#so much in the arc was wasted potential

[balkanbitch]

Post Alveraz Natsu can’t win a single verbal fight anymore with anyone in fairy tail cause as soon as they start losing they just got to bring up the fact bro gave himself magic cancer

[nocofamilyau]

not related to noco at all but what is katie and sadie’s relationship like now?

pretty good all things considered! while they're both married to two sweet guys and have separate families (none of their kids are other td characters, unfortunately...) they're still really close, and still live next to each other at that same beach town they grew up in, now both running that successful 80s themed ice cream business they've been dreaming of! its safe to say they probably suffered the least on Total Drama, only leaving with a couple of minor scars, good god were they lucky..

[bibibbon]

I've seen a take where you say that Hawks thinks he didn't have a choice and HAD to kill Twice, and you mention in ( ) that he actually DID have a choice and that confuses me.

Hawks gave Twice TWO chances to change and go with Hawks and leave the LOV behind him and change his way of life and when he refused BOTH chances, he posed as a potential (MASSIVE) threat to the hero's, so Hawks had to kill him so he wouldn't risk others lives.

So, with my maybe-not-very-analysed take, why do you think this? Have I missed a crucial part of his character? Did he actually have any other options? And how different would they be then what he ended up doing?

I am assuming you're talking about this paragraph from one of my posts about Hawks👇

Now it is true that Hawk's did indeed give Twice two (possibly 3) chances to back down and surrender. The first time it happens is when Hawk's corners twice, with all the feathers pointing at twice, ready to strike him, saying that he shouldn't resist and come calmly. The second time is when Hawk's explains his reasoning for offering twice this chance, and the 3rd is after Hawk's killed the first set of twice clones and reaches out saying that there's a way forward if he comes calmly and that he would personally help twice start over after he gets punished for his crimes.

However, I still think there's an interesting way in how Hawk's approaches Twice. He doesn't choose to position his feathers far away, but he quite literally corners him, almost trapping Twice in one place and offering him one option which is to surrender himself and come quietly or else. Now, while from an incredibly detached prespective this may seem as a mercy option that Twice should be grateful for I think that there needs to be acknowledgement as to how Hawk's own hpsc teachings and hero experiences have shaped him in approaching a situation like this and before Hawk's offers anything to Twice he feels and acts on the urge to be in control to be above Twice in this conversation to make sure that he has more power. All of this is summed up to Hawk's experiences, and we see how this is a flaw because in reality Hawk's is an incredibly fast man he did not need to corner Twice in such a way and essentially give him one option he could have approached the situation differently (yes it doesn't mean that he would have succeeded but there's still a point to be made in the way Hawk's approached the situation from the beginning)

When horikoshi first introduces Hawk's to us in the series, he makes it a very clear point that Hawk's is fast and that he is a powerful hero.

Hawk's is fast in every sense of the word,he is shown to quickly climb up the ranks at an incredible speed becoming the number 3 hero, he is fast enough to stop a criminal without batting an eye, he is fast enough to evacuate everyone from a falling building and to try and stabilise the building. Hawk's is also quick in being able to mentally recognise what's going on and quickly act on it. With the series reinforcing this message consistently it seems weird for Hawk's to not be fast enough to knock twice out instead going for the kill.

Now you can chalk this up to a writing mistake or an ooc moment, but I personally think there is symbolism in it. Hawk's failure concerning the MVA was foreshadowed the moment he came into play and said "I am too late" this to me shows the small downward spiral that Hawk's is then sent to by the narrative. It's essentially tragic that the fastest hero or man was too late or too slow to stop tragedy from occurring. In other words, Hawk's heavily reminds me of minato namikaze from Naruto.

@doodlegirl1998 even points this out

So, how does this link into Hawk's killing twice, you might ask?

Horikoshi establishing that Hawk's main trait is his speed and agility highlights (to me) the ability that Hawk's had to simply knock Twice out and get him out of the area.

Again, this didn't occur due to the tragedy and reoccurring theme of the fastest hero being too late. Hawk's was too late to apprehend Twice, he was too late in escaping from Dabi's flames. He was too late in many things, and it resulted in horrible consequences.

However, while this string of events is played for the tragic irony, it also highlights just how corrupted Hawk's has become by the hpsc teachings and how he at the end of the day is still a bird trapped in a cage both mentally and physically. This is because you can clearly tell throughout that scene that Hawk's doesn't really want to kill twice. He keeps on bringing the fact that Twice is a good man at heart and that he believes that Twice can be redeemed, but after Twice's rejection, he believes that he must kill him saying that he didn't come this far for mere sentiment to trip him up.

However, even with that being said, when fighting Twice Hawk's doesn't aim to kill him. He could have. He had Twice cornered. He could have killed him in one hit but didn't because he couldn't because mere sentiment was indeed tripping him up and he was so clearly trying to justify his actions, trying to be logical but failing. This is further highlighted when Hawk's ends up saving both himself and Twice from Dabi's flames in chapter 266. Hawk's didn't want to kill Twice but after a string of events, he believed that it was the only way to resort to his hpsc teachings.

Personally, I believe the brief fight between them heavily shows Hawk's internal struggle with his own beliefs, his own desires to save as a hero, and actually help all of that clashing with his hpsc teachings and the belief that killing Twice would be easier and safer.

Hawk's ending up killing Twice narratively shows us the failings of the system and could have been great in showing us Hawk's further questioning the system he feels trapped in and straying fat from it as he does end up acknowledging in the final arc that jin was a good man (I think it's symbolic that he calls him by his citizen name and not villain one) and it could build up to him creating a completely different one but alas that fails due to various reasons which are too long for me to list out.

[unhinged-bratty-boy]

Ughhh I’m spiraling back into my Squid Game obsession again, even though season 3 was a whole letdown 💀 and my man Hwang In-ho, who had so much damn potential, got nerfed into some masked VIP show puppet 😩 like why’d they do him so dirty??

[starii-lins]

lil thing i made for the current sun and moon show SOTW thingy

i am so proud of this holy shit. i cant believe i managed this in less than 5 days.

oh yeah also this is an au of mine where bloodmoon joined the family w lunar and theyre just silly lil dudes cause i like fluff

[mammomlette]

thinking about how Belphie’s situation in s1 is so Blackbird (the song) coded

(Because I never stop thinking of lesson 16 and Belphie in season1 I could go on a word rampage about that arc.)

warnings: SPOILERS FOR LESSON 16 OBEY ME lesson 16 is its own warning guys

Notes: I basically just rewrote the s1 Belphie plot line. That’s it. It’s basically the exact same but written narratively lol. Also!! I plan on writing part 3 of the obey me as soulmate tropes (barb and dia are already done) but Solomon’s part is giving me such a creative block for some reason so it’s taking a while! Sorry!

Constructive criticism welcomed :)

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,”

Shouts for help echoed through the hallways of the House of Lamentation. Why did it seem nobody but you (and the man who tried stopping you from approaching the attic, Lucifer) could hear them?

You snook your way around the house, trying to avoid the stars visible from Lucifer’s doorway and other places you’ve seen him roam at night. Even if he was distracted listening to Levi’s TSL vinyl, you didn’t want to risk it. You were determined to go up to the attic and listen to the voice shouting for you to please help, so you could free whatever may be trapped up there or at least hear it out.

You thought for a moment his calls for help sounded akin to a blackbird singing a morning’s song, though there are no mornings in the eternal darkness of the devildom; only the dead of night forever.

“Take these broken wings and learn to fly,”

You carefully made your way up the stairs, “MC, finally, no one is going to stop you. Now’s your chance to climb the stairs.” How did this voice know your name? More importantly, why are they asking you for help? What got them up there in the first place?

Your internal questions halted when you finally came face to face with the person behind the caged door of the attic. He never said his name, however he did ask you for help, and who were you if not humane? You’re here as a human, after all. He instructed to you to make pacts with the six demon brothers, starting with Beelzebub, in order to gain the power to free him. Your heart hurt for the poor human who claimed to have been locked away for so long they’ve forgotten who they are and how long exactly they’ve been locked away.

Make pacts with my brothers, learn to set me free.

“All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive.”

Belphie has been waiting for so long, months now spent just sitting in the same room, air long turned stale. He could tell you exactly how many boards were on the floor and cobwebs were in the corners of the room. Of course, his brother had to lock him away. Of course, his brother chose Diavolo’s rule over his own little brother.

Finally, after so long, there was finally something. A human no less, who had finally managed to enter the attic. If it had to be a human who would save him, so what?

He had been waiting so long for this moment to arrive. A moment to be free again, and even a moment to seek revenge.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,”

All Belphie heard at night now was the voice of this human. It’s strange how much comfort its grown to bring him, given his plan. But the voice of his brothers and his dead twin would be much more comforting to hear, and his sister was a much more comforting presence.

He knows he won’t miss you when you’re gone, or else he just wouldn’t go through with it, he just wouldn’t continue to manipulate you into working to free him just for him to kill you. But he will miss the routine of having a concerned voice chirping at him in the dead of night while everyone else is asleep. He’s sure Beel will suffice.

“Take these sunken eyes and learn to see,”

At last the moment came, you had finally freed him, even if you weren’t there when the cage opened, he knows it was you. Had you finally made a pact with Lucifer? Is that why he’s free? Credit given where credit is due, you were surprisingly competent for a human. It’s a shame the fate that befalls you. The fate Belphie has the power of stopping, but chooses not to.

Your eyes were so tired he noticed in the brighter lighting of purgatory hall. Sunken and tarnished by dark bags. Was this the result of your late night visits to the attic? Had you just been working too hard? Who knows, I’d rather, who cares? Any pity he felt, he swallowed down and it was quickly drowned by his seething and growing hatred for your kind. Maybe in another life, he and Lilith would be sneaking down into the human world to watch you and your kin, but not anymore. You can’t teach him to see humans as more than vermin.

“All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free.”

A humans life is always only building up to death. It’s what every human spends their life anticipating, waiting for the sweet relief or curdling torture of death. Would you feel dread in your last moments? Perhaps irony? He never could grow fond enough of you to change his plans, but you did plant an invasive seed of interest in him. He hates how he wants to understand you now more than ever, how does the human mind and spirit face death? Are you different from the countless other humans he’s killed? Are you more accepting?

It’s sad to say that the only regret he has from killing you is not making it last long enough for you to express your final thoughts to him. If only he had dragged your death out longer, given you time and air to carefully pick out your last words, maybe even a last emotion shared just with him. The thought of wanting to be the one to see your dying face, hear your dying thoughts and feel your dying senses feels quite intimate for a murderer and the murdered. Maybe in another life you weren’t unfortunate enough to be born as a human. In another life, he thinks. He dwells on the ‘ifs’ too often.

It’s only natural for humans to die. They wait their entire life for that moment of freedom, really he gifted you by killing you while you were still well loved by those around you, his brothers. Oh, his brothers will be mad… they’ll get over it, in time. They can’t love you enough to stay mad at their sweet little brother, right?

[bonebabbles]

I remember when I was reading DOTC when I was around 10, and ever since Misty died I had been waiting for the moment where Birch and Alder learned about her murder, how everyone in their lives has kept it a secret. And then it just didn't happen.

I also remember obsessively re-reading the part where Quiet Rain blows up at Clear Sky.

Birch and Alder are two characters that are just so...

I WANT to say they were forgotten about, but that word doesn't feel right for how they're constantly showing up on the screen. Clear Sky occasionally feels guilty about how he murdered their mother, but for the vast majority of the time, that's described in passive voice. So you're not reminded of just HOW cruel he was, and still very much is.

It's like they're not allowed to be characters.

Like, how does Alder feel about Clear Sky, who seemed to be acting as an adoptive father until he beat her as a child? How did Birch respond later, when Clear Sky was so busy thrashing his sister that he was threatened by a dog? How do they feel about the man who took their mother away from them?

They keep getting cited as "Good Examples Of Non-Campborn Cats," dodging around the fact they were stolen and raised by Petal. Like a lot of the other "adoptions" in the series, she quietly stops mattering to them. But even this fact... like, they're being OTHERED when they were functionally raised SkyClan.

How do they feel about THAT? That their earliest memory is SkyClan, and yet, they'll never be considered truly, fully "clanborn."

Their whole life taken from them, by Clear Sky's cruelty, their formative years spent in his violent shadow, and the narrative is just not interested in that.

[gingerpeachtea]

if they just turn this evil guy maybe being will's dad into some stupid fucking plot point for this one episode and that's it i'm gonna be so fucking pissed

[justatalkingface]

what's your opinion on the big 3? When I was hyperfoxed on this series they were the thing I care Abt the most (I enjoyed season 4, obv I'd change some stuff now but I still remember it being atleast ok)

I hate how dirty they did my girl nejire, as far as I'm aware they didn't even do anything with her after the whole pagent thing she just got a small backstory about how she was sad (don't know all of it I haven't been keeping up that well w the manga)

mirios not having a quirky and having to save eri (a girl who I can't imagine would be that skilled at the age she is and has been training on lizards to give his quirk back all together, I'd imagine it taking a few more months but bnhas time is shit so) and coming back in the war arc to punch one person and then basically do noting iicr

The only decently written one was amajiki, I wish they had more going on I think they have a fun dynamic (w them helping taking care of eri and me rlly liking idk what it's called but I love the fluff it brings) :(

Lots of mixed feelings, in all honesty. Lots of mixed feelings.

I'll admit, a big part of my mixed feelings about them is they showed up as the latest, 'Stomp on Izuku's everything' at the point in the story where it was becoming obvious that there was always something stomping on Izuku, and that gave me a bad first impression on them I've never been able to shake... which isn't helped by how they're connected to the clusterfuck of Nighteye, of all people, which is kind of my whole thing with Mirio (warning; I am biased):

As a person, he's obviously nice, but as a character, basiclly his entire reason for existing was, 'give Izuku an existential crisis' and I don't think I've ever forgiven him for that, really. His entire character is just bigger, stronger, older, happier, more capable, more confident, more successful, more loved Izuku, who had a Quirk his whole life and only had to dig deep to find out how strong it, and he, was all along.

Unironically. It's....

It's a really bad look, to be blunt; he feels kind of like a bad fanfiction character written by a bad writer who wanted to put their super special OC in the story, except he's canon.

Since we've never seen him even think something unheroic, there's really nothing that distinguishes him from that impression factual statement, which, again, makes it hard for me to give a shit about him, or even remember him... which is a problem Hori seems to share, lol. It doesn't help that I loathe Sir Nighteye and that most of his development time is spent admiring him, to boot, and that his parts of the story are either empty or focused on a living plot device I can't quite like no matter how hard I try because of how blatant the emotional manipulation is about the biggest story breaking, SOD shattering plot device until Stars and Stripes showed up.

If he ever got any kind of development to flesh him out a human being rather than being either Izuku and/or a heroic archetype, it'd help, but beyond all of that his biggest personality trait is liking jokes, and that barely even comes up. Or, rather, considering both the Final Arc and his response to Bakugou's name, along with Nighteye's own tendencies, 'jokes', maybe.

He doesn't deserve it, I admit it, it's not his fault, but I just can't get past that. He also doesn't deserve to just be forgotten until his big moment of a butt joke, but... MHA, everyone. In all honesty, I'd just like him better if his entire story arc didn't exist in and as some of the worst parts of the Overhaul arc, but he's tainted by that fact.

I freely admit that I am unfairly biased against him, so take all of that with a mountain of salt.

As a side note though, god, the story doesn't seem to realize how badly Nighteye is using the poor kid; Mirio thinks Nighteye is training him because he's worthy, while Nighteye mainly seems to be doing it because he's the closest thing to an All Might clone he can get, bar him actually cloning All Might, even if he grew to like him for who he is. I'm not sure Nighteye ever thought of Mirio with just his Quirk as anything more than a temporary situation; even at the start of canon, when on his own merits he's rising to fame with how successful he is, Nighteye's overall focus is still about getting AFO into the kid.

I almost wish I could see Nighteye explaining how all of his training came down to getting All Might's Quirk, just to see MIrio react and tear Nighteye down a peg about it, except Hori's history of handling these kinds of things means he'd never be allowed to be properly offended on his own behalf, the poor bastard.

Moving on, Tamaki. Out of all of them, he's had the biggest of an on-screen story arc, and in a intellectual way his Quirk is easily the most interesting. Unfortunately, while he has a personality, it feels so bland at times that he's far easier to remember for his Quirk than who he is.

I liked his story, really, but at the time it was overshadowed by Mirio and his everything, and by the time he showed back up it was clear how irrelevant it and he was, so it was more about how (admittedly, very) cool he get his Quirk to be than it was about him, and with some brutal honesty, it's probably because his Quirk is so interesting that he even got that much focus beyond that initial arc by Hori.

And... Nejirie.

In a combat sense she's easily the best of them, really; Mirio is almost purely defensive, which limits him (especially if he's not surprising someone with it) while Tamaki's Quirk, while flexible, is so conditional in ways that can easily hold him back (we only ever see him fight with full preparation; if he's not gearing for a fight he'd be easy to ambush), and like a lot of things in the Final Arc, his big laser canon thing is.... questionable.

Nejirie, though, is just simply powerful. In a setting where everyone has one power and one main application of that power, where you either fly or blast things, but not both, she's the closest I've seen to a 'traditional' super hero, like you'd see in Marvel or DC.

At the same time, though, out of the three of them she least has a story, for obvious reasons, and it's a disgrace, really. If Hori had just spent some time on her, on the her backstory that apparently exists (yeah, I'm not sure where that is either), she could have been so interesting... but really, all she is is the Girl Teammate. Her personality traits are The Girl Teammate's personality traits. She's just The Girl Teammate stamped over all of the interesting stuff, and it's such a waste, it really is.

And finally, as a unit? The Big Three is a shiny toy that Hori forgot in the corner somewhere as soon as he got bored with it. He spent a few minutes oohing and aahing over them, focusing really hard on developing interesting powers, how they could be used, and how strong they were, only to start to lose interest as soon as those powers were established, and he was writing the three of them off before their introductory arc was even over.

[nnoragamis]

gray vs kagura during the GMG arc could have been a really interesting battle tbh

[acid-waste]

Ivypool was a terrible spy oh please tell me what the hell did the dark forest do oots is literally the arc of go girl give us nothing

ivypool couldve told them who was in the dark forest on the thunderclan slde like what was that gonna do

and the knowledge ivypool did have meant nothing because the dark forest didnt plan at all dark forest has such bad writing because the writers couldnt think of anything for it at least ivypool brought back something

how do we win? win we fight like duhh

there was one moment where ivypool was spying and was woken up by dovewing in the last hope btw the last book of the arc its clear the writers didnt want to write the dark forest doing anything more

[akimojo]

No but you are absolutely right about how Lunafreya and Jill (haven't played FFXVI yet but still) are supposed to be narratively important but?? Don't really do much on screen? Or anything? They're just kinda there and it's sad because their potential is astronomical! And we know that FF is capable of making fully rounded female characters because just look at the previous games. Kinda sad to see that undermining the females in favor of the males is becoming a trend now.

RIGHT the fact that we KNOW square has made female characters with amazing character arcs before makes it so much more disappointing when they just?? willingly choose not to??? its bizarre

at least nowadays they have the courtesy to come up with some flimsy excuse as for why a female character has to be benched so i guess theres that lmao

[bklynmusicnerd]

"How far do you think your reach extends, little man? Well you multiply it by several time zones and twice as many nations, and then ask me why I permit your continued existence." - Stefan Cassadine

Anyways when Spencer is done crying over demon spawn moving down the block, I hope his next arc gets closer to this type of magnitude. I know I sound like a broken record at this point but SPENCER IS THE HEIR. He's not just a regular aimless Cassadine.

The issue with the demon spawn story was not that Spencer's abandonment issues were consuming him again (when aren't they?). The issue was the way that played out was him lugging around diaper bags and saying "goo goo ga ga" more than the actual baby.

Spencer stands to inherit the closest the GH universe comes to an actual "empire" and we don't even know if that's something he wants. For a significant part of his adolescence, all he cared about was getting back his birthright that was stolen from him and avenging his father. Does he still even want the power and responsibility or just the trust fund? There is inherent drama in that.

His father only revealed that he was alive so he could make sure that Spencer did not acquire the level of power that Stefan is referencing because he doesn't trust him. There is even more drama in that! It's long past time for the narrative to start taking Spencer's status as an unprepared heir seriously.

[bmpmp3]

the epic highs and lows of trying to read an ongoing shounen manga

[jflxwr]

looking through my drafts at what i should post and like 3/4 of my drafts is just me complaining abt darkness of dragons LMAOAO

[dimdiamond]

So true y'all tbh herge overdone it with writing captain crazy with drinking or tripping over smth or being clumsy at some point I just felt sad for him cause surely a man at the age couldn't be this clumsy just for jokes lol,I wish we could've seen more different acts or plots of him except this two topic of being drunk or clumsy,you know obviously tintin is the main hero and like herge said he wanted to fill his environment with more different people or colorful jokes it's true but I wish we could've also seen more of captain's different and good acts,in all of the books from first he appears he almost always trips over smth LMAO I know this is funny but at the same time taking him seriously is a bit hard

Damn so true, I wish we could have more arcs focused on Haddock and his past! Like for god's sake there is so much potential for old adventures or mysteries being brought back to the present from all these years of his life before meeting Tintin! Surprisingly for someone who is so popular and appeared in most of the books as main character, Haddock is criminally underused.

The jokes with him being clumsy are actually my favourite because they play a lot with the thing of sea legs and relates somehow with both his profession and his character. I love the contradiction between how clumsy he is on land and how stable he is on deck, especially during storms or crisis. Also seeing an older man being so childishly clumsy is somehow charming in my eyes and works well with contradicting the protagonist. Tintin is also clumsy (and in general clumsiness is played a lot for laughs in the series) but comparing to Haddock he is the most stable man.

I like how this trait of his is used in Shooting Star and in the moon case. In the first because the contradiction between on land and on ship is executed really interestingly and funny. In the second because he and all the cast are aware of his clumsiness and yet others are getting into accidents.

The only time I truly felt bad with Haddock's clumsiness and thought it was overdone was in Prisoners Of The Sun- good lord he suffered so much there.

I doubt Herge wanted us to take seriously any of his characters, not even Tintin, and yet here we are all together analyzing them and giving them all the importance that he didn't fully committed to (but I do believe he might have wanted to do so).