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cope + seethe

imagine being wilbur/tommy and doing a short stream to set up a possible reconciliation/interactions for the fans’ enjoyment/your little minecraft ocs story

 and then seeing in the chat:

“lol maybe I should do a reconciliation arc, but like OFFSCREEN where the fans can’t see it so it’d be FUNNY HAHA but would also mean that all my crimes are FORGIVEN immediately because the reconciliation happened OFFSCREEN so you can’t prove it didn’t happen. lol imagine putting time and effort into setting up a reconciliation between characters couldn’t be me who would do that lmao"

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i have simply never been wrong

never happened

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he literally did though, use him i mean.

like, what do you call this????

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxzeUjgYzXO384aGc7sNpMmkxzxtMMQy-X

You know c!Wilbur telling c!Techno he used him, when at that time in his life he felt like he was using everyone because at that time in his life he felt that everyone was out to get him, that he was a villain, that he could not for the life of him keep people around him because they just genuinely cared makes sense to me. c!Techno confirming that, despite the context of how he joined Pogtopia in the first place, does not.

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mfs be like : “c!wilbur never manipulated c!techno into thinking pogtopia was anarchist - what a retcon!”

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxzeUjgYzXO384aGc7sNpMmkxzxtMMQy-X

mf, what is this???

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google comparative advantage

google comparative advantage

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Twitter is an experience.

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cringe take op

ew gentle and la brava r in 305

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I just recently got into bnha, caught up on the manga and now this and last week are the first leaks I’ve seen... I feel like that meme from Community where Troy walks in with pizza and everything is burning chaos. It’s weird enough as it is trying to consume a story at this snail’s pace. Seriously as a writer I find this deeply troubling bc people aren’t accepting that narratives like this take time. I’m so curious where the politics of this world will lead but we gotta be patient! Breathe!

tru

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An Aside on the BNHA Community’s Most Toxic Moral Framework

As much as I hate the takes in this community with boiling passion, I’ve also just given up at even trying at this point. There really is no hope at all for this community, not even the slightest sliver of rational analysis can be permitted under the roaring ride of emotion-driven drivel that ultimately conjectures and postures without ever making a cogent argument based on reality. I don’t know if this is because people are operating on a stupidly deontological view of the narrative - because, frankly, the utter “discourse” that is happening can’t even be judged as using any coherent moral framework whatsoever. Instead of either a deontological framework or a utilitarian framework, the “framework” that’s utilized is one that forgoes the concept of moral actions entirely.

If I’m to be charitable, I feel like “morality” is increasingly being judged, not on the basis of whether an action was right or wrong, but the amount of immediate, intimate emotion that is brought upon by the figure involved. That’s the framework that gives rise to takes like, “narrative villains have been portrayed as abuse victims, ergo: any and all negative reactions towards these characters by individuals within the narrative is at best “fucking ridiculous” and at worst “abuse apologia.” There is no attempt to examine either the narrative (that these characters have literally no reason to even be slightly charitable towards the villains) or the meta narrative (that in order to fulfill an arc [such as one in which “abuse victims” like Shigaraki are “redeemed”], it needs to be properly set up, and not in such a fashion in which literally every single character is 100% on board with the idea). I’m certain that if Avatar had aired in the modern day, people would be lambasting the show for any of the characters even suggesting killing any of the antagonists. When Aang goes to consult the previous Avatars, the fandom would be “cancelling” Kyoshi for portraying a frank, if cold, assessment of the situation.

Except, no wait, there are a couple differences between these two situations, between Shigaraki and Dabi versus Ozai :

1) Shigaraki and Dabi, unlike Ozai, are portrayed with a sympathetic and victimized backstory, which in the eyes of so many readers instantly absolves them of the actions they take, painting any and all characters that even dare to criticize them as being devils for even daring to oppose the abuse victims. Never mind the fact that the greatest villains in our own history were often abused as children. I would shudder to think of what people’s takes on Adolf Hitler would be, if he were a fictional character of course.

2) Ozai, unlike Shigaraki and Dabi, is portrayed narratively as an abuser. Due to abusing his children, Ozai has committed the ultimate sin in the eyes of the audience: genocide and rampant imperialism is of now immediate concern to the emotions of the reader, but abuse? Of one’s own family? Now that’s unforgivable.

And you know what? I think it’s perfectly natural for people to be able to relate and feel more to characters that have undergone abuse than characters who are abusers. I think it’s perfectly natural to feel that abuse is somehow a more “significant” crime than genocide and rampant imperialism.

The issue is when this primitive mentality persists beyond the initial, guttural reaction. This may be asking for too much, but can the people in this community please just put any thought at all into the moral ramifications of characters and their actions, before going on a spiel centering on the morality of those characters? To be frank, can people just put down their internal, festering emotions in order to judge the narrative with a consistant and solid moral framework?

In conclusion: ground your axioms.

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thoughts on bnha 304 (part 0)

Incredible how gazing upon the hellhole that is this community can leave me with mental and spiritual scars that will persist for generations to come. All I really have the energy to say is that I hope none of you people end up caught up in a terrorist attack, lest you allow yourself to perish in the knowledge that those terrorists likely had a sad backstory and compelling character motives. 

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Super hot take :

murder is kind of cringe, not gonna lie, not exactly very based either.

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On BNHA 302

I feel like I’ve said everything I could’ve said at this point, and this chapter pretty much confirmed my expectations. That said, I want to cover a couple wacky, wacky takes I’ve seen, mostly because I’ve grown a taste for masochism these past few months.

I’d first like to cover the idea that Natsuo and Fuyumi shouldn’t (whether morally or narratively) feel any responsibility for dealing with Touya, as they were of course children when the whole debacle went down. At this point, I genuinely believe that most of these people can’t differentiate between a character taking responsibility for literally anything and that character being smeared as being somehow essentially “evil” or “at fault.” There are essentially two layers to this conundrum that need to be addressed. 

Firstly, there is the notion that people who aren’t directly or intentionally involved with a situation aren’t allowed to feel or express any sort of responsibility for that situation. This is, frankly, ridiculous. Of course Touya’s siblings are going to express a firm sense of responsibility for dealing with Touya, their older brother. Whether or not they directly contributed to Touya’s deteriorating mental state, they would naturally feel somewhat responsible for dealing with the end result. 

Secondly, there is the idea that neither Fuyumi nor Natsuo contributed anything at all to Touya’s mental instability. This is just patently untrue, for a number of reasons. We are explicitly shown that Fuyumi and Natuso, while both being concerned for Touya’s wellbeing, never really understood Touya’s mental situation in a way that Touya would feel satisfying. That’s the whole point of Touya’s backstory - that nobody in his family would “look” at him, would really understand him. While Fuyumi and Natsuo’s contributions to Touya’s deterioration were of course unintentional and far less significant than Endeavor’s contributions (a fact pointed out directly by Natsuo), they still bear a burden for Touya’s troubles.

The other take I’d like to touch on is the idea that it’s somehow a “wrong” decision for the Todorokis to settle on “dealing” with Touya together. I am genuinely incapable of understanding the framework of people who think that this is somehow unjustified. Touya is a terrorist, who has gone out of his way to murder thirty people, all to make a point to the world about Endeavor’s sins. He has actively or semi-passively sought out the death of his siblings, Shoto especially, all to hurt Endeavor. There is no conceivable world in which Touya would not at the very least be taken down and detained, if only out of self defense. I’m all for rehabilitation of criminals, and I do think the Todorokis should and will make an effort to talk with Touya, but this rehabilitation can’t exactly start until Touya has been removed from his position as an active serial killer. 

That’s all I had to say, really. Good chapter though, really sent my emotions to places.

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Yes but you specified white so that’s why I mentioned

i remember now, yes. though i am usually not in a state of remembering.

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I actually really enjoyed what you said but note this could happen in a Japanese-American family too 😅

Yes, but Japanese-Americans are also under the classification of “Americans.”

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2016 Election BNHA AU (mostly Todoroki family tbh but shhhh)

So, I was thinking that I hadn’t made enough mistakes today, and I starting pondering about how to obliterate my mental state even further. Then an idea popped into my head, which then proceeded to multiply ever further until it became.... this.

So, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the Todoroki family existed as an American middle class white family during the 2016 elections, and their family drama in BNHA was translated into more family drama, but this time serving as an allegory for the 2016 election and the rise of populism on both the Left and Right.

For this allegory, Endeavor is a neoliberal who represents Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party, or more specifically, the socioeconomic characteristics of neoliberalism that Obama’s tenure as president represented. Rei as a character more or less represents the American people, whom have been abused severely by the neoliberal policies of the Obama Administration. The American people are also more generally represented by the family structure as a whole. Each of the Todoroki children will serve as different responses to the Obama Administration and neoliberalism.

Fuyumi is a liberal conservative, or “centrist,” so to speak. She was mostly satisfied with the direction that the country was heading in, with a few qualms here and there. She’s mostly your run-of-the-mill liberal, who’s mostly content with ignoring the pressing class issues facing the country. She’s also the most reconciliatory towards the rest of her family, trying to get all of them just to be a family together and eat brunch while the working class disintegrates. Once Trump wins the election, Fuyumi becomes obsessed with bringing the country back to normalcy, thus becoming a firm Biden supporter during the 2020 DNC Primaries. 

Shoto is a disillusioned progressive, or a Social Democrat. He was one of Obama’s first supporters, back when he gave off a veneer of being a real progressive. However, he felt betrayed by the right-ward shift of the Obama Administration. Thus, he has turned his gaze to the Sanders Campaign, which he hopes can save the country and fulfill the progressive ideals he upholds. This all said, Shoto is still nonetheless attached to the liberal capitalist hegemony, still seeing value in the old American political institutions. 

Natsuo is a Marxist, who was radicalized similarly to how Shoto was. However, whereas Shoto tied his hopes to the Sanders Campaign and still held value in liberal democracy, Natsuo has rejected liberal democracy completely, recognizing it to be a sham. Although Natsuo despises neoliberalism and the impacts of the Obama Administration, he still begrudgingly and somewhat cynically decides to work with the Sanders Campaign (and later on the DNC), as while he doesn’t think the DNC is going to move the country leftward meaningfully, he does recognize it as a better alternative to the rising fascism of the Republican Party.

Last, but not least, is Touya, who is more obviously a Right-Wing Populist and a Trump Supporter. Touya grew up as a social recluse, confining himself to the Internet and his Video Games. This led to him becoming incredibly cynical to the political system he lived in, growing disgusted with neoliberalism, just like how his brothers were. However, Touya’s hatred of the liberal establishment goes far further than his brothers, as displayed by the fact that once the Sanders Campaign bends the knee to the DNC and Hillary Clinton, Touya feels utterly betrayed. Instead of working with the DNC, Touya, seeing the Democratic Party as the source of all that’s wrong with America, switches sides to the RNC. The Republican Party in this case represents the League of Villains, with Donald Trump being a Stain sort of figure: a political outsider who comes in and radicalizes a bunch of people to his ideology. Touya, an incel gamer who carried poorly disguised misogynistic and racially insensitive beliefs, threw himself headfirst into the Far-Right, ironically becoming a monster far worse than the liberal establishment (aka Endeavor) that he sought to defeat. 

Those are all the thoughts I had, but I’m sure that there are other interpretations that could be made. I would end this off on a more coherent note, but I genuinely want to hurl myself into the void after writing this analysis with genuine effort and thought put into it. 

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Misogynist Touya is Canon : Or, Why Touya is Actually the Joker

No, I don’t care what your take is. I also don’t care what extraneous circumstances may have led to Touya making various sexist remarks in his backstory. None of that matters to me, you see. All of you moral-realists can quibble over the character implications and thematic purposes of Touya disparaging the women in his family and dismissing their comprehension of his situation. All that matters to me is that Touya is a misogynist, and this is canon. Nothing will ever exceed this revelation for me, no grand truth will ever embolden my soul more than this here revelation brought to me on this day, February 18, 2021. 

Touya is a misogynist. He hates women, those of the female gender, or, as he would himself put it: “femoids.” As can be seen from his position in front of a computer at the age of 13, it can be assumed that he is, in fact, a gamer. This is supported by the fact that Touya, as Dabi, has referred to Spinner derogatorily as “lizard,” which is a term that we know is a common slur thrown at people with mutant quirks in the BNHA universe; thus, we can gather that Touya is also probably racist. In further considering the fact that he has an incredible fixation on the ideal of his father, I believe this all adds up to the most accurate designation for Touya Todoroki being not just a mere misogynist, but an out and about “incel.”

Some of you may understandably feel skeptical of Touya, the BNHA fandom’s resident soft uwu boy, being an incel. Well, have no fear, for I have the ultimate piece of evidence to persuade you of my position. Do you remember when Touya addressed the larger public for the first time, calmly stating his crimes? Do you remember how, after claiming responsibility for the deaths of 30 people, shifted the blame onto Endeavor, saying that he only killed those people, that he only went down this path of villainy, because of Endeavor’s own sins? Yes, that he, just like so many others, were ultimately warped and defined by their past social environment. 

You could say, even, that Touya screamed to the world, “We live in a society!”

I, for one, am beyond glad that Horikoshi has finally started fleshing out a character that so many can relate to on a deep, internal level. 

The only thing left I have to say now is:

Gamers Rise Up.

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On Fanon Dabi

As we learn more and more about Dabi/Touya’s canon character, it may seem like a rude awakening to people who have constructed this idea of Touya in their minds since before the official reveal. Which, frankly, is very understandable, considering the fandom was theorizing about Dabi being Endeavor’s son ever since he was revealed to have a fire quirk.

The main differences between fanon Touya and canon Touya, from what I can tell, is that while both interpretations of Touya definitely hated Endeavor and wanted him dead, most fanon interpretations of Touya had him feeling ambivalent or even positive towards the rest of his family, whom he would recognize as fellow victims of Endeavor’s abuse. Some interpretations of Touya would even have his goal of taking down Endeavor be less about himself and more about avenging the rest of his family. Canon Touya, on the other hand, is single-mindedly obsessed with taking down Endeavor and exposing his sins to the world, at any cost whatsoever. He even displays disappointment at learning that Natsuo only “almost died” from Gigantomachia’s attack, as Natsuo’s death would have hurt Endeavor. 

To those reeling from the loss of the kinder and more empathetic character of fanon Touya, I would like to propose this idea: a character already exists in canon who meets many of the same qualifications and characteristics as fanon Touya: Natsuo.

Natsuo, much like both interpretations of Touya, hates Endeavor greatly, refusing to forgive him or even consider forgiving him. However, like fanon Touya, Natsuo still loves the rest of his family dearly, even being willing to nearly sit through a dinner with Endeavor in order to make his sister happy. While Natsuo is unwilling to absolve Endeavor of his sins, he is willing to put aside his own rage and spite for the sake of his family, and for the world at large. This, from my point of view at least, makes him a very intriguing and layered character who may serve as the “mirror” to Touya; both are characters that despise Endeavor, but one retains enough sanity and empathy for those around him in order to move past his spite, while the other has adopted an obsessive tunnelvision around destroying the object of his hatred, forgoing any attempt to even consider the emotions of Endeavor’s other victims. Much like how fanon Touya is the light to canon Touya’s shadow, so too is Natsuo.