racke7

[racke7]

Hero Civil War

I'm sure everyone has read (or at least seen) the "Civil War"-idea going around the BNHA-community.

And I... have opinions. And ideas.

If you haven't, it's basically:

UA runs a "villains vs heroes" exercise over the course of several days, where both sides are let loose on a city and asked to play out their roles.

It's basically a set-up for Izuku being allowed to play a "strategic and scary villain" without having to really justify it (no weird face-heel-turns).

So I wholeheartedly understand why it's popular. But it's also... hmm... boring?

Let's ignore why the Civil-War exercise would even be a thing, and focus on the fact that it's a school assignment. The villain-side losing is basically "they didn't get a perfect grade".

Considering the amount of passion and betrayals and broken limbs, "got a good grade in math" is incredibly low-stakes, and the idea that it would escalate to that degree is-...

I'd argue that it's absurd, but then I remember that these are all obsessively competitive people, and yeah. I can kind of see it going off the rails like this.

However.

The problem with the exercise is that it has rules. It has people standing by to take care of the injured. It has robots to simulate "civilians" to keep anyone from losing their lunch at the gore. It has things that the villains and heroes are forbidden from doing.

If you want to write a vicious "strategic villain Izuku", then having him politely following some rules massively undercuts his ability to be terrifying. (Yes, even if he's figured out loopholes in them.)

So, having said this, I started trying to think of a scenario where Izuku would actually play the role of a villain trying to "take over" a city.

Different idea

Izuku gets to be quirkless here. Both because it'll keep the focus on "strategy" instead of "punch harder", and because it gives us a good starting point.

Basically, Izuku is a quirkless person and as such in relatively close contact with the downtrodden in the city he lives in. Maybe he's lived on the streets himself for a bit, maybe he's just met with enough of the homeless population to have friends there.

Regardless, when Izuku's city is hit by a disaster (massive-scale villain-attack, hurricane, earthquake, etc) the government-aid sent to the city ends up entirely focused on the richer side of the city.

As in, instead of giving aid to people in desperate need, the aid is directed to people whose milk spoiled because their fridge lost power for a few hours.

Now, maybe a few Heroes don't like this, but it's not like they can just grab the aid-packages and fuck off on their own. That'd be theft, and they'd be in deep trouble for it.

So people in Izuku's community are dying, and the Heroes are only helping the rich folks instead.

Izuku being Izuku, he decides to do the same thing as a few others, and just grabs a crowbar to steal supplies for the ones who actually need it.

Early on, this is pretty easy, because the Rescue Heroes are kind of playing up how weak they are in a fight (because they too want to help the people in need).

However, with more people resorting to these thefts, the city-government assigns "protection" for these supplies, and those Heroes don't have the same excuses (they might not even care about the problem, as it's enough in their eyes that these are people "who broke the law").

So, now they're all running into a brick-wall of resistance in their efforts to actually keep innocent people alive. And Izuku decides that it's time to organize their raids. (Izuku has bought enough good-will with his earlier raids that nobody thinks he's full of shit.)

No more scattered groups of opportunists, now they're going to have plans.

This gives us a setting where people's lives are on the line, but which also has some interesting rules of engagement.

Limit collateral-damage (they're here to keep people alive, not wreck the city even more)

No hurting civilians (again, they're here to keep people alive, not murder innocents)

No killing Heroes (it'd be incredibly bad optics and cause too much escalation from other Heroes, maiming them would probably be fine though)

Avoid being identified (because this is supposed to be a temporary thing, and they don't want to be tracked down and imprisoned afterwards)

Here we can have the villains genuinely go "is this a course of action I'm willing to live with" and have the heroes either be corrupt or torn in doing their jobs.

[racke7]

> Looks for internships > Sends out requests > Ghosted for three months > Suddenly invited to interview > Implications during the interview that an intern-spot is almost guaranteed > ... What the fuck.

[racke7]

Everyone warns you agaist going to the supermarket hungry, but nobody tells you about the dangers of going there too full: I do not want any of these things, for I will never require any food at all!

[racke7]

They really made the new genshin character a robot girl who is metal everywhere except that she has flesh specifically on her face and her armpit…

[racke7]

It's not that the room is spinning, it's more that I can't actually look in a straight line.

[racke7]

I mean, this is fair. It's not super-easy to do (because names are difficult to start with, and having them mean something in a language that most of us aren't exactly fluent in is even more difficult).

But yeah, it does feel like you should be a bit careful what you name things in the "everyone's name is a pun on their quirk and life"-world.

(Like, looking back on it, I guess I never shared my whole process for naming her Izumi in Adaptation, but it was... a massive pain in the ass.)

(1 -> Izuku wasn't going to be receiving OFA or live her life as some kind of puppet for the different powers in the setting, meaning that both "ninth" and "deku" weren't necessary to recreate.)

(2 -> Izumi means "a spring / source of water", and her quirk can be spread to others via blood. And blood is basically just fancy water. So she's the source from where her quirk spreads into the world.)

(3 -> I wanted Himiko to still be able to call her "Izu-chan" and for the name to be visually similar for the readers, so that they didn't have to get confused about it.)

(Sidenote -> This is why I refused to think of "last names" for everyone, despite Inko's constant identity-creation. It's waaaay too fucking complicated.)

(But yeah, the process was basically that I wanted it to be "izu-something", and refused to commit to a name until I found a pun. Not necessarily a GOOD pun, mind you. But a pun nonetheless.)

Having said all of that, I don't overly mind simplifying name-switching during gender-bending for ease of reading (letting people kind of just go "same person" instead of having to constantly remind themselves that "oh yeah, this person was that person").

But I also feel like you need to take a stand sometimes by saying "yeah but I'm NOT that person anymore" and invent a new name from scratch. (Time-traveler existing as a separate person, body-fusing shenanigans, etc)

So I guess my feelings are that this exists on a spectrum? And if you make Izuku's name LOOK like "Izuku", then you don't need to justify it as much (because it becomes a "reader-accessibility"-thing instead of a "deep lore"-thing).

It's not IDEAL, but it comes across as a "shoot from the hip, we've got a story to get back to" kind of thing. And as someone who fucking hates coming up with names, I can relate to that.

And when you instead invent a new name from scratch, you need to really go for it, you know? Like, you need some good fucking puns in there. And that's a lot of pressure that I don't feel like condemning people for running the fuck away from.

one thing i keep in mind while making AU Izuku names is that i want to keep the "ku"/nine pun in their name even if they never get One For All

the entire setting is steeped in nominative determinism (even if the likely explanation is that the quirks are made first before the character) and i kind of want to keep the AU Izuku's original fate connected in some way with the name

it's also why im a bit miffed at all the "Izumi" girlDekus since, well, it's almost Naruko-tier name/genderflipping, but also removing the "ku" doesn't feel right, especially if she gets One For All anyway

[racke7]

Saw mutual had a problem and was immediately inspired to meme about it.

[racke7]

Friendly reminder that you're not required to publicly take sides in any geopolitical conflict you don't understand.

[racke7]

i have an extremely dumb observation to share:

so you know tanya (von) degurechaff?

of youjo senki "fame"?

reincarnated reddit atheist military magical girl, yeah?

so a couple of things;

-thing the first: tanya is extremely opposed to actually thinking about her gender situation, preferring to ignore it as much as possible in favour of focusing on her job

her job being "killing people as a flight mage"

you could argue that her gender is therefore job, or specifically, her gender is flight mage

-thing the second: at one point while doing strategic analysis, tanya remarks that as far as "niche" in warfare goes, flight mages are basically equivalent to attack helicopters from a tactical pov

conclusion:

tanya's gender is attack helicopter

thank you for your time

no im not sorry

[racke7]

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

[racke7]

what if this happen to you

[racke7]

As I was writing out that "two decades of world-building"-post yesterday, I started thinking about what I've actually written down.

See, this stuff has always been stories that I've been telling myself as I've paced my room, talking to myself. Writing things down? Definitely not.

(I have bunches of paper-notes covering the genealogy spanning back god knows how far, and only a fraction of that is digitalized. Let alone the stories attached to that.)

And in an effort to make things easier for myself, I sat down today and started ordering the stories properly based on generations instead of arbitrary things. Which made me realize that it only took me something like fifteen generations to reach 2012.

(Which would've been around the time when I actually started trying to digitize things for the first time. So that attempt stretches back another thirty generations from there. And there are... some familiar faces in those generations too, but most of it has long since been forgotten about. Which probably isn't a huge loss.)

[racke7]

This came to me in a fuckin dream….

[racke7]

Two decades of World-building

Over two decades ago, as a prepubescent child, I invented a setting for OCs (a word I didn't even know at the time).

(Continuation under the cut, because... trying to summarize 2+ decades of lore isn't super-easy.)

The basics of it amounted to "super-powered family", where I'd mess around with one generation, get bored, and then say "and then they had kids", leaving me with an entire new generation to mess around with.

As a result of this, "being orphans" became such a hallmark of the setting that I had to invent lore for it. Not helped by the fact that "power-scaling" had gone completely haywire along the way.

I also ended up developing a lot of world-lore for the setting as a whole, because of a wide range of events. But one of the things that always amused me was that the family had a single ironclad law.

"Anything for love"

Which sounds great until you realize that this is a translation of a few kind of deranged concepts. Which implies that this is more of an "open-ended Deal with the Devil", than a cute declaration of queer-rights.

(Their language also equates "sunlight" / "death" / "love" as the same (good) concept, and "madness" / "rot" / "boredom" as the same (bad) concept. Which means that their law can also translate to "I'll do anything you want, so please kill me". Which is... in-character.)

Going back to explain the orphan-lore, it does actually make sense. Kind of. See, they were never human, for all that they sometimes had kids with them. And since they're not from the same species, this doesn't make any kind of biological sense (not even including the ones who had children with demons, angels, cats, The Concept Of The End Of All Existence, and undead).

So, rather than relying on biology, they "resonate" the songs of their souls. A process which basically shakes them apart until they're a shadow of their former selves, but causes a new life to rise from the ashes.

(Having kids is actually considered something of a dick-move, culturally. On behalf of forcing the child to be alive without a clear path to their own death. But it's basically at "no ethical consumption under capitalism"-levels.)

Now, as you might expect from the constant "death = good". They're immortal.

Specifically, they're the kind of immortals who will get bored and more bored, and then even more bored. To the point where they often describe it as "being eaten alive by maggots" until they're driven insane (turning into something unrecognizable to themselves, as the maggots take them away, piece by piece).

This is why they're so desperate for death (an end before they turn into something horrific), and in turn so desperate for love (the easiest path to death, as trying to resonate with someone you don't love is pretty much impossible).

(With some of the power-disparities that have popped up in the generations, it's also common for there to be "sworn deaths", where someone basically vows to murder the other if they start to lose themselves. But again, because of those power-disparities, this is usually very one-sided and as such kind of dick-move to spring on someone.)

Now as for the world that they live in?

First there was the Ocean Of Nothingness, eternal and unchanging and Nothing. Then there was the World of Chaos, a primordial kind of world filled with existences constantly fighting each other (heat and cold, etc).

Some of those existences grew weary of the constant battle and created the World of Life, and in turn the World of Death formed as well. The two worlds battled until they were both hollowed-out shadows of themselves, at which point a group came together and created a world where everyone could live without fighting their opposite.

The World of Dimensions, where existences and worlds are separated into neat little pockets of reality, allowing people to live their lives without having to constantly battle others.

(This is where hell-dimensions and high-school and wizard-wars and anything else you can imagine exists. And obviously also where the inevitable crossovers happen.)

Everyone was pretty happy with this arrangement, but there were a lot of bickering between the different dimensions, which resulted in the Council of Balance being established. A kind of "UN" with... about as much actual ability to do things.

(The Council very much dislike the family, because of a number of reasons and even more actual events. But considering how things have turned out when they tried to pick a fight with them, the Council is also not stupid enough to make contact unless first provoked.)

Still, this weird kind of "tower" of Worlds inside of the Ocean Of Nothingness, has lead to a kind of... in-between. A soap-bubble border between Nothingness and reality where both kind of leak into each other. Don't go there. It's not a good time.

(Sometimes, things escape from that place, that "Abyss". And those things are usually the kind of things that eat worlds. So people are pretty keen on killing them when they pop up.)

Anyway, this was all well and good until a member of the family managed to break out of the World of Chaos, dragging that world onto the "surface" of the Ocean Of Nothingness, and discovering "infinite islands" just like their own.

(If you wondered about the guy who had a kid with the Concept Of The End Of All Existence, it wasn't this guy, but it was a guy who came after and who very much fucked the Ocean Of Nothingness. Don't worry about it.)

(As a side-note, being descendants of the Ocean Of Nothingness is the generally accepted reasoning for why the family bleeds black. And why their blood is considered the spiritual equivalent of anti-matter.)

Needless to say about the fantastic power-scaling I was working with at this point, the family created the Throne Before The Ocean. And in order to sit upon it you basically had to defeat all of the monsters of those other islands too.

Which worked out to a new name grabbing the Throne every now and then, but rarely keeping it for long, until someone too insanely strong grabbed the Throne and got bored with the lack of challenge. Upon which they decided to crack the sky open like an egg.

(They go down under the title of "Horizon Breaker" and are considered to be the closest thing anyone has come to literally ending all of Existence. Their comment on the matter was "oops". The cracks on the sky remain there until this day.)

There are literally hundreds of stories here, told over the span of most of my life. Some of them are "cringe", some funny, some sad, some heartwarming, and some disturbing.

But I believe that that's a topic for a different time.

[racke7]

Air-control guy has now visited, and (as expected) fucked up the air in my apartment.

Basically, I have two inputs and one output. Output is deranged in how much air it takes in (this is the reason why I kept having cigarette-smoke leaking into my apartment from the stairwell), and it's completely impossible to adjust the inputs in any way.

(I'm pretty sure they were all put in at the same time that the building was built, in like the sixties or something, so yeah, not exactly a marvel of comfort.)

My solution has been to put some fabric over the output (enough that I can't hear it screaming across the entire apartment), and to remove one of the useless caps on the output and put a book in front of it instead (it's on top of a closet, so this works out really well for adjusting or even shutting off the pressure, so that I can actually use my AC).

Air-control guy obviously thinks that this is wrong, because it fucks with his arbitrarily values (he doesn't have to live here).

[racke7]

> Exam is almost two hours long. > Finishes it in less than ten minutes.

[racke7]

Spent most of yesterday struggling not to fall asleep bcs I had meetings. Finally allowed to sleep in the afternoon. Yay.

Woke up within five hours, ate dinner, went back to bed, failed to sleep bcs too hot, set up AC, slept for like maybe two hours. Tired as fuck, but body screaming that it's "being awake"-time.

I have an exam in three hours.