#and maybe it’s just bias but I don’t think we should be calling these arcs ‘villain arcs’

[alienssstufff]

q!dapduo parallels in how they handle grief so INTERESTING I LOVE IT (I hate it. I wish they were still alive).

We got q!Slime who while yes he did threaten the lives of others, ultimately and interestingly he never blamed anyone else except himself (and his wife). Slime destroys because he is upset at himself.

Then we got q!Quackity who even if he doesn’t physically lash out or go on a rampage like q!Slime did, he pins the blame on everyone else and to this day is plotting to kill the dude for revenge - Quackity destroys because he’s upset at the world (and even more himself too, but he has not comes to terms with that yet)

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Tell me more about your feelings on Hazbin Hotel.

Part of me doesn’t want to answer this question, because of how popular this show is on Tumblr.

And I know that people will be like.

“What do you know, you’re a Christian, of Course you’d have some problems with it.”

Yes, I am going to disclose that. I am a Christian. Not ashamed of that. Still working to be a better one. But I can be objective enough to view it as a writer, and that at most my personal bias will only be a slight enhancement of my view.

And these are my unfiltered thoughts on this show.

But for my opinion of Hazbin hotel. The original Pilot was interesting. A place trying to reform sinners in the last place people would think to be reformed. (Spoilers ahead)

That pilot premise is interesting. You see Hell as a cesspool of the absolute worse people. (Like Los Angeles but with more cannibalism) and it takes the “Hell is other people approach”

The songs were fine, the animation was great, and the characters introduced were intriguing. So much potential depth to them, theories can speculate. And of course the big question of. “Can someone in hell actually be redeemed?” And we even have a character pointing out “of course not, they’re in hell. Their chance was before this?”

It raised this question of, if you know your doomed, why try to be a good person? And That is fascinating.

Then the show finally airs. And it’s just another “Heaven is corrupt” storyline. And it’s not even done well.

(The whole retelling of creation made my eyes roll. Trying to make Lucifer to be the good guy? How original (sarcasm). And not even done well. Because it’s Charlie narrating this, which makes it be like Charlie knows all this and is doing all of this pointlessly)

Hells gonna rise up against it and all that. The hotel was basically pointless.

The show goes on to constantly contradict itself at numerous points that leaves me more confused.

Yes there is an interesting character (Alastor) but outside of a great soundtrack and animation… the writing of the show is a mess.

It feels both rushed and too slow. The characters are speedrunning their arcs, yet the plot is crawling.

Let’s then not forget the fact that Angel power and weapons are said to be the only thing that Perma kills sinners and angels. Yet sir pretentious dies and instead of permadead, goes to heaven? What fucking logic is that?

Also it says how only Angel weapons and powers can hurt angels (they make a whole point about it) only to show Vaggie and Lute have a whole ass fight hurting eachother with tables and s***. Unless they’ve been blessed them chairs…

Also where do the souls that perma die go? Detroit? Because if Sir pretentious can go to heaven after dying, what the deal with all this? Is Hell actually hell? Seems more like purgatory.

And then you include the helluva boss lore as they take place in the same universe. And MORE questions get added.

But that’s a can of worms for another time.

More importantly, Charlie, the main character hardly gets any development moments. Her issues are TOLD not showed.

Vaggie is also a mess too, like her whole thing is protecting Charlie, and helping her. But then she gets told that she has to fight For Love and that’s how to win? You mean what she’s BEEN DOING THE WHOLE TIME?!

All the stuff with Angel Dust, the writing for that is fine when showing the messed up situation he’s in, but then after the Song “Loser, Baby” he’s suddenly months sober? Speedrunning a bit too much.

Side note: HOW DOES HEAVEN NOT KNOW HOW PEOPLE GET INTO HEAVEN?!

Like they genuinely seem like they don’t know? From my understanding, there is no Big Man making all the calls. Thats not corruption. Thats incompetence.

So if it’s just angels in charge, THEY should know. Like show that they’re tilting the scale or maybe denying certain people that DO follow the criteria. Because with the incompetency of it, it basically leaves the door open for potentially EVERYONE to get into heaven.

Yet then the show shows how awful people in hell are, like it’s clear there are people that deserve hell. Maybe I’m overthinking it, maybe I’m not thinking about it enough. But it’s a really dumb system.

But the biggest glaring hole in this show is the fact that there is no point for heaven to actually do the purge in the first place.

Hell being overpopulated shouldn’t matter. Only Angel power and weapons can actually hurt angels. Why would they worry about an uprising. Heaven could easily wipe hell. The only people that could probably do damage is Lucifer and the leaders of the rings of hell. And even then… That’s like 7 against ALL OF HEAVEN!? Even if we assume overlords and some high level demons could do similar… Heaven still takes it. (But then again the Lute and Vaggie fight might contradict that. Hard to say it’s so confusing)

That all aside, is it an awful show? No. It’s just so riddled with plotholes and pacing issues.

Would I recommend this show to people? No.

Would I recommend the sound track? Probably, the songs are catchy. Can’t deny that.

Everyone has their own opinions and tastes, but the show has too much of a mess for me.

[eri-cheri]

Now that we have reached the last chapter of the year. It is time to do a 2020 roll call of what I like to call, “State of the Shippers”:

1. IzuOcha. Status: Placated.

-IzuOcha’s could celebrate several cute tidbits throughout the year. Mini moments as they say.

Anime Highlights: The OVA’s came in clutch with moments for shippers all around and IzuOcha is no exception. We got a cute tidbit where Izuku and Ochako bumped into each other and were flustered.

Manga Highlights: Christmas kept on giving to this fandom as the AM doll Izuku gave Ochako made many appearances. A cute fist bump between the two was also exchanged and Mina was right there bouncing with y’all.

Heroes Rising: Izuku super man carried Ochako to safety. And was Angy she was injured. Fans could enjoy the small Lois Lane moment.

Troubling Signs?: Ochako said “I would like to be excluded from this narrative” when it comes to her feelings for Deku. She’s a hero damnit! So if they are in for something, probably won’t be while they are still in school.

II. DabiHawks. Status: Yikes.

- Dabi and Hawk’s very public breakup set this fandom in disarray but also kind of disayay?

Anime Highlights: None yet. This fandom was cruelly cock blocked by Bones. Sorry DabiHawks stans.

Manga Highlights: Where to begin, my goodness. With these fans, I guess the good and the bad is a plus in this homoerotic double agent relationship. We have the notion that Dabi may have known Hawks when they were kids, which may be a positive? Hori sure loves his childhood friends. Other than that. The GIRLS WERE FIGHTIN’. Hawks is now permanently scarred by Dabi and I don’t think it was kinky folks. Tokoyami inserted himself in the middle to White Knight Hawks, Dabi broke up with him via YT expose and overall, shippers could anguish in the absolute MESS that this ship endured this year. But I’m sure that’s part of the appeal. So...yay?

Heroes Rising: They were both in it.

Troubling Signs?: The entire relationship is a troubling sign which again, is part of the appeal. Maybe Hawks will cuddle up with Dabi’s father after the war. That’s troubling! Speaking of...

III. EndHawks. Status: Yearning and Burning.

-If there’s one thing Endeavor couldn’t stop worrying about, it was his hot (in more ways than one) new side piece who probably should have looked at the fine print when signing a contract to be a recurring guest star on “Keeping up with the Todoroki’s”.

Anime Highlights: A fateful meeting finally in high definition for all our eyes to see! Hawks’s unwavering support of his biggest hero was endearing to watch and their shenanigans together spurred the anime onlies to finally jump on the biggest May-December ship in the series.

Manga Highlights: Endeavor’s admiration and concern for Hawks seeped through the pages as we entered our most exciting arc in the manga yet. Fate split these two up yet entwined their downfall together. And that Fate’s name was Dabi...or should I say ⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️ or should I just say Touya!

Heroes Rising: “Don’t bite my head off, Endeavor.” Geez, can you flirt a little less loud Hawks?

Troubling Signs?: They say never meet your heroes and Hawks is in for a rude awakening. We shall see just how deep his admiration runs or if Endeavor’s past will split our dynamic duo up for good.

IV: TodoDeku. Status: “Precious”

-Shoto’s “Midoriya is in Danger” radar was highlighted in both manga and anime. 4th User’s quirk, who?

Anime Highlights: “Midoriya hasn’t returned yet.” “Where’s Midoriya?” “Midoriya! Grab my hand!” “Have some of my Soba Midoriya.” Shoto gets it. His emotional support friend is a danger magnet. TodoDeku’s also enjoyed tiny tidbits in the OVA such as a hand grabbing scene. Gotta hold tight to those crumbs.

Manga Highlights: Two Words. “Precious Friend.” Deku comes in w/o arms or legs fighting for Shoto and Shoto’s honor. These two spent the entire year worried sick about each other, and going against all odds to save each other. Precious Friends indeed. TDDK fans ate.

Heroes Rising: Shoto kicks some dog ass and then faints thinking of Deku (and Bakugo but shh. Let the shippers rejoice.) On the bright side, we have a 3rd movie coming featuring “The Three Musketeers” so shippers of TdDk can HOLD TIGHT to what’s to come.

Troubling Signs?: Shoto still doesn’t know about OFA and he’s gonna have LOTS of questions after this arc. Will Deku finally tell him? If not, it could make or break the ship.

V. TodoBaku. Status: “Shining through the city with a little funk and soul.”

-Who knew the greatest comedy duo we needed was Shoto and his hot headed “friend” or not friend? It still remains unclear to Shoto. Regardless, these two had a fun year.

Anime Highlights: “I wanna see your cute face”, disco dancing, and more fun in the provisional license training. Plus the OVA added some cute moments between the two such as Bakugo staying behind to save Todoroki during a dangerous excercise and his adorable plan neatly animated for us. I’d say TodoBaku’s really were resurgent and energized this year!

Manga Highlights: Shoto, that is not how you properly Catch a Kacchan, I’m sorry. But at least you did it you mad lad. As with Deku, Shoto spent the year worried sick about Bakugo. While the anime let us have our fun, these two were suffering in the manga.

Heroes Rising: Again, Shoto put a dog down and then fainted with Bakugo on his mind (and Deku but we ignore that. Shush.) TodoBaku’s have the 3rd movie to look forward to which is bound to have some amazing content!

Troubling Signs?: They have a lot of trauma to deal with. And a lot of Deku to worry about. I also imagine Shoto will be hurt about being left out of the OFA secret. We shall see what 2021 has to offer.

VI. KiriMina. Status: Unbreakable.

-Changing your hairstyle to match the gal who inspired you in middle school? Sorry y’all but if Mina were a guy, I’d say that’s gay af.

Anime Highlights: We got that backstory Bois. Red Riot’s origin might as well make him be called Pink Riot. Again with Hori and the childhood friends though I wouldn’t exactly call them friends. They just went to the same middle school but Kirishima was highly influenced by Mina’s Chivalrous spirit! A ship is born!

Manga Highlights: The influence is mutual! Mina creates a move based on Kirishima’s unbreakable and we all let out a collective “awwww”. Also in the war arc, we got Kirishima making sure Mina’s chivalrous spirit shines through right into Gigantomachia’s mouth! KiriMina may just be the unsung MVP’s of this arc.

Heroes Rising: They were in it.

Troubling Signs?: I can’t think of a single one. KiriMina’s can enjoy a peaceful sailing.

VII: KiriBaku. Status: Crumb Collectors.

-2020 was an uneventful year for KiriBaku but Bones made sure there were crumbs aplenty! Thank God for OVA’s!

Anime Highlights: KiriBaku’s did thrive in one episode! Kirishima reflects on the sludge incident and evolves his quirk based on inspiring words from Bakugo! Hooray! KiriBaku’s can thrive in their blossoming friendship. The OVA also has Kirishima (and Kaminari but shh) once again following Bakugo’s lead when it comes to the training excercise. How can you not? He’s so manly!

Manga Highlights: Not gonna lie. There is nothing much here this year. I did find a teeny tiny flake in Aizawa’s flashback. Kirishima and Bakugo are sitting next to each other. Oh! And at the hot pot gathering, Bakugo sits next to Kirishima! Eat your crumbs KiriBaku’s! There’s always next year!

Heroes Rising: Kirishima hangs with a lazy Bakugo and delivers the most hilarious line in the whole movie. “Silly Bakugo, there won’t be villains here!” Hahah... Silly Bakugo. Oh you~ KiriBaku’s can inhale the fact that those two sure love to hover around each other!

Troubling Signs?: With great crumbs come little responsiblity. No trouble if there’s no content! 🤔

VIII: KamiJirou. Status: Singing their hearts out 🎶

-If there’s any ship that’s coming close to canonization, I think this is it, folks! “Think of the person most important to you!” Can’t argue with Midnight!

Anime Highlights: Kaminari does non stop encouraging of Jirou and her hobbies! He works super hard to learn guitar for her sake! We love a king who can encourage his queen!

Manga Highlights: Kaminari thinks of the most important person to him and surprise! It’s Jirou! All of the feels can commence.

Heroes Rising: They were in it!

Troubling Signs?: Kaminari does love his women. And men. Kaminari overall is a huge flirt. But Jirou appears to have his heart strings. ❤️

IX: BakuDeku. Status: Rising. 👑

-Alternative Statuses include Winning, Thriving, Soaring. It’s just been non stop content this year. 2020 is truly the year for BakuDeku. The shippers can rejoice.

Anime Highlights: Three words. Be. My. Cane. The OVA’s helped fan the flames of the BkDk hearts with a surprise! Deku tops! Not only that, we got a lovely shoulder tap of encouragement in the canon material. While in season 4, Deku’s primary focus was Eri. Bakugo and Deku still had their moments to be hella gay.

Manga Highlights: Where do I even begin? I guess we’ll just cut to the chase with Bakugo Katsuki: Rising. We finally saw Bakugo’s true feelings manifest for Deku and if getting stabbed for him isn’t the ultimate showing of love, then idk what is. BakuDeku’s rounded out the year with the Volume 29 cover AND the volume 29 cover drafts to eat at our heart strings. Overall, their relationship got the spotlight in the manga this year. And we’re bound to start 2021 with a dramatic confrontation. Hand holding seems to be the key with these two and it didn’t stop with Heroes Rising...speaking of.

Heroes Rising: The entire movie. Like....yeah. That’s it. [OP, your bias is showing. You have to be SPECIFIC.] {But random criticizer in my head, if I lay out the entire plot of the movie, my post will be too long} [OP....] UGHHHH Okay okay. The POPSICLE MELTING. THE HAND HOLDING. THE CHARACTER DESIGNS OF WHAT MIGHT AS WELL BE THEIR LOVE CHILDREN. Did I mention? “It’s fine if it’s you?” CAUSE YEAH. Oh and All Might randomly officiating their wedding in their heads like idk. Isn’t it just simpler if I say the whole movie??!

Troubling Signs?: Well these two’s relationship is extremely delicate and while it has non stop soared this year, Deku might not take too kindly to Bakugo almost dying for him. Will they stop pushing each other away? Time will tell.

That’s all for this year folks! Happy Shipping and good luck to everyone next year!

[linkspooky]

Kamo and Megumi is the same... 

I’ve always read the Kyoto vs Tokyo arc as a breakdown of communication.The Kyoto kids want understanding, but  due to everyone being teenagers the Kyoto Kids cannot explain and the Tokyo Kids cannot understand. One of the stand out moments is when Kamo insists they are the same, and Megumi just says no. 

They are both dark haired, quiet, introverts. They were both born outsiders. Toji and Kamo’s mother the prostitute. People that the clan looked down on. However, the clan will take in their children because they were born with a strong cursed technique. They’re both strategists, who act like they’re logical, but tend to be swayed by emotions instead. They’re both trying to protect someone, Megumi his sister, and Kamo his mother and both only became jujutsu sorcerers to protect these people. 

But yeah, they’re totally not the same at all... More under the cut. 

So, why does Megumi reject Kamo so utterly? 

Well, on the surface level it’s simply because Kamo is wrong.

To explain complicated morality a bit. 

Killing one child, even if it’s to protect the peace of everybody else is ethically wrong. 

However, the position Kamo is trying to explain to Megumi is utilitarian. He’s saying, the best way to handle this situation is to do what’s best for everybody, kill one person out of a hundred to save ninety nine. 

He then also adds that, because they’re both heirs to political families they are pressured to think that way. Kamo is thinking in a utilitarian sense, because, he’s saying that as a family with major political power they have to make their decisions on the scope of society as a whole. 

So adding onto that,  Kamo is acting like there is a higher order of reasoning. He says they are expected to think in strictly numerical terms like this, they have to be utilitarian, they have to make their decisions without personal bias, because that’s what is expected of them as the future heads of clan. Kamo is also trying to elaborate, he’s not really allowed, to let personal feelings get in the way of his judgement, because from such a young age he’s always been forced to act responsible in every situation. 

So basically.  Kamo is saying. I’m not allowed to do what I think is right because I’m the son of the Kamo clan, I have to do what the clan thinks is right and fall into line with their utilitarian thinking. 

Megumi’s response to this is, I don’t care about that, I decide things based on what I think is right.

So on one level Megumi is right. Kamo is not actually doing what he thinks is right, he’s doing what the clan thinks is right and claiming he has no choice. Megumi is saying “I don’t care about your cicrumstances or what’s pressuring you, I still believe it’s wrong for you to try to kill my friend.” 

He also, is right in calling that most people are just following their own conscience and just trying to do what they think is right. Kamo’s repressed motivation this entire time is, he’s not really thinking of the whole clan, he’s just trying to do right by his mother. Megumi, is trying to save Tsumiki and Yuji, Kamo is trying to save his mother, however they go about it in different ways, Megumi by saving people selfishly, and Kamo by pretending to be the dutiful and loyal son. 

Megumi’s callout works. Both Megumi and Kamo are just doing what they feel is right in this situation. Kamo is the one pretending like he has a higher reasoning. He’s using the clan’s control over him as a way to excuse himself for what he knows is wrong. 

However, on another level Megumi is wrong.

Megumi is saying, you are doing a bad thing. Therefore, you are a bad person and I don’t have to listen to you. 

When it’s really that Kamo is in a bad family situation. It’s true Kamo’s choices are his own, and he can still make bad decisions and held to responsible for them, however, it’s impossible not to look at Kamo’s family situation, because one it influences his decisions so much (the constant flashbacks to his mother, he’s trying to do what will protect his mom), and two because it resembles Megumi’s own family situation so much (Megumi is also, someone who became a Jujutsu Sorcerer to save his sister). 

“We have no choice but to curse each other.” 

In other words. 

“I don’t care to hear what your reasons are, I’m just going to fight you.” 

It’s never a good thing when you’re quoting Geto. 

This is a bad end. This is where the talks break down. The thing is, both Megumi and Kamo are wrong because they are both kids. Yes, Kamo shouldn’t have ever agreed to the order to kill Yuji but at the same time, Kamo never should have been put in that situation. It’s the adults that are making these kids fight, it’s the adults that create the situations where these kids fight. 

Megumi is using a simplified morality here. Megumi unconsciously divies people into good or bad people and judges them based upon that. We’ve seen them do this countless times, he sees the bad people as not worth saving, and then puts the good ones on a pedestal where they can do no wrong. 

His sister is a “good person” therefore she’s always a good person. Yuji is a “good person” therefore no matter what he does he’s always a good person and worth saving. The problem with this sort of black and white morality is that it doesn’t apply to a life that is a very, messy, gray. The thing is, the way Megumi sees the world the only people who ever do bad things are bad people. 

Well, this guy must have been bad because he hit someone while driving without a liscense.

Megumi says while not knowing the circumstances at all.  Maybe he was driving to work without a license because his mom needed the money and he was still in high school and couldn’t get one? Maybe, he actually felt sorry about it. 

The thing is, the guy was arrested, and was already actively serving penance for his crime. And yet, Megumi is like, “Nah he’s not worth saving. I was planning on letting him die.” 

That’s like, an awful thing to think, because crimminals are no longer human and therefore no longer worth saving. That’s how simplified Megumi’s view on morality is, it’s downright childish, once you’ve done a bad thing you’re labeled as bad for life. People can’t improve, or repent or feel sorry for what they’ve done. 

The thing is people do bad things all the time without meaning too, or for understandable reasons, or because they’re people. Megumi’s primary fear is what if the person I save, turns out to be a bad person?

However, that doesn’t come from a place of hating crimminals per se. 

It comes from Megumi’s tenderness, his kindness, his fear of hurting people. Childish is the best way to describe it. Megumi’s primary character trait is that he was abandoned by both parents, he doesn’t really know how to survive in the world but he has to pretend that he does because no one else is there to take care of him. Add onto that the idea that he was sort of forced into becoming a jujutsu sorcerer first by his dad selling him, then by Gojo only intervening on the premise that he come to work for him instead. Second, on the fact that he was completely powerless to stop whatever was happening to Tsumiki. 

It makes perfect sense that Megumi has a really childish morality, he is a child, and it doesn’t come from a place of wanting to punish bad people so much as he’s afraid of other people getting hurt by his actions, and he’s afraid that he might be at fault, that he might be the reason that people like Toji, and Tsumiki left his life. Megumi is so careful with choosing his actions, because he’s so afraid that he’s the reason everyone else around him left him, and if he screws up he’ll lose other people again, or he’ll hurt people. It comes from Megumi genuinely being a soft guy towards almost everyone he meets, just like Yuji. 

The problem is, Kamo is the same.

Kamo is also someone coping really badly with circumstances just like Megumi is. However, when it comes to judge Kamo Megumi just ignores those circumstances. 

The difference between Kamo and Megumi is that one of them is good, or one of them is bad, they’re not better than the other, their fight even got interrupted and ended in a tie. They are both children.

The difference is their circumstances. Basically at this time, Kamo had already been placed as the next head of the Kamo clan, whereas Megumi was still being protected by Gojo. Megumi doesn’t stop to think about how their circumstances might be different, because he doesn’t think of circumstances at all he’s still hung up on good people vs. bad people. 

The reason that Kamo decided to turn against Yuji is that he was being pressured too, he thought he had to choose between doing the thing he thought would help his mother, or saving a random stranger. He made a bad choice, but people make bad choices in bad circumstances. 

The problem with Megumi’s reasoning is that he assumes because he’s deciding things based on his own conscience, that he’ll just somehow be stronger in those circumstances. Megumi assumes that he would still make the right choice, even if put into Kamo’s cricumstances. However, how would Megumi react if he was forced to choose between Yuji and Tsumiki. If he had to decide which one to save? 

Now, Megumi is being pushed into similiar circumstances that Kamo once faced. 

Tsumiki, who Megumi always held up as his gold standard of a good person might do something bad. Geto says he’s going to release all the new cursed energy users he created and make them fight, Tsumiki might hurt someone. 

Yuji, who also was what Megumi decided was a good person also has hurt a lot of people now. 

Yuji and Tsumiki are both victims of circumstance the same way Kamo was once. Yuji never wanted to do anything bad, his only intention the whole way was to save people. Yuji ended up hurting a lot of people in Tokyo. It wasn’t even his fault, but the undeniable reality is it’s still something that happened. 

This is why dividing people into good or bad doesn’t work, good people can still hurt other people, good people make mistakes, good people are capable of doing wrong. 

You could say that Yuji should have always known about the possibility that Sukuna would rampage, but it didn’t occur to him, that one he’d ever be in a situation where Gojo wouldn’t be around to stop him, and two he didn’t think he’d be fed ten or so fingers at once. It’s true Yuji wasn’t acting responsibly as Sukuna’s host, but Yuji is, just a kid. He’s like seventeen. There’s no way he can be held responsible in every single situation. 

If you wanted to be pedantic you could even go back and say that Kamo’s decision was the right one. That Megumi should have killed Yuji all along, because the threat was always there that Yuji might let Sukuna rampage and kill hundreds of people.

However, even that is missing the point. The point being that, Kamo, Yuji and Megumi are all just kids. It’s unreasonable to expect any of them to be well adjusted in these circumstances. By expecting these kids to act like rational adults in situations that most adults couldn’t handle, then blaming the kids for their reactions, all you’re ensuring really is that the kids pay for the adults mistakes. 

Now, Megumi is being put into the exact same position as Kamo. He’s a child, being forced to now act like the heir to the Zen’in clan because Gojo is no longer around to protect him. He’s going to become a piece to be manipulated by the adults around him. 

Megumi probably won’t do very well in this situation, because he’s just a kid. If anything that’s the strength of Jujutsu Kaisen as a manga. Characters don’t ever like heroically overcome circumstances with sheer willpower alone. Yuji isn’t acting heroic like now, he’s horrified by what Sukuna used his body to do, he doesn’t feel like he can go back home right now because his friends wouldn’t accept him anymore, and he would just hurt them. It’s almost etter to see Yuji falter with circumstances instead of heroically overcome them, because now Yuji feels like a real kid. He feels what any kid would feel in that situation, he struggles with it. 

Kamo and Megumi are the same, because they’re just kids. I wish Megumi would see that too, because he might learn to be more forgiving towards himself. It’s not his fault that Toji and Tsumiki left because he wasn’t good enough. 

The strange thing is Yuji thinks that Megumi might blame him for what happened in Tokyo and think he is a bad person now, but Megumi is much more likely to blame himself. He’ll think it was his choice to save Yuji that led to Sukuna rampaging and he has to bear all the respnosibility alone without Yuji. When the truth is it’s neither of their faults, because both Megumi and Yuji are just kids. 

[hamphobicbasil]

Could u elaborate about the dsmp story being bad? Not a rabid/brain dead fan, just genuinely curious and I enjoy reading people's rants lolol

oh you dont know the floodgates you just opened

a few things:

1. despite not liking the creators of the dsmp anymore, I don't actually hate most of them. [the ones that are particularly unsavory fall outside of this of course] so all that I'm saying i truly mean in a critical sense towards the story, its also just all purely my opinion as someone who enjoys fictional and fantasy stories and who like criticizing works to see what it does well and what it doesn't do well

2. for clarification I'm going to use the c![name] to indicate when I'm talking about the characters. Don't get me wrong, I think its annoying too but its the only way I'm gonna be able to write this thing without getting something across the wrong way yknow?

3. I stopped watching the streams after November 16th, [save for one Techno one but I closed out after a particularly bad story beat lol] and so all information coming afterward is all second hand from either me seeing people on twt talk abt it or people dming me. All i really know is up to dream's imprisonment and some stuff past that.

4. This is mostly aimed towards the "main" story, so stuff abt the badlands, eggpire, and whatnot are briefly mentioned.

anyways uh, i'll try to be brief but also include enough information to get why i feel the way i do on some stuff across

A. Performances Alright obviously these people are all streamers, so obviously they might not be the best actors, and hell no one is even asking that of them. However, when you're telling a story that's based on the audio with the visuals kinda coming to a second, it's gotta be pretty strong. I will say, some of the best actors in my opinion are Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. I would include Ranboo but I never watched any of his story bits or story streams so I can't say much. Wilbur and Tommy are excellent in selling their character's emotions and feelings, when I watch the stream I don't feel like I'm watching an rp but an actual thought-out story yknow? And one of my favorite Tubbo examples was in the Hog Hunt video whenever Techno attacked him, he sounded genuinely afraid and I believed everything his character was feeling.

However, unfortunately, not everyone is gonna be that good. And I'm gonna say it; Dream and Techno have to be the worst out of the entire cast. I understand Techno's whole character is this monotoned badass, however, when really emotional moments hit I feel like he never lets that fall, and a lot of intense moments just ring hollow. And I'm sorry but Dream's attempts at being intimidating leave me laughing whenever I watch them. It feels like he watched that one scene from The Marriage with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson and said "Oh this is what good acting looks like! Just yelling." His whole "I don't give a FUCK about Spirit!" speech isn't as great as people keep making it out to be. And whenever he tries to act coy when being a villain it feels like a guy reading the script for the first time, a bit like he's trying too hard. I have more problems with his character but his portrayal certainly doesn't help.

Everyone else is fine, and I don't feel strongly either way about a lot of them.

B. The "Lore" Okay first off, I can't be the only one who thinks it's silly that people are calling the dsmp's story "lore" when it's not, it's the fucking story. Lore indicates backstory to either the world or the characters, which a lot of the streams don't really pertain to. This is a really petty section but god it's a weird pet peeve of mine.

Other than the misusage of "lore" vs "story", the actual lore and world-building of the world are so lackluster that new elements can be introduced whenever and it often feels cluttered or not well thought out at all. And here's the thing, I feel like if the writers sat down just for a few minutes to establish world rules and general history, a lot of this could be solved! but so much is made up on the spot that it starts to feel like they're grabbing at straws to keep people invested, trying to reach that next high and intense story beat without actually earning it.

C. The Egg / Eggpire This is a pretty minor note since I was only invested in the Egg storyline for a little bit, but god it's so underused that it's almost embarrassing. Bad has provided this super interesting antagonistic force that's infecting the SMP, can control people, and who one of our main character is immune to, and it's just never used or even talked about again? Now I understand if he wanted to keep it to a side storyline only, however, to introduce this borderline eldritch creature and force within the world and then never have it dealt with is so weird.

D. The Writing Oh boy this is. kinda a big one. Now I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty obvious I have a bias for the Wilbur writing over the current team [that consisting of Dream, Quackity, and Tommy mostly]. I don't this his writing is perfect by any means, the characters constantly bringing up traitors got obnoxious after a while, and writing Hamilton but in Minecraft really isn't the modern Shakespeare or anything. However, I think his exploration of characters and plot progression was a lot more thought out and well planned, like he actually had two brain cells behind the story yknow? The current team I think fails to be as emotional or even impactful, things happened too fast and my god was everything drowned in angst for so long.

Don't get me wrong, you gotta have your characters face hardships to make them reach their goal believable, but some of the shit they put the characters through just felt like too much. From c!Tubbo's constant comparison to c!Schlatt [who btw, fucking ordered his death and kept him from his friends in a nation he felt trapped in] and on a side note, i kinda really fucking dislike the "c!Schlatt dad!!" au's or the au's where c!Tubbo inherits some of Schlatt's features, it would be like c!Tommy getting a c!Dream mask after his exile, it's feels so weird yet people eat that shit up for some reason.

But god, did c!Tommy get the brunt of it all and in retrospect after his final death, it kinda feels really fucking gross. Now obviously, I'm not trusting any of these people to write decent mental health representation, but c!Tommy's PTSD and how it was explored was just degrading. [Specifically the scene in that one Techno stream where he saw the final control room from the first war, and had a flashback / panic attack where he started calling out for c!Dream. I understand this is an actual thing people with PTSD will experience, but it felt so fucking stereotypical it got on my nerves. I actually had to close out of the stream because it made me feel sick, fiction shouldn't leave you feeling that way.] And don't get me started on how they basically reused the formula from the previous arc. [Problem introduced -> Tensions rise as things start to fall apart -> Big confrontation -> Exile -> Return from Exile -> Blowing up L'Manberg, again.]

And speaking of characters-

E. Character Arcs, or the lack of them In my genuine opinion, some of these characters' arcs are so disappointing. Especially c!Tommy's. I'm not one to believe that he was a "selfish" character or anything, however, his goals were simply set on his discs and maybe c!Tubbo, he didn't have much outside that. However, L'Manberg gave him something to care about, he gave up his discs for it and he fought for it tooth and nail, I think it taught him to open up to others and trust more. It was a great character arc for him to have, seeing him still fight even after his first exile alongside c!Wilbur, to return safely to the nation that he and his found family had built.

But then his second exile happened, and I feel like all of that was undone.

c!Tommy's exile genuinely pisses me off for so many reasons. It's not that characters can't have their low points after reaching a major change or feeling like they've "completed" their arcs or anything, but it's more of the fact that it seems like he's never going to heal that feels like a spit in the face, especially to people who might have had setbacks like that before. Progress isn't linear, sometimes things happen and you get knocked back down, it can take a while to get back up, but I don't think c!Tommy's character is ever going to be allowed to get back up. From c!Dream, who pretty much was a constant abuser in his life, killing him then reviving him, and his still fractured relationship with c!Tubbo, which by the way I have a had time believing they would still be friends after all that happened, it feels like he can never get a win and it's generally kinda a shit way to treat your characters who have been abused. Of course, not all abused characters are going to get happy endings, I'm not trying to dictate that they all should, but c!Tommy deserves one and the fact that it's so obscure feels shitty.

Side note: we still don't have a canon reason to give a shit abt the discs. Like I'm sorry but without some sorta connection to the MacGuffin why should we give a shit about him getting them other than "he wants them lol". Like hell, I would even accept the classic "they were the last gifts from his parents" or something, but we still don't have a reason.

c!Tubbo also lacks a fulfilling arc as well, from someone who started out as a yes man, he has progressed a bit into having his own interests first, but besides that sometimes his character makes me so. depressed. He's easily one of the most pushed around and hated characters within the story, all for being a kid who didn't know what to do and he's in the same vein as c!Tommy; these kids can't get a break. Also, his anti-violence beliefs morphing into the "lets kill c!Techno lol!" bit was so out of place and without proper build-up it was like. what. And now he's building nukes?? god c!Tubbo makes me so sad because he's kicked around constantly and never given a chance to grow.

Another small note, I also don't really enjoy c!Techno at all. Besides the previously stated reasons of lack of emotions when they're really needed, I find his character to be weirdly pretentious. He talks as if he's constantly been betrayed and hurt but I personally, don't see it? Like, I think one of the main examples was the Pogtopia vs. Manberg war, yknow he wanted to end the government but they just reinstated it after they won = c!Techno upset. But this doesn't make sense to me because why did he think otherwise? The entire time c!Tommy had talked about taking back their nation and starting again, so the fact that c!Techno suddenly thought there would be a sudden change is, to put it bluntly, kinda fucking stupid. I don't want to say that he "plays the victim" or anything because that feels a bit harsh, but his character feels so far up his own ass that I can't enjoy him.

I have a major grip with c!Dream as well, but that's getting it's own fucking section.

F. L'Manberg This is a quick note before we get into the, forgive me for this, endgame, of this entire rant, since the next two sections are tied together. But god, L'Manberg makes me upset because it feels like they gave up on it.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that it is supposed to be c!Wilbur's "unfinished symphony", the thing that destroyed a once charismatic and widely loved man, his attempt at power that utterly ruined him. But the fact that it just got blown up in the end after everything and left to rot felt like such a waste of time. From the first war, to Pogtopia, to even c!Tommy's exile, it all felt fucking worthless in the end, and the story is actively closer to how it was when it started now more than ever. I wished it was actually allowed to exist and continue to be a peaceful place in what is a chaotic world, but no it was just snuffed out because why dedicate to this concept of finding others you can band together with and feel safe. fuck that noise apparently?

G. The Villains Now villain-wise, I'm only talking about c!Dream [during the first war], c!Schlatt, and c!Wilbur. And believe it or not, this is actually mostly positive.

Now I'm not gonna lie, c!Dream as a staring antagonist wasn't bad actually, he posed a genuine and threatening opposition to L'Manberg, even if we didn't know his real intentions or motivations as to why he was against it. He's lucky in this sense because he didn't have to be good, he had to be passable. If anything, he felt more like an anti-hero than a tyrant or traditional villain, and my god do I wish he kept this theme going forward.

Now quick disclaimer, I don't like JSchlatt as much as the next guy, he's an adult man who should know better than to joke about some sensitive topics and act the way that he does. But the one thing I'll ever give him is that damn, was he a good actor for his character.

Now here's the thing, c!Schlatt wasn't particularly deep at all. He had no real motivations behind his exile of c!Wilbur and c!Tommy other than getting competition out of the way, had no reason to act the way that he did and yknow? that's fine. The reason why he worked was from his performance alone, he was actually intimidating. When he came onto the stream and was doing his typical bad guy stuff, it was actually intense to see what he would do. Whenever he would almost catch c!Tommy back in Manberg, whenever he would begin to pressure c!Tubbo, it put you on the edge of your seat and it felt like everything would change at the drop of a pen. He's a villain to be a villain, and this works out because he's just charismatic and well put together enough to make it interesting, even without the backstory or motives.

c!Wilbur however, is much more tragic, and the best villain of the story. He essentially was the "mentor turned evil" trope and it felt terrible watching him descend into madness, unable to trust barely anyone except for c!Techno and c!Tommy. Hell, in the end I think he still cared about them both, despite losing everything. Sure, he blew up L'Manberg, but there was still a smidge of the old c!Wilbur in there made everything he did feel melancholic. His death at the hands of his father after achieving his final wish was chilling, and something I still think about.

Until yknow, Ghostbur came back way too soon to let people feel his loss as a character within that world. And then he got revived, pretty much-undoing everything that moment meant for his character lol.

And then there's the worst one:

H. Dream. I'm going to be completely honest, c!Dream is one of the main reasons why I dislike the current dsmp stuff so much. Outside of his actions as a person, the way Dream decided to write his character as this overpowered madman of the dsmp really just. destroyed any intrigue that he could've had. Perhaps this is from my growing dislike towards him, manifesting into a bias towards his character, but god I cannot fathom why people try to insist he's interesting when he has as much depth as a fucking puddle.

And here's the thing, I'm not even entirely against c!Dream being a villain, hell I think he would've been great as an anti-hero if anything. Make him sympathetic but not through c!George to get your precious "DNF" points or anything, but show him actually caring about the people within the dsmp, including c!Tommy and c!Tubbo. This would make his rival status with them just a bit more complicated, sure they're enemies, however, he doesn't want to hurt or kill them, and there's still a level of friendship there that keeps them bonded when things get super bad. This could've been super interesting to see, the first villain of the story receiving a sorta redemption arc then descending into madness as he started to fixate on being a god. This is all how I feel personally, but god do I feel like it would've been better than his current character, and hell would've worked with how he was during the Pogtopia arc, before the war that is. I'm not trying to tell Dream how to write his own character, but there are so many other ways he could've done the madman seeking to become god rather then. whatever the hell we got.

Because instead, we got this power-mad asshole who does things... because he can? And that's one of my major issues: he tries to surround his character in mystery to make him "intriguing" but it's kinda like c!Techno, it comes off as pretentious. Not only that, but you cannot keep waving around this mystery of a backstory without ever actually revealing it. I know the story isn't over, but c!Dream is effectively at his lowest point, now would be the time to reveal his backstory. But no just keep it in the dark and keep everyone guessing, that's totally fun and not at all tiring and annoying. (sarcasm, if anyone needs it)

And back to his performance, he doesn't sell this aloof, cynical and strategic warrior that has perfected the blade or some shit, he comes off as some angry guy yelling on reddit. which i don't need to tell you, isn't intimidating. It feels like he's trying to have c!Schlatt's intimidation combined with c!Wilbur's depth, but instead he's like a little brother who's trying to hard to mimic his older brother and is kinda embarrassing himself.

but other then that i dont feel too strongly abt the dsmp lol

but seriously, these are the main complaints I have abt the story tbh, I could probably talk about more but I wont because man. this is probably gonna get me in trouble if any of the hyper-dsmp fans actually read it.

[kitkatopinions]

Every time someone is like “I don’t care if Atlas falls, it’s irredeemable, the people there are all assholes anyway, I feel no sympathy for them,” I just... I just sit there and think

Who’s that girl?

Who’s that girl?

It’s Weiss!

Weiss is the poster child for why it’s broke as heck to just condemn the whole of Atlas. She comes from arguably the biggest place of privileges in the whole show. Not only is she from an incredibly wealthy family, who have a history of mistreating Faunus (even suggested to have taken part in relatively recent slave labor and at the very least massive abuse of what was likely a minor,)  but she was one of the most racist against the Faunus characters ever, who was a jealous, entitled brat at the start of the show. Her whole early character arc is about getting better and rising above her own bias and her own problems as well as those of her family. She’s a ready, constantly on hand example of how some people in Atlas can change. If Weiss deserved a chance and is now one of the most loved characters in the show, why are even her fans saying that they don’t care if Atlas burns? You know who else is a character we just got proof isn’t just an Atlas jerk in the latest episode?

Whitley. Weiss had all but written him off, but Whitley proves that he’s actually a compassionate person who knows when to put aside his feelings in order to do good when he calls on Klein to help Nora. He doesn’t do it for Weiss, he does it because it’s right. Whitley isn’t even proof that people can change, because his biggest crime was only being a snipe to his sister. Instead, he’s proof that goodness can come in surprising places and sometimes you’re just too biased to see people’s good qualities. Of course, both of these characters are ‘good by breaking free of their norm,’ but do you know who’s proof that not everyone was raised the way they were?

Neon and Flynt. I may not be into their characters, but these guys proved that Weiss is actually not the default of people in Atlas. There were kids from working class backgrounds, and one of them was an Atlas born Faunus. Of course not everyone in Atlas are rich, racist, jerks, when there’s literally these two characters who tell us that no, Weiss isn’t just the norm.

There’s an argument that unlike Weiss, Whitley, Neon and Flynt, many of the people in Atlas are adults who should know better. But it’s weird to assume that all the adults in Atlas are like Jacques and his circle of colleagues. You know who else lives in Atlas?

Klein. You know, the seemingly poor, working class, kind, apparently very versatile jack of all trades butler/chef/doctor man who made Weiss laugh after the Fall of Beacon. I may not like the dude, but you know what? He and all the other Schnee staff are proof that not all the adults in Atlas are just rich, racist jerks. Of course there’s an adult, working class populace of such a large city. It’s highly unlikely that everyone there is rich.

And then there are people essentially saying ‘Yeah, I don’t care about the literal children, the teenagers who can change, the kids from working class families, the Faunus in Atlas, the working class adults, the citizens of Mantle who have been evacuated into Atlas, or the soldiers who are doing their jobs and dying at the hands of Salem to protect the people of Atlas including our heroes who are currently sitting around drinking tea.’ I get it, you hate Ironwood and the Ace Ops and you forgot Atlas was more than them and the SDC. Maybe it’s the fault of the show, for going out of their way in season eight so far to not portray much of the goodness of Atlas that we saw in the earlier seasons. But it’s really, very broke to hope that Atlas falls, not for any benefit it can give the story, but because you couldn’t care less about any of the people there.

[stillness-in-green]

MVA In Memoriam (3/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia) (Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party)

Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade

Chapter 229 – All It Takes Is One Bad Day

• The full first page, of Jin getting mobbed by Puppet!Jins, them tearing his mask off, and flinging it and then him away. Saved them a bit of budget, I suppose, but it’s a shame to lose the drama and the violence of Twice having his mask pulled away, since it’s decent foreshadowing (indeed, possibly intentionally so, on Skeptic’s part) for the violent bewilderment he’ll be subject to shortly.

• Re-Destro’s line, “Not when he’s using his meta-ability to puppeteer, unless you want another nagging lecture.” They didn’t keep the first nagging lecture, so of course they wouldn’t keep this. I’m still annoyed, both on general principle and at the loss of RD’s implication that these nagging lectures are a regular occurrence, especially if one tries to bother Skeptic when he’s using his meta-ability. Has RD himself been on the receiving end of one? Possibly so! But you’d be less likely to think so just from the anime.

• Re-Destro’s line, “This allowed our warriors to momentarily hold back and stay out of danger.” Because why would the audience need to know that Skeptic planned for and Re-Destro cares enough to observe something like that lol?? Obviously the MLA is perfectly content to just throw their peoples’ lives away because, whatever, more where that came from! Dammit, anime, the fandom believes this enough as it is without confirmation bias from your cuts!

• Skeptic’s “fufufu” laugh, because the anime is allergic to the MLA having fun.

• The police officer’s line, “Sure, but in a case like this, you’re still to blame.” The rest of the exchange hints at it, of course, but there’s a horrifying callousness to a police officer just saying straight to the face of a teenaged orphan facing his first offense, “Yes, you were obeying the law perfectly and this guy just ran out in front of you, but it’s going on your criminal record anyway, whatever.” A weight the anime lost, and another that makes me very suspicious of the patterns behind what, precisely, was put on the chopping block.[1]

• Jin’s narration, “That police officer couldn’t have known. Me neither.” Demonstrates that Jin doesn’t really hold his fall against the one policeman. It’s a consistent thread with Jin’s character that, while he’s very jaded, he’s not actually vengeful, nor is he looking to enact systemic change. While he’s very defensive of his friends, people who hurt Jin himself are never in any real danger of him coming to collect his pound of flesh in return; he just rolls with it as part of how the world works, in the way of someone who was never given reason to believe any different. This line is a good example of that.

• From Jin’s old employer’s angry rant, deletes the note that the client that called is angry, and that the client said, “That young punk of yours did this!” It’s nothing that wasn’t obvious from the rest of the conversation, but I do I think cutting it loses a sense that this guy is just unloading all of his frustration and fear on Jin. The length of the screed, the extra details—it clearly communicates that Jin’s boss is so angry and upset he’s not paying any real mind to filtering, but just recounting every point of contention the moment they come into his mind.

• In modern society, when you’re someone without roots… Well, not a lot of people can relate to that.” It isn’t just the police that failed Jin; it’s a whole society that’s distrustful of people who don’t have a place in the fabric, and thus are unwilling to try and bring them into it. Like Tenko, there are a thousand little places where someone could have reached out a hand, but no one ever did. The audience can intuit this, but I feel it’s better to be clear about it—it’s not just the legal system that screwed Jin over; it’s every other person that never tried to help him because they were afraid of his eyes or distrusted a guy who had no connections. When Shigaraki comes, he’s not going to be coming for heroes alone; he’ll be coming for this entire tapestry of indifference and timidity.

• Skeptic’s lines, “Hrm? Fighting back? I was sure he’d either flee or cower in place... We didn’t anticipate such unity between them.” This gets at two things. Firstly, and once again, that the MLA did their research; that they came into this with educated expectations and a definite plan. Secondly, an in-character observation of what the arc has been showing the audience all along: that the League isn’t just a disparate gang of hoodlums anymore; that they’re developing real bonds. Those bonds mark them as unusual—Re-Destro comments on it in 223, as did Overhaul in 147; even Mr. Compress remarks disapprovingly on Twice’s “habit” of getting overly attached to people. It’s striking that, even though the MLA knew from Giran’s records that the League was uncommonly well-bonded, Twice’s devotion still fell outside Skeptic’s parameters.[2]

• Again Skeptic’s line, “Now his legs.” The drones don’t actually get this far (though you can see them gearing up for it on the next page), so it’s a reasonable enough cut, but it does emphasize the ludicrous, over-the-top extremes Skeptic in particular is willing to go to in securing what he wants. If, you know, “Kidnap the doubler so we have a method to make copies of the Grand Commander at our leisure,” wasn’t bonkers enough.

• Twice’s line, “Even against Gigantomachia!” It really highlights just how much mental energy Twice has been dedicating to avoiding injury, that he was able to keep it in mind even fighting a foe as overwhelming, and for as extended a period, as Machia. And like, the anime blitzed over the Machia fight so quickly, and with so little visible wear and tear to the League, that it really could have used all the reminders it could find room for about how intense those six weeks were.

• Twice’s line, “I won’t watch a friend die!” Such an important line that the composer named an entire track for it, not that the anime gave us that track in the moment it was clearly scored for. They added in a new line later in the scene which mostly gets the important sentiments back in, but loses out in being slightly less fitting to his breakthrough. See the Additions portion of the write-up on Chapter 230, following.

Framing Shifts

• The policeman in Jin’s flashback looked up at him in the anime, where in the manga, his eyes stay down on his paperwork the entire time. I realize that anime can’t just still-frame every panel of a manga and call it an adaptation,[3] so characters will do things like move and look around in different directions just in the course of inhabiting a room, Still, in this case, it has the effect of making the officer look more alert and engaged than he was in the manga, and given that this whole chunk of backstory is about Jin slipping through the social safety net, it feels appropriate to me that the officer should be completely checked out.

Additions

• A new shot of Jin(s) in his pre-massacre doppelganger army days. Didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know—it’s little more than a new angle of the gang in the truck—but it was nice to see.

Bonus Note

• They left Re-Destro’s phrase, “My company,” alone when he was talking about the micro-transceivers Skeptic was using. That’s accurate to the manga, but I’d like to remind everyone that, at that point in the anime, viewers whose only reference is the anime itself have no idea that Re-Destro is a businessman. The show skipped the commercial, RD’s intro, the dinner scene where his company comes up, and Giran’s association of RD with Detnerat; it will further go on to skip Shigaraki recognizing him from the commercial. The news report mentioning Detnerat was ten full episodes prior to Episode 110, and was followed up on in not the faintest degree. For heaven’s sake, would it have been so hard to have Hirata Hiroaki say, “My Detnerat’s,” instead of just, “My company’s”?

Chapter 230 – Sad Man’s Parade

• Deleted the MLA members that are attacking Compress as they get pushed off by the Twice wave. Not the first time, and not the last, that the anime didn’t animate the random MLA people on the street. It’s hard to take the threat of their numbers seriously when the anime kept deleting them from what are supposed to be crowd scenes, you know?

• Mr. C thinking worriedly about Dabi as he’s mulling over Geten’s strength and disregard for catching his own people in the collateral damage. It’s just a, “Dabi—!” but it’s yet another tiny cut that shaves away at the manga’s clear depiction of Leagues’ concern for one another—even Mr. Compress, who claims that such things aren’t very villainous.

Framing Shifts

• Changed the random MLA’s exhortation to kill all the Twices to a generic, “Damn—!” I know American censors have often taken issue with the words “Kill” and “Die” in kids’ cartoons, but I was never of the impression that that was the case in Japan. And it’s not like the show made any bones about Curious planning to kill Toga. A rephrase to save a second and a half on dialogue, maybe?

• Had Skeptic give his lines about failure on the way over to the elevator instead of stalking over in silence, and then dumping the whole monologue all at once. The manga’s extended silence over three identically sized panels is much funnier and more characterful. I grow ever more confident in my assessment of Skeptic as the second-most ill-treated MLA character in this adaptation.

• The return of the Doom Choirs for the Twice Parade. I really wish the anime would lay off slathering Doom Choirs all over everything, especially a moment like this: a triumph for Twice, and, true to form for Twice, also crammed to the gills with visual and verbal gags. The Doom Choir is out of keeping with both the victory and the comedy—Mine Woman, later on, served the Parade much better.

Additions

• Gave Twice a new line, “I will protect my comrades!” It was nice to make up for his, “I won’t watch a friend die!” but the latter is more characterful, especially since a more literal translation is, “I won’t kill my friends!” Which is, you know, relevant to the fact that Twice has problems telling himself apart from things that just look like him, and he just had to intervene to stop some of those look-alikes from killing one of said friends. At least it got his use of nakama back in.[4]

• A new little cut of animation as the action went back to Geten and Dabi. I suppose the Dabi fans liked it, and it was nice to see more of Geten’s ice dragon, but I’d have much preferred they could keep the scenes we already have before adding new ones.

Chapter 231 – Path

The scene of Hawks wondering why he hasn’t heard from Dabi and his subsequent flashback to the last time they spoke were relocated to the beginning of Episode 102, the first thing the audience saw after the prior episode ended with Shouto inviting Bakugou and Deku to come intern with him at Endeavor’s. In the manga, of course, it’s not “a few weeks ago in Kyushu,” it’s “meanwhile in Osaka.” Also, the order of the scenes was flipped—the episode led with the flashback, then returned to the modern day. It really makes the timeline needlessly confusing—the viewer has no real context for what we’re seeing and when, especially since the anime neglected to specify how much time passed between the two scenes. You have to assume it was enough time for an outcry to be raised over Jeanist’s disappearance, but the random shot of a bird flying over was not at all helpful there.

          Alterations included (as usual, outright removed material is in bold text):

          1. Cut Hawks’ thought, “That’s why you keep calling,” and his line, “What’s the job?” I know I should give a breakdown here about Hawks’ mentality and training, but I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to complain about any lines Takami Keigo loses. God knows the anime gives him plenty enough bonus material.

          2. Spliced in the flashback scene of Hawks reporting to the Commission from Chapter 243, but subtly changed it to suggest that it took place after the phonecall in which Dabi demanded Hawks kill a non-Endeavor top hero, rather than it taking place right after Hawks and Dabi’s first contact, which is what the manga implies.

          3. Deleted several key shots in the Jeanist apartment scene, with the effect of making Hawks way less creepy. We got an anime-original shot of his eyes, narrow and serious, but not either of the shots of his big, off-putting grin and widened eyes as he pulls a feather-blade on Jeanist. We also lost a shot of Jeanist turning to face him, framed between extended primaries of Hawks’ Fierce Wings. It’s not like the anime dropped the fake!Dead Jeanist plot, so I’m not sure why the shift, unless it’s just that they wanted to keep Hawks likable for the merch-buying crowd, not creepy and unsettling. And while I personally never believed that Hawks really killed Jeanist, a lot of people thought it was plausible, no doubt based on how off-kilter he comes across in this scene. It loses a real frisson, to just play it straight.

• Shigaraki decaying a missile in mid-air. So Dabi can get those little animation flourishes but Tomura can’t, huh, anime? I see how it is. I. See. How. It. Is.

• Spinner’s little side comment about all the ice everywhere. A nice demonstration that Geten and Dabi’s fight really is affecting huge swathes of the city; that’s certainly apparent already in a bunch of the wide shots showing exactly that, but it’s helpful to have the more zoomed-in moments, too. Also, I do enjoy those little side quips wherever we get them, and the anime often removes them.

• Thinned out the crowd guarding the route to the tower somewhat (it’s particularly noticeable on the mid-distance rooftops) and, as best I can tell, removed Shigaraki and Spinner from the shot. Why keep all the lines harping on the 110,000 number when a) it’s not even accurate to the MLA’s forces, just the League’s assumptions, and b) the studio doesn’t even have the resources to adequately convey the numbers the manga does portray?

• Somebody in the crowd being defiant about Twice’s multiplication and vigorously declaring that the League are all just sacrifices for the MLA’s Revival Party anyway. The background nobodies? Allowed to express even bog-standard over-confidence? Well I never. How dare those people think their lives count enough for them to get dialogue.

• Spinner’s, “This keeps happening!” Of course he couldn’t have that line in the anime, since the anime cut the other big place Trumpet clearly used his power to rile up his followers. What other times were you even talking about when you said, “Every time he talks,” Anime!Spinner? That scene was the first time we even saw Trumpet since he welcomed you guys to town.

• Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. He just called him a damn moron (bakayarou) in the anime; he uses the considerably more specific baka kyouso (Google Translate gives “guru”; jisho gives “founder of a religious sect”). He uses the same term again immediately afterward—Viz’s translation gives, “More like chrome dome cult!”—which the anime also deleted.

          So here’s another example of the anime doing everything it could to erase the presence of cults in the HeroAca world. The easy assumption to make is that this was tied to broadcast standards about the depiction of what Japan refers to as “new religious movements,” which—and pardon the brief swerve into real life historical horrors here—have been very unpopular in Japan since Aum Shinrikyo and the sarin gas attacks in 1995. But were these elements removed because the anime didn’t want to represent anything that smacks of new religious movements at all, or because the depiction of both the MLA and particularly the CRC are explicitly villainous and calling religious movements, even made-up ones, evil on TV leads to a lot of angry phone calls?

• Re-Destro’s line, “Unlike my good Miyashita, there’s nothing charming about you.” Of course they’d cut this, having cut the Miyashita scene, but I hate it anyway. As I said earlier, RD’s invocation of Miyashita in front of two people who are going to have not the slightest clue who that is tells me that Re-Destro really does miss and feel bad about killing the guy. Cutting the reminder that RD still feels that sting makes it much too easy to assume that Shigaraki’s right about RD hiding up in his tower, uncaring of the blood shed on his behalf, when if you read Re-Destro with even the slightest of attempts at good faith, it’s clear that those losses weigh very heavily on him.

          Incidentally, and not to harp on the art again, but in the manga, Stress is still visibly spread down from RD’s temple to the ridge of his brow over his eye socket. The anime returned it back to its normal resting state, again suggesting that the death toll mounting in the streets below (as well as, possibly, the new stress of confronting a quirk as powerful as Double) left RD completely unmoved. The spread was back in the following shot, so it was probably just an art error, but it would be nice to have had fewer of those, especially when they impact characterization as much as what RD’s Stress blots are doing at any given time.

Framing Shifts

• Had Machia doing this weird cannonball skim just over the ground, when in the manga, he’s still half-buried, spraying earth and stone everywhere. The manga never namedrops Machia’s Mole quirk during the story itself, but it’s important to know for later that Machia can not only tear through obstacles, he can tear through obstacles extremely quickly.

Additions

• Gave Hawks a few new lines about how too many unexpected things happened for their last arrangement, and that Dabi should have given him more warning. Largely seemed to be there to give the anime an excuse to flashback to the High End fight, in case the viewers had completely forgotten about Hawks and Dabi having a clandestine meeting and sniping at each other in the aftermath of that event. An understandable addition, but deeply frustrating in the context of all the lines that got cut.

Chapter 232 – Meta Abilities and Quirks

• Dropped a third instance of Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. I don’t know what the S&P restriction is on this, but given that the movie was allowed to create and villainize an entire international terrorist cult, it is really incomprehensible that the MLA doesn’t get to keep their designation as such. Why?? Because the movie involves going out and defeating its cult, but the series is going to engage in a more sympathetic treatment?[5] Because the self-selecting movie crowd is less likely to complain than the TV audience? Did they just not want to draw attention to how much the movie was ripping off the MLA’s whole shtick? What??

• Missed that RD’s swole arm swipe wipes out the puppets Skeptic left behind; they just vanished from the scene entirely after Twice’s arrival. It’s hard to blame the anime for this; the manga also seems to lose track of the fact that they’re right there in between RD and the elevator—they’re nowhere to be seen anywhere between the end of Chapter 231 and the aforementioned arm swipe, where you can see them getting obliterated. Both versions could have stood to be more attentive to this; indeed, the anime could have fixed it, small error though it is.

• A sort of twitchy sparking around Shigaraki’s hand right after he decays the tower. This is foreshadowing that Shigaraki’s big AOE decay attacks are hard on his body, which will become extremely apparent after he unleashes it on the city at large during the climax, and factors into his decision to accept the mysterious power Ujiko offers. The damage Shigaraki sustains there doesn’t come out of nowhere; Horikoshi is, on the whole, extremely good at layering in foreshadowing many chapters before the foreshadowed elements come fully to light. It makes the writing look much messier than it actually is—more convenient, more pat—to delete this stuff.

• Shigaraki recognizing RD from the Detnerat commercials. Well, they ditched the Detnerat commercial, so of course they ditched this. Still, it lost one of the indicators that Shigaraki is, despite not receiving a formal education, actually quite up to speed on current events—even, apparently, when those current events are happening while he’s been fighting Machia in an isolated stretch of mountains for six weeks! I already suffer enough through fanon characterizations of Shigaraki in which he’s a basement-dwelling feral manchild glued to his gaming console whom AFO bans from accessing information about the outside world, anime! I don’t need you dropping the scenes that most clearly demonstrate otherwise!!

• In the anime, Baby!Chikara’s face was unmarked, just a normal infant face—you’d never even know the kid had a meta-ability just to look at him. In the manga, the skin of his face is clearly darker, contrasted against the paleness of his mother’s hand. It’s obvious that he’s not “normal” looking, and thus equally obviously would have attracted negative attention in his era.[6] Also had his mother smiling; her face in the manga is too shadowed and vague to make out an expression, befitting the murky tragedy of her story and the fear she must have been living with.

Framing Shifts

Additions

• A little thing: they had Twice echo, “Cushion?” when Clone!Shigaraki told him to get ready to cushion Giran’s fall. If anything, Re-Destro and his little thought-bubbled question mark is probably the one who should have had this reaction line.

• Added a visual for Clone-araki catching himself on the window. A perfectly reasonable way to fill screen time while a dialogue beat was ongoing.

• Added a panning still over a reaction shot from a bunch of Twice clones when the tower came down. It had a few good faces in it.

                                                           ---

So, generally, this episode was better. I definitely still had issues with it, but compared to what came before, when they were trying to cram 5+ chapters into the episodes, there were far fewer cuts, and what cuts and tweaks there were, were relatively minor. Definitely nothing that made me want to throw chairs Jerry Springer-style the way 108 and 109 did.

Sadly, I can't say the same for the remaining two episodes. Come back next time for Part Four, Episode 111: Shimura Tenko, Origin.

FOOTNOTES

[1] After witnessing the massacre that was Episode 108, I was convinced they were going to cut the policeman scene entirely, and just go right to Jin getting fired for hitting someone with his bike, letting the audience think it was his fault completely rather than cast aspersions on police and the justness of the law. I was pleased they kept it at all, but less pleased with the steps taken to soften the sharpness of its accusation.

[2] Of course, it’s not like the MLA themselves don’t understand the willingness to give everything for the people who matter. They just label those feelings Devotion To The Cause, and don’t think the League is capable of such resolution.

[3] Netflix’s Way of the House Husband, be told.

[4] Nakama is, of course, a shonen standby, but, to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly limited; I don’t follow a lot of shounen series), it’s pretty rare to hear the word coming out of a villain’s mouth! Jin calling the League his nakama ties into how the League are both sympathetic villains in the larger story and also the protagonists of the current arc, thereby operating under a lot of protag tropes for the duration—foreshadowed by Spinner’s earlier talk of Shigaraki and his boyish, dream-chasing eyes.

[5] Sometime after the mass arrests, one hopes.

[6] This could well be a coloring error in the manga, but if so, you’d think they’d have corrected it for the volume release. Especially given that, again, the color is in a different shade/screentone than the shadow that covers most of his mother’s face, and her hand stroking Chikara’s chin isn’t shadowed at all.

[neokonewman]

Honestly? I think what tangled failed to do was make sure characters had good chemistry as friends. Seriously Cass and Rapunzel where like crude oil and the ocean. One single match from destruction. Season one is bottom barrel because it goes out of it's way to excuse Frederick for his shit. Season two was actually really good because Rapunzel was still herself and was making tough choices left and right. Season 3? Ohhhh boy. Season 3 was a half good half bad because while I do applaud her trying to bring her friend back into the fold? Cassandra wasn't wrong when she said "this has to stop now. This thing where you THINK you've been my friend". Cuz as far as I could tell? They were never friends. Hell even when being a slow burn villain, Varian had better friend chemistry with Rapunzel. When the show expects me to swallow "Cass and I are besties.and sisters!" whole sale? I'm not buying it.

Oooooh boy! This ask is just dripping with potential rant power. Sorry in advance for how long this answer is destinied to be!

First things first. I absolutely agree with you on how badly TTS handles chemistry amongst the main characters. Cass gets the worst of it because she is shoehorned as Rapunzel’s BFF off screen and suddenly she has equal sway on Rapunzel as Eugene? Her character can’t even be allowed to breathe most of the time because the show is obsessed with sticking her next to Rapunzel to the point that she can’t grow any further away from her. At least other show original characters like Lance and Varian have an actual introduction and a place in the world outside of Rapunzel, but even then they suffer because Rapunzel is upfront and center and there is very little wiggle room for interactions that don’t have at least have some involvement with her. It’s here where our opinions differ however.

I would make the bold claim by sayin that S1 of TTS is by far and away the best out of the three. Yes it has the glaring flaw of bias for Frederic and against Varian that makes me question whether or not it should be considered “good” but it’s much better balanced than the other two seasons that follow it. In S1 we actually get character who aren’t Rapunzel more chances to shine without her stealing the spotlight away at the last moment. In S1 we actually have an actual conflict that drives the story forward and at least pretends to care about developing the characters. Even the obnoxious bias could have still worked out in the shows favor if they were ever properly addressed in story and not swept under the rug like they were in later seasons. Heck, I would go as far as to argue that the worst parts of S1 is the fact that S2 and S3 make it worse retroactively.

S2 in my opinion is the dullest of the three, by a wide margin. With them never addressing what the mains left behind in S1 as well as taking the threat of the rocks away WAY too early, the conflict is particularly nonexistent. Not only that, but it does what I think is the worst thing a show can do during a season long journey. They never actually develop the world outside of Corona. They established that there are 6 other kingdoms in the alliance with Corona, but the most we get of any of them is the one throwaway line about them being close to the mountains of Koto in Freebird. Other than that we overstay in three separate places that end up being worthless to the plot as a whole. After spending three episodes in Vardaros right out the bat, we never return or what’s become of them afterwards. Them mains stranded on the Island is pretty dull and is only memorable to me because they had the guts of mentioning Varian again and established that Rapunzel STILL has an unhealthily delusional bias for Frederic despite of everything. The House of Yesterday’s tomorrow is just an excuse of shoehorning a bunch of magical hijink cliches that aren’t done very interesting. Heck, despite them spending a whole season getting to the Dark Kingdom, they only spend an episode and a half there and only a single night in universe. The rest of S2 is just filler that don’t even develop the characters or tell any interesting stories. Like, an enchanted forest episode even though the mid season finale takes place in another enchanted forest? A repeat of the first part of Tangled the movie with Cass replacing Eugene? Whatever the heck “Curses” was supposed to accomplish? The only thing interesting that S2 introduces is the Brotherhood, and we all know how little they are used afterwards.

I would also like to point out that at the start of S2, the mains just…. Stop developing almost entirely? Cass and Eugene never have any meaningful moments together like they do in S1, and are reduced to just taking potshots at each other to remind us that they have some sort of relationship. Lance is reduced strictly to comedic relief and in my opinion is just there to give Eugene something to do when he is removed from the plot because once again, the show is obsessed with making Rapunzel and Cass’ friendship be a thing that only matters. Hookfoot is just there to give his stand up routine about how marriage is terrible in the first episode of the season and just to exist afterwards, yet he SOMEHOW gets actual episodes focused on him while Lance suffers. Even characters properly introduced this season are cursed to never flesh out because Adira keeps pulling a vanishing act for no established reason, Hector is only gets any lines in his debut episode and never given any real focus again, and Edmund gets the same treatment as the other dads (except maybe Captain) by getting his entire character reduced to one trope later on in S3. Speaking of…

S3…. Ooooh boy S3. It’s not as boring as S2 for me, but that’s only because it’s a media equivalent of a train wreck that I couldn’t look away from. It’s like they took the two major issues of the past two seasons (the clear bias and shallow filler) and mashed them together while trying to savage it by inserting what worked in S1, (actual conflict) but completely missed the point why it worked in the first place. All pretense of caring about any other character other than Rapunzel and Cass is gone in this season. Even episodes that focus on anyone outside of Rapunzel, ends up ending with Rapunzel saving the day because she is the only one allowed to be heroic anymore.

They try to make Cass’ villain arc as complex as Varian’s but for some reason they think her blaming a literal baby for being kidnapped is enough grounds to go on a murder streak without one episode of hesitation. Lance is just there for bottom barrel dumb humor, yet the show thinks he is responsible enough to raise two kids on his own. Varian falls into the pigeon hole of just being the “kid character that hangs with the grown up mains” trope that he managed to avoid in S1 while also being just a plot device to not only give the mains access to tech, but also get shoehorned into scenes to keep the audience somewhat invested. Eugene is literal retconned in universe to be just a bland supportive boyfriend. Rapunzel, my gosh Rapunzel…. She treated is so painfully “perfect” to the point that she is completely unrelated. I’m not calling her a Mary Sue because they only ACT like she is perfect. She is still a hugely flawed human being, but the other characters just applaud her because she is “the magical, wonderous sundrop” and very little else. Also yes, Rapunzel being obsessed over Cass while playing off all the horrible actions her BFF as her being lost is the most frustrating thing ever. It’s as if she became Frederic from S1 and abandoned everyone else well being in favor of one person who doesn’t even want her attention, only worse because it’s made into a good thing. Again, S1 is made retroactively worse because of the seasons that follow it.

There is much more things wrong with S3 than S2, but honestly I find myself changing my mind a lot whether which one is objectively worse. Like making a show boring is arguably the worst thing you can do, but the choices, morals, and all around writing of S3 is just bad. Then again the writing in S2 is honestly pretty on par with S3 at times, so again, it’s a toss up.

Sorry again if this answer is a lot, but it was pretty fun at the same time. Thanks for the ask. ^^

[seattlesea]

✨My (maybe) Unpopular Heroes of Olympus Opinions✨

(maybe part one??? idk)

-I don’t really ship any of the main canon ships in HoO. None of them had any chemistry and most of them are either pedophilic, forced and rushed, or toxic in some way

-Most of the characters that were shoved into relationships (Leo, Nico, and Hazel especially) really did not need a love interest to complete their character arcs and their relationships ended up boring and flat cause Riordan just wanted everyone to have a love interest and it never went deeper than the skin

-Piper took advantage over Jason’s amnesiac state and manipulated him. She really went ‘But what if he has a girlfriend he can’t remember 👉👈 it would be wrong to start a relationship with him while he still has amnesia 👉👈 and cause it was based off lies and fake memories 👉👈 lmao imma just jump all over him and make him fall for me while he’s still amnesiac 🤪’ as if that’s not taking advantage over someone’s mental state

-And then she blamed her relationship being forced on Aphrodite and Hera saying they ‘forced her into a relationship’ and ‘arranged their relationship’ even though Aphrodite never said anything about or did anything to them and Hera gave Piper fake memories of them being a couple but it was Piper’s conscious choice to act out on those memories she knew were fake and her relationship was in no way influenced by anyone (especially Hera and Aphrodite) other than herself

-Shelper and Solangelo were way too rushed and forced (inside and outside of the books) and were only added for publicity, plus it seems like most of the fandom only like them cause they’re LGBTQ+ ships

-I hate Pipeyna and Pipabeth. My girls (especially Reyna) deserve better than some manipulative little girl who went ‘we were friends? no weren’t ❤️’

-The fandom portrays the characters really inaccurately (tweaking them a bit for humor is fine, but changing their entire personality is a different thing)

-The movies actually aren’t that bad when not compared to the books (I mean, you gotta admit- it’s pretty good effects for 2010)

-And speaking of the movies, they did a better job at portraying Thalia and Annabeth’s relationship in one movie than Riordan did in 5+ books

-Speaking of which, Riordan wrote pretty much every platonic friendship that weren’t Thalia/Nico and Reyna horribly and most of them shouldn’t have been friends and wasted all the potential for the good friendships

-Calypso should’ve joined the Hunters, not Reyna

-Annabeth and Piper are horrible friends lmao (separately and together)

-Silena is a hero and deserves redemption, but Luke doesn’t despite most of the fandom agreeing he does (he was a pedophile y’all)

-The fandom over-exaggerated the Tartarus fall, it wasn’t really that bad tbh

-Reyna is stronger and a better leader than Annabeth

-Annabeth’s intelligence is more tell than show (and quite a few characters including Leo, Reyna, and Octavian have shown more intelligence than her)

-Riordan over-glorifies and overpowers Percy way too much. Just cause he’s the main character doesn’t mean he has to be the best of the best after barely 8 months of training (four years at CHB only in the summers is 8 months total)

-Speaking of which, Jason can beat Percy (8 months versus Jason’s twelve years) and so can Annabeth, Reyna, Thalia, Hylla, Luke, Hazel and maybe Frank and Nico. Percy’s skill is overrated and unrealistic

-And I feel like most of the fandom knows that Jason can beat Percy but just doesn’t want to admit it cause they like Percy more

-Same thing with the Greeks and Romans- the majority know the Romans are stronger and can easily beat the Greeks but they don’t want to believe it cause they favor the Greeks more

-Percy and Annabeth shouldn’t have been part of the Seven, they already had their chance to shine. Riordan should’ve brought minor characters into light instead

-And Piper shouldn’t have been part of the Seven either. Riordan really expects me to believe that she’s stronger, more powerful, and a greater/better hero and deserved to be part of the Seven more than Reyna, Nico, Clarisse, Thalia, etc.?

-Riordan’s women line-up of Reyna, Annabeth, Hazel, and Piper was really cheap and boring (Avengers: Endgame women line-up who?)

-Percy (in HoO) and Piper are easily some of the worst, most underdeveloped characters Riordan has ever written

-Annabeth got really bland and weak in HoO and couldn’t do shit for herself without others (especially newbies) having to help and/or save her. She pretty much became exclusively Percy fangirl

-As much as I like them, Frank and Hazel don’t have what it takes to be Praetors and Reyna and Jason should’ve stayed as them

-Jason’s whole ‘am I more Greek or Roman’ arc was dumb af

-Riordan’s bias towards the Romans is also dumb af (the Romans could beat the Greeks in an instant)

-Jeyna is and always will be 1000x better than Jiper

-Hazel is the most powerful demigod (way more than Percy and even Jason)

-My hot take on who should’ve been the Seven: Reyna, Nico, Thalia, Frank, Hazel, Leo, and Clovis (son of the god of sleep puts Gaea back to sleep who?)

-Riordan confirming Piper bi was a cheap move to make her more likable. It didn’t even make any sense. A character is confirmed LGBT only after they become a minor character despite being a main character before and kisses some random unnamed girl only three months after her ex-boyfriend whom she still loved dies??? girl what??? Kinda obvious it was just for publicity. Like- Riordan, honey, the LGBTQ+ community is not a circus you can plop your characters into to make them more entertaining❤️

-The PJ series as a whole isn’t that creative. It’s legit just a copy of exactly what past mythological figures have already done and a bunch of character tropes and clichés shoved into one book

-And in general it’s not even that well-written (like HP, it’s over-exaggerated a lot)

-All of the romantic relationships and platonic friendships are extremely unrealistic. Like they never argue/fight, disagree, etc. (then grow stronger from those fights) at all??? Even if they’re complete opposites???

-Reyna is the best-written character in the whole series and a queen she deserved better and y’all sit on her too much

-Theyna is ✨amazing✨ their dynamic and chemistry was just *mwah Pansexual Muslim blessings to you* and people are allowed to ship them even though they’re Hunters and swore off love

-Rachel doesn’t deserve all the hate she gets. Y’all hate on her cause she crushed on Percy when half of you are doing the same thing and then y’all go and ship Percy with Nico, Jason, Artemis, Athena, etc. 

-If y’all want to hate on Jason for ‘not having a personality’ you’d also have to hate on most of the main HoO characters except Reyna, Nico, and Leo (and maybe Hazel) for the same reason cause they have the exact same problem tbh

-Zoë and Bianca’s deaths weren’t actually that sad. We didn’t get to see them enough nor did they have enough development for their deaths to have a real impact. The only sad thing about them was Zoë’s last words and Nico’s reaction

-Thalia needed more time in the books

-Reyna was the only main female character in HoO that wasn’t a boring, bland Mary Sue that all the other characters automatically loved. She was the only one with real flaws and distinct personality traits she’s my queen

-Piper, Annabeth, and Calypso did have flaws but the fact that they weren’t called out by other characters or even noticed are what makes them Mary Sues. It doesn’t matter how many flaws a character has, if they’re not called out by other characters (more specifically, other protagonists who actually like them) they don’t count as real character flaws

-Riordan can’t write female characters for shit

-Clarisse, Drew, and Octavian deserved better than being completely antagonized for no explained reason other than to make the protagonists seem better and to make the readers root for them. Those three had more potential than most of the Seven combined

-The whole ‘Aphrodite kids don’t train’ thing is bs. It’s specifically stated that all the demigods follow a strict schedule and have to follow it or they’ll be on stable duty or smth and the Aphrodite kids shouldn’t (and can’t) be excused from that

-Therefore, Drew should be way more powerful and skilled than Piper, at least enough to not back down automatically from a duel by a newbie who hasn’t even learned how to fight (Drew can control an entire cabin of people at once and Piper can barely control one person at a time, who’s more powerful again??)

-Also I have no idea why Riordan portrays all the Aphrodite kids as weak and girly in the first place. ‘Femininity’ and ‘weakness’ are not synonymous and ‘love’ and ‘beauty’ don’t equal ‘feminine’

-Speaking of which, love is actually really powerful but Piper doesn’t stand for love or ‘inner beauty’ and all her ‘thoughtful/insightful’ quotes in ToA/TBM about love were complete bs

-Riordan using the LGBTQ+ community for the sole purpose of making Piper seem more likable and ‘special’ was disgusting and proves he thinks that straight is the default- “...Or Hera’s ideas of what a perfect couple looked like. Piper finding her own way, not the one people expected of her” my ass. In other words, he’s saying ‘The expectations for love and the idea of a perfect couple are a heterosexual relationship, and anyone who 'finds their own way instead of the ones people expect’ are different’. ‘Different’ and ‘default’ are antonyms, so if you think LGBT people are different, then you think that straight is the default. Aphrodite is the goddess of love not heteronormative bullshit. Like Riordan, honey, you’re the one who thinks that the expectations for love and the idea of a perfect couple are heterosexual couples, not fictional gods from a fictional mythology. Remember kiddos- an author writes their own beliefs

If you don’t agree with some of these that’s fine sis it doesn’t matter if you have different opinions than me❤️

[beanieman]

Unpopular Opinion Time: Your Turn To Die Edition

(These all are just my silly opinions and don’t mean anything at the end of the day! Please don’t yell at me because I'm sensitive and will cry. I would love to hear others peoples thoughts about this in the ask box if you like!! )

- The floor masters are more annoying than enjoyable to me. I think it's just because they're so outlandish while the rest of the cast feels like they could be real people. I find it jarring. The two floor masters I find entertaining are Tia and Sou. Tia feels very realistic and doesn't often break the immersion. And Sou dances the line between being sadistically evil and scarily realistic very well. - I like Q-Taro's character but what he did in the vending machine ending and what Nao did in the massacre ending was not the same. Q-Taro's life was in the same amount of danger as everyone else’s, while Nao's was in imminent danger.

- I ship RanSara more than JoeSara. - Speaking of Joe, I like his character, and he's a lot of fun!! But if I rated the main cast by how much I like them, Joe would be at the bottom compared to the others. I didn't click with Joe like many other players, and I'm not sure why?? I like Ranmaru more than him.

- Something that annoys me is when I see people say, "You can't dislike Shin/Keiji if you like Shin/Keiji since their characters have so many parallels.". They have a lot of parallels, but they aren't the same. I would say they're contradicting. Shin has a mask of being a bad person, but the more we learn about him, the better he seems. (At least before the game.). While Keiji seemed like a good person to begin with, but the more we learn about him, the worst he seems. And liking or disliking either arc is fine! Someone can like or dislike any character they want! Regardless of similarities to other characters they enjoy. 

- I do not ship Keishin// at all, and don’t even really like them as a BROTP. Everyone’s shipping opinion is valid though and it’s not toxic or anything, I just don’t like it. Maybe I just have too strong of a bias for Keishima and Shinalice. 

- While Shin and Kanna's friendship should be critiqued and have the toxic parts of it acknowledged, boiling it down to Shin not caring about Kanna at all and only using her while Kanna was a thoughtless puppet to his games waters down both their characters. 

-  Referring to Shin as Sou bothers me, but I don't know how to put into words why that is. It shouldn't bother me since that's the name Shin picked for himself, but it does. I don't think anyone's wrong or bad for calling Shin Sou!! It's just a personal ick of mine that I haven't seen bother anyone else.

- I love Reko, but I'm always going to choose the Alice lives route. Reko already had a character arc before the game even began. She went from someone harsh and cold to kind and warm to those who needed it the most. While Alice has always lived for Reko. He's always wanted her approval and then forgiveness. Seeing Alice learn to live independently after never receiving the forgiveness or appreciation he wanted from his sister is more interesting to me than Reko's seemingly complete character growth. A good example of this is the Shin VS Kanna choice. It was always clear Reko would vote to save Kanna. But Alice isn't as easy to read. Kanna will assume he votes for her until Alice admits he voted for Shin. It's the little differences like that I enjoy the most about Alice's route!  

- Speaking of Reko, she had every right not to forgive Alice even if it's painful. His arrest was traumatic for her, and as far as she knew, he took an innocent life. 

[chibimyumi]

🍵Japanese Reactions☕ Kuromyu 2021

Dear everyone, I received overwhelmingly many questions about Japanese audience reactions, so here you go!

Methodology:

For this post I logged out from Twitter to avoid any bias because of my own user algorithm, and just simply searched the term “kuromyu” (生執事) , and selected “latest tweets”. As you can see, all posts have the word 生執事 in bold, meaning that was my search term.  There are a LOT of reactions, I can’t possibly discuss them all. What I did was just search at any random point of time, and take every other comment. I censored the usernames of the commenter to protect some (ceremonial) level of privacy.

I watched the Kuromyu costume rehearsal and cried, this is not it，，I think it might be better to go to Osaka [performance] without expecting too much I shouldn’t expect the Kuromyu of until last time

Honestly no matter how often I watch [the musical] this time’s Kuromyu is fantastic... as someone who knows the energy of the original comics, I really enjoyed it...

In Kuromyu Violet and Chesslock were the real thing

Like Violet’s way of walking being so slothful it was like the real thing, and the rapping of Chesslock in the cricket scene was cool

The reception of this time’s Kuromyu is entirely polarised, and indeed [this production] has a very different taste than the ones until now so I also understand the people who criticise it, but I think that’s fine.

Click “keep reading” for (a LOT) more reactions. Don’t lie to yourself and not click it, I know you all want the tea. Here’s the tea (ÒvÓ)ノ☕

There’s so much thought going on now I have seen the PV of Kuromyu. Eh? Because he [probably Konishi (Ciel)] has roots in Tennis [Probably prince of Tennis] once he holds the cricket it just looks like he’s swinging a tennis racket.

Bocchan is just too big, I’m not sure about that.

I only watched until half way ー

Calling it the Prince of Cricket is too befitting😂 Such singing and dancing, the youthfulness is exploding. They sure have stamina. #Kuromyu

Ah ーSomehow a lot of memories just popped up tears really are welling up... even though my deep-seated grudge has now passed, my obsession for Kuromyu surfaced, and it felt like it got beaten to a pulp by its big brother...

My heart is recovering through the Kuromyu DVD but the big brother is still the big brother... sob...sob (the dirty wailing of an otaku)

TLN: Big brother here means something’s superiour or better.

It became this production that made me think: Never mind the actors but is it the problem of the makers? Erm. I think it’s a waste. Is it because it’s the footage of the first day performance?

I don’t have the feeling that it’s not that, but that it somehow became cheaper? Is a really strong thought I got from this performance. With this line-up [of cast/staff] it should have been able to create the high quality of Kuromyu, but the impression is that it was a mess.

I finished watching kuromyu. Erm... somehow... it was a theatre production that strongly reminded me of the first Lycoris (the cheapness of the set), felt like they tried to create the feeling of🎾but failed, and tried to do something trendy (🎤) but then the production lost the sense of unity.

Well Mr. Tate’s [Tateishi] Sebas was good, and Undertaker’s acting was good (make up...)

I’ve watched the stream of Kuromyu countless times and gotten used to the songs, and even though I miss the old Kuromyu, maybe it’s not so bad that somebody who can’t let go is rewatching something countless times. If next time they will do the Cult Arc or the Witch Arc I’d be pursuing it. Honestly I want them to stage Lycoris again ←

Kuromyu was this place where I got stimulated by Yuta’s TOHO quality, Ms. AKANE [Madam Red] and Ms. Son [Akisono, Frances]’s Takarazuka quality. The synergy of everything, the original manga’s story, actors, music, directing all were so perfectly done in the past three productions they sure have become a tremendous bar. Once again Yuta, thank you for playing Sebas for us for three times 🥺✨

Kuromyu really was too fun, I’m in trouble

Honestly ------------- Kuromyu was so fun !!!!!!!!! Yasue-kun, you also go watch soon!! Ah, you going tomorrow???

It might be quite unsatisfying for people who only watch Kuromyus that are like Imperial Theatre grand musicals, but I think it’s good that it’s a bit like the Kuromyus of the beginning of before when they adapted the manga arcs

I watched Kuromyu and had fun 😊

I cried, I laughed, it was amazing anyway!

It was the first time watching a musical for me but I think I’ve been sucked into it...

Shall I buy the DVD, I’m indecisive 🌀🤔💭

Now I’ve seen the PV of Kuromyu I don’t think it’s worth going at all... Even in the PV the vibe of 2.5D was ridiculously strong...

My friend went to watch Kuromyu and gave me the review: “I’ve seen all sorts of 2.5, why did they do this for Black Butler. It’s trivial.” I’ve only seen the PV so I won’t say anything, and I really get what I’m refraining from saying. But Mr. Kuma once tweeted the descriptions of Black Butler, I guess it’s fine that the Boarding School Arc feels like this 🤔

Click here for the translation of this tweet. The description of the Weston Arc is as such:

(To the people who will be going to see it I’m sorry)

They did say that the staff along [with the cast] would entirely be renewed, but I feel like they’re actively trying to shake off the fans of Kuromyu until now   I’m a bit sad but I guess I won’t be watching [Kuromyus] anymore... I feel like      But I am buying the stream    I’ll think about it after I’ve bought it...

Anyway about Kuromyu, my mom said she wanted to watch it too so I watched it again with her yesterday, and she sure had a lot to say 😶 My father pulled this weird face of “what is this even” and I had to see him off halfway 😑 I thought about buying the stream of the final performance, but I guess I don’t need a second viewing. I don’t feel like watching the archive either. I really liked the Kuromyu of until now, my shock is too big.

At the beginning [of the musical] we looked back on Lycoris, Circus and Luxury Liner... kinda like some sort of recap, but I thought “huh?”... now I just want to watch that. I used to like Kuromyu, I really have trouble accepting it this time it’s painful.

But honestly when talking about Kuromyu it’s the Sebas with the superb voice who sung about the dynamic with the little lord full of emotion and built the world view, and for better or for worse the world view of Kuroshitsuji is maintained through Sebaciel, the songs, the directing of Sebaciel, but what happened there. Whether you should watch it or not. The past 3 productions were masterpieces、、、

But Sebas is not Mr. Furukawa, Ciel is not Reo-kun and even Mr. Izumi’s [role] of Undertaker was unfortunately changed, this is the new Kuromyu huh...

I watched the stream of the first performance.

I liked the songs so I checked, and I knew it.

This time has a lot of laughing factors, and I thought it was good it had a fresh cast.

I didn’t expect the cricket scene to be taken that far. I thought it was Tenimyu.

Kuromyu, this time be it the story, script, directing or casting, I thought: “it’s more enjoyable to take up this [musical] while temporarily erasing the memories of until now ～🎶”, and I watched the theatre piece without looking back to the past productions, and that was the right decision   To the people who came to love Kuromyu of until now, it’s safer to watch it while temporarily erasing the memories.

Did Kuromyu turn into Tenimyu half way?! I thought,

and the Elite Musical → 2.5D Musical transformation I also felt

Konishibocchan being cutesy was cute, and the P4′s desperate faces resonated all went by in a flash

Above was the report from the theatre ☺️

I went to Kuromyu

I went into it knowing it’d surely be something different from the past productions so it indeed turned out to be so

There were parts that made me go “erm the script....” and also this part that made me go “was it really necessary to make Undertaker descend into that dream in Act 1 just because you wanted to give him stage time??”

I went into 2 shocks gradually

Sebas doesn’t sing He only sings properly at the very beginning of the beginning Even though he’s Sebas There’s no ending solo Even though he’s Sebas

You’re the ♪ah~a~a~ number-one main character though!! That’s why this one!!! Is the N・E・W production--!!!!

I am in shock

I   A M  I  N   S  H  O  C  K  ANGER!!!

I watched the Kuromyu stream!

It was TOTALLY 2.5D~❕❕😁It was also a school setting and the Tenimyu vibes were strong (laughs)

It’s a bit of a shame that Ciel isn’t played by a child actor anymore, but because he has more stage time than Sebas has this time I caccept it.

Sebas and Ciel’s visuals are also good ~ ☺️ 

It’d be even cooler if they increased the fight scenes with Sebas though.

@ivvy_toshiki [Tateishi Toshiki (Sebastian)’s Twitter account]

Thanks for the hard work in the performance.

Today I saw the “first viewing of Kuromyu” of my dreams 🥀😆 Regardless of what I could say Sebastian’s beauty is from beginning to end spellbinding ☺️  My eyes were very happy. moreover, the songs and the killing were also AMAZING 😍 my eyes were nailed to Sebastian. I want to watch it again 💕☺️  I wish that the performances will go without a hitch until the final performance ❕

I was so happy to see the recap of the past productions

I really liked the Circus Arc (original comics), and even though it was comedy it really dived into the darkness! That was the story I also didn’t expect to see the Luxury Liner Arc So Undertaker, for real... for

Up to the last time there weren’t that many songs in total, but there were songs like I shall become your pawn and sword and the contract that made me go BATHUMP--- I have to rewatch this number!!! It’s a shame that this time there were no songs like that.

#Kuromyu

Calling it the Prince of Cricket is too accurate 😂 They sang and danced so much, the youthfulness was bouncing off it. What stamina they have. #Kuromyu

What’s different from the last time is the strong 2.5D vibe...... Until now the ages [of the characters] were fairly faithful [to canon] and in a good way there was no 2.5D-ness and I could just enjoy it as a proper theatre piece This time both the casting including the music had a strong 2.5D vibe for better or for worse #Kuromyu

Very personally! Matsushita’s Sebas was “heavy as the evil of evil and beautiful”, and Furukawa’s Sebas was  “evil, strong and unapproachable and beautiful and gorgeous”, and Tateishi’s was “light hearted and beautiful and a florid kind of evil”!! (My vocabulary is failing me) All Sebastians have a different aura about them it’s fantastic!!! #Kuromyu

The new Sebas is good

Overall

It’s this arc so that it’d get a chit-chat idol? vibe was within the expectation The cricket of the second half had a bad vibe and I was sick of it It might have been different had I watched it live I don’t like the Boarding School and Green Witch arc that much to begin with I am looking forward to the appearance of the real Ciel That's it for now

I don’t know why I’m mentally dead but it must be that, I watched the Kuromyu stream and I am thoroughly dead, mentally dead, but as I managed to say this I’ve reached a level that I recovered a bit??? I am too tired but I don’t feel like sleeping, but if I doze a bit then I realise my fatigue and feel like sleeping unnecessarily

This time’s kuromyu... erm I guess I’ll quit 🤔

I’ll be rant-puking for a bit

I’ve seen a lot of Tenimyu and A-stage [Mankai A3] but it’s not like I wanted to see that in Kuromyu... What I wanted to see was Kuromyu...

I watched the video of the Kuromyu PV? but it’s impossible. Watching the PV [I thought] children should be played by children... and as I watched their interaction it’s not the character building I had in mind... and there’s no wound on the vice principal’s forehead. I planned to watch the stream of the final performance, but I’m hesitant about spending more money to watch that... If I can’t accept Ciel and Sebastian I can’t watch this, that’s just me...

Now I’ve read the reviews of Kuromyu all are saying it went back to 2.5D, and I think that it’s not worth going after all. It’s probably because the Kuromyus until now far surpassed the quality of 2.5D... I guess it’s fine if one were to go for the cast, but I really loved the Kuromyu of until now.

[smp-live]

Was scrolling through c!Wilbur crit blogs again and it got me thinking about why exactly I argue in favour of him so much so here’s a random ramble (that got long) about it:

Most c!Wilbur critics (at least, in the tag, not directly post-lore stream. The ones that do actual analysis on him) are like... really reasonable about it, actually, lmao. Like it’s mostly just calling him a bad person because of power hunger/manipulation/being a bad dad/whatever else. (Not talking about antis. I mean people who are really critical of him, but recognize that he’s a well-crafted character with nuance.)

Which I agree with! I consider myself an apologist, my writing and analysis leans really sympathetic, and I still agree that he’s a shitty rat bastard that I would run far away from irl. Even at the beginning of the story, he’s very morally grey, sometimes using underhanded persuasion tactics, doing ehh things like stealing, and it only gets worse from there.

But on the other hand, he’s... not that bad. Like I saw one person say about c!Dream, “My reaction to most critique of him is... so what?” and that’s how I feel about c!Wilbur, I suppose. Yeah, he tried to rig an election - but it was a last-ditch effort at not going full dictator, he didn’t follow through, and later on he - in part - decided to blow it up because they couldn’t get it back while being democratic. And yeah, he manipulated people - all in all, it wasn’t really really bad things, mostly to paint himself in a better light because of his insecurities, and people sometimes fall into manipulative language without even outwardly realizing that it’s a shitty thing to do. Of course, that shows a bigger underlying problem in their mindset and the way they interpret relationships and possession, but then that’s a different discussion - and definitely one that applies to c!Wilbur.

(Not saying he doesn’t ever intentionally manipulate people. I think that a. sometimes it might be accidental, (”If you wanna be President you’re gonna have to get on my good side,” mans was Not thinking straight,) and b. other times he falls into old habits/coping mechanisms that happen to be manipulation, (Tommy at Las Nevadas.) Other than the election and maybe some times in the early founding of L’Manberg, I can’t think of any moments where I’m like, “Yeah, he is Purposefully Manipulating here.” And even then, it just doesn’t strike me as a terrible thing. People manipulate, it’s a thing they do. That’s it. A morally grey action.)

And I think the majority of the reason I make more posts painting him in a positive light and don’t really discuss my critique of him is because it feels like the fandom has an overwhelming bias of hatred/crit, even if a lot of that isn’t, y’know, proper analysis of his character. I instinctively want to balance it out for this character I love/relate to, because a lot of what I see straight-up ignores the lighter side of his moral-greyness.

Like, a while back, I posted a couple clips from late-election arc, of Wilbur talking about how he feels about Fundy siding with Quackity and against him. And the way I initially saw it while watching was, “Okay. He feels betrayed by his son who disagrees with his politics - and thus, him as a person, because your politics are a reflection of your identity, especially in Wilbur’s mind - and it’s perfectly understandable that he’d want to vent about that in private to a close friend. On the other hand, he should be able to recognize that Fundy’s allowed to be his own person and shouldn’t be babied. Fundy is in the right, here, but Wilbur’s feelings shouldn’t be dismissed.”

But then 90% of the tags were just straight-up hate for c!Wilbur, going as far as to say that he should die again. (And this was after we found out how bad the afterlife was for him.) That fucking floored me. I just couldn’t understand how they took this nuanced character aching for ‘the son he knew’ back (hm. very similar to c!Phil, actually) and turned it into ‘wow. This suicidal man sucks and should maybe die.’ I was so close to making a post defending him before realizing - I was letting fandom bias against a character push me further onto the sympathetic side.

And that’s such a fuckin’ weird thing to have happen, because you’d think that exposure to negativity about a character would make you feel more negative about them? But without fail, every time I scroll through the crit tag, or read a critical post about c!Wilbur/L’Manberg, I maybe lean a bit more towards that side for a few hours before swinging back hard onto the apologist side. Because a lot of the critique, to me, is really just, “so what?” after I let it stew a bit.

Then there’s the whole mental health issue. Obviously it doesn’t excuse the shit he did - I know people who have been in the middle of breakdowns and the stuff they say still fucking hurts, even if they didn’t truly mean it. But recognizing that he needs help? That for pretty much all his time on-screen, he was depressed and paranoid, which obviously affects the way he acts? That’s obvious. And were he in the position to get professional help - which he deserves - everything would be much better off. That’s the root of my apologism, I think: He deserves to get better. He’s not inherently evil, or bad, just a fucked up little man who’s ruined his own life and needs help. I want to see him, specifically him, get better.

Narratively, his punishment has been extreme and disproportionate. Every mistake, every choice - good or bad - has led to suffering, on his part. Start a fun little rebellion, maybe to gain some power? War and betrayal. Declare an election to consolidate said power? Lose, and get exiled. Blow up a nation? Die, and even in the afterlife, he can't catch a break. Purely as a sympathetic human, it feels like he deserves to rest. Deserves to heal.

But even medicated and less anxious, or going to therapy for his neuroticism and depression, or whatever, he still would be quite morally grey. A lot of his manipulation, his power hunger, comes from this neuroticism; from needing to feel safe and needed, (just like Quackity.) Not all of it, though. He’d still have his unhealthy ideals about relationships and possession, for example. Less prominent, sure, but still there. Some people, I feel, discount how tied up with his mental illness it is, while others don’t really recognize that it’s also a personality problem. Like, changing those beliefs is changing part of who he fundamentally is, as a person.

Actually, I think the c!Wilbur apologist community, in general, tends to scapegoat his mental illness a little too much? Not in that we explain his actions with it or ask people not to villainize it, (although sometimes I feel that what we call villainizing mental illness is a bit excessive, but it’s not my place to talk about that as someone who doesn’t really relate to Pogtopia!Wilbur,) but in that we use it in discussions a lot. Which is fair, because it permeates every single aspect of his character, but even without it he’d have toxic traits? Like his possessiveness is not purely a byproduct of his mental illness, imo. Nor is his treatment of Fundy. It’s amplified by it, surely, but that little seed of it is there in the first place. Just as c!Dream’s abuse needs to be addressed as a central part of his character, c!Wilbur’s possessiveness does too - and also outside of the context of their mental health, because they’re both brought on by an internal personality flaw, some fucked-up belief, if that makes sense.

As I said before: c!Wilbur is a mess of a human being that I would hate if I actually met. (irl I would’ve been a SWAG supporter, based on policies, but since this is fiction, I was POG.) But because he’s a character, that flies out the window, and I can love him - not even just as a character, in the sense that I appreciate he’s well-crafted, but in terms of personality and all that shit, while recognizing he’s a kinda crappy guy. Because he’s a character. That’s the fun of it.

[pla-teau]

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER: THE STAR-SPANGLED MAN

i’m late to this but watching episode two of the falcon and winter soldier was a ride. a necessary one in my view for the sake of understanding where sam and bucky are in this world.

from episode one to this episode, race is a lingering blanket throughout our time seeing the pair on screen (minus the action sequences and their banter). bucky constantly telling sam that he should’ve kept the shield annoyed me because i wanted sam to explode. i wanted him to unload and explicitly tell him his reasons for not keeping the shield. we saw in endgame that sam was uncomfortable holding the shield when steve passed it on to him. not that he felt unworthy but he knows the implications of the shield, the legacy it holds and the magnitude of that symbol in the usa. he knows that the history is associated with a white man for decades. at the beginning, steve is used as propaganda by the government for the war before he really grows into his own and even goes against the same government that propped him up to be this heroic symbol. sam, as an african american man, knows struggles that steve never had to face all due to the color of his skin. we don’t know specifics about his time in the military besides what we learned in winter soldier but i don’t doubt that sam had obstacles thrown at him in that environment. now, mixing in his struggles and knowing the implications of him carrying that shield, it’s understandable why sam gave back the shield. this isn’t wakanda, this is america and america doesn’t have a good track record with it’s non-white citizens - especially the african american community.

we learn in episode two that there’s a much darker history associated with captain america when we meet isaiah bradley. to me, the erased history and mistreatment of isaiah speaks to the fact that the government always wanted to keep captain america as a white man. captain america is supposed to be the all-american man who loves his country. as a hispanic woman, when i hear all-american man, my mind pictures a white man first because that’s what i’ve been conditioned to think through imagery and from simply growing up in this country. since the mcu mirrors our world, this is definitely the case when it comes to captain america because that’s the only iteration anyone’s seen or heard of. we learn that isaiah fought bucky and won that fight. to date, i don’t think anyone’s come close to defeating bucky when he was the winter soldier. the fact that isaiah did that and was jailed for 30 years in return for serving his government is explicit enough for us to know that the government doesn’t want a black captain america. and the fact that bucky never told steve about isaiah speaks volumes. if bucky told steve, i don’t doubt steve would’ve tried to do right by him. what that would’ve been, we’ll never know. bucky had this information and while his reasoning was that he was sparing isaiah, quite frankly - it’s not a good enough reason. he hurt both sam and isaiah when they visited his house. he used isaiah to physically show sam that he’s not the first black man the government has set up to fail. what angered me about that scene was that isaiah could’ve been spared by bucky just telling sam about him instead of taking him to his house. if he knows that isaiah doesn’t want that trudged up again, why do it to prove a point? i don’t doubt that had bucky just told sam about isaiah, he would’ve believed him. i think sam and isaiah’s first meeting would’ve been different and on sam’s terms, not bucky’s.

bucky, of course, doesn’t understand sam’s reasons for giving back the shield and that’s the fucking point. how could bucky understand as a white man? sam not explaining himself and keeping his composure whenever bucky lectures him on why he shouldn’t have given back the shield speaks volumes. sam’s reasons are his own and frankly, doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. because explaining it to bucky would be pointless. bucky doesn’t understand what sam’s gone through in life and yeah maybe he sees sam as the next captain america because steve said so along with the fact that he’s a good man which brings me to my next point.

a good man. that’s what made the serum work on steve. steve was a good man at the end of the day. we the audience, the avengers and steve’s friends/comrades know that captain america is not just a star spangled man fighting for the good ol’ us of a, it’s a good man that fights for what’s right. that’s why steve gave the shield to sam because he knows sam is a good man that’ll continue the legacy of fighting the good fight and not necessarily for the government or for those in charge. so sam’s comment in the therapy scene about steve and bucky never understanding is not wrong because while they see the legacy being carried by sam as the right choice, it’s wishful thinking that everything would be fine and that the whole world would be okay with it. i say wishful thinking because it’s easy to think that things wouldn’t change and everyone will accept sam as the new captain america when you don’t think about the struggles sam has faced in his life. when you’re in a place of privilege, you can afford to be a little idealistic because you don’t face or rarely see the injustices to poc/ minorities so you can afford to believe the world will be accepting of what you see as common sense or that the world will treat poc with basic human decency.

when bucky shares his fears of steve being wrong about him if he was wrong about sam and sam asks him if he’s finished also says a lot. that interaction just proves what i said earlier, bucky (and steve) is being idealistic in thinking there would be no questions asked and the world would be fine with sam carrying the shield. when sam says “are you finished?” it’s relatable because it’s representative of poc listening to white people throw a fit about something they’ve never experienced and can’t fully understand.

the scene with them and the cops also shows that bucky has a lot to learn about where sam is coming from and why he returned that shield. out of costume, apparently no one knows sam is the falcon. when i say no one, i mean those with authority (bank and cops so far) because what they see first is a black man and a superhero second. while for steve it seems that everyone saw him as captain america first and steve rogers second. seeing how before they apologize to sam for not recognizing him the officer had his hand on his gun vs. how they tell bucky that he’s under arrest gently and calmly should be a wake up call for buck. he’s one of the world’s most dangerous assassins and they’re just like “oh hey...there’s an arrest out for you because you missed therapy sorry.” is aggravating but the worst part is bucky telling sam to show him his ID, being idealistic in thinking that the situation would be resolved once sam formally identifies himself. that shows buck still has a long way to go because not realizing and thinking that being cooperative and doing what authorities say will resolve the situation is in fact hurtful to sam since he doesn’t know that even cooperating and doing as told will do nothing if that authority figure already has a bias going into that situation.

all in all, the main point for my essay-like post is that while bucky and steve see sam as their equal and the best choice to carry on the legacy, the rest of the world may not necessarily agree and they miss that due to their vastly different experiences in life than sam. i truly despised the way endgame did steve with his arc because it would’ve been great seeing him retired and adjusting to current life but also learning about the darker history and implications of the shield since now the show confirms steve knew nothing. i would imagine steve trying to do right with not only isaiah but sam as well by simply being an advocate and trying to understand how life is different for sam. i hope in future episodes we see bucky try to understand this and even fix his own biases and actions that are harmful rather than helpful to sam. i also just can’t wait to see more of sam’s story being fleshed out and seeing him take on the mantle.

[aotopmha]

I liked how ypu spoke about peick as your favourite character, I'd like to hear your thoughts on annie too, especially because some think that - since she didn't show remorse like reiner did for instance- then she doesn't deserve compassion and she's even comparable to floch!!

Pieck isn't my favourite character.

(Gabi is.)

The internet, its tendency towards a lack of nuance and its tendency for hyperboles has always been really funny to me.

I say something bad about a character, so I must hate them.

I say something good about them, so they must be my favourite.

Among the most important female characters in AoT, I think I like Pieck more than Mikasa and in turn I think I like Annie, Hange, Gabi, Ymir and Historia more than Pieck despite the final stretch of Historia's arc being kind of a mess.

I think I'd figure out how to rank them by really just thinking about them one by one, but again, I don't really do much ranking anymore. Maybe I'd put Ymir (and OG Ymir) between Mikasa and Pieck. I dunno.

Historia's stuff in the Uprising arc is just amazing and I think that stuff actually never lost its significance. It's still really important because she denied the Titan power.

The only character I think I'd rank below Mikasa is Sasha because her arc was given fairly limited time compared to others. She had her focus chapter, but after it her character moved back to having fun tidbits here and there. I think the fact that she continued to be so plot and theme-important after her death in such substantial ways is really good, too, but Mikasa's arc has a lot more connective tissue from start to finish despite being so relationship-centric and less interesting to me.

But at the same time, I think I still very much do actually like all of them.

(If anyone wants me to try and rank the characters female or male let me know.)

I don't think I actually hate any of AoT's characters, male or female. I like some less than others, but none of them come across as nonsensical in terms of writing. I think all of them make sense and to me that's what makes a good character.

I think even Historia's character at its worst at least has *some* logic to it.

The only character I think truly needed more time was Bertholdt. But what we did get with him was also very good.

His talk with Armin in Shiganshina was really good, his thoughts and speech before he transformed in Shiganshina was really good.

Even his very sudden, horrific death was really good because it tied back to AoT's theme of people just dying in war and there being no fanfare to it.

My issue comes with stuff before the reveal because I think a few more scenes with him so the audience would actually have a bigger sense of who he is before the reveal would have made it more powerful.

Perhaps it's somewhat the point that he suddenly became so important, but I think knowing more about him prior to it would've been better.

Reiner somewhat had this problem, too, but he got a lot more focus in Utgard, too.

But to once again emphasize it, I don't think I really hate any of them.

As for Annie, I think the fact that she feels so intensely guilty says everything that needs to be said and she actually did very much show remorse.

This scene was actually really commonly brought up back in the season 1 days:

(Chapter 18)

There is just a lot of recency bias and not much going back through the manga before complaining about it.

Other examples include not rereading any of the Paths or Marley chapters when it comes to OG Ymir or Eren.

But for a more recent example, I think the character material with Annie in chapter 133 needs more love:

In the end, Annie decides to join the battle so that even more bad stuff and regrets could be avoided.

The conversation with Kiyomi is about how her sins can't be forgiven and this entire thing applies to Annie, too.

But what she can do is avoid even more bad stuff happening.

So Annie completes her character arc by deciding to fight:

(Chapter 135)

Annie has a character arc in relation to her doing all of this horrible stuff and how the guilt of doing all of these horrible things affects her.

I saw people complaining about how she's on the boat with the others and not together with her father.

This is why I think she should be on the boat at the end of the story, acting as someone to balance out Armin's idealism and taking action in the face of the horrible world Eren left them.

I think Annie's arc deserves more love, but because her character focus is so scattered and people have such intense focus on only chapter 139, I feel it sort of falls to the wayside when talking about the story, like most other character material.

As for her deserving compassion? I think it's given fairly and just enough by the narrative.

In the end, Annie did what she did because she wanted to survive and see her father again and if she failed she and possibly her father would be killed.

She was already cynical about Marley's mission as a kid, but in the end couldn't rebel against it because of these personal circumstances.

As for the comparison with Floch, the thing with comparing how much worse one character is over the other morally for me is that I don't really care.

All I care about is whether they make sense and whether the narrative treats them appropriately in relation to what they have done.

Reiner and Annie wanted to die, but the narrative never gave them this luxury.

Instead it forced them to live and deal with the consequences of their actions. It forced them to fight to atone for their sins.

And I think stopping the destruction of all of humanity is something that earned them their life back and them being active afterwards and working towards making the best of the situation is the way to go.

I think this is a much better character solution for them than just a heroic sacrifice because it doesn't approve of the suicidal, defeatist elements of their characters.

In comparison, Eren wanted to live and be with Mikasa and his friends, but was not given this luxury, either.

He owned what he did, even calling Armin out for trying to be sympathetic.

I think both are good because they play into the characters' arcs in an appropriate way.

People keep saying Eren should've lived because that would've caused him to face the consequences of what he did, but I think this also would've given him exactly what he wanted.

He did all of this for his friends: he was willing to throw the rest of the world under the bus for them.

I think he would've been satisfied despite the sacrifices and I think we don't want that to happen to a character that committed genocide.

I guess I really have no horse in this race besides whether it all makes sense.

Thank you for the ask!

[mira--mira]

Madara and Hashirama for the ask meme 👀

Hashirama

What I love about them:

I really love Hashirama's stubborn optimism. I say "stubborn" here bc I think after a certain point of pain in misery in someone's everyday life, in some way it is a choice to remain optimistic despite that suffering. I don't characterize Hashirama as constantly happy and he can recognize the more realistic/pessimistic possibilities, he just refuses to accept them. I have it in my notes for OoT but haven't worked it in verbatim but Madara would call him "ruthlessly optimistic " and while that's tinged with Madara's own bias, I think it fits quite well.

What I hate about them:

Hashirama is stubbornly optimistic LOL. It's a double-edged sword and I think by the time he reached adulthood in a canon setting, Hashirama was so desperate for there to be peace he maintained his "everything will work out" attitude when he otherwise shouldn't have. There were the concerns with Madara and the Uchiha, his own brothers views that he certainly should have recognized could become a problem, and, after depending on when Tobirama took on students/how old they were, the possibility of biases being passed down and a Danzo like figure coming to power. However this was not Hashirama's responsibility alone to fix. I don't think, despite his love, Hashirama alone could have kept Madara in a village that hated him and a clan that distrusted him. Tobirama was an adult and let his own bias pass under a veil of "logic" and passed that, either intentionally or unintentionally down to his students. None of this is Hashirama's fault, but I think part of the canon story being a tragedy was he was blinded by a bright, hopeful future that he failed to see the early signs right in front of him.

Favorite Moment/Quote:

"To me, Madara was like a gift from the divine."

Even thinking about it makes me melt. It's so sweet and really emphasizes how much Madara means to him. 🥺

What I would like to see more focus on:

In fics? Hashirama's mental health and how his childhood affected him. Most of the long fics I've read focus on Madara. Which I understand, Madara has an arc into becoming a villain while Hashirama is just kinda "there" and it's easy for him to fulfill a support role to helping Madara in canon Au fics. A sort of unshakeable, always optimistic stone for Madara to depend on and stop his downward spiral into villainy. But, what makes hashimada so great for me is that Madara and Hashirama are equals. There will be times one falters and needs to depend on the other, and they're capable of giving each other that support. It'd also be great to see Hashirama struggle yet continue to choose optimism and compassion time after time because that feels more weighty and important than an eternally optimistic characterization that never wavers.

Headcanon wise...this isn't something I've found but desperately want to see (and will come up in all of my own aus) is the connection between the god tree and the god of shinobi who's famed ninjutsu is wood release and who's cells can be used for everything under the sun and are specifically needed to control the gedo statue / ten-tails. 👀 Look when I got back into Naruto and only vaguely knew about the war arc plot I thought Kishimoto was Doing Something with that. He was not. I am.

What I would like to see less focus on:

This is pretty much mentioned above but Hashirama as mainly a support for Madara rather than getting his own (non romantic) arcs in long canon Au fics. Headcanon wise, this is such a small nitpick, but Hashirama constantly being the one described as warm whereas Madara is cold. The big tree can *retain* heat, but he pales in comparison to Madara's ability to *generate* heat.

Favorite pairing with:

Hashimada (Hashirama x Madara)

No one should be surprised. I can wax prose about this for days but it's about ultimately finding someone else in a terrible world that *understands* you that you can grow with and support. I'm a sucker for friends to lovers and battle couples so guess what's right up my alley?

Favorite friendship:

Canon/BoaF- Hashirama & Mito

I know Madara & Mito is more popular, and I do love their dynamic but christ Hashirama needs friends outside Madara and Tobirama and I think they'd be good friends. Canon!Mito would provide a good level-headed perspective and wouldn't have the messy, complicated history like the three founders have together and it'd be good for Hashirama to get a break from that. BoaF!Mito and Hashirama are cousins their relationship eventually progresses to a sibling-like bond. They’re quite protective of each other and gossip endlessly together. Mito’s not as good as gardening, but they do it together and incorporate Uzumaki sealing techniques for certain houseplant decorations. Mito also might know about Madara 👀 

OoT-Hashirama & Sakura or Hashirama & Sai

His and Sakura's relationship is p similar to how I would characterize his and Mito's but with the added hilarity of Sakura being his "student" yet having 0 deference for him once they actually get to the "teaching" part (surprise: Hashirama's most uttered lines are "you do the thing, you know the thing, you know you just...do it. The thing. Madara "translates" a lot of their sessions.) Hashirama and Sai antagonize each other constantly and he *will* tease Sai into oblivion as any older brother would. Tobirama never reacted to Hashirama's mischief in ~fun~ ways and he felt bad about messing with Itama, who was even more emotional than he was and Kawarama, who hero-worshipped him. Sai is the perfect "if anyone messes with you I will personally make them regret being born yet *I* will tease you mercilessly to my hearts content" kind of little brother.

NOTP:

Hashitobi (Hashirama x Tobirama)

I don't do incest. At all. Even "non-incest" aus where they aren't technically related squick me out.

Favorite headcanon:

Hashirama can Speak to the trees.

Either humorously or seriously, I love this kinda, sorta, maybe not quite human power.

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Madara

What I love about them:

Madara is kind and does his best to do what he thinks is right. The “kind” point is a lot of Hashirama talking/flashbacks and the “good” intention behind the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Making everyone a “winner” in the dreamworld, while absolutely insane and full of holes, is odd for a villain’s motivation. His role in the war arc is mostly focused on watching him wreck absolutely everyone he comes into contact with but I love Hashirama’s flashbacks and the glimpses of kid!Madara we get. Madara believed in his philosophy from a lifetime of pain that ended in him losing everything and being manipulated but he was still seeking a way to “help” the most people he could. He’s such a rich character that makes it easy to want to imagine other what-if scenarios where things turned out just a bit differently.

What I hate about them:

Madara takes all responsibility onto himself. This is more speculation because we don’t get Madara’s POV of his childhood or any significant scenes with the clan. However, I think this is one of the primary roots of most of Madara’s problems. If he blamed himself for mistakes that weren’t technically his, he could get into a cycle where he only blames himself and doesn’t seek help/support when he should have and purposefully reduces his support circle because he becomes paranoid that he won’t be able to protect them. A smaller issue that is both about Madara and not is he didn’t fall victim to the Talk no Jutsu, but was Madara aware of what was happening when he was possessed(?) by Kaguya? I forgot but if he wasn’t...I don’t think he’d agree Hashirama’s way was the right way at the end, merely his way was wrong. Because, in Madara’s point of view, the village may have been “better” (used very loosely) than becoming food/power for an alien goddess but it wasn’t good. It wasn’t the solution. Hashirama saying they were both wrong in some way saved the scene but Madara still jumped back to Hashirama’s dream being the right one too quickly imo. 

Favorite Moment/Quote:

“What are you going to do about the second [meteor] Onoki?” 

I’m sorry, that was just hilarious. We see this man slaughter an entire division and drop a meteor from the sky...two kages desperately try to stop it and it looks like they managed to succeed and he just...cool. What about the second? Really cemented Madara is Here and he is Dramatic. A close second fav is him flying across the battlefield to confront Hashirama only for the “I’ll deal with you later” line. 

What I would like to see more focus on:

I really love it when fics fill in the blanks of Madara’s childhood/his time with the Uchiha so that’s always a plus for me. The other thing is Hashirama calls Madara a “fundamentally kind man” and according to Tobirama the Uchiha feel love “too deeply” so I like fics that do focus on these aspects of Madara’s personality while staying true to his prickly demeanor. For headcanons I love, love, love exploring kekkei genkai/ninjutsu/genjutsu and how they individually affect people/clans. Digging deeper so that “fire affinity” means constantly running hot/pushing into possibly having fire resistance/unable to distinguish “too hot” / or even affinity acting like a secondary blood type so even if two people had AB blood if one had a water affinity and the other fire their blood would be incompatible. Also the mundane ways powers can be used (I have some Ideas for non-combat genjustu applications that the Uchiha use and those will come up in OoT 👀)

What I would like to see less focus on:

This again kinda ties into the Hashirama segments, but Madara completely depending on Hashirama and Hashirama alone for happiness. Especially in long AUs where he’s still in Konoha but has a poor relationship with the Uchiha. That’s fine starting out! But if the fic ends or doesn’t seriously work on improving that relationship it just sits a bit weird with me bc I don’t think Madara could be truly happy in that situation. (NSFW start) The other thing I see commonly is Madara is extremely passive/submissive in bed with Hashirama which is...weird to me? There’s also a reoccurring thing where he doesn’t have a lot of experience but Hashirama does and this leads to embarrassment and the aforementioned passive/submissiveness. I understand lack of experience can be embarrassing and I do believe Madara could be embarrassed, but instead of withdrawing into himself I think he’d push through it with something close to bravado and his usual single-minded intensity, for better or worse. I do think Madara usually bottoms in his and Hashirama’s relationship but both of them are as enthusiastic about sex as they are fighting and neither is especially submissive or dominant. (NSFW end)

Favorite pairing with:

Hashimada (Hashirama x Madara)

See absolutely everything else 😂 

Favorite friendship:

Canon/BoaF- Madara & Naori or Madara & Hikkaku 

I really like focusing on the Uchiha clan and exploring the dynamics within it. We get nothing about Madara’s early life outside of Hashirama so this is almost completely speculation. For the angst of canon, I like Madara being close to his clan only to lose them after his friendship with Hashirama is revealed bc he awakened his sharingan over Hashirama and that can’t be easily hidden. For BoaF, a large part of it is exploring the clans’ cultures before they made the village so this necessitates actually fleshing out said clans. Naori and Izuna are v similar in personality and both live to prank Madara and annoy him, but they hardly ever team up bc they start squabbling amongst themselves. Hikakku is stoic and calm in contrast to Naori’s mania and Madara’s intensity but he keeps track of every little favor and Madara dreads the day he’ll act on them because he knows it’ll result in something embarrassing for him. But like all BoaF!Uchiha, they’re fiercely protective of one another and you really don’t want to insult the wrong person. 

OoT - Madara & Naruto or Madara & Sai

I really Madara and Naruto’s dynamic, it’s very entertaining and fun for me to write and they’re both positive influences on each other. Madara gets more people to smother with his brand of affection and Naruto gets early recognition and training. Their weird non-training shenanigans (coupon collecting, gaming, etc.) also is p amusing. Madara and Sai have a similar relationship but I really like writing theirs from Sai’s POV bc he insists that he doesn’t feel close/like when Madara treats him like a little brother when he really does. 

NOTP:

Madatobi (Madara x Tobirama)

Logically, I know why this pairing is popular. Fanfic is saturated with the enemies to lovers trope yet emotionally I Do Not Understand it. Personally, I don’t enjoy toxic relationships, to read or write. And, to me, that’s what a close canon Madara and Tobirama pairing would be. Tobirama tried to convince Hashirama to kill him, he killed Izuna, even if it was in war, and I don’t think Madara could or would get over that. If Tobirama has similar attitudes about the Uchiha it makes it worse. AUs exist to rewrite this, of course, but I still don’t enjoy their romantic chemistry. At best, I like Tobirama and Madara as reluctant frenemies who insult each other and try to one-up each other. 

Favorite headcanon:

Madara is fire proof. 

I have a whole rant about this in OoT’s author notes 😂 Sasuke’s Amaterasu should have been a serious threat when it hit him. Instead the man just lets his clothes fall off then kicks their asses. He’s fire proof.

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In response to the ask game:

[dahniwitchoflight]

Airy Thoughts about Heirs and Gender

That kind of always has been John’s modus operandi when it comes to dealing with problems though hasn’t it?

Eveen waaaaay back in the beginning when John totally pushed it out of his mind that his dad was actually just a normal business man and not obsessed with clowns, that it was actually John who was obsessed with clowns, and jokes and pranking, thats always been how he deals with stuff he doesn’t like

Ignore it, make it not real, don’t acknowledge it, compartmentalize it, heck, joke about it, do pranks, make it silly, make it lighter, try to lessen the seriousness of it all

John has ZERO skill when it comes to actually dealing with perceived negativity in any sense, always been very reliant on basically his Aspect’s traits to solve problems for him

and now its becomes so bad, thats hes on the edge of having a full blown dissociation disorder about it

(I wonder actually if being too reliant on what’s been given to you on your plate already is a trait overall for Heirs or Those Who Inherit? It fits well with my previous idea of Heirs notable for being stuck in ruts, but it seems the true train of thought here, is that Heirs basically are caught in a pre-determined state, the lines have been drawn around them, their plates have been served, and they have to deal with what’s given to them, and as a result, have ZERO ability to handle situations that their pre-equipped toolset cannot deal with)

definitely an area where Heirs are prone to overembracing, when they become so, reliant on their pre-existing toolset, that they become unable to change things ups, see things differently, handle different problems

There’s an element of priveledged behavior here that clearer to me now, people who Inherit their wealth have no idea what it’s like to work for it or earn it themselves

and now isn’t THAT a connection to Maid and Heir?

this is where you could spin Heir as someone who starts out having no idea how to create something new and having to forcibly learn that

I could see someone creating a Maid/Heir argument for this

but then the problems arise of “how is that different from the Maid’s arc of also having to learn to take what was given them and start making anew what they want”

and the biggest hurdle to Creation Heir: Heir is not a feminine associated class

and the reason this matters, is if creation doesn’t have to be feminine associated, then masculinity gets the lion’s share of creation and destruction in Homestuck overall, and that feels like favoring masculinity too much, especially with how much Creation and Destruction as concepts are overvalued over the other aspects by far, it’s tilting it too far in one direction, when these Red and Green concept should spiral Equal (theoretically)

its out of step with how Creation and Destruction have been shown to be thus far

BUT

All of this was how things went down for me, back before June Egbert became a thing

So, in reading this, and with having the knowledge June might actually be a girl (maybe, Hussie said so, but thus far have yet to see anything from John in canon)

is that enough to make “Heir” feminine associated overall? moreso than other feminine associated classes like Maid/Sylph/Witch? Enough to be a strong enough pair to the Maid over Sylph? Two words that can literally mean “Girl”

Equius and Mituna still exist, what does that say about them? Is the background joke of Equius in a Maid outfit starting to actually become relevant?

who knows, but, It’s bringing up interesting questions I think, for me at least

John is the Main of Main Characters, versus Equius being background and Void aspected and Mituna being essentially non-existant, is that enough to balance out importance wise of who really gets to define what being an Heir means?

is it distateful to call being Spoiled an essentially feminine associated trait, if it’s balanced out by Maids being hardworking (or Servile..?) as opposed to a royally spoiled Prince and silly clown Bard?

better question, are these questions about gender things that Hussie never actually thought that deep enough about, so theres threads of things that could work, but end up falling apart in practice, revealing biases unfortunately baked into the system itself

cuz its like this: if Sylph/Maid is the females creation classes, its making sure girls vs boys in the grand scheme of things is equal, but that’s kind of going with the quid pro quo of masculine destruction/female creation thats baked into homestuck from the start, which is likely just the result in the authors inherent bias. Is that a net good? or a net bad? kind of unsure

if creation doesn’t have to be female, the idea that we should just be able to do away with the idea of gendered classes entirely is a thing, which is good in its own context, unfortunately leaves things with a different unfortunate gendered bias, where masculinity gets all the good shit and importance and feminine associations get sidelined and its unequal again, is this a better or worse way of seeing things? if male just happens to get the lions share of cool stuff, does it mean we can ignore gendered classes altogether, or is that exacerbating the problem with gendered classes to begin with

if a class that so far, hasnt had any traits associated with either masculinity or femininity (kind of a lie with Heirs being unusually good at the “mangrit” stat) gets strongly associated with femininity via one main character, is that enough to tip the scales and make things balanced again?

(is the above perhaps just a beautiful metaphor for the question of said characters eventual transition?)

(yknow, if that actually happens in canon, and gets explored by John/June at some point, and doesnt just die as an author word of god background fun fact..)

basically, Ive been wondering exactly how much the who gendered association of classes in homestuck should matter, but more importantly, how much it’s already affecting

would it be a good step to make Heir/Maid a creation pair? or is that just making a small problem bigger

tl;dr basically if Hussie makes it clear in canon that June Egbert has been a girl/dealing with a gender struggle all along in the way that they always have done by trying to downplay/ignore/compartmentalize it then yeah, Heir Maid gets a lot stronger legs to me, purely for the character symbolism of it all and the great message that would say about the gender construct of homestuck overall

but

if John Egbert remains the status quo, if Hussie never actually intended John to transition, if it never gets brought up in any way other than the authors saying out of the workd “I said so” Heir Maid as creation just doesn’t work without that Transition metaphor, so it fallbacks to the traditionally neutral Sylph/Maid as creation oriented

though, there’s also the fun question of what if through change of the characters themselves, their classes change with them? So through the power of Main Character June changes the associated traits Heir has overall OR stops being an Heir and gets a different class, both would be equally cool transition metaphors (which ironically would just reinforce Heir as a class of Change/Transmutation overall but lol)