#endgame ethos

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[ethowo-indeed]

bdubs & etho saying that if alliances start falling apart they'll stick together

"it'll still be you and me. we'll still stick together" "i got your word on that, right?" "a hundred percent, yes! i would never turn on you"

.... i can feel the drama coming. also them instantly talking about which of their teammates they would turn on first.... bdubs saying "i would turn on them both so fast" (TURN ON CLEO? HELLO?) like.... bdubs & etho literally don't know how to be allied to each other in a normal and healthy way... no matter whether they stick to these words or not, this has such big angst potential, either because they'll ruin each other, or they ruin everyone around them to hold onto each other. why are they like this. they really are the "i could make him worse <3" trope, both ways.

[crash-course-insurance]

Lovely Bitter Water

Rating: Teen and up

Fandom: Hermitcraft SMP

Relationships: Bdoubleo100 & EthosLab, Bdoubleo100/EthosLab

Characters: BdoubleO100, EthosLab, ZedaphPlays, TangoTek, more characters will probs be added later

Tags: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Inspired by The Last of Us, Violence, Humor, at some points, Fluff and Angst, LATER, Hurt/Comfort, later as well, Dehumanization, character is referred to as 'it' a few times, just because etho like, firstly is like you're a zombie you're not human, and then bc hes deliberating pronouns, lulu's here!, Friends to Lovers, ehe

["You are the dumbest zombie I have ever met."]

EthoSlab was once an aspiring archeologist, who built an underground bunker purely for enjoyment. He ignored the growing signs of biological warfare within his home until, eventually, everything came crashing down. So now, he does his best with what he has, and finds himself the babysitter of a very… odd zombie.

Inspired in part by @hermitblurbs

[redliferiot]

as we move into the endgame...

[thatstoomanysausages]

OH MY FUCKING GOD (Tomodachi Life):

- OH MY GOD GRIAN AND MUMBO ARE BEST FRIENDS ART WILL ALWAYS IMITATE LIFE 🔥🔥🔥

- RENS BEST FRIEND IS JOE

- Why are all these things happening today

- I gave Ren a doner kebab and he fell to the floor and gagged BITCH💔💔 HOW DARE

- Tango is now wearing a flamenco dress🔥🔥

- Tango: “Just between you and me, Ren likes somebody” 😯😯 YEAH ID HOPE SO HES MARRIED‼️‼️

- I gave Mumbo some tap water and I was thinking “what if he has one of those really eccentric reactions to some bland water.

- The motherfucker shoots up to space with fire shooting out of his ass.

- He fucking would. To just some plain ass water I’m not even fucking with you.

- I don’t know if I’ve already clarified this but Scar and Lizzie are best friends. If I have then I’m glad to repeat it.

- S-sorry Etho..??? You lost a whole ass DIAMOND⁉️⁉️ AND YOU ENGRAVED YOUR NAME ON THE BACK⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

- Jimmy and Joe have gotten into a fight

- How many fights am I going to have to deal with with these bitches💔💔

- I’m trynna calm Jimmy down and he just almost threw up cause I gave him fried seafood😭😭

- JOEL IS IN LOVE TIME FOR THE HAREM TO END

- I WILL LOSE IT IF ITS SCAR I CANT HAVE THIS BE “right person wrong time”

- (context I made Scar forget his crush on Joel cause I want endgame Scarian)

- Why is he kicking his feet in the air like a pre teen girl writing in her diary

- ITS SCAR

- AND TIMMY

- YOU KNOW WHAT IM GOINF FOR BABES

- SMALLIDARITY BABYYY

- HOLY SHIT

- TANGO INTERVENED FUCK OFF

- RANCHERSSSS

- HOLY SHIT

- SOMEONE ELSE

- MARTYN????

- HOLY SHIT

- FUCK JOEL HAREM

- JIMMY HAREM

- HE CHOSE

- …

- JOELLLLL

- SMALLIDARITTTTTYYYYYYY

- HOLY SHIT

- MARTYN AND TANGK FALL TO THEIR KNEES

- RANCHERS FANS JUST COLLAPSED TO THEIR KNEES IN THEIR LOCAL TESCO/WALMART/ETC AT THE SAME TIME

- Guys I don’t like the background music for when you check in on the couples living together

- It sounds sensual😟

[theminecraftbee]

The 100 days challenge has been my introduction to VH, and I’m enjoying the process of learning by osmosis how different endgame builds work! I’m figuring out how to decipher the armory, and I couldn’t help but notice that Etho’s 1400 mana seems to be a bit of an outlier in the hermits’ stats (most have 200-300). I was wondering if you, known VH enjoyer, had any comments/explanation as to what is up with that?

so, etho’s build, unless I’m much mistaken, is a physical damage build using rampage. his build relies on the rampage skill, which is a toggle skill that drains mana over time. you want both a lot of mana regen and a lot of mana to use that skill, because if you have a rampage build, you want that massive rampage damage buff as much as possible!

etho, it appears, has solved this problem by having every single piece of gear he owns that isn’t his helmet or his sword have a mana implicit (so adding max mana) and mana percentile (which adds more mana as a percentage of his mana). so, effectively, his gear adds like 200 more mana (bringing him up to ~350 mana), except then he also adds like double that in mana percentile (bringing him up to ~700 mana), and then he is ALSO running the crystal ball as his relic, which doubles your mana (bringing him up to ~1400 mana).

as you may have seen, he then ALSO runs a bunch of mana percentile, and his lucky hit is mostly specced into mana leach. which means that while this is a HIGH INVESTMENT BUILD—he had to use a trinket!—he also will only very rarely run out of mana with his rampage up, which is the goal. also he’s using mana on mana shield when I went to go check his build I realized I forgot that, that allows hits to drain mana instead of health.

so yeah he’s basically built his entire gear set around the assumption he needs all that mana for rampage and mana shield it’s that. does that make any sense?

[cryptocism]

I love the comic book writing sensibility that Frequency has, like how Three and Five's ending is great for the story being told but if it were a published comic it would still leave them on the table for if a future writer wanted to use them.

whats funny is that despite doing my best to keep in line with dc comics/comic writing sensibilities throughout the fic (staying as comics-accurate as possible in terms of continuity/tone/characterization/story elements etc) that particular comic writing reality was one that was like. kind of a genuine anxiety that i didn't know i had until i started writing this thing.

ive said before that in the original concept for Frequency all of the clones (besides Thad) were going to end up dead. whether it was via killing each other or unintentionally being the instrument of their own demise (disney villain style). obviously it changed because creating an entire narrative about this one character's redemption arc and then not allowing any of the other villains to have a shot at redemption felt hypocritical and like. mean. not to mention antithetical to the whole ethos of the story.

but the reason why killing off all the other clones was my first instinct is partially because i had this kinda subconscious recoil to the idea that any of them would actually continue on after the story was over.

like, because i was trying to stick to canon so much, while figuring out the story a thought came up a couple times that basically went like, "okay, well, if this was a real comic, then...". and inevitably i had a realization that if this WAS a real comic, my original clone characters would be canonized, and therefore available to any future writer who wanted to yank them out of their respective endgames and inject them into other stories. which i Did Not Like the Idea Of.

classic "making up a guy to get mad at" except it was more "making up a reality to get anxious about". because obviously no matter how much it sticks to canon, Frequency still exists in a fan-created space.

but! i'd never made up original characters to put in my own fanmade stuff before and was definitely feeling protective. because all those original clones i made had yknow: a story purpose and narrative function to facilitate the actual key characters, Thad and Bart. the idea of them being removed from that context in any capacity, even if it was in the hands of a good writer, made me have this gut "no STOP you're ruining it!!!!" reaction.

they were all made for Frequency, and to foil Thad as a character, i didnt like the idea of Three being brought back as a one-note villain or Jude and Nathaniel getting folded into the wider Flash cast of allies. and none of them were made to be main character material. plus the character roster at DC is already uhh Extremely Stacked i genuinely did not want the takeaway to be "and here's the nEW ADDITIONS TO THE FLASH FAMILY!" because that wasnt the intention

anyway i got over it lol. i still did my best not to leave any loose ends, and have each ending be wholly satisfying on its own, and ideally the oc clones basically continue on offscreen while the true adventures are based around Thad and Bart. but yeah it felt right to leave off on that note (and served the story much better than killing everybody off)

[prince-of-elsinore]

still thinking about that Mike Farrell quote about BJ walking to Maine, specifically the “And it probably wouldn’t have been as wonderful as he’d have hoped it was, because you know, lives have gone in different directions” and how really that just acknowledges and summarizes the core irony and bitter-sweetness of not only beejhawk as a ship, but BJ and Hawkeye’s canon friendship, and the ethos of the entire show.

It’s a cruel twist of fate that brought these people together. War, senseless destruction, indiscriminate killing: these are the circumstances under which they become intertwined. None of them want to be there, they all want out, they endure unutterable horrors and will forever be altered and scarred. Wouldn’t it be morbid to cherish any part of that experience? To want anything but to leave it behind and wash it all off? And yet--they will miss each other. All the goodbyes are difficult, and BJ and Hawkeye's is the hardest of all. Hawk knows, and BJ must too, deep down where he’s not ready to admit to himself, that it will never be the same between them. The war created the conditions of their friendship. The stress, the blood, the fear, the yearning, the depression, all were part of it--are the very reason they “cling to each other,” in BJ’s own words. They cannot go back to that, and given the choice, they would not.

BJ and Hawk will undoubtedly miss each other, very much, as they both admit. I’m sure there are many times post-war that they wish the other were there, or might even long for the simplicity and camaraderie of the Swamp (with the rose-tinted glasses of memory), but you can’t pick and choose which parts of an experience to keep and which to throw away. The war was a package deal. Any possible reunion between any of the 4077 would, inevitably, make it clear how lives went on and paths diverged. For most of them that wouldn’t even be a disappointment, but for BJ, who clings harder than anyone to the “there and later,” to the fantasy of a perfect future, of course whatever he hoped for when he so confidently told Hawk “I promise” isn’t how it would play out. But that doesn’t mean--and Mike’s quote doesn’t even rule out--that there’s no happy ending, even if your happy ending is BJ and Hawk together. It only means that BJ will have to realize that his relationship with Hawk isn’t something he could preserve in ice and then thaw out and jump back into like nothing at all has changed (just as he’ll no doubt realize with Peg when he gets home). Because everything has changed. The war is over. If BJ and Hawkeye want to preserve their bond, they’d have to find new patterns, new ways of relating to each other, new routines away from death and destruction and hardship. It would take time and effort. Mike also said they’d make a point of seeing each other. To me that sounds like he thinks they’d be willing to put in the work. I like to think that too, even if I’m imagining a bit more drastic an endgame.

tl;dr: Mike Farrell understands that at the core of MASH is the paradox that these people mean more to each other than anyone who didn’t share that experience, but the status quo where those relationships are forged and flourish is a state of war that they all want out of so badly.

[novastardoughnut]

okay but we need to talk about this most recent Secret Life

SO... A lot just happened and I think we need to talk about it so SPOILERS:

SO... Lets talk about that Episode huh?

Jimmy didn't die first (we all knew this day would come, we all knew one day that Jimmy wouldn't be the first out because what is the statistical probability of being out first 5 times over). so what do we make of this event... well I think Lizzie dying first is another way for the watchers to get emotional reactions from the players. Now the canary still died lets not forget this, and he was the next one out, indeed the curse was broken BUUUT another part of the canary curse that is often forgotten in the rubble is that his death marks the start for the rest of the series going into that red violence/red madness era. it marks the start of the endgame. (and with Mumbo's right after we may even see a new curse arise). its a very funny thematic event to occur being that everyone throughout the whole episode was joking about Jimmy going out first again, they even held a pre-emptive funeral for him.

now already with this seasons a lot of parallels are being drawn to Last Life (we got Lizzie and Mumbo back, Mumbo made puns on his first episode back, a lot of AHA references this season etc) and now we have yet another one... THE WITHER!

now lets look at the big dogs for a moment, because indeed Mumbo did kind of join them this session, got a box of bones and everything for it. this is now a team consisting of Martyn, Jimmy and Mumbo. this team is very close to the Southlanders (it may be missing impulse and Grian but its close enough). now what happened. They spawned a WITHER (that had only ever been spawned before in Last Life) and both DIED to it one after another. (just like how they both died back to back in LL) leaving Martyn AGAIN the sole Member of his group.

in addition this time with the Wither it very much lived up to the nigh apocalyptic scenario that this situation should have been in that previous season. however with Bdubs (with his bravery) and Etho were more than capable of taking on the wither. The wither died in LL with relitively little pomp and circumstance, however in Secret Life where every heart counts, its effect becomes way more devistating on the server. last time there were a few explosions but nothing too bad, this time returning to the surface the floor devastated with explosion holes, craters and destruction. the nice walkable paths are rubble underfoot.

and yeah Martyn is yet again alone, his curse stands strong. he consistently died before Jimmy but in that moment he survived yet again to see his friends killed.

[viridiave]

WHAT YOUR FAVORITE OCTOPATH TRAVELER 2 SHIP SAYS ABOUT YOU

this is just for fun! I feel the need to reiterate that for this list too! Ship whatever you like ya'll!

POST-CHAPTER 1 SPOILERS ABOUND (up to the final chapters, but only like some of them (Hikari 5, Throne 4, Agnea 5, Partitio 4))

Hikari x Agnea

- you saw the art for Crossed Paths and committed to it

Hikari x Partitio

- you're into himbos who can sling twinks over their shouler. i don't blame ya.

Hikari x Ritsu

- shonen made you wonder why pinning your enemies to the ground is gay as all hell

Hikari x Castti

- your morbid curiosity has drawn you to the potential of the two characters of 'something's not right'

Agnea x Partitio

- you have a thing for sunshine characters who can make you go blind

Agnea x Gus

- you're a believer in childhood friends being endgame

Agnea x Giselle

- there's just something gay about being alone on a small island together and using your central ethos to inspire okay

Agnea x Dolcinaea

- you believe that Dolcinaea and Agnea have the innate power to turn everyone they meet into a raging bisexual

Agnea x Ochette

- same joke as Agnea x Partitio, but with permanent cat ears

Dolcinaea x Veronica

- you have a thing for muscled women. honestly i can't blame ya.

- you've seen Agnea's Chapter 5, and wonder how much ball it took to put that in there

Castti x Throné

- you were/are an avid Alfion shipper, and are very pleased about their path actions

Castti x Osvald

- you have a thing for Team Mom x Team Dad tropes

Castti x Rosa

- Winterbloom hurt more than just your feelings

Throné x Partitio

- you took shopping buddies as an invitation for something

Throné x Agnea

- you just want good things for Throné, and honestly who doesn't

Throné x Temenos

- same joke as Hikari x Agnea but with a significant increase in crime

Throné x Pirro

- you cried when you stabbed Pirro.

- you have not yet reached Lostseed, or have - and are still wondering what the actual fuck just happened

Osvald x Harvey

- you think the fire in Osvald's breast is a euphemism for something other than revenge

Osvald x Rita

- you cried at Conning Creek. then again at Montwise.

Osvald x Temenos

- you know what holy water is made of, and seek to defile it

Osvald x Partitio

- same joke as Hikari x Agnea but Partitio can afford therapy

Osvald x Emerald

- you really think Osvald should have mourned a little more

Temenos x Crick

- you played Temenos's Chapter 1. that's it that's the joke.

- you have either not reached Stormhail, or have - and reject that reality

Temenos x Cubaryi

- you love women who can kick your ass

Castti x Malaya

- you have a thing for mindfuckery

- you have either not reached the Abandoned Village, or have - and reject that reality

Partitio x Alrond

- you think Partitio should have taken off his shirt

- dw buddy Dancer subclass has got your back

Papp x Roque

- you think Partitio's Chapter 1 was a divorce that literally almost starved a town to death

[frozenjokes]

In my little analysis about the new chapter of the Mumbomaid fanfic has finally reach a conclusion within the council in my head.

I don’t think that Mumbo will do the actions of grown up (sexual/horny?) nature that Scar has fantasies about.

Mumbo knows he is big, he knows is dangerous to humans, he knows that they (Grian and Scar) are far more fragile than himself. He probably will be the more “dominant” one by the fault if the scenery did happen, thought.

But he will try his best to be the gentlest mermaid that has existed ever, since he doesn’t one to hurt the ones he loves. The kind-of aggressive and very dominant behavior that Scar told Grian is very unlikely to happened by the previous mentioned reason.

But since Scar (and Grian too) are aggressive-horny and kinda kinky, they might try to come to agreement with Mumbo that is okay to be a little aggressive sometimes, that they like it, but this would be unsuccessful since Etho would refuse to translate that conversation.

he has no penits

that’s a joke but it’s also not lmao also the idea of them trying to get etho to negotiate any of their sexual boundaries/desires is so fucking funny to me I think he would literally rather die. he’d rather run away with joel and never see any of them again. they make him so homophobic. etho is so utterly sex repulsed even being asked to facilitate that conversation would probably kill him instantly.

scar loves fantasizing for fun it is his favorite activity. ideal world for scar is getting swept off his feet by a sexy fantasy monster or just like. reading fanfiction. same affect. irl he’d probably rather not be under the threat of death <3 live laugh love. he should try writing sometime it would be bad but I support him.

anyway I have been thinking about what mermaid anatomy in this au is like for months (for reasons.) and I believe they are some kind of hermaphrodites and when it comes to genitalia or whatever I don’t think anything compatible is happening with human bodies. Though in a mumscarian endgame future (which. We’re making our way.) I imagine after all these concepts are explained Mumbo wouldn’t be opposed to participating. He likes to be around and learn things and he’s interested in human customs and activities, biological or otherwise! He has zero skin in the game but hey, his humans are really happy he’s here, and he’s just happy to be included! Even if being included is just sitting there. Maybe holding a hand. All :] about it. Just as wholesome as you can possibly get when right next to him those two idiots are being unbelievably nasty.

Though on a different note, Mumbo would at this point be learning English! I do think he and Etho would develop a somewhat close relationship, and I imagine Etho has already started teaching him some very basic tenants of English, as well as random words Mumbo wants to know so he can finally call his friends insufferable.

Etho had a bad experience learning English because Joel was an asshole about it, but I think being able to teach Mumbo something in a way he wished he’d been taught could be really cathartic for him, and might help heal over some of those bad associations he learned from Joel. It will be good for both of them. Of course Mumbo will also help smooth out some of the rough edges of Etho’s occasionally spotty mermaid speak as well. They r best friends to me. Very good pals.

More rambling, but I’d love a future where etho wants his best friend Bdubs and his best friend mumbo to meet. He wants to put his friends in a little box together so badly and shake them around. Watch them. Observe. That would require Etho to tell Bdubs the truth first though, and uhhhhhhhnhhhhhhhh. etho needs like a lot of therapy. like a lot. before that would ever happen.probably

[taoofshigeru]

Side-note on Octopath Traveler H'aanit

(since I had an ask that I chose to make about her today)

I always felt like the title of her story boss lead-in track, "For Master" (師匠のために), was a bit of an outlier relative to the others and doesn't mesh quite as well with her (very well-done!) story arc.

Most other Octopath "keywords" that come in via the soundtrack are more nuanced in terms of what the character's goal is and what they ultimately achieve as a result of their quest. Olberic's sought-after "Redemption" changes shape from simply tracking down and beating Erhardt to finding the man truly responsible for Hornberg's demise, but in the process he redeems Erhardt as well and finds real redemption in fighting for a cause and freeing the town that Werner holds dominion over. Tressa's "Treasure" is something concrete she sets out to find in chapter 3, and achieves, but Noa Wyndham's hand in marriage the experiences on her journey and the diary she kept of them turns out to be the real treasure.

These "For" keywords are almost always chosen with a strong double entendre to coincide with the twists in a character's story arc. Like with Therion, whose journey for "Freedom" from the bangle turns into something that sets him free from Darius and his past more generally, allowing him to look for the future. There's a lot of the ethos of squeezing the character's journey down to a word that changes meaning with the shift in context between chapter 1 and chapter 4, which I love as a writer. Pick a single word which the story can grow around, such that its original meaning and the new contextual meaning shine together like interwoven rainbows from a prism in a sunbeam.

On one level, H'aanit is on a quest to find her master Z'aanta, then rescue him from his petrification curse, but her journey takes on more significance once she fights the dragon. She's becoming a legend, a master hunter in her own right, ultimately slaying the Redeye where Z'aanta failed, and ending up with tall tales to tell him. Her journey always felt to me like it was about becoming a master, and finding it in herself to become one, rather than just looking for a specific person. However, since she never finds an apprentice, the choice of "師匠", a master in the sense of an instructor or a teacher, feels slightly misplaced. Maybe if she had a kid aiming to learn from her in her chapter one, then she was finally able to go home and give those lessons at the end of her story, it would have landed better.

Alternatively, something like "For Quarry" might have been nicer. Since her quest starts out as a hunt for Z'aanta, then becomes a quest to slay the Redeye. It has the bonus of carrying extra nuance of putting Graham out of his misery once endgame lore drops. (Since that was something she did "for" him, albeit unknowingly.)

Other "For _" comments: Primrose, who sets out for "Revenge" and does indeed achieve total and fairly satisfying revenge, is admittedly a bit of a counterexample. Albiet a slightly more bitter pill because of all that Simeon bullshit.

Ophilia, meanwhile, is like a weird case where the original text is weak but the localized version is strong enough to hold up. Her pre-boss motif is "For Light" (試練のために). The original text could more directly be translated as "For the Ritual" or "For the Kindling", but Ophilia's involvement with the church is as much about her family, her adoptive father Josef and sister Lianna, than it is a strong attachment to the dogma per se. It's a major character focus that her sister was supposed to be the flamebearer but Ophilia took over so she could be with their father. And in the finale of the Ophilia arc, the focus is on saving her sister, bringing her back to the light, much more so than on the trial of the flamebearer per se. In that way, "For Light" is great because it can be about the kindling, but it's also very much about bringing Lianna back into the light.

[erstwhilesparrow]

watched more 3rd life it's time for another list:

it fucks me up so bad that right up to the end martyn is careful and suspicious and ready to get the hell out of dodge at a moment's notice: when skizz -- someone who has already sworn his loyalty and thrown himself wholeheartedly into Being On Their Side -- brings him and ren down a staircase in skizz's base to a secret resource stash, martyn hangs back with his sword out and his shield raised. when martyn and impulse get ambushed by grian et al in renchanting's basement, martyn immediately bolts and blocks off the exit staircase behind him so they can't chase him. and then the way he dies is charging at scar for killing ren. could he have survived and gotten away by playing it safe and booking it? maybe. would he ever have? not in a million years. i know people have talked about this to the moon and back but that doesn't mean it doesn't fuck me up. he'd follow his king anywhere....

i love ren repeatedly being concerned with infrastructure even as they get into the endgame of the season. they don't know how fast things fall apart after a certain point!! they've never done this before!! ren complained about not having time for building things up, and i immediately thought about limited life. and i know this one's also been talked about to death, but really. the way some of them sort of try to build some nice things but it's their fourth go at this by now and really what do they need but the stripped-back and unadorned sky bridges, the half-burned ruins that are still standing enough to put chests and crops on? the... unravelling. the breaking of everything down to its bones. i was watching with a friend and said to them something to the effect of, like, dogwarts is so sentimental. martyn goes to absurd lengths (including straight up dying) to get the banner back. ren decides that since they're all going to die anyway, they should do it at their castle, take it back and make a final stand there. and by the finale, there are uncovered explosion craters everywhere, sky bridges and pillars made out of incongruous blocks, platforms supported by nothing, quick two-block-tall barricades, everything in ruins, but that's not until the finale. renchanting has decorative buttons on its roof. at one point during either his finale or his penultimate episode, martyn is quietly replanting dogwarts' crops while they all talk. they try to build things for the longterm. they try to build them pretty. and then limited life dispenses with all the pleasantries. god.

at one point scar runs past a bunch of floating items and going "oh, somebody's dead body." i LOVE dropped items as corpses…. here's what the game leaves you with: weapons, armour, resources. here's what the game never gives you: the actual body, hands and voice and face. but they DO leave something.

sometimes i think to myself, "surely i am exaggerating how much martyn is Like That about ren," and other times i am listening to martyn chase scar down saying, "when my lord wants something, he gets it." !!

hey kind of a weird note but martyn just Says this like it's something everyone knows: apparently green names with invis just fully can't be seen by red names?? is that true. why hasn't this ever come up. why did i forget he said this.

i love names. i love how they get used and when. thinking about etho going, "major?" to himself when ren's trying to tell dogwarts who to target, and then later, discussing battle strategy during the finale, picking up on calling him major instead of scott. ren never not calling scott 'major'. scott in his pov deliberately calling jimmy 'solidarity' when he's talking to impulse because impulse wouldn't know who 'jimmy' refers to. martyn swapping from calling him 'jimmy/timmy' to calling him 'solidarity' when they wind up on opposite sides and he needs to tell the rest of dogwarts what their enemies are up to. all of dogwarts taking up calling [impulse and his villagers] 'the war machine' after impulse gets found out. who they all are to each other, the network of relationships and understandings that gets laid out in who calls them what. man!!

i love prox chat. faint noises that might be movement while ren and martyn hide in a cave, and then extremely clearly scott going "joel, they're under you." bigb apparently only hearing scott going, "hi, bigb!" before dying is SO scary i love it so much. martyn overhearing impulse calling "eyes" to desert duo when he spots dogwarts trying to sneak back into the castle and the extra sliver of betrayal that that is, that he turned on them and stole their vocabulary for his own ends too.

i forgot martyn loses his green life within sight of dogwarts. i forgot martyn doesn't even see the actual moment ren loses his final life. absolutely fuck me, i guess.

speaking of "absolutely fuck me, i guess" moments: i hadn't noticed until this watch through that martyn's video description on his finale is "A hand to hold until the end. A hand to hold because we're friends." ;-; ???? i'm so tender about this. they were playing games and telling stories and having fun with it and they're FRIENDS. ;-;

entering the mean gills zone, in which i think about mean gills a truly unreasonable amount:

martyn chasing scott through the trees, scott yelling for martyn to back off and telling him off like a misbehaving dog. even after a rift has opened between them, there is still a degree to which scott reacts to martyn like martyn is someone/something he can boss around.

also: scott taunting dogwarts saying he has the red winter axe. martyn noticing while searching through some chests that he has what he describes as the rabbit foot scott gave them (initially a gift from ren to scott). setting this next to the lengths martyn has demonstrated to almost everyone on the server that he will go to to get the dogwarts banner back. setting both of these things next to the fact that martyn proposes stealing the pufferish of peace, saying, "i think [scott] would do horrible things to get it back."

this exchange from the middle of martyn chasing scott: "i wanna cuddle before you die. we were the last two yellows, can we cuddle? [...] hey i never wanted jimmy to die, okay, i said from the get-go--" / "you let skizz get him."

(note: it is demonstrably not true that they're the last two yellows? i think martyn might've meant last two greens; he and scott were both yellow at this point.)

martyn claiming to dogwarts that he knows where scott's nether portal is and that he can show them how to sneak into scott's base from the nether. (i say claiming because they do then get very lost trying to find scott's portal, but. yknow. this is knowledge martyn kind of has on scott. even the bridges over the valleys of the nether are bridges martyn built with scott.)

scott loses his yellow life trying to fight ren, because martyn charges in and scott nearly does kill martyn but ren shoots him at the last minute.

exiting the mean gills zone to instead enter the [whatever the fuck desert duo has going on in martyn's pov]:

an exchange you could have fun with: "Why do I keep letting Scar live!" / "Oddly we have respect for him." (i forgot to make note of who the first person was, but the second speaker is martyn.)

you could probably Do Something with the fact that scott, scar, and grian show up to attack martyn, and while grian's yelling, "revenge!!" martyn says, "you gave me this [golden apple], grian, i'm gonna use it!"

at one point in martyn's pov you can hear grian go, "scar, where are you?" and then increasingly forlornly going, "scar? scar?" i don't have anything additional to say about this, i just am vividly remembering how much i like desert duo and how interesting they are from martyn's pov.

[stillness-in-green]

Wait wait wait if spinaraki is one of three pillars what are the other two

(Re: my tags on this post.)

Ahahaha, well, actually, what I was referring to there was my quip about betting on friendship in a Shonen Jump manga—one of the three pillars of Shonen Jump:

If you google those three terms + Shonen Jump, you can find more in-depth discussion, but basically, they're the themes that manga serialized in SJ generally aim for, not necessarily because it's a strict editorial mandate or anything, so much as because those are just viewed as the most key themes that make a Shonen Jump manga—well, a Shonen Jump manga. This sense of identity accounts for a lot of the traits of the “Shonen Jump main character” archetype, as well as the expected presence of “nakama”-type characters, and plenty of other tropes that you might think of as being synonymous with shonen manga in general.

The importance of this ethos factors into some of my frustrations with Deku, actually. While he had to put in lots and lots of hard work in the early parts of the manga, since acclimating to OFA, there’s been considerably less Effort going into his victories.  It’s part of the conflict between his relationship with his classmates and the secrecy All Might demands, too, a tension that comes to a head in the Deku vs. 1-A fight, but that doesn't really continue on to a better place, I don't think.

If you look at where the three tenets are in that fight, it’s clear from the beginning who’s going to win.  Deku might be putting in Effort, but so are the rest of the kids, and it’s really obvious where the Power of Friendship is between the kid trying fiercely to go it alone vs. nineteen kids working together for a single goal and with the value of their bonds burning in their hearts.  Effort + Friendship = Victory, see?

Even after having proven the supremacy of friendship-based teamwork, though, the characters in-universe (especially the adults) continue putting Deku on this pedestal as the character who'll solve their Shigaraki problem and the kids just kind of—let this happen.

Well, I could elaborate on that more, but EH. That's not why I nor you are here. So to refocus, one of the things that makes the League of Villains so interesting and unique as SJ villains go is how they interact with the three pillars. Villains don't, as a general rule! A key part of having protagonists that express Friendship, Effort and Victory is contrasting them against villains who express the opposite of those things. And, indeed, many villains in BNHA work in exactly that way: AFO has to work for very little, Overhaul is very much not here to make friends (though some of his minions are a different story; the trash trio are very interesting in this context), and so on.

The League, however, is different. That’s most clear in the My Villain Academia arc, with Shigaraki being emblematic of Effort, with hints of Friendship here and there, Spinner’s Friendship taking the form of devotion that powers his Efforts, and Twice being a beacon of both.  Mr. Compress’s faith and self-sacrifice (Friendship+Effort) are instrumental in the villains’ escape from Jakku.  Toga’s grief over losing Twice (Friendship) is pivotal in her endgame arc.  Dabi is pretty bad at the Friendship angle (it’s what most clearly sets him apart from the rest of the League), but he’s a monster when it comes to Effort, pushing through a lifetime of pain because giving up might as well mean dying (and dying absolutely means giving up).

Looking more closely at Spinner and Shigaraki, you can read large chunks of their character arcs through this lens.

Shigaraki starts the story as a cranky and entitled manchild, unpleasantly demanding towards the few people he’s close to; he also bails on USJ once the odds turn against him.  Having thus no Friendship to speak of and being disinclined to bother with Effort, of course he can’t obtain Victory.  His lack of determination is one of the things Deku critiques in their mall encounter; during the training camp, Kurogiri asks if he views the Vanguard Action Squad as merely pawns.  Losing AFO at Kamino deprives Shigaraki of his reset button, meaning he will need to put in more Effort to secure Victory, since there will be no one around to mitigate his defeats anymore.

In the Hassaikai arc, we see him develop an understanding of his team and begin to clarify his ideology, demonstratively opening up to Toga and Twice, and trusting in their Friendship and Effort as the basis of the plan that culminates in the highway attack.  A few months later, Gigantomachia pushes him to extremes like never before, with the place of belonging he offered Twice in particular being key in the League overcoming the MLA.

This arc of finding comrades (Friendship) and discovering the beliefs he’s willing to fight for (Effort) delivers him to a decisive victory (you get the gist) at Deika.

This arc is also why I find the possession plot so frustrating and underwhelming—Shigaraki being subjugated by All For One, his friends scattered and used, feels violently at odds with the way Shigaraki engaged with the three tenets up to this point.  Like, why did we even spend so much time on Shigaraki’s Efforts and Friendships if him spending two years and 85 chapters of the climax as a damsel thanks to AFO is all it was going to amount to?  So I’m very much hoping him taking back control will get us in a better spot going forward, even if I’m skeptical that it’ll be able to wholly undo the damage.

As to Spinner, his arc begins with him being inspired by Stain’s willingness to strive even when he’s one man against the whole world; this admiration of Effort is what leads Spinner to the League, while his sense that his Effort is being wasted is what drives his confrontation with Shigaraki in Chapter 220.  He’s struck to empathy after hearing Shigaraki speak of being empty, however, and seeing Shigaraki’s Efforts lead to Victory in Deika solidifies his loyalty (Friendship). That keen understanding of Shigaraki leads to him being able to wake Shigaraki at Jakku, avoiding a defeat if not securing a victory; his enduring loyalty then leads him into AFO’s hands.

In the last scene we’ve gotten of him thus far, all three tenets are on display: his dedication to Shigaraki drives him to power through heroic opposition and his own fragmenting mind to wake Kurogiri with a plea that’s based in his love of Shigaraki and the League; Kurogiri being woken is directly responsible for Shigaraki being returned to full power just as he also returns to his own mind.

Friendship mixed with Effort leads to Victory—that progression is what I was specifically thinking about when I said I felt pretty good about betting on Friendship in a Shonen Jump comic, and made the quippy tag about the three pillars.

That's the serious answer. See here for the funny/fannish one.

[redliferiot]

pie (Pearl Impulse Etho) is my new fav endgame alliance

[polyamanga]

what do you (and your followers) think the chances of 'no more losing heroines!' having a poly endgame are? on one hand, having any of the girls conclusively lose a second time feels against the ethos of the series, but on the other the girls themselves have limited interactions with one another so far, and so they don't have much dynamics to support a poly narrative.

You're talking about Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines! right? I don't know much about it, but I was hopeful when I first heard the title! It reminded me of 100GF, with the tag line "the romantic comedy with no losing heroines". It almost feels referential? I think the series first started in 2021, whereas 100GF started in 2019...🤔

I agree that it would feel weird to have one girl "win" over the others, when it's literally in the title of the series that they've all lost once before. But who knows lol

I've been meaning to look into it for a while now, but boy life's just been crazy recently! I haven't had much time/energy for a lot of things (I'm falling so far behind!!). If anyone here has been watching/reading it, feel free to give your thoughts too!