kryberrub

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I can strongly relate to a lot of criticism surrounding Horikoshi's panorama art from two weeks ago – stuff like Spinner's and Mr Compress' designs not having changed at all in contrast to all the other characters that are still alive eight years later (implying they might have died just like Tomura, Dabi, Himiko, Twice, and Kurogiri?), Magne, Chisaki, Pops, the Shie Hassaikai, the MLA, Tenkos family (minus Nana and Mon-chan) etc. not being there at all, Hagakure's outfit…

As for myself, I don't find it in me anymore to be upset about that stuff. I can relate to the criticism, but I don't care anymore. It's business as usual with Horikoshi.

After that mess of an ending, I just don't give a damn about Horikoshi's opinion anymore, whether he thinks Spinner and Mr. Compress should die like the rest of the League or not, whether the League deserves happiness in the afterlife or eternal pain and suffering in hell.

BNHA's ending made me lose any respect I used to have for Horikoshi as a writer. And even if the panorama art gave no cause for even the tiniest complaint, it wouldn't undo all the damage the ending has done. It wouldn't change that BNHA (at least to me) is a failed story and a narrative sellout, and no artwork in the world, no matter how amazing, gorgeous, and breathtaking, could ever wipe the slate clean again. At most, all Horikoshi can do now is indulge in damage control – and even therein, he's failing miserably, constantly screwing over himself trying to please the fans that are screaming the loudest and/or spending the most money (aka the BakuDekus and the right-wing dudebros).

By now, I just try to concentrate on the stuff I like (the League smiling together, Himiko's adorable grin, Mon-chan, the Spinaraki food) and think about how I can use it in fics, headcanons, etc.

I guess, that goes for BNHA as a whole, actually; I kinda treat it like a huge buffet – I take what I like and ignore what I hate. I enjoy Horikoshi's art (which is still top-notch) and flout his crappy writing. I don't feel bound to his writing. No one should.

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people on reddit making post about how "i don't get why people hate endeavor" and "why do people dislike endeavor?" somehow make my blood boil every single time. gee, i wonder why people dislike the guy who basically trafficked his wife, raped her at least twice, abused all his children, abused his wife so bad she had a psychotic break, for about 20 years... no idea at all

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Just the older siblings protecting their tiny, weak, baby brother ^v^

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fuck around and find out what happens

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i’ve been thinking about astronaut ochako for a while but haven’t had the time to sit down and draw until now. they’re sooo cute,.. would love to polish their designs more

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Devouring his son

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"Even though I reached into his heart and smashed his hatred, Tenko was the leader of the League Of Villains to the very end."

This is weird because it's like. Was Deku expecting Shigaraki/Tenko to ditch the League the moment his 'hatred was smashed'? He thinks it's a bad thing that Shigaraki/Tenko didn't renounce the League? Hatred = League Of Villains, and that's the only meaning they had, despite Shigaraki saying out loud wanting to do something one of his teammates would look forward to, despite Shigaraki wanting to be their Hero. Has Deku ever listen to a single word Shigaraki has ever said?

Deku's confused about why Shigaraki/Tenko stayed loyal to his friends?

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hes lookin directly at you 👁️👁️

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On Heroes and Villains

(or: how I stopped worrying and learned to hate the system)

Now that I’ve gone off a bit about how Midoriya sees heroes and how he sees himself, it’s time to go off about how he conceptualizes villains. The definition of “hero” in BNHA society veers off of what we’d consider the idealistic definition, and indeed the definition that the Western-style comic books Horikoshi was apparently partially inspired by follow — a hero is someone who acts to save others, often at great risk, without being asked and without asking for payment in return. Unlike BNHA’s heroes, heroes in Western comics are sometimes viewed negatively by society and civilians (see various eras of the X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, etc) but that doesn’t change the fact that they are heroes at their core. Heroism under the idealist/Western comic definition is both intrinsic and chosen. Heroism in BNHA draws a government salary.

That’s heroes. How about villains? In Western comics, villains are people who do bad things, often using supernatural abilities on civilians who aren’t able to defend themselves the same way. Villains are sometimes portrayed as evil for evil’s sake (ex. the Joker), but more often they’re humanized. A classic example is the X-Men’s Magneto. In his initial appearances in the comics, he’s unquestionably a villain — a mutant supremacist who believes that the human majority should be subject to the mutant minority. This is a bad look. Plus ultra bad, one might say. But when the comics reveal Magneto’s backstory, it becomes clear why he holds that viewpoint: As a Jewish character alive during World War II, he was a member of a tiny minority, persecuted and murdered en masse by the majority culture. The phrase “never again” is often used when referencing the Holocaust, and Magneto takes that concept and broadens it. Never again will he or anyone like him suffer at the hands of the majority. Magneto’s backstory, tragic as it is, doesn’t excuse his villainous actions (prior to his various redemptions, that is), but it does explain them. The reader understands why Magneto does what he does, and more importantly, the reader is meant to care. In Western comics, ‘villain’ isn’t a personality trait, but a descriptor of someone’s actions — and quite crucially, they can choose a different action at any time.

BNHA takes a different viewpoint. Villain isn’t a description of a person’s behavior, but an intrinsic trait. And this gets problematic when one thinks about the fact that all someone needs to do is use their quirk in the committing of a crime to qualify as a villain.

Moving on. At the beginning of BNHA, there’s no evidence that Midoriya or anyone else has much sympathy or even a desire to understand the villains. Notably, the first villains we’re shown are thieves — the purse snatcher on the train, who activates his quirk out of panic when he’s caught, and the Sludge Villain, who by virtue of his heteromorphic quirk is using his quirk at all times. (That begs an interesting and horrible question. Some heteromorphs are theoretically using their quirks all the time. Would getting a parking ticket while “using their quirk” then classify them as a villain?) In any case, the motivation of these characters is identified as greed or enjoyment of stealing. But there are a lot of reasons why a person might steal. I don’t expect Midoriya to ask those questions in Chapter 1 as a fourteen year old who idolizes heroes. But it would bother me less if it hadn’t turned out to be a harbinger of things to come.

The first villain Midoriya encounters as a hero student is Shigaraki, who at first glance during the USJ attack appears to be the least threatening of the main trio. He’s also the youngest and the most physically vulnerable of the group. Unlike the previous villains, Shigaraki actually has a chance to explain his motivations — which are admittedly not phrased well, and are thoroughly infected by All For One’s ideology. However, Shigaraki is given multiple chances to explain his motivations, and his ability to articulate them improves by leaps and bounds. Shigaraki also has something in his back pocket that villains such as Toga and Twice don’t have: He’s related to a hero, and particularly a hero that All Might holds in the highest esteem. And yet, while Midoriya can sympathize with or “understand” Stain and Gentle Criminal, he can’t or won’t reckon with Shigaraki. (He also fails to understand Overhaul, but there’s an important difference in that Overhaul has no desire to be understood, saved, or stopped.)

On the surface, this makes no sense. Stain explicitly targets heroes, members of a group Midoriya is aiming to be part of. Gentle Criminal threatens to ruin the school festival, which Midoriya and his classmates have worked hard for, and unlike Stain, Shigaraki, or Overhaul, Gentle Criminal turns his villainy into a performance. His motivation is entirely selfish. Stain’s motivation doesn’t arise from a personal grievance. Why can Midoriya acknowledge common ground with them and not with Shigaraki?

Because in Midoriya’s worldview, “villain” isn’t something a person does. Villain is something a person is.

On some level, Midoriya is able to identify with Stain and with Gentle Criminal. Because he can identify with them, he makes a small but significant leap in logic — they’re like me, and I’m not a villain, so they can’t be villains, either. Under this paradigm, Gentle Criminal’s selfish crimes are relevant only where they might put Midoriya out. Under this same paradigm, Stain’s murders become a misguided offshoot of his veneration of All Might. Villains that Midoriya personally understands are seen as people. Villains he can’t relate to aren’t.

Shigaraki and the League of Villains have legitimate grievances, causes of their misery that they’re able to name and point to. The bystander effect, heteromorph discrimination, the school-to-prison pipeline, general intolerance, parental abuse, and so on. They also get chances to articulate these viewpoints to the heroes. But because Midoriya can’t personally relate to Shigaraki, because Shigaraki got angry in the face of his mistreatment instead of accepting it in silence like Midoriya did, Shigaraki never escapes the category of villain.

A villain in BNHA society is effectively unpersoned. They can be injured with impunity, to the point where villain-specific hospitals exist to treat the injuries caused by heroes. They can be imprisoned under inhumane conditions. They can be written off completely. This inverts the Western comic understanding, wherein heroism is intrinsic and villainy is a choice; under BNHA’s paradigm, heroism is a choice, and villainy is intrinsic. Villains can’t be saved, and it doesn’t matter, because there was nothing there to save in the first place.

In fact, the only way Midoriya is comfortable acknowledging Shigaraki is by acknowledging that he was once Tenko Shimura — an innocent child, a victim of All For One who should have been saved. This viewpoint has the benefit of being uncomplicated and not requiring Midoriya to think too hard. To reckon with Shigaraki as an adult, Midoriya would have to accomplish the Magneto dialectic; that is, acknowledging that while Shigaraki’s actions are terrible, the person taking those actions didn’t spring fully formed into the world as the Symbol of Fear. Shigaraki is still a victim of All For One, and arguably the victim who suffered the most at his hands. It’s entirely reasonable for Shigaraki to be hurt and furious that he wasn’t rescued. But rather than understanding that the innocent child and the adult villain are facets of the same individual, Midoriya separates them — which allows him to metaphorically “save” Tenko while literally murdering Tomura.

To summarize: Unless he’s able to personally relate to the villain in question on a superficial level, Midoriya makes no distinction between person and action. “Villain” is seen as an intrinsic, immutable trait, a label that effectively dehumanizes the individual it’s applied to. In BNHA, the only “redeemable” villain is a dead villain, and neither BNHA nor its main character ever takes issue with this premise. At least not enough to matter for the villains themselves.

I’m going to take a second to vent about this heroes act/villains are bullshit. We see multiple heroes take actions while on the job as heroes that should disqualify them from the label. Even as a full-blown hero, Bakugou is an utter shit whose main interests are becoming Number One and beating Midoriya, rather than actually helping anyone. Present Mic, as much as I love him, attempts to murder Kurogiri in cold blood even knowing that Kurogiri used to be his friend and that there’s at least a possibility that his friend’s consciousness is still present. Hawks straight up murders someone on camera. These characters aren’t even acting like heroes at this point. But as long as they don’t earn the label of “villain”, anything can be excused…and is excused, by the narrative, by BNHA society, and by BNHA’s creator.

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I'm genuinely so confused as to what hori wanted to achieve with the league of villains. why make them so painfully human, people that just want to feel okay for once, why make sure that we know that they are a family that the league is all they have and that they care about each other so fucking much, only to have them killed off by the so-called good guys that we're supposed to be rooting for

Like he undeniably put so much effort into making sure that we care about these guys being saved, what else were we supposed to feel except disappointment and disgust at that ending

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If you were an art piece, then whoever created you must have loved you dearly-

🐈‍⬛

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I hate drawing flowers but i love them

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Mel Medarda

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Wildlight Chronicles ending

inspired by Springtime by Pierre Auguste Cot 1873

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Hey do y’all remember when Boeing fucking killed a guy last year. And we all said “huh I guess Boeing fucking killed a guy” and then went on with our lives. And everybody knew that Boeing had fully just fucking executed a guy and nothing came of it. Like there was no police investigation no justice no nothing. Like literally EVERYBODY knew that Boeing had full on murdered a guy to silence him and there wasn’t any consequences for them. Kinda crazy.