Do you think deku's gonna arrive before bakugo awakes? I hope deku will have a difficult time dealing with shigaraki!
Ngl, I'm so done with this Shigaraki fight that I honestly don't care. I really want the story to move to a fresh perspective. It's been dragging enough.
After the War Arc being mainly about the pros, and in the VH Arc, most of Class A having been sidelined, I was really hoping in the endgame to spend more time with Class A interacting with the villains.
Instead, we only got extremely brief moments of highlight so far and again, we are stuck watching the same pros we did in the previous war arc. Like, I literally dgaf to see Endeavor fight, or BJ or Mirko, or any of the pros. The only kid on the Shigaraki battlefield is Bakugou and his been dead for 3 chapters and in any case, we know he'll be back. And I hate AFO and I’m bored to tears with his endless speeches on every battlefield about how he wants to write a fix-it for a comic he read a 100 years ago.
The pros have changed - blablabla - is a really tired, old theme. Mirko losing limbs - yawn. The hyped UA Big 3 never gets anything really done - what's new? AFO gloating - ok.
Like, I'm a bit scared if we go over to Deku, he's going to eat up all the focus again and we'll never get character moments for anyone else (unless in the big rush-style of back-to-back reveals post-Dabi dance).
My interest is in to have the kids get hype moments and good ways to close their arcs, and interact with each other, I’d like to have nice cameos from fave characters I haven't seen for a while and finally to get the villains saved.
But I suspect we can’t get on with saving the villains until MC-sama gives his go ahead. So probably, he’ll show up before we move elsewhere.
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ok I have A Lot of thoughts about the staircase confession (well really about Edwin's whole character arc, but all roads lead to rome) but for now I just wanna say that, yes, I was bracing myself for something to go terribly wrong when I first watched it, and yes, part of me was initially worried its placement might be an uncharacteristically foolish choice made in the name of Drama or Pacing or Making a Compelling Episode of Television but at the expense of narrative sense--
But I wanna say that having taken all that into account, and watched it play out, and sat with it - and honestly become rather transfixed by it - I really think it's a beautifully crafted moment and truly the only way that arc could've arrived at such a satisfying conclusion.
And if I had to pinpoint why I not only buy it but also have come to really treasure it, I'd have to put it down to the fact that it genuinely is a confession, and nothing else.
That moment is an announcement of what Edwin has come to understand about himself, but because it takes the form of a character admitting romantic feelings for such a close friend, I think it can be very easy, when writing that kind of thing, to imbue it with other elements like a plea or a request or even the start of a new relationship that, intentionally or not, would change the shape of the moment and can quickly overshadow what a huge deal the telling is all on its own. But that's not the case here. Since it is only a confession, unaccompanied by anything else, and since we see afterward how it was enough, evidently, to fix the strangeness that had grown between him & Charles, we're forced to understand that it was never Edwin's feelings that were actually making things difficult for him - it was not being able to tell Charles about them. 'Terrified' as he's been of this, Edwin learns that his feelings don't need to either disappear completely or be totally reciprocated in order for him to be able to return to the peace, stability, and security of the relationship with which he defines his existence - and the scale of that relief a) tells us a hell of a lot about Edwin as a character and b) totally justifies the way his declaration just bursts out of him at what would otherwise be such a poorly chosen moment, in my opinion.
Whether or not they are or ever could be reciprocated, Edwin's feelings are definitively proven not to be the problem here - only his potential choice to bottle it up - his repression - is. And where that repression had once been mainly involuntary, a product of what he'd been through, now that he's got this new awareness of himself, if he still fails to admit what he's found either to himself or to the one person he's so unambiguously close with, then that repression will be by his own choice and actions.
And he won't do that. Among other things, he's coming into this scene having just (unknowingly) absolved the soul of his own school bully and accidental killer by pointing out a fact that is every bit as central to his self-discovery as anything about his sexuality or his attraction to Charles is: the idea that "If you punish yourself, everywhere becomes Hell"
So narratively speaking, of course it makes sense that Edwin literally cannot get out of Hell until he stops punishing himself - and right now, the thing that's torturing him is something he has control over. It's not who he is or what he feels, but what he chooses to do with those feelings that's hurting him, and he's even already made the conscious choice to tell Charles about them, he was just interrupted. But now that they're back together and he's literally in the middle of an attempt to escape Hell, there is absolutely no way he can so much as stop for breath without telling Charles the truth. Even the stopping for breath is so loaded - because they're ghosts, they don't need to breathe, but also they're in Hell, so the one thing they can feel is pain, however nonsensical. And Edwin certainly is in pain. But whether he knows what he's about to do or not when he says he 'just needs a tick,' a breather is absolutely not what's gonna give him enough relief to keep climbing - it's fixing that other hurt, though, that will.
Like everything else in that scene, there's a lot of layers to him promising Charles "You don't have to feel the same way, I just needed you to know" - but I don't think that means it isn't also true on a surface level. It's the act of telling Charles that matters so much more than whatever follows it, and while that might have gone unnoticed if anything else major had happened in the same conversation, now we're forced to acknowledge its staggering and singular importance for what it is. The moment is well-earned and properly built up to, but until we see it happen in all its wonderful simplicity, and we see the aftermath (or lack thereof, even), we couldn't properly anticipate how much of a weight off Edwin's shoulders merely getting to share the truth with Charles was going to be, why he couldn't wait for a better, safer opportunity before giving in to that desire, or how badly he needed to say it and nothing else - and I really, really love the weight that act of just being honest, seen, and known is given in their story/relationship.
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the black sky and all those lights
a silly little something i wrote for jalentines!!
When Mal opens the dormitory door, Jay is standing in the hallway in his workout gear, hair tied up in a bun. He’s already grinning in that way he does when he wins a fight. Mal rolls her eyes at him. Grabbing her bag, she says bye to Evie, and joins Jay in the corridor.
She scowls as they walk, her workout clothes tight on her skin. Jay had insisted they’d do things properly, and not in their usual leather.
The hallways are decorated for Valentine’s Day, making Auradon Prep even more gaudy and colourful as usual. Pink and red hearts plastered across the walls, boasting the abundance of love here in Auradon. Jay’s had a thousand notes in his locker. Mal’s had none. Every morning, she watches Jay approach his locker like he would a target on the Isle. Weight forward, shoulders squared; ready to fight if needs be. And the paper falls to the floor like blood, only sickly pastel. Scrawled glittery gel pen. Words confessing passionate love, or asking him on dates, or doodles of hearts. Jay smiles the whole time. Greets and winks at girls. Scrunches those notes up in a fist.
“Everywhere looks disgusting,” Mal says as they approach the sports hall. Heart-shaped bunting crests the doors.
Jay holds the door open for her. “It’s fun.”
“You would think that.”
The sports hall is mercifully free of décor. They drop their bags in the corner and begin to warm up, another stupid practice Jay insists on. His top rides up as he side-stretches. Isle rule: never show skin, especially to the enemy. Except, Jay loved to parade around in those stupid sleeveless vests. She’s yelled at him plenty of times about it—Are you insane? You’re a walking target. He would just grin and say, they’ll have to catch me first.
Jay laughs as he grabs the practice swords from their stands. “Here.”
He throws it, and Mal catches. The weight in her hand is familiar. Already, her pulse is thrumming faster, and maybe if she closes her eyes she’ll be back on the docks, with the wind ripping at her hair, and the salt stinging her nose, and half a dozen of Uma’s crew jeering over the clanging of swords.
Jay chucks her a mask too, before attaching one to his own face. The mesh turns her vision slightly hazy.
“Ready?” Jay asks.
Mal’s watched fencing practise a few times, mostly as an excuse not to do homework and instead watch her boys wipe the floor with all those prissy Auradon princes. Coach Jenkins appointed Jay captain of the team a few months ago, a role he takes more seriously than she’s ever seen him take anything.
“Rassembler! Salute! Lower the point. Masks down. En guarde!”
Mal lunges first, which Jay clearly anticipates, parrying her blow. He circles. Strikes. Mal blocks it. He’s quick. Reflexes honed to a sword’s point; learned by practise and theory. Mal lashes out again, just catching his free arm before he jerks away. She grins underneath her mask. Her breath comes quicker. Jay’s blade arcs down, hitting her chest. Mal swats his blade away. She hears him laugh. She growls. Strike. Parry. Strike. Block. Strike. Jay lands another hit. Their shoes squeak against the linoleum floor.
“Come on, Mal,” Jay teases.
Mal lunges like a cat on its prey. Jay’s blade grates against hers like steel against flint. Jay may be quick but Mal’s smaller, and she weaves her way through Jay’s blade until they both have the sword’s point angled at each other’s chests.
They’re both panting. Jay lowers his sword first. Takes off his mask.
“You came in clutch at the end,” he says.
Mal huffs, wiggling the mask off her face and wiping her forehead with a sleeve. “You actually get training.”
“And now I’m training you!”
His hair has loosened during the sparring, spilling out at the seams. He unties the bun; flips his hair down and shakes it out. In this late-afternoon light, his hair could be made of gold. Hair longer than Mal’s ever had.
He pulls his hair back into its bun, deft fingers making quick work. When he straightens back up again, his face is slightly flushed from the match.
And Mal looks at this boy she’s known most of her life; this face and these hands; a boy that has held her at the end of the world and the start of a new one. And she snatches back down her mask.
“Again,” she says, lifting up her sword.
She’s swinging before Jay’s even had the chance to pull his own mask back down. Her blade slices against his chest, and she hears the breath escape from his lungs.
“Fuck!’
Jay’s blocking her hits in no time. Mal grits her teeth. A boy who’s inhabited every place she’s ever been. The shadow along the street; a fixed point on the rooftops. Those long, quick fingers that know their way around bandage; around open flesh; around her own hands. Like a comet to Earth. Like an eclipse. Totally consuming.
And here, where the sun shines brighter than they could have ever dreamed, she is left blistering. Those girls that fawn over Jay, professing their love with the same ease that Mal can hold a dagger to a throat. Jay’s clicking tongue, and that low fry to his voice when he’s chatting someone up. Everything is always so easy to him. He can wrap anyone around his finger with a wink.
His blade slams into her stomach. Mal pants, the budding pain in her side clearing her head. Jay’s standing above her like some heavenly deity.
“Best of four?” he offers.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“C’mon. Let’s take a break.”
Jay drops his sword and grabs his water bottle from his bag. Mal joins him, still gripping her sword, gulping down her water like a man in a desert.
“We should do this again soon,” Jay says.
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s the Valentine’s Ball tomorrow.”
Mal snorts. “Yeah, and?”
“I was gonna go.”
His words are coming too slow; too considered. Like when he used to talk about his dad, or a particularly bad Barge Day. Rehearsed. A guard dog who’s smelled danger, prowling at the sidelines.
Mal presents her blade. “En guarde!” she shouts, and Jay ducks her swing before scrambling over to his own sword.
“Really, Mal? Another sneak attack?”
“I’m keeping you on your toes.”
They waltz around the sports hall, the blades clashing and slicing and singing.
“We all agreed we weren’t going to go to the Ball,” Mal says, jabbing at Jay.
“We never agreed anything.”
Jay lands a blow. They are at the dockyard, with its rotting wooden pier and dead fish stench. The screeching of metal; the shouting; Mal’s heart hammering like the tide. Blood, and life. The roar in her ears. A dragon’s call. Body moving without a thought, as quick as a lightning strike. Not having to look behind her because she knows Jay is there.
“Exactly!” she says. “Why would we want to go to some stuffy Auradon ball?” Jay tries to say something but she ignores him. “Why would we care about Valentine’s Day? It’s corny, and over-commercialised, and a stupid excuse to make everything about love.”
Jay has her backed up against a wall. With no time to mount his mask, his lips are slightly parted, and his hair is escaping from his bun again. He looks just like he did on the Isle; none of his perfect prince act that fools Auradon. His sword hovers above her throat.
“Do you yield?” His voice is low.
Mal stares at him. Those eyes that have seen every part of her. All the blood; every smile; her pale skin in the dark Isle nights. The boy that has beheld her every action; weighed it all against his own understanding of the world, and decided that they slot together as easily as a bullet in a pistol.
“Who are you going with to the Ball?” Mal asks. She’s still clutching her sword. She could claim the upper hand, if she really wanted.
A grin creeps across Jay’s face. All those notes and heart-shaped lollipops. The giggling girls at his locker. He could pick any one of them. All of them so beautiful, in their sunset-coloured dresses. He could have anything he wanted.
“Well,” Jay says. “I was going to ask you.”
The sword’s point makes sure they keep their distance. Never too close. All touches so light; so fleeting, as if you could’ve mistaken them for a dream. As if you could’ve imagined the whole thing. All those nights in the hideout where the barrier of the body seemed thin, and the world became so small: just two kids who wouldn’t even dare knock knees.
So Mal shakes it all away with a laugh. “I’m not going to the Valentine’s Ball.”
Jay lowers his blade. Neither of them move. “Not even with me?”
“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other girls who actually want to go with you.”
“I want to go with you.”
His words echo through the empty hall. His word is as steadfast as ever, the only opinion Mal will ever trust. Compass, anchor: Jay does it all.
Heralded here, Mal as real as the vast sky outside. Here, in his gaze, held aloft by trust where there shouldn’t be and compassion where there shouldn’t be and understanding where there shouldn’t be. A home for all her broken bones.
Mal’s lips unfurl into a smile. This ache in her chest. In her throat. Jay always being able to disarm her. Jay in every place she’s ever been. Jay as her shadow; her skin; her second self. A reflection in the mirror. The line of separation is nonexistent. Like the sun, like the moon: one cannot exist without the other.
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