#Hawks has been replaced by the bodysnatcher New Hawks

[justatalkingface]

Hey 👋 I've seen your page and you're really indepth and accurate about bnha, really great analysis. Can I ask you where you think bnha is going as a series? Or like, what messages are trying to be pushed and if they're right or not? Because where we are now it's really hard to tell.

The heroes haven't really learned much about how things got this way, and even when they're told how the villains got where they are, the heroes (and the hero kids) don't really commit to (even attempt to) changing anything to make sure things don't wind up right back where the story is now.

Speaking specifically on the mutant plot you wrote that great critique on, shouji's answer of basically 'shine so bright it makes the racists feel bad' did not seem like a good sign for the future. can I ask how you feel about that part too?

An ask! My first ask! I didn't think I'd ever get an ask, actually. And! And it's a juicy one! Plenty to dig my teeth into here....

Where it's going is simple, yet complicated in a weird way. Where we are, now, Hori has finally decided on a direction and seems firmly attached to it, after zig zagging in messages and themes throughout the entire storyline, so in that sense, the end goal is clear. The problem is he took so long to make up his mind on what even wants that he left himself a giant pile of plot threads to deal with, and I am not only positive he can't resolve them all well, I'm not even sure he can even end them all, they're all so many and all over the place, and so much of it is deeper and complex that the story they're actually in.

This is the reason you're confused, by the way; all the themes, back stories and plot threads that Hori has just... decided to not use, are still there, he just left them hanging. Like Corrupt Heroes, when all the heroes we see are good, Endeavour, the lone asshole, is now defacto redeemed, and even the originally somewhat dubious Mt Lady, who was money obsessed, is fully on the straight and narrow. Everyone talks about 'corrupt heroes' (and acts like Stain has actual depth when what we have is flat out a two dimensional character) throughout the story but we never see them, because Hori realized he didn't actually want to get into how dark that would be. It's why Hawk was killed and replaced by New Hawks, and Deku (like my earlier post, I'm going to be putting a firm line between 'Izuku', and 'Deku', where Deku is a hollowed out version of Izuku, with all his defining traits scraped away to make room for power and The Plot, and Izuku is an actual human being with depth that we haven't seen a long time now) doesn't even blink at Lady Nagant's entire everything, before he revealed she was Good The Whole Time as he defeated her: because Hori abruptly changed directions and all the story build up before that point was suddenly retconned into nonexistence.

The direction Hori seems to have chosen, barring a last second 180, is what I call a 'True Shonen'; that is to say, he has committed fully to the themes of Friendship and Being A Good Person overcoming all obstacles, no matter how ludicrous the odds against it. The ending, then, will be Deku, maybe with some help, killing AFO and Saving The Day, and then Everything Is Better, probably with a timeskip to years later to show how much better everything has become. Now, in theory, that's not a bad thing. In practice, MHA is one of the most theoretically political shonen mangas I've ever seen, and until recently Hori has been trying to thread the line between a normal shonen plotline and the deep ideas and concepts he's introduced, and done that terribly, so there's a lot things that are going to happen that are going to be... awkward, to say the least.

In a True Shonen, for example, the Hero always wins. Not only that, when they reach the full potential of their powers at endgames like this? They get everything they want. Every goal is achieved, with only one or two token sacrifices, and some victories being symbolic or incomplete, and at worst the cost is just themselves. One of the places we're going to run into problems, though, is that Deku has committed to saving Shigaraki. And that is going to happen, Shigaraki will be saved, one way or another.

The problem is Shigaraki himself. Shigaraki was, at the point right before AFO stepped in to conveniently make him helpless and ripe for Deku to vibe on saving, utterly insane in a way I don't know the technical words to describe, but his goal is easy to name: omnicide.

Shigaraki was a fucked up man child that had never had a life, and didn't know how to be a person, until he went through the trials his mentor arranged for him to grow. When he finished and, for lack of a better word self actualized, he gained a goal that was all his for the first time.

That goal was to kill every living creature on the planet, destroy everything on the planet, until there was nothing left. Shigaraki's ideal endgame is a barren world of dust and ash, save for maybe five cities where Japan used to be that his friends live in. These cities have all their stuff, cute prey for Toga to hunt, and possibly some slaves to do things for them (though we're ignoring how that'd destroy all ability to make things like they'd want on a reasonable level, like clothes and food, but whatever), and that's about the only feature left on this bleak, empty world of grey.

Shigaraki has killed, at least, hundreds of people, and is at least indirectly involved in the deaths of thousands more. He has no idea how to live anything near to a normal life. Every one of his skills revolve around killing, or video games.

That is what Deku wants to save, because in the set up we're in, Shigaraki isn't the enemy anymore. He's the rival character, and he just happens to be possessed by the actual big bad. Picture Naruto trying to save Sasuke, if Sasuke was fully possessed by Orochimaru; that's the kind of energy that's happening here. Except, you know, it isn't. They're foils in many ways, but the set up for this kind of situation has never been a thing. That's where the 'kid' in Shigaraki came from, to explain this and skip over years of connections and build up that are sorely lacking to explain why Deku would want to save him.

Not even mentioning what the 'saving' would look like: maybe Shigaraki will go Darth Vader on AFO and mutual kill him, redeeming himself in the process. Maybe Deku will, and I'm not screwing with you, pull the fucking kid out of him, and that kid will just be innocent of Shigaraki's sins. Maybe it'll be like the last chapter of Naruto, where infamous traitor Orochimaru, famed for his human experimentation on orphans, and the ex-leader and founder of a hostile military state, is somehow in charge of the orphanage, and in the same way Shigaraki will just be magically reintegrated back into society somehow. Who knows?

This? This is just one problem with the end we're going towards, and there's plenty more beyond that. Dabi, for example, needs to be saved as well, to resolve Shoto's Endeavor's character arc. He can't just die, he can't just be locked in jail forever, he needs to come to some sort of peace with his family; the story will not end any other way. In it's own way, though, this is almost worse than the Kidaraki thing, since while Shigaraki was basiclly thrown into villainy, without any context on how not to do that, Dabi went willingly to his damnation, but it doesn't matter because it will happen.

So yeah, where we're going is easy. The ride there, though? Woo boy, that's going to be fun.

On the origins of villains and the complete refusal to deal with their causes? Yeah, that's another one of those big threads left to hang: MHA is a theoretically 'real' world, just with super powers in it, and that means it's complicated, and there's politics, and things don't work out for everyone. All of that? Yeah, that's a bunch of stuff Hori just... started ignoring a while ago, and at this point, i would bet actual money he never will really focus on again. Oh, Deku might make some lip service to it at a climatic moment with Shigaraki, and there's probably going to be a time skip with the problems 'solved' (and yet there'll be villains for new/old heroes to face dramatically anyways), but that's it. To realistically deal with the causes of villainy would require a lot of work on things like poverty, mental health, racism in general, and the insane amount of bystander syndrome in the setting, all of which are never happening beyond a surface level take.

Although, now that I mentioned it... man, Hori seems to hate civilians, doesn't he? I'm not really going anywhere with this, I just wanted to talk about that briefly, but the general public is always wrong in MHA, aren't they? Or, really just about anyone who isn't a hero or a villain is both useless and stupid. He uses 'the civilians' exclusively as props to push his message, usually by a hero explaining why what they're saying is dumb and bad, or as scapegoats to try and push the blame on, and it's just kinda weird isn't it?

And oh, the mutant plot. Oh, that response. Anon, you may not know this, but I loathe every part of that, and I would love to tell you why.

Let me sum up briefly his argument and explain why each part is wrong:

We start off with 'Don't be upset and act out about the discrimination you face, or your children will be next.' Like, I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, and equally obviously I'm slanting it negatively. Still, though the way I put it makes it sound like a threat, and maybe in some undertones it is, honestly the main reason this is shit is the fact that they're here means their children are being discriminated against, already. They aren't going to be in a giant mob following a villain, who is famously part of an organization that has destroyed several cities and killed who the fuck knows how many people, against law enforcement and the super law enforcement, unless they really, really think that this is their only way out. That, in the entire setting, with normal police, and the hero system that is loudly broadcasting that they will save you, the only person who is on their side, the only person who can possibly make change happen for them, is Spinner. These are people so trapped and cornered that they're trying to chew their metaphorical arms off to escape, and Shoji is saying there will be an 'escalation' of their situation that has to be a fact of life for them already.

This, somehow, along with city mutants (who according to their own words just a chapter or two ago are de facto living a different life than them and don't understand what it's like to be a country mutant) joining hands with normal humans, is enough to stop them, because.... they get to watch the people they know have it better than them demonstrate their lack of trauma?

Seriously, let me stop here a second. Let's ignore, for a minute, the sheer layers of stupid here, and take this as written: These people are desperate, and feel so abandoned by society that the only person they think is on their side is a villain. They follow him in siege on a hospital against a backdrop of heroes and police. Let's further pretend that this was, some the fuck how, a good argument. Would that even stop them? They're stuck now; they've come this far, in a something far beyond a riot, lead by a defacto enemy of the State. Just stopping it like this and leaving isn't going to make things go back to normal, it's not going to make them better, it's going to screw them over. The second they did this they were committed, because shonen logic aside, do you think law enforcement is going to forget this? Forgive this? Unless AFO wins, they haven't put their cause back by three years, they've fucked up by decades; every mutant is going to be viewed as a villain just hiding how sinister they are. The very act of doing this is tying them, ride or die, with AFO and the League, and burned the bridges behind them. They can't go back now.

Moving on, Shoji then says that, 'the reason you all gathered here, in a small army, isn't wrong, and the fact that you were able to operate beyond the level of a thoughtless animal and stop when I told you too makes it seem to me you were all shining like the fucking Luminescent Baby'. I shit you not, he compliments them on the fact they 'kept thinking'. I don't care what translation ends up official, I can't see any way anything that vein isn't insulting bullshit with the subtext of, 'The fact that you listened to me is why I think you kept thinking, and if you ignored me, you wouldn't be thinking'. Quite a fucking high horse you're on there, Shoji. Oh, and a token black hero then apologizes for being ignorant to their plight, which is just a special touch on top of everything else.

And now for the good part: "Let's use the fact that you're all Luminescent Babies to change the people hurting us! They'll look in awe of how you glow and be so embarrassed that they'll become better people out of shame!"

I'm going to dial back the snark here because this is the meat of the argument, along with the actual question asked to me (lol), and I want to seriously address how bad this is. What this argument is saying, basiclly, is to be perfect, take the high road, and you'll shame your abusers into no longer abusing you, into no longer being racist. In general, this kind of thing, a disadvantaged minority having to be better than their peers for approval, isn't new; this is old as fuck. What this does, all this does, is allow the person in question to keep their job against all the people who hate them and want them to stop getting above themselves. That doesn't solve anything, that is a step: the true change that they're talking about is long, and hard, and complicated. In fact, I can say in total confidence that historically, it is proven that doing this has not, in fact, magically stopped racism or sexism from being things that exist.

Seriously, Hori, what the fuck.

So, yeah, this is pure shit, basiclly. If this was actually how the world proceeded, off this logic, nothing would get better, but again, that logic isn't going to matter with how the story is going; things will be 'better' regardless of what the heroes actually do or don't do to fix the problem.

And... I think that's everything you asked, Anon. Thanks for the ask!

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Your lovely Bella+One story has me craving more aliens...

One of the Cullens has secretly been the scout for an alien invasion of shapeshifters or bodysnatchers. Who is it and how have they managed to stay undetected this long?

Anon's referring to A Girl's Best Friend, Love, and Lobsters.

Honestly, any of them except for Jasper.

Alice

Alice is the obvious pick. She showed up late, happened to have this convenient gift that told her exactly who she should ingratiate herself with, picked up a protector, and has since then been directing everything the Cullens do.

Added onto this she has “amnesia” and can’t remember a single thing about anything before she turned. Making all of her missteps in terms of cultural norms/identity overlooked.

And since no one knew Alice before they think “weird” is just her personality.

Bella

Like Alice, Bella comes in very late in the game, starting innocuously as a human with a gift that a human shouldn’t be capable of having. The one thing is that she appears to have a backstory with her family, except her mother doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to her and Bella could have probably been replaced by an alien without Renee noticing.

The Bella who arrives in Forks is then already infected and ends up infiltrating the Cullens.

Carlisle

Carlisle’s the very obvious pick aside from Alice. The first people he meets he shows up with the wrong eye color, claiming to be able to eat these things nobody eats, and proceeds to go around the world making friends with everyone including the vampire leaders.

If anyone’s meeting and greeting and getting information, it’s Carlisle Cullen, who then doubles down to infiltrate the human world as well.

Edward

Edward left for four years and came back a changed man. He decried his previous actions, was repentant, and else was deeply weird. It’s possible that Edward never came back from his time away and something else did instead.

Emmett

Emmett was found randomly in the mountains by Rosalie. No one knew his previous personality among them and he was a new, fresh, face. Emmett could have been infected before and no one would have any idea.

Esme

Similarly for Esme, she met Carlisle as a child but didn’t see him for years. The woman Carlisle turns is a stranger to him and very well could have been infected without anyone realizing it.

Jasper

The reason Jasper’s a dead end is in part because of Alice. Jasper is infected? Alice never sees him. The other reason is that he’s in this thing with Maria where she’s going to be watching him like a hawk for abnormal behavior and a sign of betraying her or running away.

Jasper starts acting funny then he dies.

Rosalie

Same with the others, was a perfect stranger to the Cullens and no one would question her if she was acting strange from the very beginning.

[curligurl0896]

So getting to read @thejakeformerlyknownasprince 's FMA AU reminded me of my own ideas for a FMA/Animorphs fic. A crossover, in this case, a Megamorphs of sorts (complete with rotating narration) because I really want an excuse to have the Animorphs interact with the characters of the FMA universe. I don't have enough ideas worked out to confidently write a whole fanfic yet, so I think I'll just share some of my ideas so that at least they don't stay inside my head forever like the vast majority of ideas that I either never finish enough to post it or just never get around to at all, especially when my brain is always generating new plot bunnies instead of focusing on developing the ones I already have, it's so distracting lol

(Also maybe y'all could give some suggestions if you wanna, I'd definitely appreciate it lol)

Anyway, here it is:

First off, the answer as to how exactly the Animorphs end up in the FMA universe: I was kicking around a few ideas for this, and was originally thinking something along the lines of like, a freak accident that somehow results in them ending up in front of the Gate of Truth, but I think a better idea would be for an alchemist (or perhaps even several alchemists) to end up in the Aniverse, get Yeerkified, and the Yeerk (or Yeerks, as it may be), intrigued by the memories and knowledge of an alternate Earth where you can manipulate matter and shape it according to your will with nothing more than a well drawn chalk circle (or even less than that if you've been through the Gate, as the Yeerk(s) will eventually discover), lured in by the idea of a legendary object that supposedly can be used to circumvent a pesky little law known as Equivalent Exchange, decides to pull something of a "Tom's Yeerk and his Yeerk buddies a la book 52" deciding to start their own colony in the FMAverse where they won't have to answer to the Council of Thirteen or the Visserarchy (well, at least the ones higher ranked than the Yeerk in charge, who, I imagine, would have to be a Sub-Visser at the very least to have the power to arrange all this) in addition to being able to use alchemy, which, much like the morphing power, can be used for a massive variety of things, ranging from merely convenient to pretty damn useful in a pinch to OP as fuck to even just downright terrifying.

It takes a lot of time and meticulous planning, of course, as they have to find a way to transport the Yeerks, their ship, and all the other stuff they'll need to thrive over there through the Gate and into the FMAverse-- all while in a universe where alchemy flat out doesn't work. The Yeerks have to figure out how to get around that issue, and it takes at least a year of research and using their new hosts' alchemical knowledge to work out a solution, but they work it out, and soon enough they get everything set up and ready to go. At some point, the Chee find out about this secret unknown project going on, inform the Animorphs about it, and Jake decides that they should at least check it out on the off chance that it's something big.

That's where the story officially starts: with our team of traumatized teenage shapeshifters at the location where this thing is being set up (haven't figured out the where yet). They've spent the past several days spying on these Yeerks, but still aren't sure what exactly is going on-- they keep talking about opening a gate-- and aren't sure if it's worth it. Marco's convinced the whole thing is ridiculous, especially after overhearing a human Controller mention something about a "Philosopher's Stone" ("What is this, Harry Potter? Are they gonna wave wooden sticks around and yell in Latin?") . Rachel is bored at this point, and just wants to kick ass and call it a day-- they were probably up to no good anyway. Cassie isn't particularly keen on the asskicking part, but she's been having a bad feeling about all this that she can't shake, and Tobias agrees that something fishy is going on and says they should wait a few days-- after all, from what they've gleaned, whatever plans these Yeerks had would be set in motion very soon. Ax, being Ax, declares as usual that he'll just go along with whatever Prince Jake orders, though when Jake presses him about his opinion, he just says he isn't sure what to make of it. In the end, they keep it up for a couple more days, and sure enough, the time comes for the Yeerks to "open the gate", whatever that means.

After all the time they'd spent spying on the Yeerks, it is conveniently now, when the Yeerks are about to do their thing, that they're discovered. It quickly turns into a fight, and the Animorphs attempt to bail as they're soon overwhelmed-- and then the Gate is opened.

None of them had any idea what to expect next. They certainly weren't expecting the blue lightning that erupted around them in a massive circle, seeming to originate from the curving lines that had been so painstakingly carved into the floor. They aren't expecting the atmosphere to turn dark and purple and creepy, or for a giant grey eye to suddenly appear beneath them, or for wavy black tentacle arms to come out of that eye. And they definitely were NOT expecting to abruptly find themselves in the white void of Zerospace.

Only they aren't in Z-space, exactly. Surrounded by it, sure, but somehow they stand there, as if on solid ground, surrounded by the eerie blankness that had once nearly suffocated them to death.

Each Animorph is utterly alone, with nothing and no one else in sight. That is, until they hear a voice, one that sounds like several voices speaking in unison, and suddenly they see a figure-- or, more accurately, an outline of a figure, with only shadows to mark where the figure ended and the void began. The figure is shaped like a human in all but Ax and Tobias's case: the figure Ax sees is shaped like an Andalite, and Tobias's version takes the form of a bird.

Truth gives the whole "I am God, I am the world, and I am also you" speech, then informs them they can't pass through the Gate without payment. Suddenly, there's a huge gateway where previously there was nothing. Truth is unconcerned with the fact that these "A-ni-morphs" have zero clue what's going on-- it simply takes the required toll and sends them on their way.

Except the toll is literal body parts-- which, even then, isn't usually a big deal for an Animorph, but in this case it absolutely is a big deal, because, as they'll soon discover, there's no way they're going to just replace their lost limbs through morphing. It's expressly forbidden for one to simply have nice things in this universe; in other words, Truth isn't letting them off the hook that easily.

The discovery that they're not able to replace their lost body parts through morphing is especially horrifying to Ax, because, well, y'know... book 40. The one that every Ax fan, and really anyone who otherwise genuinely enjoys Ax's character, would like to pretend never fucking happened.

In fact, given Truth's precedent for irony when extracting payment from people who've opened/been through the Gate in the series, I have no doubt in my mind that Ax would end up suffering the exact same fate as Mertil. Andalites, after all, place high value on their tail blades, especially the warriors; it's their number one go-to weapon when shit hits the fan. Ax himself is such a warrior, in fact it's a huge part of who he is as a person. Needless to say I think yeeting Ax's tail blade would be the exact kind of twisted irony that Truth would employ.

He gets over himself eventually-- well, sort of. However, it takes him a long time to truly come to terms with it-- instead of accepting that the attitudes he'd been taught his whole life regarding those who aren't fully able-bodied are actually shit, I feel like he'd be more likely to double down on them, internalizing them, and actually go into full-on self loathing as a result.

He holds his metaphorical tongue, though, upon seeing that Tobias has suffered a payment that is arguably far more cruelly ironic-- given that Tobias is a bird, given that his initial attraction to the morph that eventually became his default body came from the sense of freedom and escapism only provided through flying, I think it's fairly obvious what Truth would take: his wings.

As for the others: Rachel has lost her arm (for basically the same reason Ed did), Cassie loses her hands (which she uses to, you know, help injured animals and stuff), and as for Jake... well, it was a bit of a struggle, the best I could come up with is the idea of him going blind much like Mustang did after being forced to open the Gate (though maybe not for the same reason, though... idk. If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know lol, I couldn't think of any solid ideas for what body part would be ironic for Jake to lose). Marco is the only one who doesn't lose any outwardly visible body parts-- what he loses is his voice.

At some point, they are discovered, taken into custody by the Amestrian military, and eventually they end up in Colonel Mustang's office. Mustang listens to their story with a massive dose of skepticism. He isn't sure what to make of these bizarre barefoot children, nor their claims of fighting bodysnatching slugs from outer space by turning into animals, nor their wingless pet hawk, nor... well, he could only assume the other creature was some sort of chimera, although he had zero clue what animals could have possibly been used to make something with blue fur and extra eyes.

At this point, they're about to do a morphing demonstration to prove to the Colonel that they aren't completely batshit, when suddenly the door is slammed open, and a teenage boy with blond hair and sharp golden eyes comes sauntering in, accompanied by a hulking giant covered head to toe in a suit of armor.

The boy immediately starts shouting at Mustang, calling him a bastard and accusing him of wasting his time, to which Mustang responds by merely rolling his eyes and sighing, as if this sort of thing happens all the time (spoiler alert: it does). After a moment, the kid stops as he takes notice of the other kids standing in the room.

"So," he says, calmly, as if he wasn't yelling at his superior just a moment ago, "what's the deal with these fuckers?"

The casual use of the kind of language that would have surely landed them in hot water back home was quite shocking, but they don't comment on it. Instead, Rachel says, in a voice sweet as honey, "Oh, look, Marco. He's just as short as you are."

Before Marco could turn to glare daggers at her (come on, it wasn't like he could argue back in that moment), the boy goes absolutely ballistic, and the armored guy has to physically restrain him as he screams obscenities at Rachel ("The fuck did you just call me, you freakishly oversized bitch? I'll show you too-fucking-short-to-fucking-sit-at-the-fucking-table-without-a-fucking-booster-seat! Call me short one more fucking time, I fucking dare you to! You think I give a shit that you're a girl? I'll fuck that pretty face of yours right up, just you fucking wait--")

"Brother!" The armored guy cries. "Calm down!" Then, to the Animorphs: "I'm sorry about my brother's behavior. He's, um, a bit sensitive about his height."

"A bit sensitive" is the understatement of the century, but none of the Animorphs call him out on it. They're too dumbfounded by the sound of his voice, which sounds sweet, innocent, and, despite his size, sounds like it belonged to a boy no more than nine or ten years old.

And that's where I'm going to leave it for now, since I've spent way too long on this post already. I have a few other ideas, but mostly in bits and pieces, not really any more comprehensive plot points beyond this point. Please do let me know what you think!