Hawks and Dabi are all murderers. They have all killed someone in pursuit of their goal. Not only did Enji murder a child by neglect, he also tried to kill Shigaraki several times over, and even tried to murder Pop Step in vigilantes. Hawks killed Twice in pursuit of a goal. 

However, Hawks and Enji need to be supported, whereas Toya needs to be stopped. Because they are heroes, and Dabi is a villain. But sure, watch Dabi continually burn his own body over and over again and push himself to the very limit so he can achieve a society where another hero will never get away with abusing his family like Enji did his, and say that he doesn’t want to be good. Watch Toya burn himself over and over again as a child just trying to be a hero because he thinks it’s the only way to earn his father’s love, because he genuinely looked up to his father and wanted to be just like him, and insist that Toya just stopped trying to be better, that he was just a jealous child, that he was never good. 

Jeanist isn’t a fully developed character so I’m not going to talk about him as much, but he represents the attitude that heroes “only pretend to save people” because they fuss ove image, rather than doing the actual work of helping victims.

The thing is someone who is genuinely trying to be better would listen to Dabi’s words, to Shigaraki’s words. However, Jeanist, Hawks, Enji all think of themselves as the hero, therefore they assume they are good and that their actions are good. 

Whenever someone contradicts this, they just flat out ignore any criticism. Heroes don’t save people. Heroes just protect their own image as heroes, because they assume that’s what is necessary for peace. Even now, Hawks and Jeanist aren’t focused on the innocent people suffering from the victim break outs, but rather taking down the man out to ruin their reputations. 

They pretend to see those they haven’t protected. Even when that person is Endeavor’s own son, his pain gets swept under the rug, because the image of Endeavor as a shining hero is far more important than the responsibility he has to help his own son, that’s in pain and need to saving. 

[itsnothingofinterest]

Something I think worth mentioning about villain redemptions is, in addition to people just liking the characters; one reason the villain fans want redemptions for the League is that their redemptions would almost certainly signify the addressing & remedy of serous systemic issues that have affected many characters and aspects of the series, and have been felt since the first line of the series.

It’s no secret that the world of HeroAca is plagued with systemic issues rooted in inequality, corruption, and the gross mishandling of quirks among other things. These have affected both villains like Shigaraki, Dabi, Toga, & Spinner, and hero students like Izuku, Shoto, Shinsou, & Shoji. However while the students’ character focus is, on average, about how to overcome these hurdles to become good heroes and what kind of heroes that makes them; the villains’ character focus is more on what to actually do about the systemic issues they were never able to just overcome, and so are attempting to tackle full force. In other words, the handling of the villains is seemingly going to be directly tied and inversely correlated to the handling of those systemic issues and, in turn, just how many problems are really going to be solved in the aftermath and not rear their heads again..

The Problems

It’s like this: people often like to compare BNHA to Avatar: The Last Airbender (probably because of Todoroki’s resemblance to Zuko, even though his position is more like a less Azula-ish Azula, but that’s beside the point), and have even made comparisons between Shigaraki & Dabi and Ozai. Now that’s more than a bit weird, but we’re gonna role with that to explain something.

See, the thing about Ozai is, he was in a position of power; a position from which he and the last 2 Fire Lords had effectively caused all of the problems. And the reason they did that was basically just because they were arrogant; they thought the Fire Nation was better than everywhere else. Meanwhile; the Gaang had Zuko, the next in line to the throne who had been enlightened by his travels about the values of the other nations & how wrong the Fire Nation’s way of doing things was. The Gaang new if they defeat Ozai & Azula, he gets that position of power and will cease all the problems arising from it. For them, that part of the plan was simple: defeat the big bad = no more problems.

For Shigaraki & the League, it’s no where near that easy. See, while they have acquired power in various forms; they’re really just average joes picked off the street. Naturally occurring misanthropes produced by societal failures like oppression, abuse, inequality, prejudice, corruption, and other such topics. Heck, Jin’s name means ‘humanity’; both as in compassion, but also as in a face in the crowd (or rather the entire crowd). And Shigaraki even once compared them all to maggots crawling out of the trash piles the heroes swept under the rug. And you aren’t gonna accomplish much just squashing the maggots; they’re just gonna keep coming faster & faster as the piles get bigger & bigger, and even without a League we’d just see more Kaminos, Fukuokas, Daikas, & Jakus. The thing they need to address is the trash piles, the issues in society, in order to actually stop the problems.

The Easy-Yet-Hard Solutions

“Well, okay,” you might say, “but can’t those societal problems get addressed and the villains still get killed or jailed for life, as are the consequence for their actions?” Well technically yes, that is possible, but the problem is it would be a very, very, very hard sell to the audience.

For one; not many on the heroes’ side see these things as problems. To most of them, the biggest problem in society is that it needs more All Might. Not to say there’s no one in the country who thinks society needs to change...but there is the slight hurdle that a good number of them joined the PLF, and are presumably headed off to Death Row for association with Shigaraki. (You may think that’s an extreme assumption, but Kurogiri got worse for very similar crimes.) This doesn’t exactly discount our heroes tackling all those root issues we discussed; but, well, it’s a bit hard to believe the heroes might try to change society in accordance with the wishes of people we assume they’ll just think of as enemies until the end. (Especially regarding the necessary changes that might inconvenience the heroes.)

What’s more, the villains most directly represent the victims of those issues, so it’s hard to separate their treatment from the handling of those issues. There’s just some dissonance in the idea he heroes would be like “In our pursuit of justice, we shall ensure no hero has the power to abuse their family any more, and shall hold heroes accountable for any breaches of the law they commit. But as a separate matter, screw Dabi. Life in prison for him and he’s (debatably) lucky we’re not killing him. Endeavor of course shall walk free because he’s trying to change, and he’s gone through so much, and he means so much to us.” Like I said, that’s a hard sell. It gives off the impression that the heroes are just doing what they’ve always been doing, which conflicts with the idea that they’re then going to change things.

The Hard-Yet-Easy Solutions

Conversely, if the villains get redeemed and end up working with the heroes; societal restructuring to remedy those systemic root causes of villainy are all but guaranteed. They know better than most what problems there are in society, seem to have thought pretty hard on how to fix them or what alternative systems could be installed, and have no reason to be coy about any of that. The heroes, conversely, tend to have the faith in humanity to think they can better the world without needing any acts of terrorism, and the societal sway to then actually do it. Or at least will acquire that sway, if we’re assuming the UA students are gonna end up doing most of the leg work on this.

In short, each side has about half of what’s really needed to guarantee a societal remedy that’ll ensure we don’t get any more naturally occurring Shigarakis, Dabis, & Togas; and in turn that we don’t end up right back where we are now eventually.

It’s not quite accurate to say they need to work together on this; both sides could accomplish this restructuring on their own. But with the heroes, it’s highly questionable if they’d even think to change things if they get the chance, and how how hard they’d really try if they did; and with the villains we know they’d put their all into it, but it would incur massive costs in human life. If the villains get redeemed though, and the two sides work together on this? It’s very easy to believe the presence of one side would entirely eliminate the issues in the other’s methods. The best solution is the one that comes from both sides working together; and that’s probably why Izuku & Shigaraki’s quirks each ended up being named after half the phrase “All for one and one for all”.

Conclusion

Look. I get it. The League are terrorists, there’s no getting around that, and at times it can feel like the villains fans ignore this. But that truth is that it’s more complicated than that.

Shigaraki’s inner circle are simultaneously some of the victims most in need of saving & some of the greatest threats the HeroAca-verse has ever faced. They are, in several ways, the greatest conflict a hero could ever face, and how a hero would handle them would define not only the type of hero they are but also the quality of hero they are. I’m just saying; a high quality hero that’d save them, the real Plus Ultra-type, would probably be the kind best suited to taking care of those metaphorical garbage piles and reach that “no more problems” state you usually want your stories to end in.

Does that really mean they need to get away with everything they’ve done? Honestly, got me buddy. Like I said, from a hero’s perspective, their situation is complicated; so if you’re looking for the perfect solution for how a hero should handle them, it’ll probably be pretty complicated in itself. To me personally, that stuff seems like details. What I’m most prioritizing is if we’ll get the best resolution to the root issues as possible.

[bestworstcase]

on ‘villainy’ and varian’s and cassandra’s moral codes

for all that varian’s and cassandra’s villain arcs get compared to death they’re really more different than they are similar, and i think one of the more interesting distinctions is the characters’ moral perspectives on their own actions--namely that varian recognizes his own choices as villainous and consciously self-identifies as a ‘bad guy’ and cassandra not only…doesn’t do that but appears legitimately taken aback when varian says she’s ‘become the villain.’ from this we can infer that varian is transgressing his own personal sense of right and wrong while cassandra isn’t.

and… well with varian i think it’s pretty straightforward: he’s a kid who desperately wants to make the world a better place and make his father proud, but his impulsivity and recklessness and general disregard for lab safety foil his plans and get him into trouble. then one of his accidents puts his dad into what is essentially a magical coma and varian becomes singularly focused on reviving him--and, when he realizes that the king is more invested in covering up the problem than fixing it and his only hope lies with a zealously guarded relic belonging to the kingdom, he decides that the only way to achieve this goal is to start breaking the rules.

so he asks rapunzel--his friend who promised to help him--to retrieve some information the king is trying to steal from him, and then persuades her to help him access the sundrop vault; then when she balks at stealing it he makes it clear that he no longer trusts her and escapes with the flower. at this point he’s in the morally dubious zone; being strategic about what he tells rapunzel to make sure she helps him, spiking cookies with truth serum to sow chaos and get information he needs, and doing things that are crimes on paper but also largely victimless. i think these were things varian could probably rationalize as okay--not exactly good, but no one got hurt and he got what he needed.

except the flower’s magic is gone. he drugged the palace, manipulated rapunzel and broke her trust in him, and committed treason all for something useless because the actual magic of the sundrop is in rapunzel herself. now he’s in trouble, because he needs rapunzel’s help but his desperate measures guaranteed she won’t be willing to help him again. and this is when varian realizes that his only options are 1. give up on saving his dad and turn himself in and hope rapunzel takes pity on him, or 2. accept that no one is going to help him now and do whatever it takes to free quirin himself.

so--mutating ruddiger, attacking the city, kidnapping arianna and threatening her with encasement in amber, building an automaton army to defend him while he works--these are all things that varian feels are wrong, but chooses to do anyway because he doesn’t trust that anyone else will even try to save his father. despite his anger and his rationalizations, at the end of the day varian sees himself as doing bad things for good reasons. (“Believe me, I know/I’ve sunk pretty low” & “I’m the bad guy, that’s fine”)

and when his reasons fall through--when he fails to free his dad--he falls quickly into guilt and despair over having hurt people for nothing. he stews for a year in how unforgivable and ashamed he feels, and even when he teams up with the separatists, he’s doing it in, basically, pursuit of a reset button: he wants to take back what he did. and when rapunzel shows him that he can be forgiven, he can have a second chance, he does have people who are willing to help him and trust him again, he drops the memory-wiping idea and his alliance with the separatists without a second thought--because what rapunzel actually does is give him a way to pursue his goals without sacrificing his conscience, which is what he really needed the whole time.

now, cassandra, on the other hand…

cass is an interesting character in this regard because, while she does want to be a hero, she’s not at all altruistic. she’s consumed by her lack of autonomy and she craves not only control over her own life but also respect from the people around her--her desire to be a hero is very self-interested, at its core. and moreover she has a somewhat fatalistic view of the world wherein some people (not her) matter and some… just don’t. 

moreover cassandra, despite her ambitions of becoming a guard, doesn’t so much as blink at eugene’s or the pub thugs’ criminal pasts--she is suspicious of lance at first, but on the grounds that he’s an unrepentant thief who showed up out of the blue under suspicious circumstances to ‘reconnect’ with his old partner in crime; eugene is also distrustful of lance, for the exact same reasons--and of course she doesn’t think twice about breaking the law herself. literally one of the very first things we see cassandra do is commit treason to make her friend happy. cass doesn’t care about the law, and she only wants to be a guard because she associates getting the job with having her dad’s approval and it’s also her ticket out of lifelong servitude.

on the other hand, cass does seem have a strong sense of right and wrong where people she cares about are concerned. she is constantly putting the desires and well-being of her friends ahead of not just her ambitions (e.g. in beginnings for rapunzel, or great expotations for varian) but also her own safety (e.g. risking her livelihood and home to sneak rapunzel out for the night in bea, or setting aside her misgivings about the sketchy bird people in freebird). 

which is all to say--cass isn’t exactly amoral but the moral framework through which she sees the world is… more complicated than varian’s. she doesn’t seem particularly motivated to help strangers but she’ll move mountains to help people she cares about; she doesn’t care much about rules or laws except insofar as she doesn’t want to get caught breaking them, and she has this hierarchical mindset that some people matter--meaning, they get to make decisions for themselves and have people care about what they need and want--and some don’t, and that she herself is stuck in the latter category despite her best efforts to climb out of it.

which brings us to the subject of the moonstone, and cassandra’s villain arc, and why cass, unlike varian, doesn’t consider herself a bad person.

i think what it comes down to most is this: taking the moonstone is an act of defiance against not only rapunzel but also fate itself. waiting in the wings sets up cassandra’s resigned acceptance of this hierarchical order and her own cosmic insignificance, and then in crossing the line she REJECTS that same order. she’s raging against rapunzel but also against the cultural and legal and destined systems that put rapunzel on top and forced cass into subservience. she is very literally fighting for her freedom against the universe itself.

and when cass was not an altruistic or heavily morally motivated or even particularly law-abiding person before, and when her conscience has always been predominantly oriented around taking care of her friends first and herself second, and when the thing that drove her to this breaking point was her friends spitting that back in her face… well.

it’s easy to say “cass literally tried to murder rapunzel a bunch of times, how can she possibly believe she’s the good guy?”--but rapunzel maimed cass, blamed her for it, and consistently prioritized her destiny over cassandra’s wellbeing; and rapunzel represents the cosmic order that cass is fighting to liberate herself from. and while i know that the -popular- take on be very afraid is “cass is terrified of hurting rapunzel,” i submit it’s actually “cass is terrified of having to fight rapunzel, because she still believes that fate is literally tilted in rapunzel’s favor and she can’t win a direct fight with rapunzel.” that’s why she’s so scared; that’s why rapunzel seemingly deleting the red rocks hardens her resolve; that’s why she marches into corona with maximum drama and bluster and builds a fortress and tries so hard to mess with rapunzel’s head before the battle begins. she’s trying to even the odds. and that’s why, when rapunzel stomps her into the curb, cassandra’s immediate response is “i need an army.”

cassandra isn’t scared for rapunzel. she is scared OF rapunzel.

we do also see cass trying not to harm people she considers to be innocent bystanders; she uses the truth serum on varian bc she needs the incantation, but afterwards she doesn’t even bother to restrain him until after he starts pestering her, she says flat out that she doesn’t want him to get hurt when she fights rapunzel; similarly she is willing to hurt calliope to force rapunzel to comply, but--despite her deep personal dislike of calliope--uses a minimum amount of force and again verbally expresses that she doesn’t particularly want to hurt her, that it’s a means to an end and nothing more. attacking rapunzel? that’s fine, rapunzel is her enemy. attacking eugene? of course, he’s rapunzel’s closest ally. mind controlling the brotherhood? that kills two birds with one stone--eliminating powerful enemies with a vested interest in taking the moonstone away from her and turning them into allies who can level the playing field between her and rapunzel. and when she does finally snap and raze corona to the ground? the people of corona attacked her first. i think cass ABSOLUTELY sees herself as fighting a purely defensive war against people who have or will hurt her.

and this is, of course, ultimately why varian failed to get through to her during ‘nothing left to lose’--he appealed to her sense of morality and her sense of morality shrugged. 

as for the thing that snaps her out of it? the moment that forces her to question whether she’s really as right as she thinks she is? it’s learning who her new friend really is. it’s the shock of finding out that she’s been allied with, confiding in, taking advice from a legendary villain, from a monster she likely grew up hearing stories about. cass takes it as a given that zhan tiri is evil--and if she’s friends with zhan tiri, what does that make her? and even then, cass is resistant to the idea that she might be a villain--“No, no, I’m nothing like you. Just because I’m pursuing my destiny doesn’t make me a bad person!”--which is, ultimately, very telling of her whole mindset. she’s not a bad guy, she’s fighting for her freedom. she’s not a bad guy, she’s protecting herself against people who want to exploit her. she’s not a bad guy, she’s just putting herself first for once.

and OAH generally, i’d argue, is not actually about cassandra trying to reconcile with rapunzel or redeem herself or be a better person, it’s… literally cass trying frantically to prove she’s NOT the bad guy. it’s “oh yeah? you think i’m a bad person? well could a bad guy do THIS? *lies and impersonates a former coworker and gets up on a stage to justify her own actions in front of a crowd*” it’s “a bad guy wouldn’t apologize, rapunzel never apologized for anything, and to prove i’m a better person I’M going to apologize! see? SEE!?”--and then everyone in corona attacks her and she goes “FINE, i’m the bad guy, fuck you all” and wrecks the place.

only then--only in plus est en vous--does cassandra get into a mindset similar to varian’s, of “i am the bad guy but if i can pull this off it will be worth it.” she’s not sorry. she still sees rapunzel as an enemy trying to get her under control again, and the only thing that’s really changed is cassandra acknowledging that she has in fact done bad things too.

and… i would argue that by the end of plus est cassandra… feels some guilt but isn’t sorry. “i’ve failed” and “i’ve done terrible things” and “i tried to prove i was more than everyone thought but they were right”--her anguish is not like varian’s anguish in RR, where he was consumed with despair because no one could possibly forgive him for the things he did. cassandra is upset because she did awful things and failed and she perceives that failure as proof of her own worthlessness. she’s right back to feeling how she felt in waiting in the wings but with a hefty new helping of self-disgust and shame for having been stupid enough to believe she could change anything for herself. 

she’s not sorry. she’s not pleading for forgiveness. she just wants rapunzel to give up and leave her alone--& then, after rapunzel convinces her that she’s wrong, and she does have worth as a person, and she does have a destiny of her own, cass does what’s necessary to clean up the crisis she created and then… just bounces. she gets the freedom she wanted and leaves without a backward glance.

(which. good for her.)

tl;dr: varian’s villain arc explores his moral scruples and what it takes for him to be willing to ignore them, whereas cassandra’s villain arc explores her incendiary reaction to a lifetime of injustices; she isn’t amoral but her sense of right and wrong is, unlike varian’s, very contextual and personal. varian is a pragmatic idealist who wants to be lawful good but is capable of setting his own morals aside in pursuit of a goal he considers to be important enough, and cassandra is one radicalizing incident away from realizing that her grievances are not a unique personal failing but a systemic problem and then leading a class uprising.