#well i fucking guess the villains are doing it for the protagonists which fucking....okay i guess

[dailykugisaki]

Day 129 | id in alt

Right after Fushiguro tells you what Itadori's final words are? Girl, do you have something you're not sharing with the class.

[celestie0]

HEY ELLIE!!!! i hope your doing well!!! okay so i just read the most recent ihm chapter (which is AMAZING by the way. my jaw was only the floor when gojo tried to kiss the reader) and i saw that u had choso x reader in the tags. is choso just gonna be like the annoying, jealous ex bf that won’t fuck off or is there gonna be more depth between the reader and him?!?! idk i might be looking into this too much but im just so curious!!!!! no pressure to share anything tho 😓 also i’m really curious about ihm gojo’s house. i imagine it being very contemporary with an open floor plan and neutral colors but would love to know your thoughts! i also imagined the town where ihm is set to be a midwest suburb right out side a major city but i know in a recent post you intended for it to be a small town in washington. ive literally never been outside the midwest and have no fucking clue what the west coast is even like 😭. if u have any pictures that u think give off ihm town vibes please share because my brain visuals are lacking LMFAO anyways sending lots of love your way and apologies for this yap sesh!!

hiii darling you are so cute n sweet omg <3

ohhh yes yes choso will definitely have lots of depth too! i think i may have mentioned this before, but i don’t really want there to be any comically “evil” characters in ihm. even the ones that seem most villainous, i will still attempt to put their thoughts n feelings into perspective somehow!

but as for choso n reader, yea i mean obviously what choso did to reader was atrocious, but i think there’s another side to it too, of which i’m sure my readers can kinda guess. a person doesnt just end a six year relationship n then hook up with someone the day after out of nowhere, that typically indicates that they had long since checked out of the relationship, and we’ll get choso’s perspective on that decision

i guess since ihm is a more “adult” romance, there will be lots of candid n mature conversations between the characters, but there will also be a lot of childish drama too BAHAHAH. idk that’s kind of how my adult life has been so far so that’s sort of what i’m trying to emulate! but i’m so glad you asked about that, bc yea i am super excited to bring more nuance to the more “antagonistic” characters in ihm! and also highlight the flaws of the protagonists as well :0

oh yes i totally think ihm gojo’s house is more modern, i think contemporary might be a lil too far, but it’s definitely fresh looking yet still cozy at the same time. also, i think mideastern washington kinda looks a bit like the midwest in some places hahaha, but yes i did try to kind of look at some houses that i think match the ihm town vibe!!

this is kind of a mix of what i picture for the neighborhood:

obviously since it’s washington state there will be gloomy days and lots of fall foliage

and then this is sort of what i picture for interior of gojo’s house:

very bright, sorta modern n newly renovated

this is what i picture for reader’s house:

little bit more dated, older, darker colors!!

and here’s some misc photos of the town:

hope this answers my dear :)

[allwormdiet]

Gestation 1.5

I wonder if Taylor's night is gonna get any better

This is actually a really good passage for the building tension. Lung's not gonna kill our protagonist in the fifth chapter of the novel but she doesn't know that. She can see her options narrowing down and her chances getting slimmer, she doesn't know there's like, a million plus words more to her story. This could be it, and this really sells it.

Okay actually I'm gonna circle back to something I totally missed in 1.4, which is the mild comedy in Taylor hacking multiple EpiPens in her kit as a teenager with, I'm gonna guess a modest allowance? You can tell this was written by someone who hasn't had to put up with US healthcare, that's minimum like $600 bucks of medicine, and frankly I don't think it's going to be any cheaper when the predominant pharmaceutical company is run by a Nazi.

Sweet of her dad, and also I cannot imagine facing down a hitter like Lung with nothing but a can of pepper spray, Jesus Christ that's stressful. This never comes up in the retellings, Taylor has cast-iron balls to pull this stunt.

Kudos on this, it's such a cool descriptor, and again: huge props to Taylor for staring this down and not running like hell.

Side note, either Lung's eyes are a magnet for violence or else Taylor is compelled to target the eyes. Maybe both. See if it keeps happening with either of them I guess.

Something something Jurassic Park reference, also do we need the reminder that he has an accent

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH IT'S THE CAVALRY BABY

Listen I know I'm a little spoiled here and the bias is showing but I already love these kids, look at em! They decided to swing at Lung for the sake of the girl who'd already pried him off their backs, they didn't need to save her but they did. I can't wait for them all to break my heart one way or another, it's gonna rule.

Grue is real as fuck for his costume, it's so cool.

Also I desperately want to know what the conversation was like for the Undersiders to decide "yeah fuck it let's put up our dukes against the head of the ABB." Who voted in favor of that?

The "but yeah" really sells the underlying youth of the character, btw. Gonna go out on a limb and guess there's a lot of kids who feel like they need to hold themselves like adults (and then don't really know how) in this story.

Squad squad squad squad

Quick and dirty introduction to the team, good enough start as anything, also lmao at Taylor just standing there with jelly legs trying to process this and completely unable to make words happen. Poor girl

"Certainly least" my ass, kid's got style.

Can Tattletale actually stop herself from talking? Not like in a power sense I mean in a needing to be smart way. I assume she can but it's not out of the question that she just cannot put a lid on it. I've known people like that.

Also an effortless display of trust and teamwork. Tattletale says boogie and Bitch is on it immediately.

So the fox parallels just start immediately, okay. Everyone always compares her to a fox, or makes her fursona a fox, or describes a vulpine grin, and I figured that was drawing on the text but I didn't think it came up literally in the first chapter she appears.

There's a couple different emotions I feel at this last paragraph. Per usual I feel bad for Taylor because this truly just has not been her night, she gets like half a W against fucking Lung but gets scared half to death, saved by villains, and then mistaken for a villain as well. Awful way to start a career.

On the other hand, Taylor, honey, you're terrifying and used a bunch of venomous and painful insects in order to break up a gang meeting, you're in all blacks and grays with big ol yellow eyes, your entire aesthetic screams villain, this is at least partly your own fault.

On the third hand, knowing full well how important the Undersiders are gonna be, and how feared Taylor is gonna be as a future villain, it's not hard to look at this like. Well what's so bad about them being villains, and what's so bad about being mistaken for one. Obviously it's a matter of morality and perspective and stuff like that, Taylor seems to only now be dipping her toes into moral flexibility, but the gift/curse of future knowledge means there's something, I dunno, a little sweet about this encounter.

Current Thoughts

Tired. Dragging my hands down my face rn. Last one for tonight.

This was a cool sequence. Rough introduction to the Docks and ABB aside, the fight between Lung and Taylor was super cool, a great feeling of the momentum shifting between the two as Taylor's bugs stop being able to keep up with the fire, the desperate play with the pepper spray, and being just. Fully backed into a corner until she's saved by the cavalry. If this is how the fight scenes keep going for this series then I think I'm in for a fun ride.

Also yaaaaaaaaay the team has been introduced, I can't wait to find out how much of the perception of them I've gotten through fanworks and my own half-baked osmosis is going to contrast with their canon personalities. Grue being all serious and Tattletale being a smirking know-it-all literally described as fox-like feel like solid indicators, if nothing else.

Next chapters tomorrow. It's Armsmaster right after, right? See what he's like.

[aucatgirl]

I'd like to hear your complaints about mha please. I think rei should've rolled her ex husband off a cliff.

SIGH. Here is my official diatribe against MHA’s ending. This is definitely not my first rodeo with a series I love and had hope for having a bad ending but wow this one stings harder than usual

What’s craziest about all this is how much I defended this manga up until the last ten chapters. I loved this manga so much and had such high hopes for it. My own MHA social circle was nothing but huge fans that also had high hopes, some criticisms about things but willing to give the benefit of the doubt��� But then 420 happened and I snapped out of it (and then my mutuals also snapped out of it, one by one, lol). It was so rushed and baffling that it actually ruined my day when it released, lmao. Deku regaining his arms via Eri ripping off her horn via child mutilation was only the beginning and I was not prepared for the everything else that would happen

The biggest issue starts and ends with Deku, who apparently got a secret lobotomy during the dark Deku arc and has not been written the same since. He completely loses his ability to be introspective in any capacity. “I’ve been having these thoughts about Tenko too” where?? Where is it??? Where is literally any of your real thoughts on Tenko or losing OFA or anything??? This manga used to have such an interesting insight into Deku’s mind. And it’s just, gone. A big issue with Shigaraki’s death goes back to that. Where’s the reflection?? “Show don’t tell” doesn’t work that well with a protagonist that barely shows any emotion at all!!

When it comes to the saving Shigaraki plot, I saw some mutuals suggest that Horikoshi changed his mind on the ending at some point between the togachako fight and 423. I reread those chapters and disagreed. Deku being unable to save Shigaraki is a plot twist and it’s a BAD one. All of the build up leading to 423 is that Deku would save Shigaraki, not just his soul, full stop. Unless it really was a last minute change or pushed by editors/SJ, I cannot imagine that this ending was not planned the way it was, so I will criticize Horikoshi as such. The twist was ass. And now we’re left with an ending of “well we can try to prevent villains, but if they’re already villains, beat ‘em up!” which is just.. AUGH!!! Completely throws Twice’s death down the drain!!! I can’t believe we were left with “we’ll do better next time” when the whole point was that the next generation would do better than the previous… Deku’s generation was supposed to be that one!! Not to mention that All Might seemingly forgot about his personal connection to Shigaraki…

It’s also wild that the togachako plot was the best written tragedy while also being the most offensive of all of them. I don’t care how many people Toga killed 😭 she was explicitly queer. At least izuocha didn’t happen, that would’ve made things so bad I don’t think I would’ve been able to interact with the series anymore. It was a one-off line but Toga’s death had the most direct impact on improving society, however, it was a ONE-OFF LINE, there is zero indication that Uravity is as prominent of a hero as this line makes you believe, which sucks. Also, the fact that the cameras got retconned is ridiculous, just another knife twist of completely gutting the theme of rehabilitation and societal changes on how people view villains

And… that’s not even mentioning what the fuck happened with 3baka. I understand the rush. Horikoshi has health issues, there are time limits for endings. I would’ve been okay with just the rush. But the writing decisions that were made… why the fuck did Kurogiri die like that?? In the most baffling, inconsequential way possible? Aizawa wasn’t shown, Mic didn’t react, it’s never brought up again except for a tiny, tiny panel of Shirakumo’s grave. I guess the whole plot with nomu and how they’ve slowly been humanized was just completely scrapped, because Kurogiri’s death was more inconsequential than Hood’s. If you’re going to kill Kurogiri, make him die by AFO’s hands. It would’ve worked a lot better as a tragedy rather than random and unnecessary Bakugo moment

This is honest to god one of the worst pages in the entire series:

Finally okay I honestly don’t care for the Todorokis so I don’t really have any strong thoughts on their ending. The ending Dabi got is actually better than I expected after Shigaraki died lol. Though I do agree that Rei pushing around Endeavor in his wheelchair is a hilariously bad look and I don’t know why Horikoshi thought it was a good idea

Here is one thing I will say, though. One final word:

Foster brothers Shigaraki and Kurogiri never got debunked!! Can’t have your theories be wrong if you get no information about a character!

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Agitation 3.12 Live Reactions

(This is me, writing reactions as I read, because why the fuck not. They're not complete, mature thoughts taken after I sit back and evaluate what I've read. Consider them as such)

“Falsified records,” Tattletale grinned.

I do love just how deep the hypocrisy of "New Wave Means Accountability" actually goes.

“We know this story already,” Glory Girl replied, her tone just a touch testy. Whatever Tattletale was doing, I sensed it was giving us more control over the situation.  I commented, “This is new to me.  I’m sort of intrigued.”

Character: "I know all this already"

Protagonist: "Well, I don't, and the readers need to know, so why not keep going?"

“It’s not the man that would bother her so much.  It’s the knowing.  Every hour of every day after hearing me say his name, she would wonder.  She’s terrified she’ll start second guessing every part of herself, wondering if she inherited it from him, or if she was that way out of an unconscious desire to not be him.  Knowing as much as she does already keeps her awake some nights, but knowing his name, knowing who he is and what he did?  For the rest of her life, she would compare herself to him.  Isn’t that right, Amy?” “Shut up.  Just… shut up,” Panacea retorted, her voice thick with emotion.

Okay, seriously, Tattletale, do you really feel no guilt about this? You aren't actually a soulless monster or anything.

I get I'm just unreasonably partisan towards Amy, but JESUS FUCK I really hate Tattletale for all this. It's just... so fucking cruel.

I saw a flicker of doubt cross Glory Girl’s face.

She's probably thinking about the beating guys into pulp thing.

“Very principled.  Very self-involved too, that you think the secret and the consequences have to do with you and your overzealous nature.  They don’t.  They have to do with her.”  Tattletale directed the laser pointer at Panacea’s forehead, “You won’t be tickled pink, either, but the aftermath would be hers to deal with.  Humiliation, shame, heartbreak.”

And if Lisa did say it and did ruin Amy's life, she'd just go 'Look What You Made Me Do."

Ugh, I don't think I'm ever gonna like Lisa. It's not really reasonable, but who cares. Yes, villain protagonists and all, but like... just the cavalier willingness to just... destroy people.

Fuck you, Tattle-bitch.

Panacea abruptly tore out of my grip, so violently I had to pull the knife away to keep her from cutting her own throat against it.

I wouldn't be surprised if on a very tiny level Amy was like 'if this gets out my life is ruined so if she does cut my throat who cares?' Because she couldn't know that Taylor was going to pull her knife back.

“Nobody fucks with my family!” she shouted, and her power cranked out full-bore.  My knees turned to jelly and my brain just gave up on rational thought. 

That aura really is nucking futs.

“I’m going to pull in every favor I’m owed, and put myself in debt with the local D.A. and whoever else I have to, to get you both sent to the Birdcage,” 

Okay, so... Vicky? What the ABSOLUTE fuck?

A prison without wardens.  No communication with the outside world.  No escapes yet, which is pretty amazing considering it houses all of the worst and most powerful villains we’ve been able to capture.  We don’t even know for sure if anyone’s alive inside there.  It’s just a bucket where we dump scum like you, so we never have to worry about you again.”

oooh! Worldbuilding!

Also, such a wonderful idea for a prison! No issues with a black box like that at all! /s

“And no contact with the outside world means you don’t go fucking talking about whatever Amy wants to keep private.  I trust my sister, I trust she has a reason for keeping it to herself.”

I've said it before - Vicky really was Amy's number one fan, the person who trusted and believed in her the most and nope I'm not crying about what happens between them what Amy does to her, to *them* not at all

“Idiots,” Glory Girl’s muffled voice came from the midst of the cloud of insects, “I’m invincible.” Tattletale used her good arm to prop herself up, groaning, “First of all, I warned you about calling me stupid.  Second, no, you’re not invincible.  Not exactly.”

Does Earth Bet not have an equivalent of the Evil Overlord's List?

Well, probably not, but like - Alexandria Package or not, hero or not, Vicky, Vicky, I love you, but the minute you say 'I'm Invincible' is the minute you get your ass handed to you, you get that right?

“She’s not really invincible.  That’s just an idea she likes to put in people’s heads.  She has a forcefield around her entire body, but it shorts out whenever she takes a good hit, comes back online a few seconds later.  I knew when I saw she had dust on her costume.  Dust that her forcefield would keep off her.  Fuck, this hurts.”

The illusion of perfection, invincibility, flawlessness. Really is a whole package for her.

Another reason to remember Carol sucks as a mom.

The fight outside the bank was still going our way.  Only Aegis was still in action, and he was hemmed in by the three dogs and Regent’s borrowed laser cannon.

What happened in the interval? Because Vicky was implying things were turning the Wards way when she came in. Though that could have just been posturing.

“It was Glory Girl on the roof,”

Glory Girl, on the Roof, With the Aura. That's whodunnit in Clue.

We’d done it.  I’d done it.  We’d escaped without killing anyone.  The only ones who’d really been hurt at all had been the Wards, Glory Girl and Panacea, and that would be fixed when Panacea came to, for sure.  Any property damage had largely been the fault of the Wards and Glory Girl. 

Alec did fire the laser into the building a couple of times, don't forget that. But overall, a fair point. Reminds me of that Powerpuff Girls episode where they move to Citisville and destroy a multimillion dollar bridge to stop bank robbers who had like, a few ten thousand or something.

And how the fuck did that come back to my mind? I was like 7 when I saw that?!

“No injuries or deaths for us, for the heroes or for the bystanders,” she confirmed. “Then it’s a good day,” I said. “A very good day,” she agreed.

A good way to ease Taylor into all this (had there been a major injury or a death, even on the Wards side, I'm not sure Taylor would have been able to rationalize that yet). And ease the readers. Sure, we were warned what this would be, and yet, people still want to root for their MC, so we've got to be eased into it, into villain Taylor.

[penisbilt]

saw you mention the scavengerverse and i got curious,, what's your favorite thing about it? ^^

hello and thank you so much for the ask!!!!!! i will also use this ask as an opportunity to pitch scavengerverse in general since i havent posted much concrete details about it yet haha

so first, a brief introduction since most of its development has been offline thus far, but anyway scavengerverse is the name @llatimeria and i gave to our superheroes+villains oc headworld that originally centered around my boy vinny, also the masked hero known as The Scavenger. he, along with many others in the original cast, are, basically, humans with genetically modified animal hybrid traits that are, you guessed it, escaped (or otherwise originiated from) a dubious science lab.

vinny, for example, has bearded vulture dna, as well as being part of the approximately 1 in 4 population of human-animal hybrids that have awakened superpowers. his superpower is the power of flight, but that is technically entirely coincidental to him having giant bird wings (there are other human-bird hybrids with wings that cannot fly, bird wings cannot support a human body in flight on their own. flight powers can manifest regardless of which specific animal dna)

the vinny angle on scavengerverse was conceptualized back in 2018, revisited during uhhh 2021? and in like 2022-on, latimer and i have been fleshing the hell out of all the other characters, and incorporating blorbos past with new life here in scavengerverse. on that note unfortunately we might have a bit of a homestuck cast type situation going on in that regard. but thats okay because its actually really fun to have a project without a single defined core protagonist group, and trying to make a cohesive and effective storyline while navigating that challenge

all this to say, as far as answering your question: my favorite thing about scavengerverse is that this is the first time ive been able to have complete and absolute fun with the creation and ideas we're putting into this. even tlh (the last human, my previous main sci-fi oc headworld) got concepts toned down when i thought i was being too silly with it. at one point niyt was going to be forced to operate a mecha, and it was going to be so cool and dramatic and gihr would have to like climb the mecha to save them and it wouldve been so cool. but i was like Nah.. thas too silly. the mecha thing really comes out of nowhere, it's clearly been included just for the rule of cool. so basicly. whay if Nobody take me seriously . because i added a cool robot scene without good enough reason

But so now, with scavengerverse- well, i haven't had any particular ideas in mind for introducing a minor mecha component to sv yet, but if i ever do, we're actively making the kind of world where, yknow what, Yeah, there probably would be at least some mecha action, happening somewhere in this world, at some point - so sure, why not here, and now, within the story actively being explored?

and like, this story started with misunderstood escaped lab experiments with cool powers, so sure, why not go ahead and add whatever else is fun to play with - we've added witches, aliens, devils, psychics, a mafia, hell even one of our biggest oc blorbos right now in our biggest oc blorbo ship came from me re-reviving my old as fuck bisharp oc, from back when i roleplayed pokemon on deviantart in like fucking 2011. it is never too late to return to the playground my friends 🧡

[boundlss]

on: the striker problem.

i don't have a bio for this guy yet and even if i did my bios are hilariously barren so i figured i'd make a post detailing my canon divergences and. um. WHY i'm canon divergent in that way. everyone take my hand ...

hey albatross what's wrong with striker?

great question albatross. helluva boss sort of has a villain problem in general where they want their villains to be threats but don't necessarily want to let them change the status quo too much or become too developed as characters. for most of the villains this is fine since they were introduced as comedic (the CHERUBs, DHORKS, tbh even crimson to some extent altho he really shouldn't have been) however. how ever.

striker falls into the category of helluva villain where he's introduced as someone who is a legitimate serious character with like well rounded motivations and goals, and above all that he's a villain that our protagonists don't BEAT in his introduction. which is more than can be said for literally every other recurring antagonist IMP deal with.

the problem comes after this. western energy is um... okay? ish. i liked most things about him in this episode but it's not better than harvest moon festival, and it's really inconsistent to his character in his first appearance at times. "oops" on the other hand is a nightmare episode that striker is literally barely relevant to and everything he was set up to be is completely trampled all over because fuck me for being invested in the things he was setting up i guess.

so what does this actually mean in terms of what's wrong with striker? great question albatross. what's wrong with striker is he's simultaneously supposed to be a pretty big threat but he's ALSO just being shoved into comedic plots and getting his ass beat all the time which is super tonally dissonant and i don't fuck with it.

that's so cool albatross thanks for that four paragraphs of yapping nobody read. what are the canon divergencies?

yet another slam fuckin dunk in the questions department albatross. i think i'm going to put this one in list format because i like myself and value my own sanity. this is chronological.

striker does not get hired by stella to kill stolas the SECOND TIME the first time he still does this is about in WESTERN ENERGY. this has more to do with my stella's canon divergencies but striker does this of his own accord because he assumes stella and andrealphus will turn a blind eye, which they consider doing before ultimately deciding, unfortunately, that they need stolas to remain alive and threaten striker to force him to back down. otherwise western energy is more or less the same.

he does not appear literally at all in "oops". crimson can have some goons surprise blitzø and fizz i don't care but this is a hard line for me in my portrayal of striker. he didn't show up there.

that's honestly genuinely it for plot divergencies. also some other minor things that are tweaked in terms of personality details and little non-chronological things:

striker is not as egotistical as presented. he was playing up his own confidence to piss moxxie off because he didn't like moxxie, but he's not the type to get a giant statue of himself. he's confident but not THAT confident.

also this is less divergence and more just me expanding on his motivations but in general striker wants to kill a goetia to rile up hell's imps and generally "lesser" species about the mistreatment they all face pretty often.

this is also more just me expanding on things but he grew up a ranch hand so he's very much a horse guy he's just more subtle about it than some people.

anyway those are my notes on striker and the striker problem yeehaw and goodnight. < not actually going to sleep

[tenebriskukris]

An Exhumation Of Hikaru Kamiki's Character Intermission: Why Does Nino Even Exist?

Spoilers for the entirety of Oshi No Ko below.

There can be no attempt to detail Kamiki Hikaru’s character without doing the same to Nino. I’ve made my thoughts on Nino as an antagonist very clear before on my chapter reviews, so my reasoning might feel familiar to those of you who keep up with my analysis. For the purposes of clarity, however, I think it’d be best for all of us to be on the same page.

Before Nino showed up in the manga, she was first introduced in, get this, a side story of all things. If you haven’t heard of 45510, then I don’t blame you. I was aware of the side story when I first started consuming the manga but never took the time to seek out because if this material was relevant then the authors should have easily been able to shoehorn it into the main series.

The short story basically details Nino’s thoughts about Ai as well as her obsession with Ai as an idol. While the manga does underline this obsession and backstory to a mild degree during its runtime, she simply does not have the laurels to displace Hikaru, who has been de facto the main antagonist of the series until this point.

Taking a look back at the manga for the relevant chapters leads us to Chapter 155, where Aqua and Akane talk about how even if Hikaru was the one behind everything, there are things that still don’t quite make sense—one of which is Yura Katayose’s murder. 

Nowhere is it stated just how Aqua and Akane both independently came to the same conclusion that both Hikaru and Nino were responsible for Yura’s murder nor is this reveal given the proper time to actually develop naturally. As far as we know, no one’s found the body by now so the public simply thinks she’s missing. Yet another thing that the narrative has failed to mention and properly set up during the manga’s runtime. Get used to that in the last few chapters in the manga, the quality’s set to crash right into hell.

So this chapter sets up Nino as a relevant character—and also someone possibly involved in so many other people’s deaths. That’s…certainly something. Especially after Aqua and Hikaru’s confrontation gave off the impression that Hikaru wouldn’t be a threat any longer—something compounded by events later on, but I digress. 

158 gives us more insight on Nino and how she perceives Ruby. She is now, in Nino’s words, an idol that surpasses Ai. Impressive praise considering that Nino already bloody idolizes Ai. It establishes Nino’s motivation here that Ai can only be the best idol both in her mind and in reality. This culminates in Nino attempting to stab “Ruby” at the end of the chapter.

Hikaru also shows up in this chapter. I guess. He tries to convince Nino to hand themselves over to the police. I’ll return to this a bit later. 

Oh no! Ruby has been stabbed by Nino? How will this affect the concert? Just kidding! Next chapter shows us that it was actually Akane in a wig this whole time! If it wasn’t evident through text please infuse a hefty amount of sarcasm into all of that.

Okay, it was detective Akane that figured out that Nino was going to stab Ruby for some reason. With barely any foreshadowing and buildup behind it. Okay. Thankfully the next chapter dispenses with any attempt to make Nino a good antagonist and just cuts her out of this entire self induced murder scheme by having Akane and Ichigo deal with her. Good fucking riddance.

There’s something to be said about Ryosuke being Nino’s boyfriend and how he switched his favorite idol to Ai and all of that but it’s barely relevant to the series at large. At least Nino has finally been dealt with and our protagonists are homefree. Except, oh no! Hikaru is actually the main villain all along. But before we focus back on him let’s wrap up Nino’s section in this essay. 

In less than ten chapters, Nino as a character has been pushed to the pedestal of main antagonist and then unceremoniously deposed by Hikaru in a cheap attempt to fake out the readers by having her be a red herring antagonist. She was little more than a plot device designed to distract from the fact that Hikaru was the true antagonist all along. She had close to zero character, a completely unsympathetic motivation, a backstory that strains a reader’s suspension of disbelief, and was just so uninteresting after the reveal that she was gunning for Ruby that it boggles the mind. It doesn’t feel satisfying seeing her meander around because she literally came out of nowhere during the movie arc and somehow managed to pretend to vie for the title of final antagonist when Hikaru was still lurking in the shadows.

Comparing the two side by side leaves no room for doubt. Hikaru has almost a hundred and fifty chapters of setup and Nino has less than ten. Hikaru’s backstory gives him some level of sympathy—while Nino’s backstory, or rather, lack of it—isn’t even shown in the manga itself and is only through a sidestory AND she is less than sympathetic during her whole jealousy spiral towards Ai. Hikaru as a character has developed intrigue about him due to his position as someone in the industry with connections and a far reach. Nino is…a washed up idol with little influence and reach. Even in the way they kill is evidence for Nino’s lack of class. Hikaru kills through indirect methods never letting himself be put at too much risk. Nino just stabs what she thinks is Ruby without any indication that anything was amiss and flops around for the rest of her runtime.

On a more thematic level, Nino as the final antagonist just stinks all around. Hikaru at least was this big industry executive who Aqua had to spend the majority of the series trying to find and kill. He was a victim of the system that graduated to becoming a part of the system itself. Nino was a coworker who was jealous of Ai’s success and childishly held onto the idea of Ai rather than the woman herself.

The main villain of the series isn’t the system, but rather the people suffering alongside you who want to bring you down! Not the bad circumstances behind your current suffering, that’s just a part of the industry itself! That sort of conclusion for the series just fucking sucks in my opinion. It’s a completely tone deaf thematic conclusion to the series.It’s not as bad as the manga’s canon ending to the story but it’s close. 

Laying it all down so logically, it only makes sense that Nino would be little more than the red herring antagonist for Hikaru. Except that’s not how the narrative frames it. Until Chapter 159, Nino was framed as the final threat of the series until the reveal in 160, which revealed that Hikaru actually DID manipulate Nino and he is the true final antagonist of the series. The fact that the series took its time to bait the readers for latching onto Nino in spite of the narrative issues such a decision would cause is a testament to how bad the writing’s gotten. Red herrings are at the very least supposed to be believable—and Nino’s attempt to vie for the status of the final antagonist of the series when she had so little setup and a flat personality speaks volumes of the shitty writing that the authors are serving up for us in these last few chapters. 

But now, at least the main villain has made his reappearance. Surely this time it’ll end off on a satisfying note, right? Right???

Wrong.

>ACT III ACT I ==>

>ACT III ACT II ==>

[dappledpaintbrush]

wow, looks like you can do an essay about Dimentio.

What do you think of the other characters?

For me in "short"

Tippi: The protagonist of the story and got her happy ending, I came to miss her presence after the end.

Count Bleck: Definitely one of Mario's best written villains. I cry.

Nastasia: I was in her place, I empathized a lot with her and sometimes I wish she would return in other stories.

O'chunks: I was surprised by her story, I didn't expect that background, for me he is a himbo in a good way. A good guy.

Mimi: I can't say the same with Mimi, a little disappointed, but at least there are headcanons.

Mr. L: Definitely wasted potential, I would have liked to see more with the other minions. It's weird if I got a penny for every time Luigi is hypnotized into being an enemy I'd have two cents, which isn't much but it's weird that it happens twice.

Dimentio: It's thanks to him that I have an obsession with Jesters, he managed to do what Bowser couldn't with just a snap of his fingers. Terrifying, I hope one day we see it again.

OMG YAYAYAYAYAY IVE BEEN WANTING THIS ASK

Okay so. I’ll try not to make this unbearably long. But this game is my special interest so. I apologize in advance. (I turned off reblogs bc reblogging asks removes the read more) (and it’s gonna clog people’s feed) (this IS unbearably long) (I Failed)

Tippi:

Omg I miss Tippi too :( it feels so weird playing the game without her.

Tippi is so . so interesting. All of the characters are interesting, but I especially love the way she’s written. I love how they were able to nail that she’s gentle and caring, but also firm and not about to put up with anybody’s bullshit. To me, that’s hard to write without it feeling disengenuine, and they pulled it off with Tippi VERY well. A particular line of hers I really like is, “Perhaps...my life would have been more carefree without you, that is true,” in response to Blumiere’s, “But I have caused you so much suffering..." She didn’t immediately console him. She told him the truth, as harsh as it was. Idk, that scene had just always stuck out to me. It’s not a line I expected to be written.

I wish her unexplained teleportation powers were. Explained. But that doesn’t really mess up her character so it’s okay. However. I hate how she developed a crush on Mario. I’ve always hated it. I like to pretend it’s not real LMAO. But then again, it can be interpreted in a deeper way- that she didn’t actually have a crush on Mario and she was merely projecting onto him. Her memory was flooding back to her and she was in a very vulnerable situation after all. Projecting those feelings for an, at the time, unknown individual onto Mario makes sense.

I love Tippi dude she rocks she’s my favorite forever and ever and ever

-

Count Bleck:

where do I even begin on Count Bleck good lord. One of Nintendo’s best villains even outside of the Mario franchise. God he’s so fucking good.

I wish it was more clear whether or not he was planning on erasing Team Bleck from existence as well. Whether or not he was going to do that that impacts his character HEAVILY. Him wanting all worlds to end but sparing the people who cared about him really helps his “redemption” and helps us have more sympathy for him. Unfortunately it’s not directly touched on outside of that one thing Dimentio said, but. It’s Dimentio LMFAOOO we can’t trust him. I personally lean more towards Bleck was going to betray the team just given the evidence about it. I yapped a lot about my reasoning IN A POST I CANT FIND. It had a bunch of screenshots and stuff and I can’t. Fucking. Find it. Oh well I guess that’s just GONE ❤️

Despite this I feel like it’s important to address Bleck with nuance. I don’t think he intentionally planned on betraying his team. I think he genuinely loved them. But he was so caught up in the Dark Prognosticus and the Void and Timpani and ultimately BEING this Count Bleck character the book spoke of that he felt like there was no way out of it anymore. This is supported by the fact he tried to fight Mario in the final battle despite knowing Timpani was still alive. It’s clear Blumiere had completely lost himself, as if he forgot why he was doing this in the first place and let Count Bleck take over (note: I mean this in a symbolic/psychological sense; I don’t believe the book was controlling him). It’s only when he’s on his death bed that he realizes he does not have to do this.

I put redemption in quotation marks because. I don’t think he was redeemed. Granted he didn’t have enough time to do anything, but to be honest, I don’t think he or any other member of Team Bleck is redeemable (before anybody comes at me with the lament au/ajl, THE POINT IS THAT DIMENTIO IS NOT REDEEMABLE NO MATTER HOW HARD HE TRIES!! YOU CANNOT REDEEM THE EXTERMINATION OF LIFE ITSELF!!!)

Also he’s a goofy guy. He’s just a dad

Thoughts thoughts THOUGHTS THOUGHTS THOUGHTS

-

Nastasia:

NASTASIA COME BACK TO ME. God I wish they kept her emo hair strand.

Her character is so. so sad (I feel like I’ve said that sentence forty seven times, this game is MISERABLE). I love her so much. I love her confidence, I love how she doesn’t take bullshit from anyone, I love how much she loves. It makes me so fucking sad how depressed she remains long after Blumiere’s sacrifice. Like, we don’t know how much time passed between the ending of the game and Mario returning (when you boot up the save file again, Merlon states that it has been a while since he’s seen Mario). It explains why Mimi and O’Chunks seem fine (I’m sure they’re not fine, but I mean it explains why they were able to have a “normal” conversation with Mario and co.), but Nastasia is still so heartbroken.

Of course that is to be expected, and I’m glad Nintendo didn’t make everything all sunshine and rainbows ooo we’re all happy now etc, even IF a long time has passed. It makes total sense that there are repercussions to experiencing a traumatic event and Nastasia portrays it well (for a Mario game). In her epilogue dialogue, her hope for better days is shallow. It’s fake. She shows how she truly feels and immediately backtracks (“I guess I should be happy... I mean, I am, but, um...”). She still wants to put on that confident and secure exterior, but it’s not working. She will always love Blumiere, and she will always miss him. I hope she finds happiness one day, too. She deserves to live her own life.

-

O’Chunks:

O’CHUNKS IS SO UNDERRATED. FUCK

I know I’m contributing to this I barely post about him but lord he’s so interesting. I know the Japanese and English translation tell different versions of his backstory, but I really like the English version where Blumiere manipulated him in his extremely depressed state to join him. It gives more layers to Blumiere’s character- the lengths he was willing to go to get this job done, lengths that he would have never gone to before losing Timpani (and himself).

O’Chunks has one of the most unforgiving backstories in the whole games and it’s rarely talked about. He was a fucking COMMANDER OF AN ARMY and the whole game he’s just played off as some dumb brute/comic relief. I actually believe he suffered some kind of brain damage from that final battle, explaining his eyes, his struggle to speak properly, and his overall behavior. Also, the fact one of his most trusted advisors betrayed him mirrors his relationship with Dimentio. JUST. GOD . RIPS HAIR OUT. I wouldn’t blame him if he never trusted anybody again after the events of the game. But he clearly has a heart of gold beneath that rough exterior, so I doubt that mindset would come to pass

Also I know it’s not this deep like at All but . Regarding O’Chunks and his backstory, the last war fought in Scotland was the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The Scots lost that battle too, so it fits O’Chunks backstory. It’s funny to imagine he’s hundreds of years old and he just Stopped Aging once he joined the “Mario Dimension” for lack of a better term LMAO. Side note, I also believe Blumiere lost Timpani centuries ago- especially considering the Ancients are extinct by the time the game takes place (although I’ve heard it’s possible Blumiere murdered the entire Tribe of Darkness? but that’s ambiguous) (and my feelings on it would be another yapping session so I’ll shut up for now). It just took THAT long to get the criteria for the Void met. So it’s interesting to think of the concept that O’Chunks and Blumiere have known each other for THAT long. Probably why he sent O’Chunks out to fight the heroes first. He trusted him the most. But then again, I know the game did not intend for O’Chunks to be born in the 1700s lol. Like I said it’s just interesting for me :3

-

Mimi:

MIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMI!!!! MY GIRL!!!!

I agree with you- her backstory is disappointing compared to characters like O’Chunks and Dimentio. But at the same time I enjoy the unknown. After all, she is the embodiment of mystery. Her whole shtick is mimicking. You never know if a character is truly themselves or it’s a copy (I mean, you do- her mannerisms are obvious- but still lmao)- hell, even SHE canonically loses herself sometimes in her mimics. But even then, I wish we knew more about her. AND I WISH THE CONCEPT OF HER BEING A FAILED PIXL WAS TALKED ABOUT MORE? WHAT??????? HELLO????? REMINDERRRR that you can’t just go about making Pixls. That was a practice for the Ancients, and the ONLY reason Merlon could do it is because he is a descendant of the Ancients with a shit ton of their books. How old is Mimi? How much has she seen? If she’s centuries or even thousands of years old- depending on how long ago you think the Ancients died out- what was she doing this whole time??? LIKE HELLO!!! MIMI!! SPEAK TO ME!!!!

I love love LOVE LOVE LOVE how she can be used as a parallel to the Pixl Queen in regards to Dimentio. Dimentio and Mimi have a sibling dynamic to me, and the story potential considering Dimentio’s biological sister got turned into a Pixl and. Yk. Mimi could possibly be a failed Pixl. Is INSANE and I WISH it was used more because holy shit it has so much potential.

I like to believe the Pixl Creator (aka Dimentio’s father imo) created Mimi even if there’s no evidence JUST LET ME HAVE THIS but I also made a post maybe a year ago that theorized Francis’ ancestors created Mimi. I don’t think it’s really recognized that Francis CREATED A PIXL WITHOUT MAGIC. Yk that spell that requires the magic of the Dark Prognosticus? Yeah just forget that shit I said earlier about Non-Ancients not being able to just go out and make a Pixl, because apparently this fuckass Redditor did it. Anyways. Tipton is a robot. Mimi is a robot. I rest my case (loud applause) (people throw roses at me)

-

I already made posts about Mr. L and Dimentio, so I won’t ramble anymore here :3 But in regards to what you said YEAH . Mr. L could’ve been so much more it’s genuinely painful. And Dimentio is fucking terrifying. I honestly like to believe he did genuinely nuke the protagonists and the game only said he merely teleported them because saying “Mario’s dead like for real” is probably something Nintendo didn’t want to put in their game. I mean come on- he used the explosion attack that causes actual damage in battle. They died LMOAOOAOA. I hope we see both of them again. I was hoping so BADLY for even a glimmer of Mr. L in the Mario movie-like a mask/bandana hanging out of a drawer cameo or something. BUT ITS OKAY GUYS 😁😁😁😁😁😁 (visibly shaking) (teeth chattering) (is missing patches of hair on my head) (rocking back and forth)

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Gleipnir

Something-Horror Manga, which is to say, not the pure horror manga of artists like Junji Ito, but the manga that uses horror as part of its worldbuilding and storytelling, seems to be a major part of my favourite kinds of show. Maybe it’s the action-horror manga like Chainsaw Man, or Summer Time Rendering. Maybe it’s thiller-horror manga like Talentless Nana, Elfen Lied, or Monster. It is a genre space in which I seem to consistently find stuff I like, and it is also a genre space that inevitably requires a meaningfully large and pre-emptive content warning.

That content warning, however, has to contain information in it that will give away things about the kind of story Gleipnir is, and to that end, I guess… Spoiler Warning?

Spoiler Warning: I’m going to talk about Gleipnir‘s overall story. I’m going to talk about things that happen to the characters and I’m going to talk about the way the characters’ powers work. I’m going to talk about the villains and their motivations! It’s all on the table here!

Content Warning: Everything.

Okay, somewhat glibly, Gleipnir is a horror-action manga that deliberately draws on adolescent lives and the way those things feel. That means that while this manga comes with warnings about violence, dismemberment, dubious consensual sexual experiences including both as a threat of sexual peril and also the way that teenagers may touch one another without necessarily thinking through consent and boundaries properly, along with the body horror, suicide, long-term suicidal ideation, identity and ego death, (deep breath) all of this is also all happening to and around teenagers.

And you might not be here for that!

Oh and not only am I going to talk about this thing, this manga that’s got all of that stuff in it, I’m going to talk about it in terms of praise and excitement. I don’t just think this manga is good despite these things in the content warning, I think this story – the one with the meat fursuit on the cover up there – is a story that is better because it chooses to be about those things in that way.

And I like it.

Gleipnir is a manga series written by Sun Takeda, published by Kodansha, and it ran from 2015 to 2023. It’s 14 volumes long, and focuses on the story of Schuichi Kagaya, who starts the manga where you and I are. There’s something about him that’s new, and he doesn’t know who to talk to about it, and he shares it with us. Schuichi, you see, can turn into a fursuit, made out of meat. That fursuit has a gun.

And you might wonder, ‘hey, what does that mean,’ and literally that’s what it means. There isn’t some metaphor here. Schuichi has the ability to shapeshift, bit by bit, turning the meat of his body into the shape of a mascot monster that’s shaped like a big kinda-anthro cartoon dog, and that monster form is big enough that a whole human can climb inside.

And one does!

See, while running around in this weird cartoon dog form, he finds a burning house, and acting on impulse, rescues someone from that house. Then, again, acting on impulse, with a helpless girl in his arms, he contemplates inspecting her underwear, then realises what he’s doing is pretty fucked up, and runs off into the woods.

This is the first issue of this story, by the way, this jumps into that protagonist’s mind right out of nowhere. Hands-up, going whoah-whoah-whoah style here, I can make a case that hey, hey, when you get to the end of the manga, this scene makes some sense, but that’s an attempt to save something that should work as a sort of all-purpose content break for folks. Our protagonist considers, then partially acts on sexually exposing the body of an unconscious girl! That sure isn’t a good sign for this character, right? Is this going to be a creepy, horny manga for freaks?

Well, yes, but not in the way that that question might imply.

A component in redeeming this narrative beginning is that Schuichi’s feelings about what he almost did upsets him greatly, and he flees the scene. Furthermore, when he gets the hell out of there, the next day at school, the girl he rescued recognises him and proceeds to show that she is both extremely mentally unwell and that she’s smart enough to make that his problem.

This is Clair, and Clair is to an extent, the protagonist of this story. It is through her actions and her driving want to answer questions like ‘why was she in a burning building?’ and ‘what the hell, he can turn into a meat fursuit, what the hell,’ that the story propels forwards and back into its history. See, while Gleipnir has an establishing shot that would be perfect for a big dumb horny gory horror manga about fanservice, it instead is a not that dumb horny gory horror manga about fanservice. There’s stuff going on here, and it’s something that feels really important to what the story is about.

Anyway, narrative flow. Clair gets blackmail material of Schuichi, about his ability to shapeshift, she then decides to experiment with the wearable friend she has, which is then interrupted by the intrusion of another, second (or third) monstrous weirdo into their lives. This is when Schuichi and Clair kill a person. With a gun. A person who the story humanises, as a former fitness runner who was trying to do better at it. It tells her story, it shows the way she found a coin, out in the forest, and brought that coin to a weird alien reading dirty manga, and she asked for the powers to be a better runner and that turned her into a monster and now she’s out for a quest to try and become a normal person again. This isn’t something we discover later, either: the story takes a break to show you who she is and how she got her powers before she dies fighting Schuichi and Clair.

Because good lords, Clair does not fight nice.

Schuichi is a super-powerful, hard-to-hurt monster body, a messed up beastie. But Clair, inside him, can take control of him, make him do more, can make him stronger or better, if they work together. That means that it isn’t just ‘she killed someone,’ or ‘he killed someone’, but in the truest sense of two hands on the gun, they both killed someone.

As far as slippery slopes for protagonists to start on, this is a pretty wild one. Kind of standard in the genre, but it’s still a hell of a place for our characters to find themselves as our dominant instigating event. Secret identities, after-school exploration of puzzles and exploring the mystery of the meat fursuit. But also thrown into this is the revelation that Clair was in that burning building because she was trying to commit suicide.

Again, this is the premise. This is how the story starts.

Gleipnir is a story that feels incredibly adolescent to me, and I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean it as a praise, in that there are ways of being that ring true to me about being an adolescent and this story is really good at using them. But I suppose in that context it’s necessary to address one of the sweatier elephants in this room.

Yes, this series is horny. This series is a sexualised, horny series, and that horny is both subtle and unsubtle. You may not realise that ‘being a living fursuit’ is a kink but if you read this manga you probably will work out that things like encasment and feet are kinks. As the story goes on we get bondage, coercion, dubcon, hair play, vore, bugs, and dismemberment.

As kink.

There are categories of enemies who threaten sexual peril on women but also, at least one of our heroes’ allies do it (and she’s even known for it amongst her friends). That people get naked to get into Schuichi and there’s a gender compatibility issue there is a significant plot point with how Schuichi’s powers work. Being attracted to people and having crushes on them is vitally important to how this story goes, especially in an adolescent way, where you may care about something really deeply in a way that’s incredibly stupid.

Gleipnir has three major plot twists where the biggest surprise the story has for you is that someone acted in a reckless way to save someone else’s feelings, and doing so involved not talking to them about their feelings and the results are disastrous. You got this whole story where weirdo powers show up, with people shapeshifting into monsters or making pacts with hair or looking through and broadcasting to screens, and that’s neat but then the story introduces a character who can erase things from memories.

Did you immediately lurch and go ‘oh okay, so we can’t trust anything that happened in the story?’ Or, did you start thinking ‘hey, is there any part of the story so far that’s unknown because someone doesn’t remember something?’ And yeah! There is! Schuichi’s entire backstory is something he doesn’t remember! But he doesn’t say it that way, because why would you!? Schuichi got the power to become a meat fursuit, and then someone wiped out his memories of the experience, to protect him.

Because she loved him.

And she did it to her own parents, to save her little sister Clair.

This story goes places, and part of how it needs to go to work is the rash, ridiculous and reckless way adolescent minds respond to adversity. It is the emotional tenor of a story where you can’t take a second punch in the face so you react to the first punch in the face. It’s the drastic retaliation of a young life, where you don’t know how you handle recovery or reconstruction, and the story then escalates that inability to a way that the world has to work at this level of relentless failure. Teenagers feel like they don’t have power, they feel like they can’t recover, and this story puts them in a situation where they do have power, but they don’t have the option of recovering.

Something that surprised me when the time came to truly put down my thoughts and feelings about Gleipnir was how little I said anything about it, anywhere. I didn’t have a lengthy thread with a friend or in a discord where I effused about things I was thinking about and talking about. There’s a tiny amount of questions with friends – ‘Hey, have you read Gleipnir?’ and then nothing, because it turns out, no. Nobody’s read this thing but me, nobody’s interested in this even though it got an anime back in 2020.

Instead, Gleipnir got to be this very isolated, very individual experience for me where I inhaled this series, took notes over time, saved screenshots and composed theories and shared them with nobody. Because how do you share something like that? Summer Time Rendering is a much more approachable anime and it has the opening that only features a modest amount of looking-at-your-underaged-sister’s-underwear comparatively speaking, it doesn’t open with ‘and here our protagonist starts committing sexual assault,’ which okay yes he stops but that’s not much better.

Still, if I start explaining things that happen or exist in Gleipnir it’s hard to not sound like a completely beautiful mish-mash queer banger of a series. The villains of this series are male attempts to own women. This is a series where the protagonist turns into two different girls, and it makes him stronger! There’s a heroically toxic badass lesbian who commits girls to pacts with her because it’s her only way to feel she can trust people, and who refuses to do them to men because boys are gross! There’s a story focused on wanting to disappear from people because you feel you’re fundamentally radioactive! Oh and there’s a whole plot element that’s about accidentally creating perverse incentives with a badly designed game.

That’s right, that’s right this is secretly a big dumb death game anime.

I love these characters. Clair is a special shape of yandere, someone who is mentally unwell and has abandonment issues and anxiety and stress because of something that was done to her and all of her reactions make so much sense as someone who was injured, mentally. Schuichi is a classic shounen protagonist given such a succinct explanation, but where that archetype is normally the one who exceeds and succeeds because of his individuality, his own unique power, instead Schuichi is a character who merges together two combat identities you don’t see glorified that much in these manga.Schuichi’s not the striker, he’s not the assassin, he’s not the weapon. He’s a shield, and whoever pilots him, whoever he can unify with, that is the person who gets the truest power. Schuichi is a tank and he is support, and he gives over of himself, if he can to someone, to desperately reach out to them and willingly share of himself, then he doesn’t just get better at protecting them, but they both become something powerful and amazing.

Now, the things that Schuichi becomes are terrifying hot latex catgirls, which is something else that may merit greater consideration, but for now I just want to dwell on how happy I am to see such a major character, such an important drive, behind a guy who isn’t here to Save The Day, he’s here to make sure she can save the day. A narrative wife guy (for a given value of wifes). And that wifes? Clair? When she finally spends the coin (literally) to get superpowers of her own, the power she gets is absolute control of herself. Schuichi wants to protect people, she wants to be who she chooses to be and those are two incredibly powerful character drives in my opinion.

I didn’t know, going in, that Gleipnir was a manga about a monster boy who wanted to open his heart to people in order to protect them, nor about a tormented girl who would become herself so powerfully it’d let her kill god. I didn’t know on the other side of a remarkably icky amount of ‘I got you now my pretty hee hee hoo hoo’ oni-style villains on a mountainside there was this thoughtful narrative about a girl so desperate to save her friends from sadness that she was willing to die and their response to that was to see it as so impossible that they assumed it was a lie and killed the girl who had already died.

Gleipnir is a horror manga about teenagers but also, really importantly, overwhelmingly it’s a story about women and the way boys see themselves in the stories of women, and their pain and I am awed at how well this incredibly stupid seeming premise leads naturally into a story about fighting monsters made out of memory loss, patriarchy, entitlement, and cruelty for its own sake. With an opening pitch that I found genuinely a little nauseating, that I feared was going to be a hard turn off for the idea that this manga could go anywhere, I had no idea what was waiting behind its deliberately horrifying start.

But god damn I’m glad I read it.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[knowlessman]

…it's always been way longer than I think it has, huh. rereading the last batch… aoyama was a lil creepy, there's a school festival concert thing coming up, and a sean-connery-looking libertarian is looking to get fingerblasted. looking forward to that. (bnha s4e20-25)

(mineta meeting eri) jesus christ on an alternate dimension where he can do anything about untenably problematic anime characters, I think I'd take Leeron, Gurren Lagann Leeron, over this guy and that says a lot

(ep title is "gold tips imperial") "gold tips?" "yeah, how do you always seem to find more gold than we do? what's the secret?" "I'm gonna level with you, I have no idea, they just coded Skyrim to put more gold in chests when I open them"

anyway back to the show aw hell it's Ditto again, get a personality my dude -- "we're doing a play: Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of random references." …wait, is azkaban not copyrighted? well, wookiee probably is and they used that, I guess they just don't give a fuck

beauty pageant. …think I might just not like this arc in general. the mafia stuff we just did, that was cool. it was, like, dark, but it was good. this one, I can feel it, is gonna have too much mineta in it (which does not have to be very much).

(deku's working on the finger gun thingy) "so much more control is required than before… is there a trick to it?" imagine you're putting a microwave on defrost. or, or something. …I miss deku's silly microwave epiphanies

hatsume: "yeah, the thing you asked me about the other day, I've been working on it" IS IT GAUNTLETS. ARE YOU GONNA FUCKIN THOMAS EDISON MELISSA'S FUCKING GAUNTLETS. AT THIS POINT I DON'T CARE AS LONG AS HE GETS THEM BC YALL HAVE PROVEN THAT YOU HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY

"there's something I want to try with this new move… I want to try and put a paper football on the moon"

"my mom sent me this new tea, it's called [title drop]!" is the tea haunted. or drugged. why is it in the title. squints suspiciously

okay, sean connery the clownboy would not have 0 likes and 800 dislikes, he would have WAY more likes and 90% of those likes would be people who thought he was hilarious. if this was ten years ago (maybe only five, idfk), there would be dance mixes of this nonsense.

"I just wonder what sean clownery is up to…" mah boi, this not-having-to-worry-about-what-a-libertarian-is-thinking is what true warriors STRIVE for -- "open the bat-folder, kronk! …it won't open." "I locked it, you have to right-click" peak comedy. 'XD this goofus is gonna get clowned on so hard, he might end up making this whole arc worth it by himself tbph -- "we can have a 90-minute teatime if we get there right when they open" …blinks wait what am I saying, I take at least two hours to eat lunch when I take adderall

'XDDDD "wait did you say TEA???" gentle doofus blowing his entire cover like this is almost jojo levels of stupid, I am LIVING here -- gentle thief, filming self running from deku: ♪ look here come the consequence, consequence, consequence, look here come the consequences of my own ac-tions… ♪

who would win, a villain with ten youtube subscribers whose head is so far up his own ass he's a donut, or a shonen protagonist who is prepared to move heaven and earth to entertain a little girl -- 'XD oh yeah, and the donut's mustache is apparently on the line. hope la brava packed a shaver

(translated from Gentleman) "I just want to sneak in, make an ass of myself, and get tossed out by security. um. so let me go plz?"

wait so ditto only entered kendo in the contest so she'd stop hitting him when he does his inferiority complex bit? so someone with a fucking baseball bat took over her duties? pfft okay

I've never actually seen bobobo bobobobo but iirc they control random body hair in that. I think this lady must've wandered in from there. her quirk must be either prehensile eyelash tentacles (which is fucking terrifying) or super-strong eyelids (which is truly pitiable)(she does also remind me of renge from ouran host club a bit but only bc of the dress and the hoity-toity laugh)

("remember where the air membranes are…") hanzo from before they completely changed his abilities back when overwatch 1 existed: "heh. simple geometry."

show, these are filler villains with incomprehensible motives. I don't think even brava knows what clownery's trying to accomplish. don't try to get me invested in them

oh gawd and now it's the deejay nobody likes

"Today, I take the first step towards my great work! I WILL get my eleventh subscriber!" -- "they wouldn't let me be a hero, for the silly reason that I was completely incompetent! the world OWES me attention!" -- "it's not a selfish wish, either, because there is one entire other person who also thinks the world owes me, and that makes my cause just!"

…deku, the fuck no you aren't the same. clownery was born with a legitimately useful power but would've made a shitty hero for other reasons, you were given your power because you were judged to be good hero material.

please tell me brava isn't actually as good a hacker as she thinks she is and doesn't get in, it'd put a nice toothpick in this whole stupid sandwich.

(more flashbacks for the filler villain) "please don't help me rob people. it'd make you a criminal." "it's too late for that. I've already hacked your bank account and invested your entire savings fund into crypto. you shouldn't have made your password whoisjohngalt."

…eh, what's three more episodes

gentle thief suddenly epiphanizing that he's just a selfish dumbass having a particularly destructive midlife crisis. good for him

'XD they could've had Hound or Ecto give a dramatic pause and then go "no, all is fine here," but I'm glad they had Hound bother to say "some alex jones type jackass tried to mess things up but we caught him" first. don't flatter the guy by pretending he'd be worth canceling the show over

"I was once in the hero course, too" 100% of the population was, it's kind of the only thing anybody aspires to in this setting -- "he was so hard to fight because I could've ended up like him" again, he had the chance you didn't and flubbed it

concert scene gud stuff, no notes

"you heard about your father from gandalf. he lied to you. I AM your father" dammit I wasn't planning on liking this too 'XD harry potter reference aside

holy nier automata flashbacks batman

something something vaporeon

montage scene gud, no notes : ] just watching characters who've been through hell have a good time. (still miss shinso tho, I know it's asking for stuff but I wanna see him get to do hero stuff)

wonder what these last two eps even are, they just wrapped up an arc

(eri is gonna live at the school apparently bc I guess they don't have stuff set up yet to account for kids with uncontrollable destructive quirks) blinks I'd completely forgotten that togata lost his quirk. …gotta admit, show gets points for that

(hero rankings) huh. endeavor's "mask" and "mustache" sort of make the symbol for fire. sort of, anyway. hadn't noticed that

how an appliance direct commercial is in the top ten, I don't get

"quirk: streaker!" …I was tryna think of anything to say about hawks but wtf, what the actual fuck

"endeavor doesn't do handshakes, you've changed, you've ruined it now, waaa" 'XDDDD

"haha I just have no self-control" you've said that, we get it, you're an asshole, we just don't know how bad of one yet

"you can fly?" "I'm just not falling!" pfft

…okay well that was a sendoff, huh. that was a lot all at once.

(postcredits) the ninth what. one for all? ghosts? spookums? tbc, I spose

[cosalphonse]

i don’t know how anyone could watch 03 and brotherhood and prefer brotherhood’s take on the homunculi. i don’t mean the individual characters, i mean the concept itself. because holy shit are the bh homunculi a let-down in comparison.

this is coming from someone who watched 03 first, but i find the concept of the bh homunculi to just be.... so boring. like, they’re meant to be the manifestations of father’s sins. okay. cool i guess. i’ve always found father himself to be a rather bland villain which is fine, not every villain needs to be completely fleshed out or understood. but the fact that these representations of sin are meant to reflect the sins of our antagonist, who’s a rather flat character anyway, feels like such a waste when you look over to 03.

03 having the homunculi be products of failed human transmutations is just.... SO fucking genius. it’s so interesting! now, every single one of the homunculi has a backstory to them! even the ones we know so little about like 03 pride and 03 greed have a level of depth to them. we know they were once human, that they were brought back by someone, and that they surely must have SOME feelings about that.

and for the ones we DO get to know more about? holy SHIT. sloth?!?! SLOTH. what a genius move. having the elrics go against the monster they created, the creation that sparked the whole series, the reanimated face of their MOTHER. it’s just so heartbreaking and something that works so well. and LUST????? HER WHOLE CHARACTER???? IT’S INCREDIBLE! having her break out of the “sexy woman” trope to actually be her own character, have her own feelings about her humanity and her own desires. having her turn against dante, her relationship to scar, all of that. her character became something truly beautiful.

in comparison, bh sloth is.... nothing. like i get it, haha, he’s sloth so he’s slow and doesn’t do much, whatever funny joke i guess. but it feels like a waste of an entire character. and bh lust is yet another waste. her entire existence is merely to set up roy’s character, and as the only female homunculus in bh, it feels so cheap.

i know this will probably not be a popular take, but i also think that envy suffers in bh as well in comparison. 03 envy is just, SO much more interesting. he was transmuted by his parents, then forgotten by his father in favor of a new family. he was then manipulated by his mother for YEARS into doing what she wanted. and then suddenly the name “envy” makes sense! he’s envious of humans, just like bh envy talked about, but in a much more PERSONAL way. he’s envious of what ed has. he HATES ed’s guts, and when his backstory is unraveled, it all makes sense why. bh envy is one of the more interesting homunculi in that series, but even then, his last speech about being jealous of humans and being humiliated feels a bit out-of-nowhere. his hatred for humanity really being a cover-up for jealous DOES make sense, but in comparison to 03 envy’s motivations, it feels so disingenuous to me.

and again, when thinking about the concepts, what do the homunculi in bh tell us about the characters in comparison to 03? we do get characters fighting against their “deadly sins” in each series, but the emotional stakes are much higher in 03. ed fighting pride in bh is intense and makes sense symbolically, but it lacks the emotional gut punch of ed fighting sloth in 03. both of them are the same thing on paper; ed is fighting the sin he struggles with most in each series. but bh ed has no emotional ties to bh pride, and he really can’t have any considering the whole concept of the homunculi just being born from father. in 03 however, when ed is fighting his creation, fighting his own mother, fighting the literal embodiment of his sin, it feels so much stronger.

this isn’t to say all of the homunculi are bad in bh - far from it. i LOVE bh greed. but what makes him a good character has nothing to do with the homunculi’s conception or his ties to father. it’s all about what he does inside the story. which is fine! i’m not complaining about that! i’m just saying that the mere concept of homunculi in 03 is a much better setup for the homunculi themselves and gives them a very personal stake in other characters’ stories. instead of being subsections of the Big Bad, they are born from our heroes, which gives them this much deeper sense of sadness as well as a stronger, personal tie to the protagonists. 03′s take on them is more tragic, more memorable, and just. so. good.

[folfar]

11, 35, 49, 52, 59, 63 and 74 of the fic writer prompt

okay so firsty sorry that this is ten billion years late....

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

Genuinely have not been reading fic recently so have three long-time faves instead!

Concordia - Ccainao3

Obviously this fic is genius, its so perfect, everyone loves it BUT I don't think it gets the recognition it deserves for having the best summary of perhaps all time:

He’d had hope, after those talks, that when the sting of Olympic loss had faded he and Auguste would be able to salvage something of their old friendship. This doesn’t seem likely now. Sorry I gave you a concussion when I checked you is one thing; sorry I beat you out for the gold medal and then had your little brother wear it while I fucked him is another.

DREAMY SIGH!!!! Also Auguste is so damaged <3 fic writer cocaine ao3 and i are on the same wavelength when it comes to grievous head injuries <3

like a solar flare in the rising sun - Lazulisong

This fic is like a little pearl, a perfect morsel, an absolute dream of a scene. Damen, helpless. The sense of character and place and tension is so well done - it's short and it doesn't need to be longer because it's so gorgeous the way it is.

stars in secret influence - crimson_adder

I am a big believer that a wip need not be 'finished' to be 'good' and this fic is PERFECT.

Anastasia AU that is SO funny, so clever, so well put together - and, rubbing my greedy little hands together, a perfectly executed amnesia fic. brain trauma!!!! However funny you think this is, it is funnier.

35. What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?

HMM! I guess that they have a motivation - they are a villain because they're acting towards a goal that is at odds with the protagonist? Sometimes the motivation is to be dick and the goal is to make the protag feel awful, though. It doesn't have to be complicated.

Oh and also just because someone is a monster doesn't mean you can't have fun with it! I LUV the segment in Sunblind chapter 21 when Auguste is in the bad-end dream, and his Uncle is like 'hey :) want me to be your anointed heir?' and auguste genuinely doesn't get it. that was funny to me, a simpleton.

49. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

NO which is good because i am the most oversensitive person alive!

52. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I am trying to reply to every comment I get this year! it was a new year's resolution. I used not to but that was mostly a combo of being shy and having weird feelings about artificially inflating my comment count because I was a little fool. I'm trying to reply to everyone because I LOVE getting comments, it IS the only thing that motivates me, and i want to thank people <3 i luv everyone who comments on my fics hugely and unreasonably

also, another resolution this year was to leave a comment on every fic I finish, which everyone should do! I'm a hardliner, sorry.

59. Does anyone in your personal life know you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

yes actually! thought i would take it to my grave and then lockdown happened. now i update said friends when i hit a significant milestone. sometimes they ask me if 'that big thing you're writing' is finished yet and i have to say no, shamefaced.

63. Something you hate to see in smut.

okay so I already said d*ddy k*nk but incest or worse, untagged incest vibes. also i really don't like exhibitionism when the people being exhibitioned to aren't enthusiastically involved.

74. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

asides, so many asides. random segues into character backgrounds - not so much much tangents as parabolas because I do think they tie into the main plot but... sometimes I honestly come up with a random snippet of character history and then have to write a fic around it because I like it so much. This is one that currently doesn't have a fic attached, but will eventually fit into the Brexit storyline* -

Laurent has a surprising passion for offal; no one can pin down if it’s because he’s French or if it’s some sort of animal rights thing about honouring each part of the creature.  If pressed Auguste will say it’s stubbornness, because Mama had tricked Laurent into thinking that pâté was ‘special jam’ when he was a truculent child. The meaty origins of this treat were revealed only when Laurent was caught feeding it to his pony Daisy (thereafter renamed Cannibal by all and sundry), and Laurent had decided to double down on his passion for it, possibly to cover up the fact that he had been feeding Cannibal-neé-Daisy regular jam for the past three years.  That’s why her teeth are so bad! Mama had exclaimed. All those vets bills, Papá had said mournfully, stroking his moustache.

oh lol i actually had to come back to this and add another tell which is of course: character has intensely real but not prophetic dream and/or character succumbs to a fugue state and/or character keeps going to sleep at strange times. you know when you think something is a universal experience and then people are like 'girl no what's wrong with you?' anyway. hashtag narcolepsy rep or w/e

AND 55 which you sent me in a different ask lmao: Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

my secret second favourite character to write is a tie between Jokaste and Nicaise. Nicaise is self explanatory, because he is So Fun to write. I have a fic here from his POV! Please read it (jeb 'please clap' voice).

Jokaste is the darling of my heart. You can tell this because she has shown up in 0.01% of my stuff on Ao3 which is how I show my affection. She is however in like. All of my WiPs. Looking at my google drive nd of the 4 things I am actively (cough cough) working on now she has a prominent role in 3 of them. No one asked for this! But I am so intrigued by her. Her canon characterisation is literally just that line from blades of glory when will ferrel goes "nobody knows what it means! but its provocative!"

here is a snip from one of said wips:

Jokaste, as if feeling the weight of his annoyance, rolled her head around to look at him. “You should try dermarolling,” she said, apropos of nothing, because she was awful. “What? You need to start stimulating collagen production. You’re looking a bit -” she made a dismissive gesture around the cheek area “- sunken.” Laurent communicated with his eyes that he would always loathe her.

[instantpansies]

well. alright then.

thoughts on episode one:

holy fuck that was long. hour and 28 minutes and for no reason whatsoever

so, it's tropey. especially the characters i'm just gonna go through everyone:

dot: dorothy's daughter, alright. pretty standard Sweet Girl Protagonist, honestly just a very dorothy-ish characterization, fairly caring but determined and driven. not a lot to say. likeable tho!

neddie: dorothy's son. The Child. emotional, needs comfort and protection, empathetic to animals and 'outcast' people, caring and sweet and naïve and helpless. whatever honestly he could be much worse - i'm hoping we see more complexity moving forward is all.

frank: wizard's son. Serious Nerd/Tech Whiz. ehhh, honestly. he's focused, no-nonsense, and knowledgeable, but we do see a more casual or caring side, so i guess that lends him a bit more nuance?? i like that his name is frank (homage to baum!)

scarecrow: i think it's pretty obvious whose kid he is. if frank is the Serious Nerd, junior is the Comic Relief Nerd. a literal punching bag but it's not played too far, which i appreciate. makes jokes, isn't just the butt of them. smart, and the show makes it clear, but his intelligence isn't really utilized. if anything we could call him the Useless Nerd, even. idk, i like him okay. i hope he doesn't get flanderized into a true punching bag bc there is some potential here

tin boy: yes, he's called tin boy. i know, im disappointed too. yes girl give us nothing!!! i know nothing about him and he had the fewest lines of all the gang this episode :( very unfortunate this is definitely a strike for the show :(

jack pumpkinhead's son: i don't. i don't know his name. sorry. it's probably jack. he doesn't have much more characterization than the tin boy (chill runs down my spine every time i write that), but he gets some points bc he stood up to a couple of the approximately one thousand villains of this episode. so. the scrappy one, i guess?

boris: lion's son. The Coward/Afraid Of Everything. that's his whole entire thing. every other line is "that's scary!". it's not even the 1939 lion thing where he puts on a brave face but is still terrified (because remember? the lion was courageous all along. king of doing it scared tbh), it's just he's scared. okay.

bella: lion's daughter (they're twins). wowza. the Girl Who Can Fight. she punches, she yells, she can do anything. slay, honestly, but it's a boring tropey character. her whole thing is making fun of her brother for being scared, but not in an interesting way like she's secretly also scared and just isn't showing it. at the end this is briefly subverted and she's shown to feel similarly to her brother despite all the contradiction, but it feels kinda shallow. if they'd introduced this earlier, i'd still think it was a boring direction, but it would've worked better.

andrea: is she?? glinda's kid? or the wicked witch of the west?? or ozma???? i don't know. it was never established. she's the Mean Girl Who Just Wants To Be Included, she can do magic, it's whatever. has a good bit of potential - this trope is kind of irritating to me (idk this type of character i just don't enjoy watching. they're being irritating and unhelpful in a boring way on purpose and i just get tired of it so fast). is she supposed to be dot's rival? idk she was just kinda thrown into the middle of things. anyways, gets a Redemption Arc but is still A Little Mean, you know the drill, even down to the fingers crossed promise. like. okay.

okay that's the kids. rick (rake?) is the Down-On-His-Luck Lovable Old Man, gets 'saved' from his unfortunate circumstances by people from a utopia. very narnia cabby driver core. he does have some decent dry jokes tho, which is fun occasionally. anyways, this show is. it's nothing special. the humor is okay, i've already mentioned it, they're trying. voice acting is very hit or miss and the timing is terrible throughout, so no jokes land and banter feels flat and intense moments are reduced to 'my seventh grade youth group putting on a campfire skit' levels. also what is it with oz adaptations and sound design? the music is very repetitive and doesn't suit the tone of individual situations at times. feels really awkward.

the plot was so convoluted i can't even believe. they made a whole feature-length episode based on the premise 'andrea is mean and magics toto to new york city so now they have to save him". this did not need to be an hour and a half. there were so many sidequests and random micro setbacks and. like i said before it feels like getting blocked in an improv, which is one of my least favorite feelings. it got hard to watch after a while - i just want things to keep happening, ideally in a forward direction, but it just kept stalling and doing little spins in the middle of the road or going off to the side to look at a flower but not pick it. i can excuse filler for a while but THIS WAS A FEATURE LENGTH EPISODE ABOUT RESCUING TOTO FROM UNFAMILIAR PLACE. 90 MINUTES OF THIS IS TOO MUCH. so that was the biggest thing

some nice references to the books! the ork, like i said. andrea's circlet/headdress (which is why i thought she was ozma). the scarecrow taking falls to be a landing pad for someone else. the deadly desert.

also some just. weird shit. there were two Mean Teens (who the show and i have been calling 'the goons' who initially steal toto for money and then have a complete change of heart and just. help everyone? they're not the Two Halves Of A Whole Idiot trope, not quite, but more like a stand-in for that sort of dynamic? idk it's weird. also they just threw some crabs in here for some reason. just a bunch of crabs. your guess is as good as mine

sooo, overall, i'd rate this episode a 1:29:43 out of ten - way longer than necessary or enjoyable, forgettable characters, convoluted and unsympathetic plotline. it wasn't very good. i realize i'm biased, since this show is based around a concept i fundamentally dislike (yes i've written descendants fanfiction what's your point), but i've tried to look at it from a lens of actual analysis of presentation, not believability per se or my own headcanons. it's not very good. i'm gonna probably do this for the other episodes, but definitely in a separate thread bc this is longgggg

wahoo

against my better judgement. i'm gonna watch oz kids

ughghg

i hate kid fics/next gen aus (nothing against them per se, i just personally don't enjoy them at all)

apparently the dorothy chara is like. the daughter of dorothy and zeb???????? they are cousins!!! ?? (i could be wrong about this but that's what i've heard) and listen i am starving for zeb representation too but NOT LIKE THAT

a few minutes in and it's very awkwardly paced with too much silence and the dialogue is hard to hear and there's no subtitles. this is going to be so hard to watch

why am i doing this? bc im desperate that's why. leave me alone

also like. how many extra characters are they gonna have to introduce?? who is the mother of scarecrow's kid?? scraps???????? but i know that's not happening

[faelapis]

"the owl house" thoughts - s2 finale

i'm just gonna bulletpoint here. starting with things i liked:

obviously, i like that the collector ended up being someone with their own motivations rather than just like a xD quirky ex machina

i like that hunter wasn't able to fight belos, even when it counted. so often you see the """satisfying""" thing where an abuse victim just snaps and decks their abuser in the face without fear. i'm sure hunter is mad deep down... but i like that it's something he's not able to channel, due to other emotions like fear being paramount here. perhaps even lingering love.

in fact, IF hunter stays this way... i, resident hunter disliker, may even grow to like him. i just assumed, TOH being somewhat predictable, he was gonna have the classic arc of realizing he's been lied to and then Beating Up His Abuser. i want him to stay more conflicted. more gentle.

i like that they played into belos as someone who wants to save humanity with more sincerity. that felt very fake and cheap before, it was more substantial here. it was like he almost had a real motivation!! rather than being just an Evil Liar who Lies!!!

as much as i didn't like how refusing to free the collector was another instance of belos being, well, an Evil Liar who Lies, in hindsight, it does make sense. this kids a powerful lil fucker.

i also like that this means we have a "villain" who is not an authoritarian, but an anarchist agent of chaos. wild magic, even. sure, i don't think the collector will really be a villain, more an unpredictable force of nature who may actually just be having a tea party with king right now. but still. duality! nuance! yay!

I LIKE BELOS WEARING HIS HUMAN DRIP FUCK YOU LUZ

also huge fan that the belos goo attached to hunter and came with to the human realm :D i'm sure this means only good things :D ok but unironically i would like a redemption arc ("we need your help to save humanity") that only i will enjoy, while every egg on twitter complains about it being unearned or rushed.

WE GOT A TITLE DROP!!!!! THE COLLECTOR IS CREATING AN OWL HOUSE (TM) THAT MATTERS TO THE STORY?

things i disliked:

the aforementioned "you lied to me!" betrayal between belos and the collector. i feel like every poorly-written villain has to do because they're the villain. they're an asshole to people around them not because it furthers their goals, but just to make sure the audience knows they're an asshole.

same thing with kikimora.

in the collectors case, like i said, not entirely unwarranted... but it does seem like an instance where belos is just big mad that he cant control them. its not like he's doing it for the boiling isles' sake. its just him him him.

wow they really just had belos try to kill everyone (even his followers, some of which he's known for decades, if not centuries!) just to once again show that he's the bad guy.

okay. so. this is a big one - in a show for kids, you know the protagonists will survive. that's not a bad thing! but it does mean you NEED emotional stakes that aren't rooted in whether people will live. and almost everything "emotional" this episode is a fakeout about someone dying.

strongly trying to resist urge to contrast it to SU "change your mind", where steven's entire identity as himself, as someone separate from his mother, hangs in the balance.

raeda suffers the most from this. like 50% of their relationship is already someone lying or tricking the other To Protect Them (tm), which i already don't love... but to ALSO have their main emotional thread in the s2 finale be a fakeout sacrifice is not great. we know raine isn't gonna die, we know eda isn't gonna die. this is a real relationship with emotional complexity, but they can't steer it in any other direction than angsty fake sacrifices.

oh eda got out of the coven system REAL easy. just remove the arm, i guess. that's dumb. i wish she had stuck with it. could've prompted some soul-searching now that the new threat (the collector) is the embodiment of wild, unhinged magic.

other general thoughts:

look. i know belos tentative truce with the heroes is extremely unlikely, but i feel like even people who want him to just be a villain have to be somewhat charmed with the idea of grumpy ghost goo following the gang around, commenting on how stupid their plans are, how he should be the leader, etc.

on that note, luz actually keeping her promise and getting belos some modern human clothes would be sick. girls night shopping trip WHEN????? i wanna see him in yeezys.

i'm all on board with king molting theory. make him big.

bring luz' mama to the demon realm somehow. she seems somewhat disillusioned with her own life, yknow?

while i agree that this was a somewhat messy / overstuffed episode, idk, i think that lends it an advantage in that it can't just wrap everything up with a neat little bow. i think that lack of time might even benefit the show in s3 somewhat, because they might have to keep some things open-ended. which i like :)

aaaand that's all! see you in season 3.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 318: On Your Left

Previously on BnHA: The Hawksquad+Lurkers were all “well this sucks” and sat around a bit talking about how maybe they should actually come up with a new plan that is actually good, but then in the end they were like “nah.” Deku was all, “THERE’S SOMETHING INSIDE ME THAT PULLS BENEATH THE SURFACE!! CONSUMING, CONFUSING!! THIS LACK OF SELF CONTROL I FEAR IS NEVERENDING. IT’S HAUNTING HOW I CANT SEEM TO FIND MYSELF AGAIN. MY WALLS ARE CLOSING IN.” Just, literally that whole entire song. All Might was all “Deku you should take care of yourself, try eating a thing,” and Deku was all “BYE, ALL MIGHT,” and just LEFT. He left!!! What the fuck!!!

Today on BnHA: Endeavor is all, “maybe if Deku didn’t listen to All Might he’ll listen to me instead.” Deku is all, “[doesn’t listen to Endeavor]” because, well, yeah. The Vestiges are all, “surprisingly, even we are a little concerned -- maybe you should get some rest, kid.” Deku is all, “((Ò ‸ Ó)).” The Vestiges are all, “holy shit.” Deku is all, “[wanders the ruined city streets terrifying the populace on account of him looking like Shelob had a baby with one of the Nazgul].” Some shriveled-up puppeteer villain asshole is all, “HORIKOSHI SAID IT’S MY TURN TO ATTACK DEKU TODAY SO I AM GOING TO SUMMON MY FRIGHTENED HELPLESS ATTACK MOB!!” Kacchan is all “WHADDYA MEAN THEY FOUND THE NERD!!! -- oh wait, that’s me, I found him. I found the nerd, you guys.” And just in time, too. I was about to owe a whole lot of people a whole lot of dollars.

so I have been super good about spoilers this week as always, but let me tell you guys, for the past 36 hours my dash filters have basically been nonstop “manga spoilers” this and “bnha 318” that, and so I’m coming in with a fair amount of hype here. your move, Horikoshi

oh, good! they got Endeavor to call Deku to try to talk him out of it. what a great and wonderful plan

“listen up kid, you haven’t slept since March and you are basically a walking biohazard right now, I’m just telling it like it is. didn’t you get shot like three times?? and there was a whole thing about how you urgently needed medical attention?? and supposedly we gave it to you, but I mean you haven’t even changed your clothes and don’t seem to have any fresh bandages or anything, so did we?? did we, really?? and also we all got blown up yesterday, so yeah.” hmm he’s making some reasonable points here you guys, but you sure do go on and on, Endeavor

oh he says foreign aid is finally on its way! I’m sure they’ll be very helpful. I mean in fairness they can hardly be worse than the home-grown heroes at this point

hey Enji, could you maybe try appealing to Deku the sixteen-year-old human boy, as opposed to Deku The World’s Last Hope? he does have value beyond his quirk. I know that’s always been an incredibly difficult concept for you to grasp, but could you maybe TRY, jesus

and also we’re worried about you as a person?? you’re just a kid and you’re pushing yourself way too hard?? you were going to say that part next, right. why the hell didn’t Hawks make this call instead

“don’t worry about me... I’m completely fine” Deku you do understand that saying it over and over again doesn’t actually make it true

and again with the rush!! all the rush rush rush!! we’re running out of time, we can’t let AFO and Tomura keep getting stronger, I have to end this now, there’s no time to rest, etc. etc. etc. just the constant pressure of this whole big countdown on top of everything else

holy shit, you KNOW it’s bad when even the Vestiges are telling him to chill

these guys are basically the walking talking embodiments of self-sacrifice; if even they’re telling him he needs to take five, then he must seriously be like half a step away from death’s door

OH SHIT LMAO

DIDN’T EVEN LET HIM FINISH HIS SENTENCE BEFORE HE SENT HIM INTO THE FUCKING SHADOW REALM WITH THAT FUCKING LOOK. HOLY FUCK. DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE TO DIE TWICE. SHIT

(ETA: so I’m pretty sure this was just Danger Sense activating and so he cut them off to go do more hero stuff, but I’m gonna go ahead and stick to my original interpretation anyway lol.)

anyway so how’s everybody doing. we all good? En, you good? Banjou? Shino? I’m imagining you guys all curled up in a little ball on the floor right now lol. can’t say I blame you though, no shame

lmaoooooooooooo

“SHEESH.” sheesh indeed, lmao. “what in the FUCK was that”

see, this is why y’all need Kacchan. you need someone who’s not going to back down from him no matter what. if it’s a matter of out-stubborning Midoriya fucking Izuku, then there’s only one other person on the planet capable of that, and we all know it. don’t pretend like you don’t. I am not going to shut up about this! we’ve had our hurt so now what about SOME COMFORT, DAMMIT

“I’m afraid that he’s becoming influenced by my conscience” nah are you kidding Nana this is all 100% made-in-Japan pure original Deku right here

see, Banjou gets it. “that kid, he’s totally going on his own.” exactly. this was so inevitable it was basically scientific law

“well I for one don’t see the problem with Deku being so obsessed with saving everyone else that he pushes himself until his body and soul literally fall apart” okay, whose speech bubbles are these?? we’re about to have words

lol of course

well you always did prefer the direct route didn’t you. but even you can’t possibly think this is okay lol

dark AU!Kacchan please tell us more about your badass doomed timeline in which everything went to shit and you apparently had the same character arc that Deku is having right now except it somehow made you sexier instead of turning you into a rabid t-rex. I have so many questions

oh so now you want to help??? well -- good, actually. sorry if that sounded offended just now lol

(ETA: so at first when I got to the end of this chapter I was wondering if Katsuki B. had somehow summoned his alternate-universe counterpart through trippy OFA space telepathy lol. but in the original Japanese there’s no reference to “we”, so this appears to be a mistranslation. this line should probably read more like “if there’s something/someone out there that would be able to complement/complete the current Midoriya Izuku [it would be]…” which, oh hello, is that Horikoshi once again reaffirming that Deku and Bakugou complete each other lol. “guess what guys, the Vestiges ship it too" heck yeah. they know what’s up!)

look how admiring his boyfriends are. HORIKOSHI GIVE US THE REST OF THIS BACKSTORY ALREADY GODDAMMIT

“meanwhile somewhere in the depths of the ruined city, Deku was having a dance-off with the villains”

I like how the villains all have this “AHH WHAT THE FUCK” kind of body language to them lol. I mean if it were me, and an eldritch horror suddenly clawed its way from the shadows with its writhing glowy tentacles and pants-shitting nuclear death stare, I would probably just die on the spot. no need to stick around. only pain awaits

lol for a minute I thought this was Can’t Ya See-kun and I was like “WHAT A FASCINATING CROSSING OF PATHS” but it’s just some random girl

he seems genuinely confused lol

Deku it’s because you look like something that crawled out of a sewer drain, sweetheart

lol they just took his word for it?

so trusting. even though they’re immediately hauling ass anyway just to be safe lmao

“my appearance is frightening to others” no shit Deku it’s because you look like a fucking alien exorcism. you look like a Lich that got caught up in an oil spill my dude

NO NOT THE CHOSEN ONE ANGST AGAIN

I RAN OUT OF ESSAY JUICE FOR THIS ALREADY HORIKOSHI!! I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT IT FOR MONTHS NOW WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG!! BUT ANYWAYS, GOOD!! I MEAN, BAD, THOUGH, OBVIOUSLY. BUT YES

“ENJOY THIS MONTAGE OF DEKU BATTLING A RANDOM KAIJU AND WANDERING THE WOODS LIKE A DERANGED GREEN BABA YAGA” okay yes but sir, exactly how much longer is this going to go on. if it’s a matter of you wanting to make sure we get it, let me assure you that aside from a few stray chuunis who think that Deku embracing the Darkness is the coolest thing he’s ever done, all of us here in fandom fully comprehend that this is Not Good

-- OH SO IT’S LIKE THAT

really. with the flashbacks to his loved ones’ smiling faces and everything. not even gonna try to aim above the belt, huh

AND NO KACCHAN??! NO CLASSMATES?!?! IS HE PURPOSELY NOT THINKING OF THEM??? OR ARE THEY BEING SAVED FOR THE NEXT PAGE??? SO HELP ME, IF THE NEXT PART OF THIS SENTENCE IS “CAN PROTECT THEM”, OR EVEN WORSE, “CAN SEE THEIR SMILING FACES AGAIN”, I...

WHAT DID I JUST SAY

(ETA: my man did Sero and Kaminari fucking dirty lmao. I miss their smiling faces too omg.)

the sheer, unparalleled irony of him saying this while he stands there looking like the gargoyle demon from Fantasia got crossed with an umbrella that got struck by lightning. Deku :(

oi who the fuck is this clown

is he controlling this mob with his evil hair. “what if I made an exhausted, running-on-fumes Deku battle a brainwashed mob at Ground Zero.” Horikoshi do you just have like a checklist of horrible things you want to do to your protagonist

easy there Sasori

well joke’s on you buddy because he’s apparently “completely fine”, so

“here’s to hoping that you know more about AFO’s location than the others” jesus christ Deku you really have hung your mercy out to dry huh

now he’s forcing his mob of terrified prisoners to attack Deku ahhhh. sucks to be them. at least they’re not being controlled by bees

so Deku is saying that Sasori’s control can be broken with “physical trauma.” similar to Shinsou’s quirk I guess. but so does that mean he’s gonna have to hurt them? ( •﹏•)

NO NOT MORE SAD EYES

“DEATH BY EMPATHY!!!” HORIKOSHI NO

fuck. he looks like he’s on the verge of passing out

this is what happens when you nerf a character’s self-preservation stats in favor of spamming their bone-breaking stats instead. NOW ACCEPTING BRAIN CELL DONATIONS FOR A BOY IN NEED!! with your loving generosity we can hopefully help him live to the ripe old age of seventeen

OMGFGGG

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[grabs your hands] ლ(*꒪ヮ꒪*)ლ [swings you in a circle] へ(ﾟ◇ﾟへ)

THASSSSSSSS WHATSSSSSSS UPPPPPPPPPP

HORIKOSHI REALLY SAID FUCK THAT MASK (ノ°ο°)ノ YOU FINALLY LEARNED!! IT’S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!!!

JUST FOR YOU KACCHAN, HORIKOSHI LEFT THIS ONE BAD GUY WHO’S STILL WEAK TO FIRE. GOD BLESS

IT’S YOUR COUNTERPART, KATSUKI B!!!! HOW WE DOIN OVER THERE IN THE TRIPPY COSMIC OFA SPACE REALM LOL. DO WE BELIEVE YET, FANDOM???

LIGHTS!!!!

INSTANT RESULTS!!! IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!!!

(ETA: imagine what this must look like to Deku though. he’s been caught up in this dark cloud of despair and exhaustion that’s been building up over... I’m gonna go ahead and say “weeks”, because yeah. and now he finds himself here, in the place where All Might’s legacy ended and the torch was passed to him. and the world is in ruins, and he’s surrounded by frightened people who are all trying to hurt him -- because who isn’t trying to hurt him, these days -- and he’s scrambling to figure this all out, but meanwhile the weariness is finally starting to catch up to him, and so he’s basically just standing there in a fog of complete and utter misery.

and then all of a sudden through that haze, he hears the one voice that’s more familiar than any other that he knows. like, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was just imagining it at first. Kacchan showing up to save him right when he’s at his most desperate and feeling the most alone. Kacchan, showing up to save him.

this is the person he always looked up to as a child (to be fair he was quite a strange child lmao). the person who was even closer to him than All Might. the person he always thought was amazing. and bam, here he is now. appearing in the sky out of nowhere to one-shot the bad guy with a single blast (which, btw, that was his armor-piercing attack too lmao dslkjlk take it easy there kiddo). like, that must have felt absolutely surreal to him, especially coming at a time when he’s already half-delirious and barely hanging on to reality. he must have really thought that he was losing it there for a second.

but he’s really there. it really is him. and for this brief moment -- before the rest of the situation catches up to him, and he remembers about all of the fucked-up AFO stuff, and remembers why he was so afraid and why he was pushing everyone away -- for just this one brief moment, he’s too exhausted and stunned to do anything except to just react. just stands there, looking up at him in awe.

and you know, it almost reminds me of...

just. you guys. the character development. the freaking character development. someone who brings reassurance. someone who shows up and makes you think, “oh, it’s all going to be okay now, because [person] is here.” the role reversals. the growth. the payoff!! because who is the one person who always had faith that Kacchan would one day grow up to become an amazing hero like that. WHO IS IT. YOU ALREADY KNOW.

omg. anyways, bless you Horikoshi, my feels which have been on backorder since fucking September have finally arrived lmao. yes, good, thank you. worth the wait. it is always, always worth the wait. fuck yeah.)

“LOWFRIES” SO YOU’RE TELLING ME THE WHOLE GANG IS HERE, AHHHHHHHH (º̩̩́⌣º̩̩̀ )

BEAUTIFUL. WONDERFUL. SENSATIONAL. I DON’T EVEN CARE THAT JUMP IS ON BREAK NEXT WEEK. THIS RIGHT HERE WILL SUSTAIN ME