#you are a hero sir

[anyosu]

I can't live love laugh in these conditions horikoshi

[oroontheheels]

Me when Eddie Brock is woke:

[fantasykiri5]

Fabian Seacaster, Maximum Legend that you are

[stingrachelmha]

Those close to Toshinori’s heart in the language of flowers

[vinni-dragon]

MHA Portraits

EDIT: GUYS TO EVERYONE SEEING/REBLOGGING THIS PLS TELL ME WHICH OF UR MHA POOKIES I SHOULD DRAW!!! PRETTY PLS!! 🙏🙏

I'M IN THE THROES OF HYPERFIXATION AND WANNA DO MORE PORTRAITS!!

I'm pretty happy with these tbh :3c

And the close-ups or w/e

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 424: Detroit Tears

Previously on BnHA: You know what, fandom is way too heated about this still so we’re just going to leave that be that for now and not get involved. I have some conflicted feelings about it, but this is not the place or time. This is a happy post.

Today on BnHA: Oh right, Horikoshi still owns the rights to my soul. And I’ve just been reminded of why I willingly signed them over to him so freely.

Quick heads up that this isn’t going to be my usual style of chapter reaction post, in that it’s really just going to be a ton of rambling about That One Scene. Partly because I’m only halfway caught up with stuff, but mostly because tbh, this is the only thing that matters to me right at this moment.

Also this is your friendly neighborhood spoiler warning that I’m posting about a chapter which hasn’t officially been released yet! So proceed at your own discretion. This reaction is based on @pikahlua’s excellent spoiler translation writeup here. I’ve officially lost all of my fucks about spoilers and it’s extremely liberating.

I’m glad that Kacchan’s arm isn’t just magically better and that he’s never going to be 100% again. and also that the doctor mentions him needing to rest his heart as well. because I did feel like there needed to be at least a few lasting consequences from him LITERALLY DYING AND UNDERGOING OPEN-HEART SURGERY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BATTLEFIELD. but I’m also glad they established that it wasn’t career-ending or anything. he’ll probably have some chronic pain and occasionally aggravate his old injuries while fighting, all of which is great for angst purposes. but it was good to see him being calmly accepting of that while also being determined to put the work in to rehab it as much as possible.

also enjoyed the doctor summing up Kacchan’s highly improbable main character resurrection and subsequent antics as basically being some wild bullshit that nobody can explain. lampshaded the shit out of it. “I don’t really understand” lol. nobody understands. in truth it’s that his secondary quirk is bending reality to his will in order to kick ass.

moving on to the main event now! so Kacchan and Izuku’s reunion was obviously the highlight of this chapter and of my life, probably. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like it wasn’t. y’all know how it is.

what really made this scene for me was Kacchan being more upset at Izuku’s loss than Izuku himself. all those callbacks and all that guilt. that careful selection of flashback panels. the fact that Kacchan’s past bullying of the quirkless Izuku wasn’t glossed over or forgotten, and in fact is the emotional core that fuels Kacchan’s reaction here. Horikoshi didn't have to cut that deep, but he knows what he's about.

and then the crying. I need to write a lot of words about this right the fuck now. first off, having Kacchan just flat out sob while Izuku for once is the calm one (at least until All Might goes in for the emotional kill later on), is such a beautiful reversal and really shows how far they’ve come. even better is that none of it was even remotely out of character. I’m always appreciative when an author can produce top tier emotional hurt/comfort like this and have it feel earned and authentic rather than forced. well done.

also, “Na--cchan!!” fuck yeah Izuku. we’ll never let him live this down. (but also, him later trying to reconcile his forever-tough image of Kacchan with the crying, hiccupping version standing in front of him, by blaming it on Kacchan’s weakened physical state... oh, Izuku.)

also the fact that Kacchan so easily reverts to this smol crying boy even after defeating the world’s greatest evil pretty much activated every protective instinct that I have. he’s seventeen. he’s practically a man now. he’s objectively one of the strongest and toughest people in the entire world. and yet his eyes still go so wide and his face is still so young and Horikoshi still draws him so tiny and vulnerable whenever he’s like this. goddamn gets me EVERY single time. let’s be real, it’s been this way ever since the “you looked like you needed saving” scene back in the literal first chapter. just, omg. he’s still just a kid and he’s too small to contain all these feelings SOMEONE HELP HIM.

anyway so NEEDLESS TO SAY, Kacchan full on mourning in between sobs because he wanted to keep being rivals with Izuku cut me to my core. I cried too, goddammit. because in Katsuki’s mind it’s like. he wasted a dozen years of potential friendship by being a giant asshole. and they were only able to start getting things back on track less than a year ago. and that was probably the best year of both of their lives. and that rivalry meant so much to both of them. pursuing their dreams together as equals. and he wanted it to continue!! he missed out on so much, and it was his own damn fault, and now it’s all being taken away again maybe!!

and I think it’s especially devastating to Katsuki because he was trying so hard to make up for how he treated Izuku, and then this comes along and now he’s worried it was all for nothing. he’s scared that Izuku will maybe have to quit being a hero. (we know that won’t happen, obviously, but Katsuki is living this and not just reading it. he’s never met narrator!Deku and doesn’t have the benefit of all that foreshadowing and stuff.) but even more than that, I think he’s scared that it will undo all of their progress toward mending their relationship. not because Katsuki thinks any less of Izuku now, quirk or no quirk; but because of how Izuku might feel about being quirkless again, and because of the memories it might bring flooding back to the surface. I don’t think Katsuki fully believes that Izuku has forgiven him. so that’s a major fear potentially rearing its ugly head once more now.

and of course, he’s also just sad and upset on Izuku’s behalf, because he knows Izuku is sad about it too, even if he’ll never show it and will just downplay it because of his selfless nature. it’s a major loss, and one deserving of tears being shed, even if Izuku won’t shed any of his.

so yeah. it’s a lot. in Katsuki’s mind it’s the potential loss of a partner (if Izuku quits heroics), and a friend (if Izuku does cool toward Katsuki as a result of being quirkless again), and a dream (of them reaching the highest heights together), and his friend’s dream. so it makes perfect sense that all of that would overwhelm him. all of this is stuff that’s broken him down on past occasions as well.

so anyway it’s going be very cathartic when all those fears prove to be unfounded (because they better be unfounded lol). but in the meantime it’s a very moving reminder of how much he really does care and how far the both of them have come.

also Horikoshi really couldn’t resist giving Nobu one last chance to destroy everyone when this scene rolls up in the anime. that’s so reckless of him. there will be no survivors.

All Might telling both of them they’d become the greatest heroes was also the perfect chef’s kiss moment on top of everything else. we already knew it, of course. but it was good to hear him say it. and they needed him to say it. they needed and deserved to hear it.

and I really love that the qualities he specifically praised them for were the same things that each of them had struggled with the most in their respective journeys. he tells Izuku, who had such a difficult time learning how to tell the world “I am here!!”, that he inspires everyone and has become everyone’s hero. and he reminds Katsuki, who struggled with learning how to save people, and has especially struggled with his guilt over what happened to All Might at Kamino, that he saved All Might’s life and is the reason he’s able to still be there with them. both of them just really needed to hear that acknowledgement and encouragement, and it was such a powerful passing of the torch moment. All Might gets so much shit from the fandom, but he really is a phenomenal mentor when he’s in the zone, and I’ll die on that hill.

also a nice touch keeping the focus of those panels on the two boys and their reactions. even though I would have liked to see All Might’s face when he thanked them at the end, it definitely felt deliberate. this is their moment. their soft little tearful smiles afterwards punted my heart off a cliff and then picked it up and held it gently.

lastly, let it be known that I’m still convinced Katsuki has OFA (All Might vestige explanation when??), and it’s not lost on me that that would be a mighty convenient way for Izuku to potentially still go on a-quirkin’ in the end, if that’s how Horikoshi wants to play it. I'm just saying.

also before I forget, just a quick shoutout to Horikoshi for FINALLY showing all three members of the Bakufam in a scene together in which they finally managed to not be completely dysfunctional lol. my deepest darkest BnHA secret is that Mitsuki is secretly super high up on my list of favorite characters. and she was great in this chapter, and I love how she was just “WHAT THE FUCK” aghast at Katsuki using his main character powers to continuously ignore his injuries. and then she and Masaru kind of silently agreeing to step outside the room and let the boys and All Might have their moment. while still secretly listening in. because you know they were. good for them.

lastly for reals, I just want you all to remember that as great as this chapter was, the one thing that it was STILL missing which we have STILL not gotten is a HUG. we demand HUGS. I’m not leaving this manga till I get a bkdk hug goddammit. I will stay here all night if I have to.

[bearw-me]

Could I request headcannons of the Hazbin Hotel Crew/Staffs Reactions to a batman or moon knight like hero appearing in hell and somehow drastically taking down its crime. (Let's just say they got the information from the news or something)

i didn't know you could request in blue (cutee) and also: AWESOME request!

𝐇𝐚𝐳𝐛𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐰 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐕𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𐐒 ft : gender neutral!reader, charlie morningstar, alastor, vaggie, angel dust, nifty, husk, sir pentious. katie killjoy mentioned 𐐒 cw : none 𐐒 summary : the news broadcast of a hero in hell is finally being covered, you figured it wouldn't take that long for gossip to spread. . . and it reaches all the way up to the hotel 𐐒 note : tried a format swap! is. . . is it working? + the reader IS gender neutral, only nifty and angel make their typical jokes (plz have mercy on me)

It wouldn't take long for you to show up in the news. Wrapping up your knuckles with medical tape while the television droned on in the background. You listen absentmindedly, occasionally flexing your fingers to see if you still had the ability to move them in the temporary restraints.

And that's when you hear it:

"Local denizens of hell have been reporting unusual sightings of a so-called 'hero' that has appeared in hell."

You glanced over your shoulder, the blue glow of the television screen the only light source in the room.

Katie Killjoy rambled on about a local crime ring falling, a thing you took care of not-so-quietly last night.

There were shadowy pictures of you plastered all over the screen, obnoxious 'eye-catching' titles and arrows surrounding the images.

You sighed, turning away from the gossip and focusing on tacking the medical tape down firmly to your wrist.

It wouldn't be long before all of hell was wondering: what was happening?

Charlie Morningstar! watches the broadcast with her mouth ajar, and when its abruptly cut out she squeals! She's so excited others are motivated to improve hell and are actually helping out! She's definitely someone to see the good in you first. Especially when the broadcast depicts the steady decline of crime in that area of Pentagram city. This is such a good sign!

Alastor! Walks in on everyone staring at the screen. Hates that the tv is on, but watches with interest at the headlines, head cocking to the side so he can be sure he's hearing this correctly. 'Hero'. Is that what they were calling you? He doesn't know what to think of it, but it sure is interesting enough to wonder about you and look into it further. How entertaining.

Vaggie! Is skeptical, she's watching with her arms crossed and brows narrowed, even when the numbers and stats are read out-loud. Maybe the hosts or the channel needed something to broadcast and spiked the numbers. . . or your an aspiring overlord looking for fame and fortune down here. Whatever you're up to, she's sure it can't be out of the goodness of your heart.

Angel-Dust! Is probably lounged on the couch next to Charlie and Vaggie, raising an eyebrow at the news. He makes a joke about how he loves a man in uniform. . . or a mask. Definitely watching how that suit fits you, but he's also a little weary, no matter how hot you are, he (like everyone else watching) doesn't know what to really make of you just yet.

Nifty! Stopped her obsessive cleaning to see what all the commotion is about. Eventually she weaves her way up to the tv screen and stares at your caped image with a sinister smile "Ooh a bad boy!" She genuinely likes how unconventional you are. She'd like to meet you.

Husk! Is watching from over everyone's heads, taking a sip from his flask and listening in instead of gossiping with everyone. He's seen hells hierarchy and the way things work out down here. He's not sure what to make of it. . . but he is interested 'to each their own'. Husk definitely wants to watch or listen out for more though.

Sir Pentious! Slithers up to the couch and starts complaining. He was just on the news! He should've been the one on the broadcast in some amazing story! But when everyone finally manages to shush him and keep listening, he gets all sparkly-eyed at the heroic story that seems to be unfolding before him. Quietly thinks you're really cool and ends up your biggest fan. Especially if you have gadgets and stuff you built yourself!

[evelynpr]

You ever think about how All Might has two male exes that both have a child with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a big heart?

[some-random-poseidon-kid]

The most Child-of-Apollo-coded thing I have heard anyone say:

@somerandomapollokid : I just realised how useless I'd be in a battle. Like my only skill is music. Like the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Throw a ukulele at a fuckin hellhound? Don't think that's gonna do much bro.

[a-dreamworld-fool]

I was looking for DD references and stumbled upon matt murdock from earth-65... had to get this out of my head

[frickingnerd]

workplace crushes

pairing: mirai sasaki / sir nighteye x gn!reader (+mirio togata)

summary: mirio can't help but point out sir nighteye's crush on you

tags: silly & wholesome fluff, mirio teasing sir nighteye about his crush, use of y/n, colleagues to lovers, sidekick!reader

"are you seeing anyone?"

sir nighteye looked up from his paperwork and at the blonde boy, grinning at him. 

"mirio, if you're trying to ask me out, then i'd like to inform you that this relationship would be highly inappropriate…"

mirio just laughed and shook his head. for a man as humorous as sir nighteye, he surely hadn't expected him to give such a serious reply. 

"i'm not asking because of me! it's just… i've worked here for a while now and you've seemed so different recently. in a positive way, of course! i was just wondering if it had anything to do with your new sidekick… y/n was their name, right~?"

sir nighteye didn't reply, but mirio could see his eyes wander towards your desk for just a short moment. the grin on mirio's face got bigger as he noticed, before chuckling quietly and taking a step back. 

"i see how it is~ no further question, boss! i'll get back to work then~"

[cluttered-echo]

bubble girl: one last pic before you go🥺? nighteye: do I even have a choice

They were besties your honor.

sketch:

[babyblueetbaemonster]

Thank you for saving me, with your fists, punch the necromancers to death.

[fablexdreams]

Rip Ben Finn, you would have loved eating cereal at 3am.

Rip Page, you would have loved debate club.

Rip Walter Beck, you would have loved the found family trope.

Rip Jasper, you would have loved the Scrub Daddy.

Rip Reaver, you would have loved red carpets and glambots.

Rip Sparrow, you would have loved a fucking break.

Rip Theresa, you would have loved The Sims.

Rip Logan, you would have loved Lexapro.

Rip HoBW, you would have loved pop music.

[pynkhues]

omg that analysis was everything!! thank you sm! really was a palette cleanser. would love the continuation with the parts you didn't get to - his relationship with jonah and the dynamic within the rue royal household. the housewife insult from claudia really did a number on the fandom's reading of louis. (still not over people seriously considering him the embodiment of "edwardian housewife" archetype while lestat is a classic patriarch. dunno if i wanna laugh or cry).

(x)

Thank you! And yeah, I think I've mentioned it before, but it's interesting to me that so many people take both Claudia's housewife insult and Grace's white daddy insult as effectively one-to-one attributes instead of as weapons of emasculation to not only try and hurt Louis, but to goad him into action.

The dynamic of the Rue Royale household is probably it's own entire answer, and one that might be best answered after I've finished my re-watch, but yes! Let's talk about Jonah. Or, well, about sex, haha.

Virtue and the gothic heroine

One of the key attributes of a gothic heroine is her virtue, because Gothicism as a genre is rooted intrinsically in the loss of that virtue. What that means or looks like exactly changes – in the earliest stories within the genre, that loss of virtue was a result of perversion or corruption and usually spelled doom for the heroine, and in later stories it marked a point of transformation or metamorphosis where the loss of that virtue often came to symbolise a transition from girlhood to adulthood.

Virtue was, and still is, often depicted in the genre through virginity as excellently stated in the paper Female Virtue in Gothic Literature 1780-1810 “female morality was irrevocably intertwined with a sexual code of conduct. Daughters…were reminded that their most important attribute was intact virginity and wives were constantly retold their worth relied upon their chastity and therefore their ability to bear legitimate children.”

This came to define gothic literature, and her loss of virginity became pretty vital as a character beat as it would mark this loss of agency which I talked about a bit in the last post. Significantly too though, the gothic heroine usually has men after her virtue. Which, well, - -

As put in this paper Haunted Heroines: An Examination of the Complication of the Gothic Heroine: “She is the object of the perverted sexual desire of older men, above all representing the innocence and purity that the men are themselves negations of.”

Typically, when she did lose her virginity, she’d end up with three options: she could marry the man who took her virginity, she could “give up the idea of marriage and take holy orders” (aka become a nun), or she could die. Regardless of the decision she makes, the actual choice is a really marked moment for the gothic heroine, as it’s often the only actual moment of agency she gets in a story which is invested in her disempowerment. She has to give herself away – to a husband, to God, or to death – because the gothic, particularly the female gothic, understands that once her body has been taken by a man, it can never be her own again for better and for worse.

Claudia loses her virginity way back in season 1, but she’s robbed even of that momentary agency, because her body itself stays virginal. She does not get to make a choice. The monstrosity of Claudia’s making is that she will never not be an innocent, the virtuousness that men seek to take from her can never be taken, and thus she is never allowed transformation, she is never allowed her moment of agency, and she can never belong to another. It re-emphasises her arrested development, but it also keeps her trapped as the gothic heroine in Louis and Lestat’s house forever. There is no getting out for Claudia, she dies without transformation, she dies so that she can be mourned by the monsters in the house.

The Byronic Hero and the Past

On the flip side of that, the Byronic Hero is, inherently, a romantic, both physically and poetically, or as Jean Ann Bates put in her excellent 1949 essay “The Byronic hero is distinguished by the clearly defined existence of sensuousness and its antithesis, sensitiveness.” After all, as an archetype, he’s based on Lord Byron who fucked his way through Venice while producing some of the most romantic poetry ever, in history.

Bates continues:

“The Byronic hero is almost always a man with a mysterious past. This past is usually surmised to be of wickedness and sin, and our hero is periodically haunted by feelings of remorse concerning it…the mood of the Byronic hero is one of intense melancholy and pessimism; yet we feel underlying this apparently static exterior, the beat of throbbing life energy. Like the Corsair, the Byronic hero is ‘warp’d by the world of disappointment. He seems to loathe himself and all mankind, and is always one apart from his fellow creatures…The Byronic hero’s  character is amoral rather than immoral…The Byronic hero is all that is characteristic of the somewhat jaded cosmopolitan man of the world.”

The whole essay’s a great read, and I think again, really encapsulates Louis’ character, but I wanted to talk a little bit about this sense of a mysterious past and one surmised to be of wickedness and sin, because I think it’s an overlooked part of Louis’ arc.

Because he tells us in such soaring, and romantic detail, this large portion of his life, it can be easy to think we know all of it, when really, there’s a lot we don’t know about Louis as a young man. We meet him when he’s 33-years-old, we know that his father is dead, that the sugar plantation his father owned went broke, that he and his brother had a chapter of their shared life where they shuffled for pennies, but we lack a lot of context beyond these glimmers of what Louis tells us.

In particular, we don’t really know that much about his sexual history before Lestat, which is actually pretty typical of the Byronic Hero. Think the reveal of Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre or Heathcliff’s three year absence where he mysteriously returns wealthy in Wuthering Heights and soon marries Isabella, the Byronic Hero has chapters that remain unrevealed to us, and part of that is often soaked in sexual or romantic undertones.

In the first episode, Louis talks about the fact that he didn’t consider himself a homosexual, which I think can become a focus, but I’m more interested in the earlier exchange with Daniel where Louis articulates using Lily as cover for his sexuality.

If you take this scene at face value, and look at it on its own, Louis’ saying yes, he had urges towards men, but his faith was keeping him in check, only if you look at it with the scene before it, we see him refuse to enter the church confessional after joking with Paul that Paul is wasting people's time as he has nothing to confess. An implication, perhaps, that Louis knows that he does.  

My reading of that has always been that Louis was sleeping with men in New Orleans long before Lestat came into the picture, and probably a fair few, but the show plays with Louis’ unreliable narration and the mystery of his sexual history to shroud that really until Jonah’s introduction. Jonah, after all, not only confirms that Louis had been with other men prior to Lestat, (as does Louis’ familiarity with the bayou as a gay hook up site), and that he wasn’t keeping much of anything at bay through the threat of absolution, but that he was sleeping with boys.

Louis’ 33 when he’s turned in 1910, and we know from the notice in this episode that we’re now in 1917, so Louis should be 40. We don’t know how old Jonah is, but given they look like contemporaries now, I think you could pretty safely gauge that if Louis was hooking up with him when Jonah was 16, he was probably in his mid-twenties. The context of the era is, of course, important, and there are a million reasons why Louis might have taken the opportunity with a teenager (although I think given Louis’ relationship with power, particularly in the NOLA era, we can assume that plays a role) but the narrative choice of the show to make Jonah a teenager when they hooked up – just like the choice to have Madeleine sleep with a Nazi teenager – is a deliberate ethical muddying of the waters to show that these elements of the monstrousness and the predator existed in him prior to his turning.

Louis is not, and has never been virtuous. He is not chaste when Lestat first has sex with him, and he is not an innocent when Lestat turns him. He can’t be corrupted, because, like a true Byronic hero, he is corrupt.

I could talk more here about the Paris park hook-ups, or the 128 boys in San Francisco (literally the most Byron thing imaginable to fuck your way through the city and then try and write a book about your ex lmao), but I think it’s worth leaving it at the New Orleans era, because I think what Jonah represents is not just Louis’ tendency to paint himself in the best light, but the mystery of his past and his inherent sexual agency which is vital to a Byronic hero. Louis is deeply feeling, and he’s capable of being in love with Lestat and having his heart dance with another man, he’s allowed sexual agency and sexual freedom even if it does lead to a bitter fight with Lestat because he's not under the thumb of the patriarch, he is one of the patriarchs. Lestat might follow after all, he might watch, but he doesn’t interrupt, he doesn’t exert control, in fact he fills the house with other men to offer Louis the deepening of depravity even through his own jealousy and, notably, empties the house when Louis tells him to.

Again, this goes back to what I was saying in the last post, but Louis doesn’t lack agency. The townhouse is not a prison to him, Lestat’s patriarchal, yes, but so’s Louis, he’s just more emotionally manipulative about how he keeps Claudia close to him. Louis' sexuality is a huge part of him, but it also doesn't define him in the way Claudia's virginity does. After all, for Claudia her sexuality is symbolic of her eternal chastity and girlhood, a gothic heroine locked in a prison of her own innocence, whereas for Louis, it gets to be so much more, because as a Byronic Hero, he gets to be so much more.

[basicallykiyotaka]

No one will ever understand how upset I am at how little recognition Sir Nighteye gets. You mean to tell me that you made an entire line of figures based on the Shie Hassaikai arc and you DIDN'T INCLUDE HIM?? I GOT EDGESHOT BEFORE I GOT NIGHTEYE??

Don't get me wrong, I love Edgeshot, Team Lurkers for life, but this man who was of huge narrative importance for an entire story arc, the man that helped establish what stakes the protagonist is working wit, the man that helped influence All Might even after his death GETS NOTHING. NO MERCHANDISE.

I DID NOT CRY FOR THIS BULLSHIT. OVERHAUL GETS A FIGURE BUT YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE ONE OF FAT GUM INSTEAD?! MIRAI DESERVES YOUR RESPECT AND DESERVES A PRETTY LITTLE STATUE.