#i can't believe my twitter turned up on tumblr

[decolonize-the-everything]

what do you realistically believe will happen if those on the left wing do not vote for democrats? do you believe that will single handedly reform the system? or do you believe trump will win and ruin the lives of millions of americans who would have been okay under the democrats?

Y'all tried to threaten us in 2016 and how did that turn out for you?

I'm native. I'm not voting for a genocidal Democrat. For a genocidal anyone for that matter. Y'all are lucky I vote at all, I have no fucking business participating in the genocidal colonial-settler project that killed my family and decimated my people and hundreds of other tribes.

"how are you gonna reform the system if you dont-"

Shut up. You literally won't refuse to even entertain the idea of voting for someone who's clearly stated goals are to reform the system just because they're a 3rd party.

Again, y'all are lucky I'm willing to vote at all. The person I vote for sure as hell won't be someone who's actively taken steps to repeat America's first mistake.

"how will we ever reform"

It's been 500 years and youre STILL justifying a genocide and convinced you're the fucking good guys. You won't. This country will never reform because even it's fucking liberals dont think a genocide is worth a threat to the status quo.

Die mad with Trump as your president and know it's people like YOU who literally fight progressives and activists that let it happen.

You are settling for fascism not me

"how will we reform"

Give me a fucking break and ask the white people that have had power from day 1 and to this day continue to vote in their own interest.

You want reform? Take it up with the people who Don't want reform at all instead of me. I'm giving you my vote, you don't get to tell who to vote for.

That'd be fascism. And if your country falls apart without fascism to make it function, good. Fascist countries don't deserve to exist.

"what do you think will happen to the people-"

Idk maybe Biden should've actually codified something instead of just promising to do it after his presidential elections or after Dems won mid terms like he said he would or trying to maybe even back when he was a vp or-

You don't get to hold me accountable for the way your party has chosen to actively fail everyone alive right now.

I'm not a politician. Natives couldn't even vote everywhere until the 70's!!! You can't be serious with this victim blaming nonsense and blame shifting.

If you message me then get rid of that cognitive dissonance you have.

"ruin the lives of millions of americans-"

Which lives aren't already ruined? If you are marginalized or someone who experiences intersecting marginalizations then you must've already been making donation posts on Tumblr and Twitter. And that's those of us who can post.

So who's life are you thinking of?

Your party is a party upholding white supremacists values and that's why they're so okay with xenophobia and genocide overseas but want to increase racist police budgets despite the war crimes being committed by police against Black people and protesters on the daily. And if you think American lives are more important than anyone else's in general (you're the one that told me to consider the lives of Americans while several genocides are happening), that's nationalism! The first step to straight up white nationalism and white supremacy. And you're acting like its rational in my asks on behalf of your party!!!

Don't be shy. Let's think critically here. What does that mean about who's lives you consider valuable and worth saving? Who is it? Who. Tell me. Go on.

Hope this helps ;3

[stereax]

spill the controversial deeply-held opinion(s)?

every time someone makes fun of a hockey player's name, an angel loses its wings.

very often, I want to say the strong majority of the time, when I see posts like "this player can't be real with a name like that" or "that's not a real name", the name in question is simply Not Anglo-American. just pulling from memory, people are saying names like Zeev Buium (name origin: Hebrew), Arber Xhekaj (name origin: Albanian/Kosovar), Zemgus Girgensons (name origin: Latvian), Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (name origin: Finnish), and Ivan Miroshnichenko (name origin: Russian) are "fake" names, "NPC" names, or "Japanese baseball" names (after the infamous "Fighting Baseball" game where a dev had to make up a bunch of fake names on the spot). I hope I don't need to point out how this is often xenophobic. I don't think most people are actively aware that they're perpetuating xenophobic thinking when they do this, they just go haha name funny, but ultimately this can be deeply xenophobic.

maybe I see it differently than others - but I'm half-Polish, and as long as I can remember, my Polish family and friends' names have been butchered by (usually) English-speaking Americans, often with snide comments on the side about "are you sure this is your name?" and "this is spelled correctly?" to really rub it in. often enough, this ends with the Pole anglicizing their own name so it "doesn't cause any more problems" - Katarzyna becomes Kate, Grzegorz becomes Greg, Mariusz becomes Mark, Zuzanna becomes Sue. god forbid you have a name like Czesława or Bogdan, where you'll either go by a name like Jessie or Danny (which aren't at all related to the original name) or just get mispronounced forever. oh, and by the way, if you've noticed, almost all of these names turn into diminutives. I'll leave you to think about why.

you probably don't know who Teodors Bļugers is. that's because he anglicized his name to Teddy Blueger so it wouldn't cause problems for announcers. on the Cup, his name is spelled Teddy Blueger, not Teodors Bļugers.

...even when the name is "normal" (think Jason Robertson, Robert Thomas, Jake Bean, Will Smith), making fun of it is a dick move. you're essentially telling someone that their name isn't real - that a core part of their identity must be fabricated because it "sounds funny" to you. and yes, the fourth wall exists and hockey players won't (or at least shouldn't) be on tumblr reading your posts, but people who are from these cultures or have similar names likely will be. and it's they who are being told, because your name does not fit our criteria, it is not a real name. (plus, while tumblr is relatively safe from fourth-wall breaches, other social media such as twitter is infamous for having hockey player burners on them. if Patrik Laine can find and like posts calling him a bust, you best believe players can find and read your opinions online.)

does that make sense?

[swaggyfishii]

TW// grooming, nsfw

i can't believe im making this post again but this is getting out of hand. @eechytooru is a groomer. and I'm making this post to warn the people in the welcome home fandom. I'm not that big into the fandom but i still want to spread awareness.

@eechytooru went by another name in the OSC - @/teenbeeny

back in 2020, i was 12 and new to the object show community but i saw bfb fanart by a person named @/teenbeeny (eechytooru). they where 16 but said they were turning 17 soon we talked in instagram dms but they would talk about object show porn and we would have nsfw rps but the worst part, they drew porn my sona (i was 12-13 at the time) and her sona (she was 16-17 at the time) together a couple of times. but in 2022, ive grown and i was 14, my friends helped me make a callout post on twitter and im thankful it worked. after a few months i didn't see her again but i soon started to hyperfixtate on tawog so i looked up fanart - and i found @/teenbeeny going by a fake name, eechytooru, trying not to get caught.

now, tawog fandom helped me to spread awareness and got her deactivate their tumblr account but that wasnt enough and now they're posting welcome home fanart and getting popular with a AU that they made - the EnA AU

again, im making this post to spread awareness. to this day she still hasnt given me a apology and claims that it was my fault and that i started all of this.

tweets that have proof:

(tw// nsfw mention) twitter callout post

tumblr account callout post

please reblog to spread awareness in the welcome home fandom!

[lemotmo]

Queer arc question 🎉

Q. Don't you think there's lots of ways they could take the Eddie storyline? I mean yeah queer is possible but the show could also double down and run in the opposite direction.

A. Sure the show can go a different direction, but there's no other satisfactory way to go for Eddie other than making him queer. I just think they've painted themselves into a corner where he is concerned. His very established dating pattern is meeting a woman who is culturally and physically acceptable asking her out and then immediately jumping into commitment and introducing her to Christopher or asking her to move in. He forces instant commitment instead of just dating. And then he spirals because he feels like he's got an instant family. He's on record saying he hates being 'forced' to date because he feels like he has to perform (yes he was talking about blind dates but they made a point of showing Hen's reaction). He's on record saying he's a nester and doesn't like just dating around. But every time he 'nests' with a woman he's seeing he spirals and breaks up with her (Anna) or sabotages the relationship (Marisol). This is his dating pattern. And every time he spirals we see Buck occupying the same space/role that his girlfriend's would (minus the sexual part, for now) and Eddie is relaxed and happy when it involves Buck. He had a ready made family with him, Christopher and Buck by episode 4 of season two. The show also made a point of having Bobby tell Eddie that he doesn't have any trouble committing when he actually wants to. So the show was reinforcing this pattern, that they have very noticeably and constantly made Buck the exception to

This past season the show did a kind of retcon and appeared to be saying that Eddie's relationship issues are because he's not over Shannon. So they brought in her doppelganger and had Eddie start seeing her. But instead of doubling down on the not over Shannon thing the show had Eddie specifically tell Buck that it wasn't anything physical and he didn't want to sleep with her. And when Kim found out about Shannon she transformed herself into Shannon and it turned out all Eddie wanted from her was to talk. He wanted to ask her why they didn't work. Wanted to ask her why he feels broken all the time and can't figure out how to fix it? So any chance the show had to kind of drift away from the picture they were painting they didn't and instead had Eddie kind of double down on the fact that it's because he can't figure out why he doesn't feel 'right'. Now I ask you, anon, if all of this doesn't sound like a character who is about to experience a sexuality awakening then what the hell else could it possibly be? Because I've got nothing. I cannot think of a single other storyline all of this could be building towards. And no one else has offered a plausible storyline alternative either. They have written themselves into an obvious corner and I think they did it on purpose.

Thank you Nonny! Much appreciated as always!

All right, I so much agree with Ali here. I've discussed this topic before with some mutuals who have been around since season 1 or 2 and a queer Eddie storyline is the only thing that would make sense now.

We also have some inside information that they have tried to go down the queer Eddie road before, but that it was blocked by FOX at the time. Now, I know that this information isn't 'official' as it was said by the anonymous insider over on Twitter. But they have been right about so many other things on the show that I choose to believe them. Whether or not you choose to believe them, is up to you. Remember, this is just my opinion on things.

So yeah, all of the evidence from the show itself, combined with information from other sources, interviews, podcasts and articles? To me this can only go one way. The way of the queer storyline.

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[goldenhickeysandramen]

What if we ask for receipts?

(This post is inspired by some recent posts from some moots on Tumblr)

We spend all day defending Jimin and JK's bond.

All day, all the time, always in the position of defendant, against anons here, trolls on twitter, and in general, hordes of annoying people.

Well then, let's see what happens if we are now the prosecutor, and not the defense lawyer  

Let's see where the hell your receipts are:

- Love expressions: how many times have your favorites declared that they love each other in different kinds of language?. And I'm not talking about the "I love you" that are given to friends for a specific situation (like Hobi leaving for the ms)... or weird hand signals, you know a lot about that and symbols... but big signs of love…

Like suddenly this:

Or this:

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 Or this: 

- Intimacy displays: have your favorites given each other hickeys? (this is important...u know I love hickeys)

Have they flirted in front of thousands of people? (and watch out! because here the line between fan entertainment (I won't say the damm word, which I know you don't like) and genuine flirting is very subtle, but distinctive. This is flirting, for instance 😌

Do they've sucked each other's ear in front of thousands of people?

(Or do they have some kink for ears?)

Have they stuck their D's in front of thousands of people?

  (my God, do you realize what they won't do in front of thousands of people)?

- Show the evidence that your favorites live or have lived together (not in the dorms era back in 2018): let's see... let me think... how many times have they suspiciously shared a car, when we didn't know where they lived extra officially? 

Or do have they been at 4 am in the morning together alone, celebrating billboard or actually delivering hickeys? 

Or in the deed of the purchase of a house appears the address where the other lives (91).?

- Samples of tension or awkwardness beyond explanation: look, we have so many receipts here that I don't even know where to start... just look at Jimin's recent bomb and see JK's visit... and well, there it is... the awkwardness of some of their interactions... sometimes it makes you want not to look... sometimes it makes you feel embarrassed... I sometimes think they're going to screw up at any moment.

- Proof of inside jokes that show that they actually WATCH a lot of content together. Do you have any of your own?

- Demonstration of knowing certain personal information. Here I'm sorry, but again we have a lot of receipts. Tae had no idea that JK did a 3 hour vlive. Or Hobi also didn't know about Jimin's "time" (10:13). Instead, Jimin sees all of JK's vlives...and vice versa (as we’ve been able to check recently) and they know most of things they have done, or where they are at each moment (they even know what happened at bae's grandma's birthday)

And now...let’s see and talk about YOUR receipts:

made-up dinners out alone and selfies in bathrooms (not to mention other things you say happen in the bathrooms)

trips for which there is no concrete proof, or which are clearly BTS trips

any close-up, or photo, or mention on vlive....

each pic on Instagram

a look

breathing the same air

stepping on the same ground

And, so far the most robust, outings at their free time. We had in the past months vkook, jihope, hobikook, or vhope outings.

This is what most people are claiming lately. Maybe it is our fault, for having repeated so many times that Jimin and JK were the ones who most "hanged out" together..... now it seems that this mantra is turning against us.....

Well..... NOOOO.... I object your honour!

Because jikook have literally told us recently that they are both super homely. Which I understand. Not just because of their personalities or that they like it, but because outside, they can't be totally free lately. 

Because if JK is constantly being stalked in his country - just look at where he officially lives - and also, as we believe, jikook are a couple, they have a lot to protect and I think they know that the most intimacy and security they have is at home. 

On the other hand, they already know what happens when they are seen in a certain location: that restaurant ends up becoming a crowded place of jikookers or k-army. So, if they go out, they're going to be very careful and most likely they'll go to trusted places, where they don't post their signatures on IG. So, my friends,…WE WON'T KNOW about it! Unless they want to, or go somewhere more public and new.

And then again, Jimin has been busy with his album and hasn't been seen with anyone. NO ONE. The only exception, Hobi's birthday and the drink they had last Sunday or Monday (as a farewell). And we know this because they wanted to tell us... because if they hadn't, or posted any pictures, there would be no receipts from them either (of course! who of us could have been at Hobi's house on his birthday to know?).

But even with all this reasoning … the truth is that friends hang out and that does not mean they are dating. Hanging out doesn’t work with jikook either by itself. Other things must happen (see above 👆 ☺️)

So your receipts, imo, are either conspicuous by their absence or rather lacking in robustness.

Ours, on the other hand, are terrific! Stop asking for more! We've justified enough.

It must be pitiful to ship any “couple" whose ultimate proof of confirmation that they are together depends so much on another couple failing to provide certain evidence that confirms they actually are...the audacity!!! 

[sam-keeper]

hilariously, I tried months ago to switch my patreon to a subscription model and they wouldn't let me because they switched that functionality off. now, magically, it's back, because Apple is twisting their arm about it. lots of "fuck apple" takes going around but... if this is what forces patreon to actually do their job uhhhhhh I'm not complaining lol

they've essentially been letting all infrastructure not attuned to the subscription model rot for MONTHS, they WANTED to force people onto this model before. it feels like Tumblr whining about how they can't have porn even though twitter can "for reasons idk", when it's become SO fucking obvious that they just wanted to ban porn and apple makes for a convenient scapegoat.

I firmly believe that the reason they turned off the ability to just switch from per-creation to subscription because they wanted to force all of us with grandfathered in lower fee rates because we signed up in the first few years of their business to just remake our patreons from scratch. if this forces them to just let us switch normally that's a good thing, though part of me still is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

also, lol, remember when the ENTIRE PITCH for Patreon was "we can keep service fees down because we charge cards ONCE in a big lump sum then distribute the earnings"? it's funny how that fell by the wayside over time...

anyway fuck this company, they're doing a great job of making it look like apple is responsible for what for the most part is their own infrastructural incompetence and fecklessness.

[hethuisxdashausxhouseofxanubis]

4 Years HHAtranslated

It's 15 April 2024, which means HHAtranslated turns 4 years old today 🫶🏼🥹

When I thought of starting this account pre-covid, I never expected it would turn into this. During lockdown, I had so much time and the nostalgia and my love for Anubis helped me through so much over the years.

So many accounts on Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter talk about this universe and it makes me so happy!

As there are four series and this is the fourth anniversary, I'd like to express my gratitude for each show.

Het Huis Anubis:

* HHA raised me as a kid and helped me through my struggles as a teen and now in my twenties

* Seeing the cast IRL in December was a dream come true and I still can't believe it happened 🥹

* I can't wait to see the EMDV vodcast of Anjali and Iris! They're teasing the date of the first episode online atm. I can't wait to unravel new truths 🤩

The Five of the Magical Sword:

* Such an overhated and underrated show in Belgium and the Netherlands, that I was scared to sub it. I'm glad I did, because international fans took Sterre, Pim, Marcel, Raphael and Anastacia into their hearts and didn't let them go 🫶🏼

* I also learned to appreciate the show a lot more

* I hope they've a reunion too

House of Anubis:

* HHA and HOA fans often butt heads and it's not necessary at all!

* Both shows are absolutely amazing

* HOA took the key elements of HHA and made it their own and I adore what they did with it. Some characters might have a different arc, but it makes them their own person and I love discovering the differences

* I need to rewatch the masterpiece that's season 3!

Das Haus Anubis:

* For some reason, DHA makes me hella nostalgic while I only discovered it in 2019

* The same sets and scripts make for fun comparisons and while DHA is a lower budget show, it's so much fun

* I love to watch DHA episode/day wise and I've rewatched it like that already often

* The cast is so involved still and it makes me very happy!

The future of HHAtranslated:

* Once I find an editing programme again, I'd love to sub the S100 Singalong Anubis concert, BTS of HHA/The Five and the discography

* I'd love to sub Das Haus Anubis someday🫶🏼

Now:

My main project for 2024 is the 9 Het Huis Anubis novels, based on the TV series and the movies.

The books are in third person, but follow Nienke's pov, throughout her stay at Anubis House. Some scenes are way more graphic than in the series, like Nienke and Noa's kidnapping.

The romance is also more present and we get new scenes which make Nienke's decisions more logical, like how she ended up in Anubis house with the grail mid-season 2.

I'm starting of with book 1: The Secret Club of the Old Willow

I'll try to upload frequently. I've less time as I work fulltime and live with my boyfriend, compared to university and living at my parents' years ago. A new blogpost will be created on my website, with links to the chapters, published in a Google Drive doc.

English isn't my first language so there will be mistakes. However, I hope to do the books justice like I hope I did the show.

Teasers to the books and chapter 1 will be posted soon. Stay tuned ❤️

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is.  While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic.  Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended.  While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it.  In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well.  Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370: 

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji.  It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement.  I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression.  After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it?  Here’s the full scope of that.  It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away.  Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like.   They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages.  The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas.  While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure.  While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens.  Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause.  It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace.  So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda.  With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs.  None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!”  I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to.  After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”?  Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities.  Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city.  So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be.  That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric.  And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!    

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education?  Phony nonsense, he says.  That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title.  The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves.  Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified.  Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.    

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.    

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.    

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks.  It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about?  I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks.  But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time.  Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof.  While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not.  So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame.  So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks!  However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant).  So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs?  My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga.  Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable.  It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in.  She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs?  That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble?  Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling.  That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward.  So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.    

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous.  She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.    

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school.  He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts.  He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife.  (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)    

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer.  It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better.  But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects.  What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior?  It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types.  He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge.  These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6]  Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons.  Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains?  Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8]  This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot.  No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target.  Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it.  The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on.  But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun.  As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease.  As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters?  He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front.  It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves.  Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes.  Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu.  Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes!  I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying.  The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination.  I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend.  However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers.  Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady.  Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot.  Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.”  But discrimination very much does exist in cities!  It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there!  Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be?  Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes.  What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life.  Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy.  Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality.  For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider.  Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.    

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar.  We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance.  That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly.  In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on.  There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land.  Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence.  Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki.  It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.  It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates.  Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object.  It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed.  Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

   

Chapter 371: 

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero.  It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally.  Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga.  Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait!  Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia.  Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had.  Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it.  Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.    

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone.  This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork.  This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone.  This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like.  The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl.  Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent?  That’s hard to say.  On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare!  On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there.  Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something!     17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly.     18: The duplicated ones, at least.  I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.    

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks.  As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with.  While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene.  Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.    

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents.  The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder.  Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language.  The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child.  The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is.  Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in?     Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls.  I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean.  However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.    

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background.  If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede.  I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother.  That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents.  He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.”  That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people.  While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives.  In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it.  Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19]  Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with.  In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal.  After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time!  If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either.  Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter.  Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible?  After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure.  That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways.  For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”    

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory.  Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.    

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A.  Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21]  It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country.  It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks.  My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning.  Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status.  It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on.  The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger.  That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole.  This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything.  Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless.  At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing!  It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene.  Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings.  We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge.  He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up.  He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool.  I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled.  I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up?  I have my doubts for two reasons.  First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch.  It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga.  Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March.  In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants.  The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs.  Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose.  While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification.  (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes.  So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories.  He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers.  As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries.  This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3.  The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.”  Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV?  Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person.  And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?    

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner?  Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs.  Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR.  As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

   

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry.  To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words?  He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism.  And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.”  Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross.  Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed.  (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

   

Chapter 372: 

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group.  Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size.  Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones.  However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height.  In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.    

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment.  Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him.  (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)    

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such.  If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it.  Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!    

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced.  Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere.  Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country?  That might track with the overalls she was wearing.  And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time.  Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.    

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students.  That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger.  Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it.  To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do.  It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen.  Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like…  That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building!  The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds!  The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner.  Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side.  No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla.  Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today.  This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child!  Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town.  Children already and still are being targeted!  Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary.  She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology?  Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted.  And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right?  And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself?  Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing?  Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her?  Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence?  If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages?  If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly.  He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.”  Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself.  It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying.  This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good.  Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too.  While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse.  Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with.  That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding?  After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict?  How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box.  That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry.  That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system.  Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward.  This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction.  So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man.  This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country?    •  If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?    

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline?  If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him.  But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?    

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of?  To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing.  This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast.     This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims.  That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph.     Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly?  “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care.  But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all.  Is that what I am?  Not nice?”  On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person?  Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

   

Chapter 373: 

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies.  It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes.  However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains.  It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far.  All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly?  Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today.  Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place?  Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent?  This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad.  It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might.  Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change.  We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it.  Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news.  The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building!  He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be?  How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been?  In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better.  If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it.  And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it!  It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims!  But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him.  His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own.  As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

   

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned?  No, I don’t.  I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society.  I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable.  Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power.  The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is.  I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism.  That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

[yooniesim]

this as a prime example of what is wrong with simblr (and tumblr in general). this ask was sent to me within like less than a day of that post about cf going up, while I was away for the weekend and not at pc for days. I did not even see the post until right before I got this ask. yall are so damn terminally online that you lost the gd plot and cannot comprehend someone not keeping their finger on the dying pulse of the performative activism headquarters of the internet. and you definitely can't comprehend waiting for complete info or maybe just a full day before starting some reactionary bs. just peeking in here since yesterday i see that simblr is yet again so hyped up on smelling its own farts that it's turned an issue of genocide into yet another dick measuring contest of who can reblog more posts than one another the fastest so they can look more empathetic and better than anyone else. and call themselves "real activists" for being able to click the reblog button. not to mention the usual spamming anons to random people minding their own business. yall are weird as fuck and need to get a firm grip on some grass. stop making the horrific suffering of others about yourselves for once.

that being said, let me get serious for the people on here that are actually normal. for those that don't know by now, this anon seems to be referencing this post about cf, which talks about overwolf (the company that owns curseforge) donating to the IDF. But I also found this tweet by OOP made after that post that explains they have since received DMs from Overwolf stating that they have shifted their relief efforts to aiding victims that have lost their homes from the Hamas terrorist attacks exclusively and do not fund the IDF. this is a much better cause as the victims of terrorism definitely deserve to be helped, and it makes sense they would do this as an Israeli company. The DMs also clarify that it is donation based and nothing uploaded to cf (cc/mods) contributes to this effort whatsoever. As well as Overwolf/Curseforge revenue in general. So simply using curseforge does not mean that you fund or endorse genocide. OOP calls their new efforts commendable in that tweet but I am still looking into and keeping an eye on this matter since, as we know, more information could come out later that contradicts this. And since I have been away im still catching up on everything that has been posted relating to cf.

here are the pics for those that may not have Twitter. do I still support a boycott for those that want to? oh, absolutely. I know that many will still want to boycott regardless, and I'll be working to add alt links to my cc uploads as soon as possible (the ones that don't already have them) for those that don't want to use it. However, everyone I've seen wanting to boycott seems to want to do it because a) they believe overwolf is funding the IDF (apparently is not true) b) they believe having their uploads on cf or downloading from there will fund the IDF (apparently is not true) or c) overwolf itself is an Israeli company (is definitely true). therefore based on the new info we now have some may decide not to boycott after all or will still do so, it is a personal decision. will I be deleting my account there? for now, no.

to be completely honest, I'm in a really bad place financially right now, and while it isn't much, the little bit I get from cf downloads has been exclusively going towards my meds and dr appointment bills. I don't have the option right now to turn down the small amount of added income when I am currently living day to day, especially with the updated knowledge that simply having cc uploaded there does not contribute to their donation efforts in any way. I do not paywall my cc and never will and I do not ask for donations myself, so my options are somewhat limited. although I do not make cc with the aim of getting paid, I ultimately wouldn't be able to justify the sheer amount of time I spend on it if it wasn't helping me with my medical bills currently, as I am already caregiving with the majority of my time. I'm not reliant on cc making or cf to live, and I never want that to be the case god forbid, but in full transparency it is helping me with my healthcare expenses atm and I cannot afford to neglect my health anymore than I have. especially since, as established earlier, using cf does not contribute to the IDF in the first place. so I personally do not judge anyone that continues to use cf for this reason.

also, for the record so there is no confusion on my personal views, I fully support the freedom of Palestine and condemn genocide first and foremost, as well as terrorism and antisemitism. The current situation in Gaza is abhorrent and I encourage all my followers to not only reblog posts, but educate yourselves on the situation and bring it irl as you are able. Speak with the people you love as well as those you are acquainted with and bring this to this to their attention (if you feel safe to). Attend protests if you can. If you cannot, make the calls and emails to your representatives, sign petitions, and donate as you are able. I have been seeing that even spreading Palestinian culture among your loved ones and peers is helpful. So even if you are in a bad place mentally, that may be an option to spread the positive message of the Palestinian people in your everyday life. I'll be reblogging the posts I already did earlier and some new ones too so you can find those updated links. I will be tagging it with palestine so that it can be found easily on my page.

In addition, be kind. To others and yourself. Try to see the full damn picture instead of a snapshot. What someone posts on tumblr of all places does not reflect an entire person's being, or their efforts, or their heart. Yelling your head off on this dying website does not equal activism, and running your mental health into the ground taking on the weight of the world doesn't give you any more control over the issues we face- I learned that the hard fucking way, believe me. By all means share as much as you like, every bit helps (especially if you have a lot of followers), but keep in mind that it certainly doesn't make you better than anyone else. I know it's extremely difficult to feel helpless and you want to feel like you're doing something, but just make sure you're doing the right things for the right reasons. Please do not fucking attack random people for not responding within one business day of the latest info coming out. And take time away from all this shit to breathe. You can't help anyone if you're fucked up yourself. especially for those of us that already face discrimination and bigotry every day irl, I know it is exhausting. Remember to also care for yourselves through all this.

[archivalofsins]

It's probably not something many people want to hear or even attempt to internalize.

However, if the way a person engages with any media is making people actively fearful, afraid, or anxious to engage with said media that's not good. If a good deal of people's response to trial two coming to a close is like they're clocking out of a long work shift, finally getting that vacation they've been hoping for. That's not healthy or fun.

I want it to be known that if someone cannot personally handle being around others with different opinions than them, if someone is asking why these people can't just see this how they see it- It's not even an issue of Milgram not being a healthy series for them to engage in anymore. At that point being a part of big fandom spaces may not be a healthy thing for that person in general.

Look I know that throughout trial two a vocal minority of fans have made Milgram a completely horrid experience for a good deal of people. Mostly fucking twitter users. Some of which are here now and like to bring their drama with them. I don't even use the fucking thing anymore. This ceased to be just a western fan problem and turned into a global one a long time ago.

Fans on twitter to my personal memory,

Complained about other countries being allowed to vote at all stating that Milgram should only let people who live in Japan vote, the same person who said this on twitter made a poll after the end of Amane's trial to figure out if it was just western fans that wanted her innocent. Consistently gave inaccurate information about dissociative identity disorder (focused primarily upon one person's individual experience with it multiple times in various spaces). Resulting in presenting the disorder as a monolith in order to push their own theories setting back progress for the millions of people who actually have it. Literally the western audience heavily headcanoned Mu's victim as half black while making fun of her death/how she died during her second trial. Along with using racist rhetoric/dogwhistles in order to push for an innocent verdict for the girl. Made a Kazui guilty shrine. Directly incentivizing people to vote the man guilty by giving them stuff each day they did-

Bitch I'm not paid for this. Hell I would like to be- Incentivize me real quick. Honestly, since they got paid just saying where's mine? People on tumblr write elaborate theories and analysis for free. Because they genuinely enjoy the media. Twitter is the fucking platform that's telling people how they should fucking vote and trying to decide who has the right to since trial two started. Then fucking whining when their piss poor behavior doesn't get them the verdicts they want. It's so bad that eastern fans have actively sought help from western fans to combat some of these problems on multiple occassions.

There are people in the east who wanted Amane innocent and celebrated when she was innocent just like there are people in the west who wanted her guilty. Whether the fandom on twitter believes it or not. This part of the fandom is so detached from the rest of it that they only dream about knowing what the fuck we do over here. They've created a fucking echochamber. Yet the people literally going think for yourself, this is my opinion what's yours are getting the most flack because the vocal minority doesn't like the fact the logic they share makes their feelings hurt.

That in the face of the actual facts of the situations presented to us none of the prisoners look completely good or completely bad. Yet, they're definitely not looking that good either. That some of the facts directly conflict with the squeaky clean always right image they've created of the prisoner they like in their head. Then they go online and make that the issue of whoever's take they like the least that day instead of I don't know not bothering others. Then the worst part is these people whine and play victim harder than the prisoners in their interrogations as soon as consequences present themself for their behavior usually as tangible trial results in Milgram.

Because they've continually thrown these fits publically just to have the verdict they didn't want happen over and over this trial.

Pushed for Mu innocent-

Pushed for Kazui Guilty-

Pushed for Amane Guilty-

I don't even give a fuck what Twitter is pushing for with Kotoko at this point because she's pushing up daises from the bottom of hell-

By audience choice. Literally by audience choice. Fuck the only thing I've heard about Kotoko's trial from twitter was from Star about how they're once again attempting voting fraud in an attempt to get her innocent. Though even I can admit this is fucking embarrassing. This is like really fucking sad. Everything Twitter has fucking pushed for this trial has not won. Meawhile I think maybe tumblr took one loss with Haruka this trial and just vowed never again.

I think everyone can realize how fucking wild that is. Can you fucking imagine how at your wits end you would be if you kept publicly losing like this? How dejected? It's only reasonable to think why isn't anyone listening to what I have to say or how I feel in this sort of situation. Yet, at the same time some of the fans on twitter have actively alienated the other fans on there they have no fandom unity. Which makes sense given they do the shit up there. They are literally eatting eachother over there for sport.

Because it's fucking twitter. That's how it's always been.

Hell, I fucking wouldn't even know these were losses for them if they didn't announce on every verdict post on twitter that's what happened. Or even go back to the comments of Purge March where they're still complaining about Amane's innocent verdict primarily blaming you guessed it the west.

Then they want to go I'm just trying to have fun why are people so mean- Without ever asking who their fun is at the expense of. What it says when they blame everything on overseas fans, state they shouldn't be allowed to vote, and Milgram is different now. This is the platform people are letting impact their experience and encite them into bothering people on other platforms?! People who are actually just trying to have fun in a way that is unique and personal to them? This is the platform running the milgram fandom narrative?

This is what people want the history of the fandom to be when all is said and done? I don't because I know the fandom is better than this. I know it can be better than this. The worst part of trial two is the fact that we let people with no intention to understand make us believe it couldn't be better than this. People who most of the time actively sought out someone who's privately enjoying themselves in the fandom to just go "um, actually you're doing that wrong" or picked someone from the tag to have bad faith discourse with.

Newsflash nobody asked, nobody fucking asked for a Milgram referee, nobody asked who's watching the watchmen, who's guarding the guard. If anyone's fandom hobby is trying to micromanage how others engage with media they're in a different book now and they deserve to stay in it alone or with people like them. Because the only thing people who act in this way want is for others to shut up. For them to stop saying the things that make their favorite look bad and there's only one thing to respond to that with after a while.

I hope you grow up someday~

Think about what makes people who do this more entitled to having fun discussing the things they enjoy than the person(s) that they're currently behaving in this way to? What makes them different from the others that they look down on and treat as an enemy from square one. All because they read a post and decided to define whether a fan was a good or bad person based on that alone. It's not different from coming to that conclusion from just listening to a song or watching a music video really.

Plus, I promise anyone who is doing stuff like this nobody is going to magically change their mind because someone behaves this way towards them. Because the people who do this shit are usually no different from the people who do the same shit listed above. Now everyone is not like this. This is why I said the vocal minority. It's still bad that people are behaving in this manner and treating others like this regardless of how little people are doing it.

At a point the Milgram fandom globally is going to have to reckon with how the way many have treated other fans in this space has been harmful and sown division. The solution to this hostility should not have to be disavowing an entire part of the fandom on a different platform and going we don't do that shit here. However, at a point that becomes the only correct response. Because at the point the behavior being exhibited by some fans is making others feel unsafe and anxious about enjoying the things they enjoy it is only right to go-

We don't do that shit here. We don't engage with people who do that shit here. I have no respect for anyone who mistreats real people over Milgram. If people want to have fun and not have these serious discussions the door is right there go out of it. Communication is a two way street and if you come to someone else with disrespect and hostility you should expect right back. The time of having both while some have none is fucking over. People who behave in this way, whining and bitching about how we don't need nuance it's not that serious one instance just to pivot into how can you not take this seriously are disngenuous and ultimately driven by serving only theirselves.

I myself am sick of pretending like they don't fucking realize that. Because the biggest kicker here is they treat themselves like prisoners but unlike them no one is forcing them to be here or engage at all. People who enjoy anlayzing these things and asking these questions aren't forcing them to fucking do that too. So, no one who enjoys Milgram that way is responsible for the feelings of those who do not enjoy engaging with the series in that way.

Every individual is responsible for currating their own fandom experience. Anyone entitled enough to bother another person into currating their personal fandom experience around them and only saying things that they like is the one being the issue. It's probably disappointing to hear but if the ways up there are how fans want to enjoy Milgram on Twitter and I don't like that I stay away from fucking twitter. Like I said I stopped going in the milgram tag on here and I don't go on twitter either.

I'm not going to act like the tumblr part of the fandom doesn't have problems or even a lot of the same ones as twitter. It spreads misinformation as though it's fact, the fans here can be just as hostile, a lot of fans on tumblr are from twitter as well or use it too. More fans from twitter are coming to tumblr. I can't imagine why-

On tumblr I've personally been messaged some of the rudest most guilt trippy shit by multiple people in this fandom and then blocked immediately. One of the reasons I made that post explaining what grooming is by definition was because someone condescendingly direct messaged me stating I had misused the term. Then when it boiled down to it they're entire issue was simply I don't think Kotoko is that and I don't like how you're stating that she is.

If people keep making they're interpretations your responsibility that's a personal issue not a failing on you the person they happen to be taking that out on today. Because if they feel emboldened to do it once they'll do it twice- Hell, they'll do it as many times as they can get away with doing it until someone stands firm and goes I'm not engaging in this anymore if this is the behavior that brings you joy fine go have fun. However, this isn't what I want my fandom experience to be and I'd appreciate if you respected that and if you can't we just won't talk.

Engaging with your own personal interests is meant to be fun. It's meant to be honest to how you feel and what you personally believe. Anyone making you feel bad about that for no reason by centering themselves and their enjoyment first and foremost in a shared space, regardless of how understanding you want to be, is taking advantage of you. They're saying you have to pay for my fun by giving up your own and being less of yourself publicly because the way you have fun is messing up mine. That's not fair to you and anyone who wants you to respect their fun by dampening your own fucking knows that and doesn't care.

Because if they did they would respect what you enjoy as something that makes you happy first and foremost and talk to you about like a person instead of a problem. Yet if others can't do that if they can't give you the good faith back that you extend to them. You just have to cut them off at a point. Because I'm not cutting off my own hands to put a smile on a strangers face. I'm not silencing myself just so others can applaud. That's not how this works and no one should ever think it is. Fandom while it can be personalized to one's own needs is about community and no community can be good when anyone in it is being mistreated.

Sadly we can't control others the only thing we as individuals can do is try to be kind and understanding of the other fans that share this space with us. And- when people do the things above extend the benefit of the doubt say they're having a tough time and then extend consideration towards yourself and ask is this something I want to see or engage with in any capacity. That's all. The prisoners may have to go through hell by the end of this but that doesn't mean we have to make this hell on each other.

[vincent-marie]

Hot Take: "Equal Fights" Predicted Online Faketivism

In some ways "Equal Fights" hasn't aged well in its effort to teach about feminism, that the execution wasn't handled as well as it could have been & that it wound up painting the feminists as straw men stereotypes. Rumor has it that even Lauren Faust, who did storyboards on the episode, isn't a fan of it in hindsight.

However this episode feels a lot more relevant to me now in our current age of online purity culture.

We live in an age of social media where young people, who had little to no power before, now have a tool at their fingertips to signal boost for those who need help the most. Teenagers can be everyday heroes in their own right. Frankly I respect you kids for being motivated in your sense of kindness & nobility.

However the problem is that unfortunately what good that can actually be done gets drowned out by a lot of harassment & bullying in the name of social justice. Especially if these young people's sources are very dubious & self-serving.

That's basically what Femme Fatale is as a character. She's a grifter who uses a progressive movement, feminism in this case, as her means for her own gain. Namely, robbing banks.

It's understandable that every super villain has a gimmick. Two-Face has the Number 2 & duality, FF could've just been a devious collector of currency with women imprinted on them. (I myself wish they would discontinue the bulky, useless penny & bring back the Sacagawea dollar.) But beyond that, she uses it as an excuse to get out of getting arrested, to claim that what she's doing is good for society at large, & above all to manipulate & influence the young & impressionable Powerpuff Girls.

The girls, being literal children, take her words to heart & implement them in ways that do more harm than good. From bullying boys in the schoolyard to letting Femme Fatale get away with her crimes.

Reminds me an awful lot of kids & young people on Tumblr & Twitter who get riled up by the words of self-proclaimed progressives who turn out to be TERFs, grifters, or members of the Leopards Eating My Face Party. Namely, the people who use progressivism & online activism to their own end.

And it's not just the Youtubers with the large subscriber base. It's also the individuals who reblog, retweet & bully even on a small scale to make themselves look good or feel like they're making a difference. Not to mention the burner & bot accounts being used to fan the flames of discord within progressive circles.

But what I find the most telling is that FF claims to be a feminist, she collects Susan B. Anthony coins, but she doesn't even know who Susan B. even was & why she was so important to American history.

Reminds me an awful lot of certain gay or trans Youtubers who would try to have you believe that "queer" is a slur, when in reality we not only reclaimed it as an umbrella term to include bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual, etc. people, but is an important part of our very history.

The slogan chanted demanding our basic human rights:

"We're here, we're queer

Get used to it."

It makes me sick that there are multiple generations of people who don't understand our own history. That there are people within our community who would promote & capitalize on that ignorance.

That's who Femme Fatale is. Willingly ignorant herself, selfish, manipulative, & would promote such lack of values to the next generation for her own gain.

And that's why she deserves to serve time in prison, while online faketivist grifters deserve to lose followers, go broke, & disappear into obscurity so they can't do any more damage.

[readreactrant]

I read (you'll whisper, serpent tongue) what you fear you have become and as usual I have to make it some poor soul's problem.

Hi, it's me and I'm the problem, I know most anyone that follows me is either here for Goyuu or morally questionable shipping content but there's being such a lack of interesting content for me to talk about and paired with my lack of energy, it's been pretty difficult...until I stumbled across this fic in the Goyuu tag here on tumblr. The title gave Hogwarts au and the synopsis gave 'All That's Left of the World' (which if you haven't read go ahead cuz all I remember is that it warmed my heart so much as my first zombie apocalypse bl).

In addition to this intriguing combination it was also rated E for 'Either they fuck nasty or nasty shit happens' so it was definitely up my alley. With all the stars aligned and my interest piqued I went over to ao3, finished it I one sitting and I'd like to say...I'm a slightly different person now. I'll explain but make sure to read for yourself before continuing as there will be spoilers and before you leave to read be aware there is smut...

AND IT'S BOTTOM GOJO 💔

Did that turn some of you off, yeah that's how I felt but trust me the fic is genuinely beautiful and heart-rending, and though I don't give a fuck about what dynamic others choose to enjoy, I DO have a problem with authors not tagging their shit. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE TAG EXISTS AND IS READILY AVAILABLE.

Anyone who knows me from Twitter knows I take my dynamics very seriously in shipping and I, some others, have sort of sense for these kind of things. First set of pictures instantly lit up in my brain from the post I found it through but I brushed them off as reading into too much. The second set went off while I was examining how Yuuji was described and spoken of, especially through Gojo's lens, as it's the exact same way someone would write about a shorter top. I can't explain it but there's definitely a tone to it. I went back up, re-checked the tags, nothing.

No dynamics tags, which isn't as egregious as fake dynamic tags but I still feel very cheated. I know some authors do this, especially when writing for less popular dynamics but even if it's for like a surprise factor or not spoiling, it's still in itself a bit disingenuous. Not only are you making it hard for ppl to filter out what they don't want to read but you're actively making it hard for bottom Gojo enjoyers to find your story in a sea already mostly cluttered with top Gojo.

Nevertheless I'm not here to nitpick shipping dynamics or tagging because I'm aware there are authors who believe caring about dynamics is stupid or unimportant, which no, it's important but that's like another topic in itself. I simply skipped the sex scenes which hurt cuz intimacy in the plot of these kinda stories really gives something extra to the flavor.

If you enjoy multiple dynamics and can or have read it, I'm jealous give me your brain. And if you haven't read and no longer feel the need to cuz you don't want anything to do with bottom Gojo that's fine, to each their own. I definitely know if I'd seen a bottom Gojo tag before I started reading I wouldn't have opened it but I got invested and wanted to see the end.

(side note it is kind of crazy though cuz they tagged everything sex or kink related but not the dynamics which sure whatever, I'll get on with the review on why I enjoyed it now.)

We open up in a world that's the Canon universe but 1000 years later cuz that's when the cube thing chooses to spit out Gojo. I don't know if there's a Canon reason for it being 1000 ýears or if the the author made it up but I'm not that overly excited about jjks magic/power system like the dudebros to care. I'm here for daddy Gojo, Sukuna-oniichan and sweet baby boy Yuuji, make of that info what you will.

Gojo pops out of the box 1000 years later and the world is a mess cuz just like the avatar, he vanished and came back but the difference is everyone's fucking dead and curses are everywhere. Thing is, not everyone is dead.

Yuuji, our most precious boy is still alive and most likely the most powerful being alive thanks to absorbing Sukuna who was killed by Kenny (read to find out, I am not explaining cuz thinking back to it makes me so fucking sad.) There's this one part where Yuuji talks about how it is being without sukuna even tho they hated each other.

Of the many things I enjoyed about this fic I do have to say it's amazing how raw and and painful the writing is. There's a lovely blend of humor, hurt and emptiness in the conversations that Yuuji and Gojo. Pain, regret, loneliness, fear, it's all there building up to a kind of angst I haven't read and felt in a long time.

Another beautiful thing that's explored is one of the biggest 'what if' in the series. I'm guessing this was probably written before Gojo's kit-kat ad of a death in the manga and tho now, we have leaks Gojo being alive (probably) I read this before the leaks. What if the world had to move on without Gojo Satoru and the curses won??? I think the way this fic answers that is very interesting and unique but so close to canon it's feels strangely believable.

I enjoyed reading Yuuji's rendition of all that happened, tho I got lost a bit but once again, I'm the problem. I do not read jjk so my knowledge is limited to what my lust addled brain retains from the anime and the leaks that happen to pop up on my timeline. I do not know wtf the Angel is or how they are tied to Gojo's unsealing and no I don't want to be spoiled.

I don't remember any fic that's brought me so close to tears before but at the end, when Yuuji tells Gojo to actually kill him this time because he doesn't want to be left alone again when he eventually outlives the other (Yuuji is a curse now btw), I literally wanted to toss my fucking laptop. You start and can't help but expect some for of happy ending or optism now they're reunited but things only seem to get more complicated. Yuuji is still Yuuji but so different, Satoru's guilt weighs heavy and tangible through the screen and though it's short and trust me when you finish you will feel it's way too short, you can't help but feel you've spent the months and centuries beside them.

This is what I hinted when I said it gives ATLW vibes, the joy of discovering hope only to have it dashed as you move on only to find some dim lights fraught with uncertainty later on.

As for the end, I think it's well executed, open ended, sad and a bit nostalgic. I'd like to imagine after a few years together Gojo does kill Yuuji but ends himself immediately after because he can't stand living without him. That or he remains alive to start his own form of punishment for never being there when the world, when Yuuji, needed him most.

This kind of feels to me like the alternate universe that modern Yuuji dreams of in lainebee's reincarnation fic I'll open my eyes. Yes I've caught up, no, I won't be talking about it soon, all I'll say is fuck Naoya in every fucking fic I read, I do not know who this man is but I dread when I'll have to in the anime.

Back on topic tho, I think this is something any Goyuu reader should definitely give a try if they can handle it. I don't have a lot of influence but my post do tend to get out there sometimes so please don't go into the author's comments to chide them, don't be weird, I've given you enough warning.

That's all from me about my first and only bottom Gojo fic lmao, I watched a couple other anime I feel like talking about soon, 86 or Black Clover, not sure which I'll talk about first or if I'll just make another Goyuu post lol. Bye <333

[desultory-novice]

Another Lightning Round!

This time, we're answering:

-Borb Feet -Shadow Dedede and The Mirror World's Dream Fountain -Kirby Royalty -Soul of Kirby?! -Forgiving the "unforgivable" Dream Friends (a lo~ng post for an old ask!)

Hee hee! I'll tell you what, anon, at first, I wasn't sure how to take this comment (something I mentioned on stream) because getting good at drawing feet on the internet is... well...you know!

But given I myself started this by pointing out how bad I was at it with Galacta Knight, I really do appreciate the compliment! Next on my list.... borb hands. I've seen so many people draw Kirby's n-nubs (?) in ways that really make them look so marshmallow-y and fun!

-

Hello?! That idea of the Star Rod never getting repaired after Shadow Dedede broke it?! Fantastic! Imagine it drying up, and of course, the effects something like that would have on the mirror world!

(Has anyone else stumbled across that gorgeous but haunting series of "bad end" pictures a certain Kirby fan artist did on Twitter? I remember one had Dedede with a dried up Dream Fountain. That's very much what I'm visualizing here!)

Now, I vague~ly recall that there's some debate about the "darkness in his heart" part of the Shadow Dedede pause screen?  That the English version says it is Shadow Dedede who has to overcome his darkness whereas in the original, it is OUR Dedede who has to overcome his "shadow" that being Shadow Dedede.

...But just because it isn't saying that Shadow Dedede is trying to overcome something doesn't mean he doesn't represent a painful mark in both Dedede's histories. And such a "mistake" (unknown at the time) is an excellent possibility!

Lastly, thank you! The steady influx of lore and theories everyone drops into my inbox reminds me of my favorite parts of fandom in the old days and is a major treat!

-

This is NEAT! While they may not have known about each other in the past, you bring up a great point that after so many games, these various planets (dimensions? in the case of Fluff) are forging bonds with each other. Everyone likes the Galactic Star Alliance from the anime, right? What's interesting is that we kind of have a basis for such an "alliance" forming in our current Kirby-game verse!

Kirby has helped these monarchs get in contact with each other, becoming a link across multiple planets. So I think the idea of them getting together and talking now, in the present~post-game of Forgotten Land is a possibility! Let each other know if any suspicious activity is happening or if everyone is still doing all right.

Although that reminds me of something that came up in the stream... Since King Dedede is the "self-proclaimed" ruler of Dream Land... is there an ACTUAL ruler of Dream Land/Popstar waiting in the wings? Waiting for their return? Or sealed away even? (D-Dark Nebula, is that you?)

Either way, a meeting between those 5 sounds both intense and fun! I would love to come back to this idea with a sketch or illustration of some kind!

-

I'm digging into the backlog for some of these. Also, I can't believe I never answered this one?! Sorry if this ask is too old even for you, @emeraldcoloredwinter

(I'm also sorry in case I did in fact answer it in the past and can't find it - because Tumblr's search is really unreliable. If I repeat myself here, I'm sorry. If not and this turns out to be relevant...great!)

Frankly, I would love to see all kinds of soul lore expanded upon in future games. Partly because I have my headcanons as to why Sectonia/Pres. Haltmann died for realz versus why Marx and Magolor came back and if we get more tidbits, I can come closer to completing my conspiracy corkboard!!

(As well as figure out just where Drawcia lays in the current state of "canon." And maybe figure out some stuff about Zero, Zero 2 and the Dark Matters and what happened to them!)

On the one hand, I feel like Void did a rea~lly bang up job at feeling like you were battling the soul of Kirby. Or at least "a Kirby." I mean, seeing Kirby's face appear on Void, with all those childish movement patterns and that smile before defeat?

But Void was also composed of a variety of thoughts and feelings, so it wasn't exactly our Kirby. Then we've got the Shadow Kirby battles in Kirby Fighters 2, which also come somewhat close in concept, as you're fighting someone with the same ability set as you. That would be another good way to do it, I think.

But it still doesn't quite scratch that itch, does it? ... Now, I feel silly that I can't remember if this is a real thing or I'm just combining a bunch of games in my head (I-I may be old but I'm decades away from the point where I should have to fear being senile!!) but watching some Castlevania longplays... there was a part of one of the games where you go through one of the old castles, right? Maybe it wasn't in black and white, but it is in my memories.

And Kirby had a part like that too, in one of the games! At least, I think it did...? (Okay, maybe I AM going senile...)

:cough: That aside, something like those visuals above when combined with the feelings evoked by the 8-bit nostalgia portion of Void Termina's The Star Conquering Traveler Suite...

I can only imagine it would be sad. Maybe it would involve some kind of sacrifice or some kind of origin story. A time-travel game even? Something that takes us back to our favorite hero's beginnings. Despite it inevitably being THE penultimate fight, I can't picture it being a big dramatic battle so much as one of those interactive cutscenes, or something with never-seen-before-now gameplay elements. But it would feel like a true goodbye to the Kirby series. Oh, it might be able to continue on past that, just like things didn't end after the Star Allies completion picture either.

...But expect a lot of fears (and tears!) of something happening when it finally did.

Personally, I can't help but think Kirby's Soul would look like Retro Kirby or Popopo from Twinkle Popo. It might not even be called "Kirby's Soul" but have a more archetypical name like "Soul of a Traveler" or "Soul of Youth." 

...Soul of the Spring Breeze.

-

Another super old one. Gah, me and my slowness... The sad thing is, I had nine~ty percent of this written out a while ago but just didn't know how to finish it. I'm so sorry about that, @vexx-ation !

It was a really good ask though and I'm glad I gave it another shot. Now then, I think that in large part, this would boil down to who was most harmed by those characters and in what ways!

-

[Dark Meta Knight]

Dark Meta Knight is the biggest mystery because... DMK refuses (or can't) talk to anyone so we know nothing about his feelings. And we don't even know how he returned the first time after death (?)

Meta Knight is the one DMK has arguably hurt the most (excluding maybe Kirby) but I feel like Meta Knight is also the one who needs nothing from DMK to understand forgive them. It really all depends on where Dark Meta Knight is coming from. Was DMK a willing agent in Dark Mind's takeover? Then Meta Knight would be more hard on/untrusting of his shadow for certain. But being his mirror counterpart, I think he would take it as a sign of something lacking in himself. That he is only one step away from making such a turn. But if you, like me, think that the placement of certain objects and events in Amazing Mirror (Radish Ruins as DMK's "stage" and Shadow Kirby showing up one last time before you face off against DMK) are indicative that something more subtle is going on, Meta Knight may not even require an apology from DMK at all. Either DMK was manipulated or was attempting to manipulate the situation in the Mirror World's favor. In which case Meta would just silently nod and go on with his day.

Then there's King Dedede, who, at least in his own parallel mode, was seemingly attacked at random by DMK. That certainly puts them off on a wrong start, but I also think that Dedede would be able to eventually laugh it off and compare it some of his Meta Knight's more belligerent actions in the past (something that would probably fluster Meta Knight, as he wouldn't expect that comparison, mirror counterpart or no.) IE: I find it hard to believe the guy with a wrestling ring in his castle would hold an ambush against somebody for long, especially as he won.

It would take Bandee probably a bit to come to terms with the scary version of someone he most likely respects, but DMK has his cute (?) side too (like in his idle animation) so I think Bandee could come to accept DMK, especially after both Meta Knight and Dedede express that they no longer hold any hard feelings toward the dark knight.

Kirby would probably be the closest thing to a "holdout" here, only because Dark Meta DID ambush two of his friends (depending on the timelines) and he'd want to know that's not going to happen again. Afterwards though? DMK's right to be a part of the group is never questioned again!

-

[Susie]

Susie... ahhh, Susie. Let's just note that all the classic Susie discourse disclaimers go here and remind everyone once more that they're on a Susie-friendly blog and to some of you, what I am going to say may come off as being exceptionally "light" on Susie's crimes. It is what it is, however. If you want a brutal takedown of Susie, there are dozens of other blogs who will give it, I am certain. I can only go in-depth on things from my view of my Kirby-verse.

In random order: Bandee was the only one to not be incapacitated for large chunks of Planet Robobot's story and I believe that were the game to be remade in the modern style (or even had it been released on more powerful hardware than the 3DS) Bandee would have been a second player character just like in Forgotten Land. And if we assume that of him, then we can assume Bandee would have been exposed to Susie's entire plotline same as Kirby.

Bandee is, at least in the novel-verse (and it's not a bad HC in general) the most empathetic member of the Dream Team. Bandee can sympathize with and care about just about anyone. And Bandee might have been wondering if there was something going on with Susie before even Kirby started to see the cracks in the secretary's facade of corporate perfection.

While Bandee wouldn't like the things she, her father, and the HWC have done to Popstar, I think that once he sees where she's come from, his own anger would be tempered down. That everything reverts at the end (ironic (?) that everything is almost "magically healed" except the Haltmann's shattered family bonds) would be enough of a relief for Bandee that I think he could move on to looking at Susie as just a person. (And isn't he the one in the novel who gives her the pocketwatch back or am I mis-remembering that?)

I actually think Susie "as a friend" could be more intimidating to Bandee that Susie as an enemy. She's a sympathetic enemy. As a friend, she might be a considered too "extra" for the small warrior Dee! XD

On that note...I don't know why, but in most cases, I just see King Dedede as being very forgiving toward people in trouble. Oh, he will grumble about it to no end! But I don't see him EVER hurting anyone while they're down.

Of course, Dedede was also unconscious for 99% of Planet Robobot. Was he even awake when his DNA was stolen? Does he know? I mean, not knowing wouldn't be great at all, but I can't help but think that more than being harvested and bottled, his biggest concern, just based on his priorities, would be that his castle got destroyed AGAIN. Why can't the poor man keep a castle?! He didn't even do anything this time!! (Even the Halberd made it!) So, yeah, imagine a confrontation with Susie and Dedede and Susie tries to imagine all the things Dedede is going to call her out for and no, he's just upset about his castle getting wrecked. Susie is surprised he even cares about that "dinky, dusty old thing" and thus, a shouting match begins.

But again, I don't think it would last for too long. I think the things Dedede and Susie would clash on would be petty things. Dedede is pretty manly in his interests and Susie is very girly. They're blue and pink, even. I think Dedede would forget or just plain ol' not care about Susie's more "human rights" crimes and make MOUNTAINS out of the little things. Although they do share a love of machinery, and that might be something that would bring peace to the VERY petty disagreements. At least until Susie chastises Dedede for using "old parts" while Dedede goes on an old man rant about how those old parts are three times as reliable as all this easy to break new stuff! (Dedede is the equivalent of the guy who put his first car together by hand. Susie is the "born plugged in" type.) So, yes, they fight, but not for the reasons you think. ^^;

...As for Meta Knight, I think countless paragraphs have already been written on these two and most people know where I fall about now. Meta Knight, whether we saw it happen on screen or not, was able to figure out what Susie's deal was faster than anyone else, and while he didn't care for having his autonomy stolen (not to mention, I can't imagine he liked all the bulk of his un-asked for cybernetic upgrades. Mecha Knight is a tank. A stark contrast to Meta Knight's fast "here and away" style.) But if anyone in the entire FRANCHISE understands that sometimes your morals take a backseat for your goals, it would be him and now that the dust has cleared and the HWC was on the losing side with Susie as it's sole survivor (speaking brutally) there's no reason to be angry with her anymore. That said, I believe that, much like happens in the fandom, Meta Knight probably gets questioned fairly often (by people who know) if he's upset at Susie, with some not believing its possible he wouldn't be. But I really think to him, it's just something that happens when you're pushed into a corner.

What Meta Knight would care about is not what Susie has done in her past (to him) but what she does now.

...That said, I think he will find an "excuse" to be somewhere else when she looks at him with stars in her eyes and a wrench in her hand. (I am a firm believer that the Star Allies scene is meant to be taken comically, not seriously. I have nothing against Mecha Knight unwanted modification angst but that scene should not be your sole "proof" such a thing exists.)

And of course, as for Kirby, Kirby has already accepted Susie. He ran to her side when she was injured. He agreed with her request to stop Star Dream, and he accepted her invader armor. There's nothing else to forgive. Acceptance is freely given.

Lastly...

-

[Marx]

Marx is the silly one. Very silly. I think, on my first draft of this post (I made the choice to write it again from scratch rather than base it on my previous version, so that it was up to date with my current feelings) I took the concept of Marx and forgiveness very seriously, but then I booted up Star Stacker (SNES) again and remembered that the story began because one day, Dedede saw a sparkling star flying through the sky and decided, "I'm gonna shoot it with a cannon!" So, in case this needs to be restated...

The people of Dream Land are absolutely buck wild.

Probably, due to the comparisons with his spiritual successor Magolor, there's been a casual attempt to try and make a bigger deal out of the "ship in a bottle" events of Milky Way Wishes.

I don't want to be a hypocrite here. I'm a huge fan of "Let's try to expand on Marx's backstory, personality, and motivations using every tiny scrap we've got" and I do so relatively shamelessly. I love the idea that there might have been buckets and buckets of angst and pathos behind his decision to trick Kirby into bringing Galactic Nova into Popstar's orbit so he could kick our beloved puffball into the darkness of space and wish to make the planet his own...

...but do I think that those acts in a vacuum are on the same scale as what all the other big, bad, last bosses have done?

Not really.

Well, not like the modern villains. Marx is a bit more like Dark Meta Knight or Daroach in the breadth of his bad guy-ness. His act harmed very few people in practice. It could have gone on to harm more eventually, had it succeeded. It might have even been devastating! Similar to if Dark Mind's reach was allowed to expand into the peaceful non-Mirror Popstar. Or if Dark Daroach went on to rule as the second coming of the Lord of the Netherworld!

But... it wasn't. The clown's dreams lasted only a few brief minutes. To the people on the surface, Nova exploding probably looked like no more than a shooting star. ("Everyone make a wish!")

...The only person Marx needs forgiveness from, then, is Kirby. And that is the story of several hundred different fanfics and fan theories and frankly, I enjoy all of them because the ~potential~ dynamic these two characters share is one of my favorite things in the series.

And, leaving the "middle" of that journey for we, the fan creators to come up with, I believe we can at least say that, in the end, the two seem to have made up successfully.

...Now, there's still the question of would the rest of the Dream Team LIKE Marx or forgive him upon hearing what he did! I think Meta Knight would be wary of him for a lot of reasons. He's unexpected and uncontrollable. He hopped in to attack the group during the Star Allies credit sequence. But Meta Knight also (in an alternate timeline) thought wishing on Galactic Nova for a ridiculously selfish wish was a perfectly sane thing to do so I gather he would have little issue with Marx's ambitions, if not his actions. And as for his attempted murder of Kirby, Meta Knight is :cough: also guilty of that so yeahhhh. Maybe he doesn't LOVE the jester's antics or even tolerate them, but he wouldn't decry them from a moral high ground...?

I personally love the idea that King Dedede is headache-inducingly familiar with Marx. I like the idea that Marx might have even gotten his title of "jester" thanks to King Dedede. According to the Dedede Encyclopedia entries on twitter, Dedede had no idea about Marx's attempted takeover of Popstar nor did he know about Marx's "true form." Thus, it's easy to imagine that to Dedede, Marx is nothing more than another cute, silly resident of Dream Land, like the Waddle Dees. He may even treat Marx with the same paternal kindness he gives the Waddle Dees. At least until Marx goes a step too far!

TLDR, I love the version of their relationship as implied in the Kirby Storybooks, where Marx is one of "those troublesome kids" who teams up with Kirby to play harmless pranks on Dedede. It's so crazy wholesome, something that you can't always say about Marx!

...Lastly, Bandee... Oh, empathetic little Bandee. I feel like Bandee would probably be the one to eye Marx the most critically. Because Bandee has eyes on the ground level to NOT be fooled like Dedede nor so extreme that he can't hold Marx accountable like Meta Knight. I think Bandee is probably the closest to Kirby in seeing Marx for who Marx really is, but doesn't have the "complex" relationship Kirby and Marx does that inspires Kirby to forgive him no matter what he does.

Not that I think they fight or don't get along, necessarily. (In fact, the sudden spike (?) in MarDee - am I spelling that right? - shippers has rekindled my interesting in their dynamic) But I do think that while Marx is giving everyone his "Who? Meeee?" eyes, Bandee is off on the side giving Marx a narrow-eyed look of "You don't fool me."

But again, I think that honesty may be something that could turn into a kind of closeness they don't have with others! Plus, biased, but I also completely love, love, love the idea that the one Waddle Dee who is tired of being "just a Waddle Dee" and the one Noddy who is tired of being "just a Noddy" have an understanding that none of the naturally over-powered residents of Popstar can ever understand.

It's possible to write them as rivals or enemies. These two, quite frankly, could be very cool together in a variety of ways!

[velvetvexations]

Hello! Hope your day is going well ^^

I remember reading this ask you answered (I think it was the "how come i" anon) and your response + your general attitude re: trans intracommunity discourse really resonated with me

I might be a trans man but long before that I was an artist and I specifically came back to Tumblr because I was having a hard time making my art on twitter after a certain someone took over - _ - (and of course, the rampant transphobia), only to find out that a small but vocal minority of queer folk here insist that I'm privileged for... [checking notes] having he/him pronouns and identifying as a man, despite being pre-T, and facing all sorts of transphobia, misogyny and transandrophobia (mostly from my parents, I'm lucky to go to a uni that's accepting of trans and genderqueer people)

I tried speaking up for us, but all it did was turn me into an unhealthy, paranoid mess, constantly checking my phone instead of focusing on things that mattered like my study, art, and relationships w my friends and my fiance, and I deleted that side blog after a few days.

I know you said it's fine to vent in your inbox but I still wanna keep it short - I still feel like.. I'm betraying the cause, or whatever because I don't actively make posts on transandrophobia on Tumblr, despite being 100% behind the term as another facet of transphobia - purely based off of my own lived experiences.

Anyway, I'm slowly transitioning (heh) my blog into something less "trans man with an art blog" and more "artist that happens to be a trans man", and I feel... right, despite the aforementioned guilt, because there's so many stories I want to tell, so many scenes I wanna capture with my stylus. I don't believe in vocations in the spiritual sense, but art feels like home to me, and I wonder if that's the same case for you with your writing.

And finally, I'm sure you've heard this plenty of times, but thank you for standing in our corner, despite getting so much shit from other blogs (this also goes for starryjoy and other transfems and trans women that have supported us transmascs + men! Thank you all so much <3)

Your fellow artist,

🖋️

(P.S. I was considering using a paintbrush but I like the fountain pen emoji more lol)

It's always my pleasure to help, anon. <3 You don't have an obligation to engage with discourse. Do what's best for your sanity and maybe see how you might be able to help out causes here or there that don't cause you anxiety or takes more from you than you can give. I had the same guilt not being able to engage with most issues (me even mentioning potential consequences of the election earlier should be taken as a sign of how angry I was when I made that post) but I was able to find a niche I can operate in. Even if you can't do that much or don't have money to donate, even just supporting your friends and the people around you adds a lot to the world.

I do feel that way about my writing, also. i have so many characters, so many scenes, so many themes, arcs, stories, it drives me crazy sometimes. I really hope eventually Velvet Nation will get to read them.

[chaikachi]

I appreciate you so much for being loud about rg, despite all the unnecessary hostility this ship gets on a daily basis ❤️, it's my comfort ship and these two dorks literally makes me so happy 💕

Awee of course!!! 🥺💕 This ship means the world to me and I don't know how to be quiet about it these days even if I tried, as evidenced by the fact this answer turned into a whole essay somehow uwu

V8 was when i first really joined the fandom/RG and it was rough. I was scared to admit I shipped it romantically for the longest time because of all the discourse/harassment and I know I am very much not alone in that feeling. For the longest time I was scared to even draw them kissing lest it incite something. But ffs I'm over it. This ship is cute as hell, has so much going for it in canon, and so much creative potential in fanon. I love analyzing their story and somehow still discovering old crumbs even after all this time. Not to mention all the new crumbs this volume has given us!! Feels more like a whole loaf of freshly baked bread than anything else!

Every single argument I've ever seen thrown against the ship in the last 2+ years has been made in bad faith, is a double standard not applied to other ships, or is easily debunkable. Some of the loudest RG antis have a terrible reputation even outside of our 'ship wars', and it actually become so easy to not notice or let it get to you when you block without remorse.

I can't really speak for tumblr as I've gotten not-so-good at interacting with people here recently and feel a bit disconnected from the community (aside from the stray asks/tags y'all send me which I always appreciate 💕). But I know on twitter we've had a handful of new artists and vocal shippers come out of the woodwork in light of the new volume that are flooding the tag with positivity, memes, and creations every day. I've seen multiple rival shippers admit that they have to 'prepare for when rg is canon' and they genuinely believe it. We've even got a few bigger RWBY youtubers standing up for us and shutting down that discourse when people try to stir the pot.

Also numbers aren't really indicative of anything on tumblr when reblogs are more scarce than ever, or on twitter where the algorithm is anyone's guess, but there are some rosegarden posts on this site from 2017 that hit over 4k notes. Some of my own rg pieces on other platforms breach 1-2k. Heck, even some of the metas that I have cross posted to twt have hit more than 600 likes.

There are so many rg shippers out there. And what I am seeing with v9 is a few things. First, any people joining the fandom anew that aren't aware of all the discourse fall into RG pretty easily without that bias being pushed on them.

And second, that when we are loud and we are enthusiastic and we are kind to each other... when we foster healthy and approachable community, that is how we tune out all the negativity, and that is when we have the most fun.

So i'm glad you appreciate all my yelling, and I am not trying to pressure anyone into speaking out or participating if they don't have it in them... but this is a very friendly reminder is always room for more of us out here 💕🌹🌲

[cyle]

you said that there is no inbalance between likes and reblogs, and that people made it up. how can you be so blind when it is so, so painfully obvious? this used to be a blogging site, but no one reblogs anymore, and most of the art/edits go unnoticed. and this is not just me, all of my content creator friends are experiencing the same thing, many of them even quit editing because no one even reblogs anymore, and the content never gets spread around. the only stuff that gets lots of reblogs nowadays are funny shitposts or tiktok/twitter screenshots. fandom gifsets only reach 2k+ if they are on the trending page. are you aware that this site is no longer the home of fandom, but the home of shitposts and leftovers from other apps? if likes AT LEAST showed up on dashboard like on twitter, it would do miracles to us. please consider making changes to the like button before you lose all your content creators.

i believe you must be referencing this and this?

first, i don't believe anyone "made it up". i know people (including other members of tumblr staff) are worried about this, and for good reason. but let's break this down a bit more.

your specific screenshot is a cumulative total over time, and reblogs repeat much more often than likes, since people can reblog many times and can only like once, so of course the further back you look, the more the ratio will be better for older posts. also, the interface back then didn't even separate the like count from the reblog count, so how would anyone in 2015 even know the ratio? probably by looking at their activity, but even then, if you're actually a popular blog, you're probably drowning in activity items and can't "see" the ratio.

i can almost guarantee you that if you were counting the ratio for the first 3 months of a post's life in 2015, and compared it to the first 3 months of a post's life now, you'd see very little divergence in the reblog-to-like ratio. i literally have access to see this ratio across the whole platform over time, it's part of my job, and i can't find strong evidence that the ratio has changed. i was really worried about this too!

the big caveat i'll concede is that for some individual blogs, the ratio may be different today than it was 7 years ago. if you're comparing tumblr in the universe of 2015 to tumblr in today's ecosystem, you're in for a hard comparison no matter what, because the world is not like it was in 2015. that's not altogether a bad thing. times change. we have to adapt with it. some blogs that were popular in 2015 simply aren't going to be as popular today; and likewise, some popular blogs today wouldn't have been popular in 2015.

also, "if likes AT LEAST showed up on dashboard like on twitter, it would do miracles to us" -- they do! it's called "Based on your likes", and you probably didn't realize you turned it off in your Dashboard Preferences, so you never see it. it's on by default for everyone, unless they turn it off. it's a really amazing discovery mechanism for many, many people on tumblr. that's part of what we've been trying to do to adapt the platform to any such changes in behavior over time.

regardless of whether or not the ratio is changing, though, i definitely agree with you that there's more for us to do to try to keep content creators around. making it clearer how content spreads around the platform is definitely one of those things. stay tuned, because there are lot of improvements in that regard that we've been working on. but they don't look the same as what we may have done in 2015 tumblr terms, they look closer to what other mainstream platforms do today.