#mla is okay I GUESS

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

i've been out of academia so long (less than a year) that i forgot there were various citation styles

[that-spider-fan-over-there]

BNHA 430: This wasn’t very “My Hero Academia” of you I’ll be honest—

Okay, where do I begin? Uh. So the story reached its conclusion. Congratulations, and all the best to Horikoshi-san for telling the story he wanted to tell for ten years, loved the characters, the little world he created after the cancellation of his previous works, I will cherish it for the rest of my life.

... but in my opinion: the last seven chapters were so bad- I don't think I can see this ending as anything other than a contradiction of what we were shown. Like, I thought we'd get a twist, everyone would be fine, something would change. I'm wearing the clown shoes already.

So, I'm just gonna treat this as a normal chapter, and not a final one, because I'll be here for days if I open this can of worms, which, I will not lie, is very bad (I'll open it at some point, not now.) I'm posting this on the.. 6th? Because apparently there's an announcement in the 5th and I don't wanna spoil the fun.

So, uh, under the read more are my thoughts on the ending, be warned I'm very, very negative about it.

*sigh* Oh boi, how killing the League made this go from an "underwhelming" to a "tone-deaf" chapter- I mean, Jesus fuck, leaving things open-ended don't erase the fact they can't make a single appearence to prove me wrong, if they were alive, the last five chapters were a waste of emotions and keeping them hidden was a stupidly cruel move.

Funny the narration is just "people aren't equal but it's because of these differences that people find common ground to get along"- THE VILLAINS WERE KILLED OFF FOR BEING DIFFERENT BRO WHAT DO YOU MEAN- "if lending a hand and caring is being a hero then we all became the greatest heroes". Izuku, whatever you're drinking, I'm taking it and drinking it all by myself. You may have cared. But Tenko died. On accident. Because you gave him OFA.

I liked the "Midoriya-Sensei" part. For 5 seconds. It's fitting, he loves learning stuff, he's good with kids, until you say it's only because his embers were gone. Then why use it as a tease for seven chapters only to just get rid of them at the end? Is running to Ochako really the last we get to see him use it? Not even as a part-time hero? (not that it matters at the end-)

Ragdoll works with the WWP, Tsukuachi was head strategist in the final battle, Hawks is the (H)PSC president, why wasn't Izuku hired at an agency? Intelligence was a huge part of his character, yet the moment he was fully Quirkless again, he was out? Men truly aren't created equal...

"Cursed power", "blessing", "special" — the only thing special about OFA was being haunted by a guy whose brother was insane enough to hunt it down for generations. A Quirk's a Quirk; having multiple people/powers in one body isn’t special, Tokoyami and Shoto exist. Izuku made it special using it on his terms. But I guess "meant to save, not kill" was a lie, as eight out of ten people who had it died. Nine out of eleven, counting BNHA: HR. Tenko died because his body couldn't handle the Quirk, but I guess Izuku isn't gonna think about any of it? Katsuki was right about this too, holy shit.

Spinner wrote a book (not a comic, guess he took offense to Izuku. Fair, actually). Mr. Compress got a panel, but no real mention of the LoV? They broke the status quo for months (in-universe), and after all of that, nothing changes? Did Spinner know about Tenko, how he became Tomura? And the people who will read it and pull an MLA? TomurAFO had followers, now he's martyr a lá Re-Destro, I’m hoping Spinner didn’t commit suicide like that guy.

Ochako’s expanding Quirk Counseling. Reform’s implied (it only said expansion), but Himiko still became what Curious wanted her to be: A cautionary tale. And I’m still asking how Ochako knows Himiko went what through, she only told Ochako she was hated because of her Quirk and how she loves. I wanna think she’s reforming it, but nothing else changed, why should I think she’s the exception?

(At least she's seen as a hero on her rights… even if it took 429 chapters, messy writing, her face looking like rubber, and still being a girl recognized as a "caretaker", not a kickass hero).

Shoji's travelling through Japan to solve discrimination and got a prize for it. No foundations or mentions of Spinner being the main reason he did it, just "standing atop those who rose up eight years ago", just solving it peacefully, you sure are, buddy. Like, I'm sure you are being successful but how exactly are you solving this? I mean, you "solved" the hospital fight by fighting Spinner with Koda- Oh wait, time constraints, we can't elaborate how.

Shirakumo showed the noumu state could've been reversed, yet Katsuki, who never killed someone aside from AFO (and he was gonna die anyway), fatally exploded him. I hoped it was a misunderstood panel but no. He died because he wanted to save Tenko. Even fucking Gran Torino was alive by the end of this. Why.

I think Shoto is the only main character I’m not really having a problem with (Ochako's ending required Himiko for it to feel somewhat complete. Sorry, Ochako). I’m weirded out that they mentioned the billboard using the guy whose life was ruined by it as an example, but other than that, he’s doing fine. Wish we saw him talking to his siblings though. But alas. No mention of Fuyumi and Natsuo. And Rei's with Endeavor. Fuck.

Inko got so sidelined when Mitsuki and Masaru got half a chapter, by the way. Just one panel for her, the protagonist's mother.

Schedules not aligning is one thing, but Class A not opening an agency together? They survived two wars together and you're telling me they wouldn't say "WE'RE WORKING TOGETHER AND WE'RE TAKING MIDORIYA WITH US"? Also, where’s the "world where heroes have time to spare" when they look so busy? Were they understaffed or working as celebrities? (if someone says it was for the suit I will point out to the three nepo babies of Class A, Katsuki’s a dumbass if he forgot that detail).

Dude. We wasted pages on a kid that can throw plates from his hair. To tell him he can be a hero. Coming from the guy who had to go when he lost OFA. I'm not taking this parallel seriously.

I wish Izuku wasn't in "everything’s fine" mode until the end. We're really gonna leave him at "implied" mode, not confirm if his mental state's fine? Being open and emotional was an appealing part of him and now we just get “Yeah that’s just how it is”.

This one's petty and irrational, I know, but since I'm letting some of the steam out: I hate Izuku's new design; face scars (the constant "HE FAILED" reminder makes my eye twitch and I wish that was a joke, but also so many characters in BNHA got face scars, it doesn't even stand out), "perfect tie", normal formal attire- where's the character highlights? The things that make Izuku stand out?

But hey: He gets to be a hero again! Not with skills, heart, intelligence, strength, in spite of Quirklessness. No, he has an Iron Man suit! That Class A paid billions for. The government should be paying Class A and B (and Shiketsu and Ketsubutsu) instead, but all they get is a pat on the back. If the suit broke down, hurt or killed him while in it I'd laugh (Hatsume and Melissa worked on it? Oh it's gonna happen). And Toshinori, what happened to him, did he hit his head when he landed on that building!?

Went from: Smiles cover his fear and reassure people, believed saving is about saving body and soul, wanted to help Tenko, only didn't because Gran Torino said it wasn't a good idea. Disliked people were being heroes for fame and not because it's the right thing to do, only used support items as reinforcement and a precaution, never as a full solution, even Iron Might was so he’d have a chance to fight, not a solution.

To: If Tenko died smiling, it wasn't resignation, he was saved, even though he died. Didn't care AFO killed the Shimura - his mentor's - bloodline. Is fine with the billboards existing, even though it caused things like the Todoroki plotline. Now he's giving Izuku a suit, when the last time he did it himself, it didn't save him and his spine was almost snapped? Dude, what?

Also I thought he was paralyzed but I guess he just had a bad back.

... I hated BKDK's conclusion. It's actually so laughable how much I hate it. If it had another outcome, I'd probably be overjoyed. But:

Thematically, Tenko wasn't rescued, it wasn't a perfect victory because AFO still got away with what he did to him. "End of an Era and The Beginning" is hollow, nothing changed for the world they lived in, and it doesn’t look like they stand out among other heroes (these are AM’s successors. How.) What new era is this, really?

Their resolutions and relationship rebuild? Offscreen, but Katsuki was the one with the Iron Man suit idea for Izuku and apparently that compensates for it. Because he’s the one who can solve all of Izuku’s problems now, not motivate him to be better anymore. It wasn’t even Izuku’ idea, it was Class A, and sure it’s a nice gesture but we’ve seen Toshinori barely come out alive even with one.

Izuku barely batted an eye to any of the things he went through - losing his arms and/or OFA? Seeing Spinner's breakdown? Lady Nagant!? Katsuki or Tenko dying!? SOME INTROSPECTION, PLEASE IT’S BEEN OVER 100 CHAPTERS SINCE YOU’VE BEEN THE EMOTIONAL MC—

Katsuki's insecurities were for nothing by the way! Izuku's empathy and heart never mattered, a Quirk was more important to be a hero in the end. BULLIED HIM FOR NOTHING BUDDY- shouldn't have done it at all but wow did it become even more pointless in hindsight. Like Twice's death. Or Katsuki’s death, since “Control Your Heart” meant nothing as well.

Izuku still remembers Tenko, but has he done anything about it? No one wants to remember him, Himiko or Touya. Spinner's book will not be taken seriously, Mr. Compress was sidelined, Twice's death was pointless. They didn't change society, they've returned to the status quo. Pointless as Izuku losing his arms.

That fucking suit- Wow, he really couldn't be a Quirkless hero, the casual rivalry was just erased for an easy way out of Izuku's consequences, there's no catching up because Katsuki paid for Izuku a way to be a hero. He went full on-simp in the most disrespectful way.

And it ends with Izuku seeing Tenko's... Ghost? Hallucination? Vestige? I guess we’ll never know, because Izuku’s following his dreams again! Let's ignore he's doing this during class hours and he definitely should be in UA but who cares, he probably quit and we'd never know, as aside for the BKDK/DKBK fics, being a teacher was clearly a inferior choice for him and he can't do both ignore Aizawa and Present Mic look at him being the world's greatest hero!

It just took 1 year of trauma, scars, following on his mentor's mistakes, losing the thing that "actually" made him be a hero, having the first and the last people he tried to save dying because of his existence (one literally by his hands), proving anyone can be a hero! By ignoring the guilt of those you failed, give hands and sparing your thoughts, having superpowers and/or connections who'll give you a suit! Fuck this shit I swear-

A story about hope bent itself over to give the protagonist an unearned happy ending, when it said it was for every character who wants to connect to that hope, who wants to give that hope. Izuku went from "wanting to be a beacon of hope and save people" to "talk about beacons of hope, but in the end, others are doing this better than you. You had none of the willpower to be one." He's not hope or unity. Act 3!Izuku is just a plot device, I feel nothing for his ending other than irritation.

You could’ve had the BKDK proposal with a double spread handhold, and I'd still think Izuku's ending isn't earned anymore. His "happy ending— actually. BKDK crumbs are compensation for this ending, I feel cheated out of this ship (I feel like I'm shipping the version of them in my head, nott the canon one 424 onwards, and it only got worse from there-)

So. Yeah, those are my thoughts about the ending. I think. I don't know if these are all of them. I feel horrible about hating it, but I've sat on this chapter for days and right now, not a lot can make me like it, especially with the timeskip, which made this "open ending" a rushed and incomplete mess. If you disagree with me, honestly, that is very fair. I'm glad for you if you liked the ending. I'm just disappointed, and wanted to share my opinions. (and I do have more stuff to say about it but I think I've been negative enough)

But for the weeks I spent hoping this wouldn't slap a classic shonen ending in this catasthrophic mess and for making me feel like a dumbass after what we got in the end: Everything after 410 that isn't 421 and 422 is non-existent to me, this epilogue was a freaking waste.

Thank you for reading.

[codenamesazanka]

I might be delusional at this point, but i hope the bystander issue will be somehow addressed once shigaraki/tenko/whoever comes back. I feel like the jaku speech was such an important character moment that it has to be brought up again. saving the crying child might have only been the first step!

I'll be delusional with you, anon! There is indeed the fact that The Walk never showed up in the memories AFO showed Tenko/Shigaraki. And the problem wasn't just limited to Tenko - Hero Society did turn a blind eye to a lot of people and a lot of issues, and that pain is real.

But have this wild thought. What if the bystander issue is brought up again... but not quite in regards to Tenko?

So like. AFO is back and i know we all want him gone but—this is literally the last chance for the fact that HE WAS BORN AS A TRASH RIVER BABY BITTEN BY RATS to be addressed? That hey, people should've done something about that, back then, even when Heroes didn't exist yet.

I guess it would have to be Shigaraki who, as he's currently swallowed up by AFO, figures it out by seeing AFO's own memories and conveys it; and that's asking a lot of Shigaraki after what this guy did to him! ...But. Villains need a Hero of their own.

Endgames is a mess and a very smart friend told me before I shouldn't use logic. But Shigaraki has a pattern: Stain stabs him, but he learns from him anyways, used his name to continue to topple the status quo like they both wanted. Overhaul kills Magne, but Shigaraki preserved the bullets and even spared a thought to him at Jaku. ReDestro kidnapped Giran and tried to kill him and his League, but Shigaraki didn't kill him and included the MLA into his destruction plans.

Like, he no doubt would be glad to see AFO gone - kill the guy himself! - but point still stands. AFO fucks with his entire life... and Shigaraki aids in his defeat... but he thinks being a River Trash Rat Baby is pretty sad and unfair. So he demands the Heroes to address it. He wants to address it himself.

Villains need a hero of their own.

We know Shigaraki now has access to AFO's memories. AFO gave it to him to hurt him, sure, but the pathway is there. And right now he thinks Shigaraki is gone, so maybe Shigaraki is defused deep within him enough to go through any barriers between him and the memories. (However mindscape physics works, it made sense in my head, okay.)

This would be one way for the bystanders problem to come back to be addressed, should that ever be addressed 🙏🏼please🙏🏼begging horikoshi please🙏🏼. I had felt, after getting AFO's backstory, that AFO was a bit like Tenko during The Walk, but without the sympathy framing. But also just in general, like how AFO tried to recreate his own Hand trauma thing with Shigaraki. How AFO's motivation turned out to be 'intending on ruining every because he was ignored.' So they aren't as different in some of their feelings.

Finally, AFO's last thought before he rewound out of existence was that he wanted to be remembered by the world. Eyes on him, forever. He also wanted someone to just have cared about him, in a way. That's so sad, and should it be fulfilled (in that he's remembered as a cautionary tale), that's incredible kindness that he doesn't deserve... but that's what heroes do. They reach out and give some relief, even if the other person might not deserve or want it.

(or if you want, frame it as a fuck you to AFO. solve the problems of society, and you never need to worry about another AFO. forget AFO because that he and his tale becomes utterly irrelevant.)

This is far fetched. But here is one thought that's stuck with me.

Thanks for the ask!

[waitingongravity]

Alright, so. So there's PLENTY of unfinished business in the Abyssal Hunter storylines.

Let's look at what we know of already and what that could mean:

First off, the stuff that has already been established in previous events: There were three big leaders in the Church of the Deep: Quintus, Amaia, and some other dude who has only been referred to as Him. This Him is acquainted with Specter during her time as an experiment subject. We can pretty safely assume that much like Quintus and Amaia, He will be the one orchestrating the events of next uhhh... event. Besides that, we have Ulpianus and the Last Knight. Those two swam off into the sunset at the end of Stultifera Navis, and we can only assume that they are still hunting seaborn to this point. The curious thing with the Last Knight is that we got to see him plenty in IS3. We know he's a powerful piece of work, and that in true Don Quixote fashion he is unreasonable with. The real question for me is what the hell he's going to do in a world where Ishra-Mla hasn't taken over yet. Will he be more helpful? Proooobably not. Speaking of: ISHRA-MLA. I've seen a lot of speculation over whether Skalter is fully non-canon to the main timeline, or if she is merely an eventuality. Skadi's condition is not looking good, and we haven't really been presented with any possible solutions. Specter is fighting off infection and insanity through her seaborn blood, but Skadi's issue is seaborn in nature. That being said, I'd like to stay optimistic. Skadi's arc has been an upwards one, even if it's only slightly. I'd like to believe that the difference between IS3's timelines and the Canon is that Skadi had more time to grow stronger mentally and emotionally to resist the pull of Ishra-Mla. Or at least stall long enough to find a solution. Of course, this transformation is also affecting Specter and Gladiia. Much like oripathy, they may be doomed, but maybe there's hope for a comfortable life.

AEgir is a nation we know next to nothing about since they're all the way in the Water. An unknown settlement of AEgir was spotted right under the Stultifera, and we know Ulpianus preventing the Hunters' return to AEgir is one of the reasons why the fish apocalypse didn't happen. Whether that is just proximity to the ocean or something in AEgir itself, I think we'll be diving out of Iberia and into that AEgir colony. I doubt we'll go into AEgir proper, but that doesn't mean AEgir won't send its own people out. Okay, now for the operators relevant to all this: The obvious one is Andreana, our lonely cuttlefish. She is essentially a cheap walmart knock-off Abyssal Hunter, so many think that she'd be getting an Alter or some story focus as she goes full fledged (full scaled? Whatever.) While I see that as a possibility, a lot of Andreana's character is just NOT CARING about any of that. She outright rejects the opportunity from Kal'tsit to learn more, and wants to leave her mysterious past behind her. Honestly, I can respect it. My guess is that Andreana might get involved but stay out of it, unless someone (like her employer Incandescence who we've yet to see in-game) gives her a reason to care.

So who else do we have involved in this? Well, Deepcolor is pretty sus, and the only other AEgir operator besides Skalter. I'll be honest, I always thought she was up to no good. Do NOT trust her >:I. There's also the chance she's some loose AEgir agent or something that lost contact after the Great Silence. But I still don't trust. Here's the sleeper pick: Blue Poison! The curious thing about Anura, besides how cute they are, is that they were enslaved by AEgir and brought to Iberia in hopes that their toxins could be a new weapon against the seaborn. This puts Bloopy in an interesting position as both someone with a vested interest. Hell, she could truly be the secret weapon in the event.

With all this in mind, here's my idea for what the event could/should be. Ulpianus can be the new 6 star, whatever he's a loser I don't care about him. More importantly, BLOOPY ALTER as a limited unit. That's right, Andreana can keep her gun, we all know she loves that thing more than anything. Let Bloopy be the first 6 star Arts Defender or something! Or a new Fighter since we know she boxes. I dunno, just make her busted so I can feel vindicated in my love for her. and finally, 5 star... I dunno, some AEgir girl from the settlement under the Stultifera. Give me a manta ray girl! Flat friend. Or angler fish? Hmmmm. As far as the plot, I think it'll be a two-pronged threat. On one end, He and the rest of the Church of the Deep implement a final plan, either relying on the super advanced tech AEgir have, or simply being the culmination of the evolution which has been a running theme for these events. Under Tides saw the seaborn evolve to talk, Stultifera Navis saw them evolve to be incredibly powerful and adaptive. Who knows what we'll see next? As for the AEgir settlement's conflict, I think we could see a next step in the other relevant issue in Iberia: the persecution of the AEgir peoples and the role of the Inquisition in the fight against the sea. I doubt the settlement will be safe for long, so perhaps over the course of the story we will see them integrated into Iberia, and offer their own tech/abilities in exchange for a stronger frontline. Of course, all this is assuming that the settlement isn't just an long-abandoned ruin. I'd also like it if the Doctor actually got involved in this event. Kal'tsit is a given of course, but I think the Doctor's presence might be appropriate for the conclusion of this trilogy. Much how like Lone Trail concluded the story started by Mansfield and Dorothy's Vision, there might be big story turning points at the end of this. And given the forces involved? This wouldn't be surprising. Anyways this was a super disorganized ramble I typed mid-ttrpg session so I'm sure I missed a lot or messed stuff up. I'd love to hear any more speculations, this stuff is very fun to think about.

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 387: Congealing

Howdy, everyone, guess who had an unusually high amount of research to do for this post? Next chapter's should be up faster, between being extra short and largely Todo-centric.

Content Note: I will be talking quite a lot about the Himura inter-family marriages below. An enormous chunk of this post is going to be dedicated to dispelling some of the most frequent misconceptions in the fandom response to the Himura situation, which I don't think is anywhere near as drastic as a lot of people are making it out to be. That's not the same as saying there's nothing wrong with it at all! However, I want to be very clear on what I believe Geten is describing before I talk about what we can gather from it.

(Spoilers: A lot of people don't have the first clue what the phrase "branch family" indicates and good lord, does it ever show.)

Hit the jump.

On Geten and the Himura

O Wow, you guys.  Wow.  Okay, so, obviously, lots to cover here, and I know I’ve said before that I try to make these posts with minimal reference to Bad Takes I’m seeing out there in the wilds of the fandom, but holy shit, people, the takes are SO INCREDIBLY BAD.  I should have known better, I guess, than to expect the fandom to be remotely reasonable about a reveal that intersects with both the MLA and the Todoroki.  So, first things first:

Please, please, please, knock it off with the inbreeding jokes and the screeching panic about Rei’s only choices being an abusive arranged marriage or a cousin-marriage.  Geten specifies in nearly every translation we have that the intermarriages within the Himura clan were between distant relatives.  And I strongly, strongly suspect that the majority of people who are making banjo jokes or fretting about the deleterious effects of inbreeding on their faves have not the faintest idea what Geten is talking about when he says “branch families” and “main family.”

As an illustrative example, let’s talk in brief about the Fujiwara clan.

The most dominant clan throughout virtually all of Japan's Heian Era (794 – 1195) was the Fujiwara clan, whose whole shtick was marrying their daughters to Emperors and then relying on the practice of raising the future Emperor in his mother’s household to take advantage of filial piety traditions—which applied even to in-laws!—to secure the loyalty of the Emperor/future Emperor to his Fujiwara father/grandfather.  Even after they fell from the heights of their influence, they still monopolized powerful positions as imperial advisors and regents all the way up to the Meiji Restoration in 1868!

That’s over a thousand years of first marrying into the imperial line and then being the only family who were even eligible to be chosen as regents for child Emperors or Empresses Regnant.  They certainly didn’t achieve that by being a single family for a thousand years!  Rather, there were branch families under the clan umbrella, four of note—

—Well, actually, it was four during the Heian Era.  Once the Kamakura period rolled around the most powerful of those four further subdivided into five.  So eight families total—

—Well, wait, those were really just the most important and chief of the families.  Actually there were five more cadet branches, too.  So thirteen families total—

—But actually, those five cadet branches were subdivided even further as well.  According to Wikipedia, the total number of subfamilies in the Fujiwara clan, families that were specifically aristocrats in the Imperial court (the kuge class) or higher—is…

Uh.  Ninety-seven.

Now, I don’t know how many of those families existed concurrently, but with numbers like that, I hardly think it matters.  All those families—and they are families, not individuals—fell under the broad umbrella of the Fujiwara clan.  So, you know, if some of them intermarry, it’s not exactly on the same level as you marrying your first cousin!  Or your second.  Or your third or fourth or fifth.

Obviously I don’t think the Himura were anywhere near that big or influential, but I hope it illustrates my point: Japanese clans that have had a few hundred years to develop can be fucking enormous.  Please banish from your mind the idea that the Himura have been marrying their direct cousins this whole time.  When Geten says they created multiple branch families, and started marrying distant relatives, the plural on "branch families" and the adjective "distant" are giving us crucial, meaningful information, not just superfluous clutter.

Truthfully, I think a lot of this panic is due to the fact that most people aren’t very into genealogy and thus have no idea how quickly you can become very distant indeed from people with whom you share a common ancestor.  I mean, how many of your third cousins can you name?  For me, that answer is zero.  Heck, I can’t even name any second cousins.  The best I could do would be to tell you of their existence in broad strokes—the son of one of my mother’s cousins, whose name I don’t remember but who I know exists; the hypothetical children one of my father’s cousins might have had at some point after the last time I heard anything about him, well over twenty years ago, at which time he was still single.

Now, it’s a little easier to look down the family tree rather than across, in this case.  To wit, you almost certainly know your cousins much better than your parents’ cousins—your children and your cousins’ children will be second cousins.  That’s probably much closer feeling, right?  But put yourself in the shoes of those kids—unless you live in the same town as your cousins, and see each other pretty frequently, your children and theirs will probably meet only a handful of times before they grow up and head off to live their own lives.  After all, look back up—how well do you remember your parents’ cousins’ children?

And, again—that’s second cousins, the outer periphery of what people who study this stuff class as “close relatives.” [1]  Geten specifying distant relatives means we’re talking farther removed even than that.  Your second cousins once removed, for example, would be either your second cousins’ children (that is, your parents’ cousins’ grandchildren) or your grandparents’ cousins’ children.  Your third cousins, meanwhile, would be your grandparents’ cousins’ grandchildren.

Have you ever met family that far removed?  Have you seen pictures?  Do you even know if they exist?  How many members of your extended family do you know of, generally, perhaps because your parents brought you along on visits a few times as a child, but you’ve long since forgotten their names or their specific relation to you?

Now, in a situation like Geten is talking about, you probably would be able to positively answer some of my questions above, because you’d be mid-level ruling class; your parents would be talking about marriage to someone (hopefully) your age in a branch family.  But that doesn’t mean you would have met them.  They’d probably live in a different part of the country entirely, your common ancestor married to some outside group before the Advent of the Exceptional.  The branch families of, for example, the Tokugawa shogunate lived in four strongholds, each a hundred or more miles distant from the next.[2]  You can track descendants of Queen Victoria through royals from England, Spain, and all three of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

What all this boils down to is that, no, it really is not that strange for a widely spread clan to do a bit of intermarriage now and then to consolidate power.  People in power want power to stay in the family.  Duh.

However.

That all said, I am not saying the situation Geten describes is 100% fine and cool.  Obviously if it were totally normal and unremarkable, there’d be no point to even bringing it up, much less having Mr. Compress disparagingly comment on it!  But look at the timetable here.  The Himura began as village leaders a long, long time ago, and even after the land reforms, they still went on creating branch families, enabling them to maintain their wealth and pride.

It’s after the Advent that the marrying between the families starts.  And even this, done a handful of times and then abandoned, would not be a damning thing—as I said, those big families in power do have marriages across branches sometimes.  The real trouble is carrying out such marriages repeatedly, across many generations, within a small group.  Some research on the Habsburgs, for example, surely the most famous inbred royals in the Western hemisphere, turned this up:

From 1516 to 1700, it has been estimated that over 80% of marriages within the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty were consanguineous. In other words, they were marriages between close blood relatives. Most often, these unions took the form of marriages between first cousins, double-first cousins, and uncles/nieces.

Nowhere does Geten suggest that things with the Himura got this bad.  In fact, I would argue that the text is quite clear that the family slowly stopped intermarrying, and this is what led to their demise!  Consider the following points:

The Advent happened in modern times.  The glowing baby is delivered in what is very clearly a modern hospital; the very next panel shows a geeky dude levitating a volume of manga, which didn’t even exist in the form we know today until after WWII.  Technology stalled in the wake of the Advent, but the characters now still have cellphones and laptop computers—the Advent was modern.  My rough estimate for how long it’s been since then is a bit over 150 years.    

Because the Advent happened in modern times, the Himura family would have known about the dangers of excessive intermarriage.  This isn’t something they’ve been doing since the Stone Age and refused to change their minds about until the last twenty-five years!    

Because the Himura family would have known about the dangers of inbreeding, look at what happens: they do inter-branch marriages to “distant relatives” for about 125 years and then they stop.  Over the course of that time, the clan shrinks and wanes, for one reason that is immediately self-apparent and a few others that we can guess were probable.     The self-apparent reason is that, even though the families started out as distant relatives, the divide would get shorter with every wedding that produced children.  Thus, the pool of marriageable candidates for those children gets smaller and smaller as the families become more closely entwined.  Avenues close off, marriages become unavailable that would be illegal under Japanese law (which allows marriage between first cousins, but not between uncle and niece/aunt and nephew), or which would have too high a concern of congenital defects—which, remember, a modern family would be aware of.     We can hypothesize plenty of other reasons for the clan’s diminishment.  Once it became clear that quirks were there to stay, entire families might have broken away rather than go along with an inherently doomed endeavor.  Some marriageable candidates likely ran away or otherwise abandoned the family rather than continuing along the path the family had laid out for them.  There would probably have been otherwise acceptable candidates who became unacceptable due to developing quirks that were undesirable to the bloodline.[3]  And so on and so forth.    

Eventually, Geten says, the head family—presumably the one Rei’s from—started selling off their children to outsiders, and that was the end.  If the head family threw in the towel on preserving the bloodline, the branch families certainly weren’t going to be bound to do it anymore!  And so the remnants of the clan shattered.

So, no.  Rei’s choices were not, “Marry Enji or marry a cousin.”  Rei’s parents were looking for someone who could bring money to the family; by that point in time, I don’t think they would have let her marry within the family even if she’d wanted to!

By the same token, Dabi and Geten are not cousins—not in the way people have been using the word, at least, to mean “someone I am imagining to be as close to me as, like, my first cousin, ew.”  While the repeated intermarriage would indeed have reduced the distance quickly as the generations passed, if the common ancestor (that is, the family founder) was from, say, eight generations ago, two and a half centuries prior to the point at which the intermarriage began, and there were at least five or six branches of family at the start,[4] it would have taken more than just one or two generations before the only options available to wed were close relatives!

And, to reiterate, that’s exactly what we saw happen—the Himura kept it up for a few generations, shrinking all the while, but fragmenting for good four or five generations after the Advent.  I would guess that, while Geten would have been more closely related to any children Rei had borne via intermarriage, Dabi and Geten are third or fourth cousins at best.  The Himura were in denial about the new state of the world; they weren’t idiots that managed to forget everything history has ever demonstrated about what happens when you keep marrying off first cousins in a closed environment.

That all said, what else have we got this chapter??  Because make no mistake, the fact that I’m pushing back against reductive cousin-marriage takes in no way means that I wish to shy away from examining the darker implications here!

O I love how ambivalent about all this Geten is.  Given that Rei was married to an outsider over twenty years ago, if the branch families scattered around that time, Geten must have been very young, so he’d have been profoundly impacted by it.  This is especially apparent given the harshness of the language he uses to describe the event: the families don’t merely admit defeat and grudgingly set to integrating; they “scatter.”  The main line doesn’t just start marrying outsiders; they start “selling their children.”

This suggests incredibly bitter feelings in the family, and no wonder!  I imagine there were a lot of people, especially in the branch families or among younger members, who’d hated the clan’s insularity, and they would have left the moment they had an excuse to!  Conversely, though, there would also have been people who’d been indoctrinated into the clan’s worldview all their lives, people who’d quashed their doubts or discomfort down long ago, who would be clinging to sunk cost fallacies with all their strength because change would be terrifying to them.  Those people, I think, would be particularly likely to have complete breakdowns (or meltdowns) when the main family surrendered.

Whatever happened, it must have been quite dramatic, given the way Geten talks about Re-Destro having found him.  Counter to a couple of, just, woefully awful takes I’ve seen around, Re-Destro did not buy Geten; it doesn’t even sound like he found him via any official channel.  It was the main family members who were being “sold off,” remember; the branch families, which Geten explicitly associates himself with, were “scattered.”  It sounds, then, like Geten was basically an orphan, and not one living in any kind of facility or home.  He clearly had family, but whether he bolted on his own, was abandoned,[5] or whatever, that family’s no longer in the picture.  This despite the fact that, again, he would have been a very, very young child at the time.

On a similar note, because of that youth, it’s also probable that his view on the family tragedy is colored at least in part by whatever Re-Destro’s reaction to it was when he got Geten’s story upon taking him in.

Re-Destro, of course, is all for radical quirk acceptance, but he’s deeply entangled with issues of bloodline himself.  Although he uses some pretty flowery language to talk about his inherited blood from Destro, he also views that duty as a huge burdensome responsibility from which he is deliriously happy to be freed by Shigaraki.  So we might suppose that he himself is pretty cold on chaining children to bloodline purity politics, especially in absence of a Worthy Cause.  And rejecting the glorious future of everyone using their quirks to become who they were meant to be is the very opposite of a worthy cause!

O  Gee, I wonder what Spinner would have thought about this.  What a shame we didn’t have a three-month period where the League and the MLA were living together to explore oh wait.

O  Congratulations to everyone who ever ventured to suggest that the Todoroki microaggressions against heteromorphs might stem from Rei, with her old money, traditionalist family, rather than New Money Endeavor, who went whole scenes being mad at Hawks and never called him anything dehumanizing even in his own mind.  Guess there was something to Natsuo not bringing up his mouse-eared girlfriend in the hospital scene after all!

I’m mostly being facetious about this, but you can check here if you want my thoughts on who in the Todofam uses animal insults, who doesn’t, and some analysis as to why. I'd add two observations in light of new information:

First, Natsuo's girlfriend isn't at the shelter with him and the others, despite having a far better justification for being with him than the Masegaki kids have to be hanging around Fuyumi. It's a small absence, but noticeable in the context of the Himura being specifically described as heteromorphobic by Compress.

Second, while a lot of people say that heteromorph discrimination is a recent retcon, it's got a lot of early evidence. In that same vein, it's notable that Rei brings up bloodlines and obligation to them all the way back in Chapter 39—Shouto's Sports Festival flashback—where she reassures baby Shouto that he isn't a slave to his blood as the two of them watch All Might on TV talking about quirks being passed on from parent to child.

It's a little obscured by both Shouto's fears of coming to resemble his father and All Might's (frankly pretty contradictory) claims about what his, "I am here!" catchphrase is meant to indicate, but even back then, Rei's comfort is phrased in terms of being free from obligation to one's blood. If Horikoshi already knew what the Himuras' deal was even back then, one can easily imagine that he already knew the sorts of people the Himura were rejecting.

   

On the Todofam Reunion:

I love all the information packed into Geten and Compress scene, but I do wish it felt less arbitrary.  Indeed, it’s the second scene we’ve gotten of the incredibly specific “captured villains sit in their cells and randomly, with no apparent prompting, talk about something relevant to the Todoroki situation” scenario. But then, this whole confrontation in the Todofam is wildly arbitrary.  Which is frustrating!  The family had that great scene in the hospital where they all talked about stopping Touya together and then did absolutely nothing to actually make that happen, and it really does not reflect well on either them or this whole scene.

Consider:

Dabi is only in this location, confronting Endeavor, because of spill-over effect from other villain actions (Spinner, Kurogiri).  This was not planned in advance because the villains didn’t plan for being split up.  Likewise, Endeavor confirms this chapter that he was trying to lure Touya away from the fighting at the Villa, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have intentionally led Touya towards one of the evacuation routes if he’d known there was a stalled box in the danger zone.  (Why exactly didn't one of the people at police HQ tip him off about that?)    

There are many, many other transports Rei and the kids could have gotten onto; they’re on this specific one rather than any others by total freak coincidence, not active choice.    

The transport only stops where it does because of outside villain interference (Skeptic, and, as of next chapter, AFO’s spies).  This interference was obviously not intended to stop the transport in the specific location it did because Skeptic was already interfering with them long before Dabi was warped in, and the AFO spies ought to value their own lives too much to willingly try to get themselves killed in a blue flame inferno.  (More on them next week, because my god, does their scene in 388 annoy the hell out of me.)

So, taken all together, the Todofam’s vow in the hospital has amounted to absolutely nothing, and the fact that they’re being reunited now is a result of villain actions at best, random chance at worst.  At no point have any of them been seen to make an effort at facilitating a full family action.  While, yes, it is the case that the rest of the family are civilians, why even talk about “dealing with Touya as a family” if they’re going to do nothing of the sort?  When did “deal with Touya as a family” become “allow the planners of this combat to move us all to different locations, leaving only Shouto—who knows the least about Touya of anyone in the family!—to try and talk down the brother who resents him more than anyone?”

It's just another point where Team Hero talks big but takes no action to back that talk up.    

On Enji and Touya:

O  The, “Watch me!”/”I don’t want to watch you die!” exchange is good stuff—all that telling people to watch him, and now Enji’s on the other side of that.  Even better is that ludicrously delightful panel of the two of them with hands and flame-hands entwined, Enji’s arms wide open as Touya comes in[6] for a landing.  As ever, Dabi’s dancing imagery is on-fucking-point.  Good work getting your dad to dance with you in hell, Dabs.

O  As to Enji’s actions here, I’m torn.  On the one hand, it’s extremely telling that Endeavor leaps straight to, “Guess we’ll die together, then,” when he fails to talk Dabi down, and that’s emblematic of the flaws of the hero mentality, which is so drastically bad at dealing with nuanced situations in which they or their society have failed.

On the other hand, Enji does try to talk to Touya here and gets nowhere, not necessarily because he’s saying the wrong things (though you could argue that he is) but because Dabi’s frying his own brain.  This is uncomfortably reminiscent of Spinner’s mental decay, and, as others have said, I’m Very Not Here for the villains being so damaged mentally that they can’t even articulate their own grievances, allowing heroes to get the last word by default even though their “solutions” are wildly insufficient and ultimately in support of the demonstrably failing status quo.

Anyway, Enji is obviously taking the wrong tack here, but I can’t help but feel like the writing has put him in a no-win situation by stripping Touya’s ability to reason from him, rendering him unable to even attempt to respond to Enji’s attempts at engagement. Enji’s still ultimately to blame for this, of course, thanks to all his many, many failures to engage with Touya at literally any point prior to this, but it’s just an ongoing disappointment to me that we continue to be deprived of a proper intellectual back-and-forth about this society’s ultimate worth because, at all times, either the heroes are unwilling to engage or the villains have been rendered unable to.

O  Travel times in this series continue to be unbelievably whack.  Endeavor has gotten 800 meters from the Villa ruins? 800 meters? That's less than half a mile! AFO is most of the way to U.A. by now! All Might has driven even farther, going all the way from the police HQ, which is probably in Tokyo near Central Hospital, past Kamino and every other active battlefront, to far enough out from U.A. to intercept AFO's flight path. That's well over a hundred miles, traveled in a matter of minutes![7] But Endeavor, even on injured legs, couldn't make it one single mile?? And Dabi couldn't have caught up to him if he was moving that slow?

God save me from these arbitrary fucking travel times!    

Stray Notes:

O  The “land reforms,” not “the agricultural revolution,” jfc C.Cook. There's a pretty huge difference between a family sustaining their power through an agricultural upheaval in 1947 vs. 10,000 BC!

O  Why is it so cold in there??  Get Mr. Compress a jacket!!! Also, like, Geten doesn’t seem terribly bothered, as one might expect from an ice quirk user, but it’s a bit inconsistent with his wearing a full-length parka during his fights, seeing as the parka would suggest he is, in fact, not totally immune to sustained chills!

That being the case, why is it so cold in there?  I wouldn’t think it’s actually just that cold in the prison, since there’s obviously a cold mist drifting into Mr. C’s cell, rather than being ambient in both of them.  Does Geten just generate it?  His whole thing up to now has been that he controls ice but can’t create it from nothing, so if it is coming from him, that would be—well, not quite a retcon, but certainly a swerve.

Does he naturally generate it but do so very slowly, not in sufficient amounts to use for his preferred Ballistic Iceberg fighting style?  If it’s coming from him automatically, can he turn it off?  Presumably not, since if he could and isn’t, that would suggest he’s doing this with a goal in mind, something you have to think his jailers would have Opinions about.

So if he can’t turn it off, and this just happens in anyplace he sits long enough, is the parka to protect other people from his chill, rather than to protect him from the cold of the ice he uses?  Recall that there wasn’t ice caked on his chair during e.g. the MLA dinner scene.  What a fascinating idea, and one that speaks to the need for support items like Detnerat makes!

Well, whatever the case, I certainly hope he’s about to use his ice to decisively break them out of there!  Because haha, why wouldn’t he be able to do that if he ambiently creates cold just by sitting there and the prison can’t even be arsed to crank the temperature up??  Surely no one thinks that those restraints on his hands are sufficient to stop him from using his ice?  I haven’t forgotten that he definitively does not need to touch ice in order to control it, and it can’t be that hard to find a fire suppression sprinkler system line or the plumbing connected to whatever the toilet situation is for prisoners or something!!

(Sigh.)

O  Unexpectedly good of the heroes to let Mr. Compress keep his prosthetic.  And a bed, no less!  I wonder where Geten’s bed is.  (My god, these jail conditions are so inhuman.  Get them a damn futon, at least.)

O  That hint that Mr. C has been talking to the cops and heroes—Geten asking about the conversation—I wonder if anything will come of that?  Because it would be incredibly lame for Horikoshi to promise us we’d see Mr. C again only for this to be his final appearance, doing nothing but weighing in with disgruntled expressions on Geten’s out-of-nowhere backstory drop.  It’s a pretty shit final scene for Geten, too, dropping backstory exposition for no reason save to layer in some justification for the ice powers Dabi is about to exhibit.

--------------------- FOOTNOTES ---------------------

[1] The cut-off between close and distant relatives is made here because, once you get further out than second cousins, there’s little to no difference in the impact of shared blood on the child of two such distant relatives and that experienced by any random person in the general population.

[2] I eyeballed this on a map, so it’s not exact, but it’ll do as a ballpark.  Two of them looked a little closer together than a hundred miles, but that’s also a straight overland route from Point A to Point B, which the roads probably wouldn’t have been.  Incidentally, traveling a hundred miles in a time before cars would have taken at least five days if you weren’t a military messenger in a hurry and trading out horses at multiple stops.

[3] Given that the characters in-universe still don’t know the origin of quirks, there’s no way to completely guarantee desirable quirks, or even to perfectly guard against the dreaded heteromorphic quirks.  Eventually, the Himura would get a kid whose ice quirk is tied to the fact that they were born looking like a snowman, or they'd crop up a polar bear heteromorph or something.  And whoops, there goes another viable bloodline.

[4] A very reasonable and indeed conservative estimate. Remember that Geten says “the few remaining families” scattered after the main family gave up; the plural indicates that there were still at least two branch family holdouts even after all the waning and shrinking.  In turn, those being the remainder means there must have been more previously.  Losing only two over the course of over a century of mandated intermarriage throughout the chaos of the Advent is possibly undershooting quite a bit!          I talked about the Fujiwara earlier, but for an anime example of how ridiculous the branch family situation can get, look at Kakegurui: we’re at ten and counting branch families under the control of the main line, and if we read the kanji of that main line's name literally, there could be ninety more in the wings.

[5] I lean towards some form of abandonment because it makes the Dabi foiling tastier if Touya left his family by choice when he became Dabi, whereas Geten was left alone through no choice of his own. Abandonment also provides more meaningful context on Geten’s attachment to RD and his determination to be useful and strong for him.

[6] Crotch-first.

[7] Maybe he gave Lady Nagant a ride and that’s how she got in range to start taking potshots at Shigaraki at U.A.? It'd be nice to have any kind of explanation for that particular feat, though it would mean All Might didn't leave Tokyo until after Kurogiri was freed, cutting into his travel time even more. But heck, what's a few minutes matter when your car can drive eight hundred miles an hour, right? Christ.

[deusvervewrites]

Okay, so the way I personally reasoned out the ask is that all of them go off like they would in the original asks for them. Grand Debut goes is horrible and that attracts rest of the league early but they don't actually join for it. Dabi gets his death match with Endeavour little after guy becomes Number One hero, the pillar of society when it already was horribly destabilized by Grand Debut.

But it still is Phyrric Victory and without Dabi the League do not get to enjoy victory as incompetent MLA leadership still invites them to ambush that goes horribly for both sides. Only now there is Yaoyorozu to cash in on everything, being intelligent enough to salvage/rebuild way faster than society can begin to recover from everything league achieved.

It is shocking how many AU's have to be thrown together just to approach Failed Foresigh bad. Would even Ground Zero at the start of this be enough to reach level of damage Nighteye left unchecked is capable of?

Ground Zero leaving All Might retired and potentially having Midoriya out of commission for the Sports Festival would in fact fuck things up even more. But I don't know if it would be at Nighteye levels, considering how he managed to start several crime organizations while helping the HPSC crack down and resulted in several canon Hero Students not being at UA.

So yeah, Failed Foresight is still on top. Or, on bottom, I guess.

[heroes-in-the-dark]

I have to talk about chapter 370

I don't do these very often, but this chapter was REALLY important to me because it revealed a lot of little details that I've been looking for in this series for a long time. Mostly in regards to my writing, but also just in general.

For starters, THIS is where they were keeping Kurogiru?! We've seen Central Hospital before, but I've only ever associated it with the treatment of top heroes and important individuals, like after the war. I headcanoned through my fic that they had basement levels for treating and dealing with villains, so I'm intrigued to see some truth to it! No mention of Mr. Compress, though... they had to have treated his injuries from the war somewhere. Could it have been here too? And then afterwards he was transferred to a prison?

Honestly, it makes sense that they've bolstered their ranks. A lot of members of the MLA seemed like ordinary civilians in the first place. It's a little detail, but seeing the CRC heads on stakes really sticks out to me. I thought that insidious group might never be mentioned again after the League dealt with them. I'm guessing that, even being a less popular group these days, this newly unified legion of mutants could still find pockets where they were still active. Perhaps after this stand, the CRC will be extinguished altogether. But as this chapter points out, the on-going threat of discrimatory acts against mutant-types is still very pervasive.

I wrote about this guy a little bit! Wish we'd gotten a name (and pronouns tbh) but I'm glad to see them taking up a role in all this. I was curious about them before! They were a supervisor for the Brown Regiment; I bet they're already quite used to assisting Spinner in leadership. Speaking of Spinner...

I... I don't exactly have the words. I LOVE Spinner. He always struck me as someone who was sweet but tenacious, and I valued him for that. When we first saw him different like this, I thought he'd been using Trigger or some other quirk-enhancing drug. But now we know that ALL FOR ONE GAVE HIM ANOTHER QUIRK.

I am LIVID at AfO. Like, I've detested him for a while now, just because of what he did to Shigaraki and Touya, but that man seems dead-set on dealing out as much damage to each member of the League as he can. After Spinner was so loyal to the League and Shigaraki especially, it just feels like a slap in the face that he'd end up this way. I don't think Spinner knew what he was signing up for when he took this new quirk. AfO is incredibly manipulative. He won't care what happens to Spinner. I know the multiple quirks CAN be done with people, but depending on how demanding the quirk is, they don't mesh well!! That stuff is usually for nomu, and the specifically altered bodies that allow them to hold these different abilities. I can see the strain of the quirk really pushing Spinner's limits. I want him to get out of this okay...

And then! Shouji's face!!! We finally get to see it outside of his concept sketches! I, uh, don't remember his og design having those scars, though. Makes me wonder how he got them... we really haven't ever seen him without the mask. Ever. Not in his dorm or changing room or anything. But I want to assume that some students have seen under his mask, since he wears it so that he doesn't scare or intimidate the people around him.

I bet Tokoyami has seen his face. I'm sure there's very certain circumstances in which Shouji feels comfortable showing people what he looks like. I mean, anyone can tell at a glance that he's a mutant type quirk user, but the presence of the mask has always seemed like a comfort thing for someone who's already very aware of how they look to others. If other characters with mutant traits are any indication, then he's had it hard based on his appearance before.

[uncouth-the-fifth]

I was reading your stories with Sam (our favorite psychic boy) and something that had me enthralled by all of them was the way he just seemed to ooze out of every word you carefully wrote (all his little personality traits, the kindness, the selflessness, the chivalry , the way he tends to blame himself for even a fallen leaf... EVERYTHING). So I was wondering, do you have any headcanon, curiosity or thoughts on the character? Things that make you see him so clearly when you write about him?

I'm on my way to starting writing stories in this universe (rewatching the series woke me up to the character after all these years), and I find it really interesting to see what others think about, hope you don't mind 💕

okay, confession time: i am a massive fucking nerd. i'm also a hugeeeee Sims girl, and it has given me this disease where I am obsessed with character traits. i used to eat those huge blank "build your character" worksheets WHOLE. i also tend to read a lot of fic from a show before i start writing it, and there were a lot of fics that i chewed on that had a very tasty sam flavor that I stored in my brain. PLUS... heaps upon heaps of meta posts about him. so I guess the way I write sam comes from those things: inspiration from other interpretations of him I really enjoyed, the little Sims traits I have pasted on him, and tbh... a little bit of how I WANT sam to act. i love him at his guiltiest, his most loving, and his weirdest. i don't know if I could really string together some grand interpretation of him, but when i think of sam, i think of this guy who is just so GOOD, no matter how many people or circumstances could've made him the opposite. like i think of that exchange he had with claire, when he explains to her that the reason why he suffers through his shitty ass life is to help people. and when claire says, "that's it?" sam tells her, without hesitation, "that's not enough?" LAWWWWD. i love that boy. that is the most compelling shit ever to me. he's so good it DEFIES FATE, but he's also an annoying little brother, a dweeb, a little bit of a buzzkill, AND he's sexy. it's a weird balance. character of all time 👍 tbh if you're really struggling with getting a grasp on him, i would just make a big ol' google doc of things you associate with him, your favorite sam quotes, paragraphs from fics that describe him well, whatever. mine is color-coded with MLA citations, bc that's what papa would want <3 best of luck, buddieee 💖

(also, this ask made me open up my current Sims 4 save, and these are the traits I gave Sam lmao: good, genius, mentally gifted, morning sim, rebellious, quick learner, then he also has a fear of fire and unfulfilled dreams. and kid dean also raised him so he has the top notch toddler trait too 😭😭😭😭)

[prince-honeypaw]

Hello hello you shall never guess who it is <3

I am sneaking in the back window and infiltrating your inbox to request some regressor!Giran headcanons, if that is okay? Something something the broker is always there to take care of things for the League, but who takes care of the broker? They are breaking into his place to say hello Compress needs a new arm again after that last fight this one is busted, but it's hard to do business when you're baby...or you know, wherever you see fit to take it, you know what you're doing. Please, I've had naught but crumbs and am withering away without any good good Honey food of my boy! 🌙

♡ Anything for you, dear! I decided to do some basic headcanons since I've never really gotten to explore Giran as a regressor, so I hope this will sate you! Please enjoy!

♡ It's already difficult for villain aligned and older regressors to find time to go down, but try being both at the same time! Not only that, but Kagero's regression is a rather recent development in his life. Sure, he isn't totally in the dark about it, having experienced Dabi and Jin in their own drops, but it wasn't something he really saw for himself as he felt that it was just... Out of his age range. That he was too old for it.

♡ Little does he know that no one is immune to the all encompassing warmth of regression once it latches on, and the seeds had already been planted! From Ken gently explaining that she thought he was a regressor because he has such a fondness for cute, but tacky trinkets and the like, to Jin being insistent on only wanting to play with Kagero when he feels small, it's practically inevitable that regression starts to gently saturate his life.

♡ At first he only really grazed over a wobbly sort of middlespace on occasion, which was not ideal when he was out and about. Sometimes you're an adult with adult money that you can do with as you please and then the next minute you're in a Build-A-Bear using your adult credit card to pay for a Pawsome Pink Bunny named Tulip. This is not a one time thing, despite him wishing it was; He ends up coming home with pacifiers, bottles, hot pink leopard print blankets, more stuffed rabbits, plush slippers- Whatever that little voice in the back of his mind wants he typically ends up getting.

♡ It isn't until after the incident at Deika City that he really and truly regresses. No middling, no slipping, just a full and proper drop as soon as there's no more risks to his life to worry about. And he drops extremely low! Two or three at the highest and infancy at the lowest- Not what he expected, but it's the cards he was dealt. After losing five entire fingers, it's reasonable to assume that he doesn't want to be anywhere near the MLA for an extended period of time, so Jin and Himiko follow after to make sure that he's cared for! ... Despite their own wounds.

♡ But, honestly? He doesn't tell them not to. Kagero is in a new, small, and vulnerable mindset that is genuinely frightening to him! He's scared to be alone, so Jin won't let him be alone. And where Jin goes, Himiko follows! And she follows with direct access to the Detnerat CEO's bank account that will be used to spoil the baby. "Five figures for five fingers seems fair to me!" She'd said while one of Jin's clones stole Trumpet's van to take Kagero home.

♡ It doesn't take Jin and Himiko long to figure out what's up with their broker during that car ride. What with them both having their own experiences with regression, they peg him as a baby pretty quickly and adjust their attitudes accordingly! ... Somewhat. They try their best, but they're very high energy individuals that are hit by that new baby high! Poor thing still cries over the intense energy they bring to the table so they're quick to scramble over themselves to fix it.

♡ Turns out that Kagero is very much a vibes only sort of baby! If the vibes don't match with how he's feeling, the only solution is to cry about them. He's also a shapes and colors baby, sitting on his bedroom floor with Tulip clutched in his good hand, mesmerized by the tacky fabrics and textiles in his closet while Jin and Himiko try to hunt down pajamas that are appropriate for a baby. Toga opts to simply Purchase clothes, being pretty trigger-happy with the company card in her little gremlin claws.

♡ Kagero's place was a total wreck when they got there, but it didn't stay that way for long! Jin felt responsible for Kagero and the state he was in, he was the whole reason Jin had somewhere that he felt like he actually belonged! So, using his recently reawakened abilities, Jin made it his personal mission to fix (or steal) anything that had been broken. The bathroom, living room, and kitchen had been the first to be brought back to a livable condition, which meant that it was safe for Kagero to finally have a well deserved bath while Himiko skittered around his kitchen like some sort of creature.

♡ Trying to wash off roughly a week or so's worth of blood and grime off of an injured infant is not an easy task which is why it takes three clones and grilled cheese-NO crusts!-bribery to achieve a clean and fluffy Kagero.

♡ Himiko has spent roughly five hundred dollars on clothes alone for this boy and she refuses to explain how. She simply says that a baby needs cute clothes that make them feel cute or what's the gosh darn point of it all! She has also purchased a myriad of adorable bunny Calico Critters that gains an appreciative croon from Kagero!

♡ The night is spent with old Disney movies on the TV, grilled cheese, and online shopping in the pillow fort that Jin and Himiko made... After trying to beat each other to death with pillows.

♡ Kagero has no interest in joining as soon as his pacifier is broken out. He has no taste for bedding based warfare, but he does have a taste for chewing and gnawing and sucking whatever is in reach, so the pacifier was an absolute necessity.

♡ When they finally built their ramshackle little fort and peruse a few online stores, (with Toga purchasing anything that even got the slightest reaction from the baby), Himiko scrambles off to the kitchen to show what she had been doing. She'd managed to find the bottles that he'd hidden away in the back of his cabinets and used one of them to make strawberry milk!

♡ With how low he'd been kept throughout the night, there's little fuss from Kagero when she holds the bottle for him, the sharp little manicure she'd pampered herself with scratching against his scalp and Jin's sturdy body settled up against his side.

♡ He wonders how he ever came to earn such a devoted friend in Jin and, by association, Himiko, but in that moment, the world felt just a little bit safer and a little bit kinder.

[fancassticfiction]

I guess I actually have an update on that Ghost-themed master’s thesis I completed a month ago, so buckle up because I ramble for a while. (Gif attached because why not...)

Okay, i decided to break it up just in case people don’t want to be scrolling through my update. Also, I’m pretty sure no one has read any of these updates (not that it really bothers me), but it's nice to get things out into the void, isn’t it? Anyway...

First, I have found some journals where I do not have to edit the citation style, which is great because I both suck at trying to figure Chicago footnote style and hated seeing how much those footnotes added to my page count/word count. I have found three which ask for MLA so far...so stunning!

However, I now have to choose one, and I’m a little stumped because I wrote a long autoethnography. So I would like to break down the pros and cons here. I made a table (because I’m that sort of person). If you have any advice, let a girl know (and if you have suggestion, really let your girl know). 

Next, I had a call with my professor that lasted all of 6 minutes about it, but he did offer to help review it before submit it to any journals! So that’s exciting!

[cccrhirdb2]

assignment breif

Throughout this assignment you will need to ethically consider what is appropriate when engaging with other peoples knowledge, or sharing your own cultural knowledge, in a colonised context.

I don't know how this will play out without misappropriating something but I guess that is the whole point??

so what seems to be different so far is that for the 2nd assignment we have to have a work of art in a group setting instead of individually - we still have to write on our own though, which makes sense because I cannot imagine co-writing a definition with other people.

group part

so will need to choose a topic from the list; Whakapapa, Sovereignty/Nationalism, Kaitiakitanga, Te Tiriti, Tikanga, Pacific Histories, Te Reo, Asian Aotearoa Histories, Tātai arorangi, Takatāpui/Queer Histories, Colonisation, Decolonisation and Capitalism, Mana Wahine/Feminism

then consider your own position/identity within the context of the project (or in context of the example??) - pose yourself a question e.g “What does my day look like with active decolonising/indigenising?” (I can only presume indigensing means existing to involve ingidneous people or knowledge, bringing it back to who was here first)

and then make an interactive or response artwork to it!

part 2

section a

200 words reflection on the chosen resource for the group (does resource mean what we made or the topic chosen)

consider these questions/use them to help you respond

What did you learn/begin to understand differently?

If you were going to produce your resource commercially what ethical concerns might you address?

Who benefits? What benefits are there?

Who is your audience? Who might be included/excluded?

What further research might be necessary if you were going to continue developing the resource?

What changes would you make, having completed your prototype?

okay so i think by resource it means the thing we make.

section b

1000 word formal writing that unpacks the key topics of chosen example.

Must include at least 3 resources from google scholar, massey library, discover (your own found resources)

must also include 1-3 art and design examples that may have inspired or informed proposal - must be captioned correctly with images

must site correctly in MLA format

workbook (dont have to do individual one)

do not have to submit a workbook that shows the process of making your resource and responces to the weekly independant tasks.

[traumatictouch]

why tomura reads like a sexual abuse survivor

ive noticed that a lot of survivors - including me - easily read tomura as a csa survivor. ive decided to try to put these impressions into words, mostly for myself, but also for anyone curious as to why he’s so frequently read this way, or why i personally write him as such. i will mostly be elaborating on the reoccurring sexual assault imagery and csa survivor traits tomura exhibits.

triggering themes ahead, including discussed child sexual abuse, incest (sibling and pseudo), trauma and its effects, and sexual assault imagery (from the bnha manga itself). also spoilers for the most recent manga arc.

(disclaimer: i realize symptoms of trauma are pretty much common all across the board, and depression also comes with a lot of these behaviors - but there are some that crop up more commonly in cases of sexual abuse (especially from a young age) than in others. csa survivors also frequently end up with depression, too, so that doesn't necessarily take away from it.)

i’ll start with the cover above. the hands touching him here are much more expressive than the ones he usually wears. it's also framed in a way where you can't see the ends/cap things very well, and they don't appear so symmetrical, making them feel much more like real, living hands grabbing him.

there's also the fact that his face is exposed, which is something we had rarely seen him do willingly at this point in the manga, and even when he had he was still covered up with a hoodie or completely alone. the way he's covering half his face gives off the impression that he's not okay with the way he's exposed.

all of that, plus the obvious distress tomura is in, gives this very glaring assault vibes.

also, the hands on his head are clearly someone's actual, living hands as well. my guess is afo, especially since they seem to be petting him, which is reoccurring imagery between tomura and afo.

tomura's total lack of privacy

there's a clear lack of boundaries between tomura and the adults in his life. most of the spaces that seem to belong to tomura (the bar - he feels safe enough there to take Father off, and his room) are accompanied by cameras and audio transmissions from afo. he has no privacy, and doesn't even seem bothered by this fact.

he also doesn't seem to set boundaries with other people in general. toga can hold a knife to his neck, spinner can grab him and yell in his face, the doctor can shout over his earpiece, dabi (or anyone, really) can say whatever rude or callous things he wants to him… really the only time i can think of that even comes close was when mr. compress made a joke about working with overhaul and tomura said "hey, not funny."

he seems to kinda just let whatever happen to him. earlier in the series, tomura seemed to rely on kurogiri to notice when he needed space and step in for him rather than ask for it himself. that's a pretty telltale sign of someone who's had their needs and boundaries violated (or even punished) for a long time.

Tomuras over-attachment to afo and his praise/affection

obviously afo groomed tomura whether it involved sexual abuse or not, but it is something that could have easily lended itself to that as well. early in the series, tomura clearly highly valued afos opinion of him, and seemed to strive to please and repay him for his kindness. these are feelings afo incited in him on purpose and did, canonically, take advantage of to turn tomura into a villain and pawn - who's to say he didn't use it for other purposes, too?

it's also the kind of thing survivors tend to latch onto to cope with their abuse. it can be easier to think of the event as being affection, returning a favor, and/or special treatment, than to think of it as abuse. tomura looked up to afo so much that it's possible he could have considered (or been convinced) that it was special that someone as great as afo wanted to do something so intimate with him.

also, if this is really tomura realizing his sensei isn't as special and powerful as he'd been led to believe, then his reaction being to cover up while looking angry might, well… be a reaction to feeling used.

Tomura & older men

there's not a lot of people besides afo that tomura seems very quickly, openly… invested in. there are two major ones i can think of, and they are both 1. older men, and 2. mentor figures (even if not to tomura.)

the most obvious of the two is aizawa, who tomura has seemed pretty fond of since his first appearance and, even in the most recent chapters, can't seem to help but think about how cool aizawa is. aizawa isn't a mentor to tomura, obviously, but he is a teacher and tomura knows this. (and seems impressed by the way he tries to protect the students in his care--something afo very specifically does not do for tomura.)

the second, and perhaps less obvious to most, is Stain. i wrote up a whole post trying (trying.) to explain the way tomura seemed interested in him, and you can see a bit more about that and how tomura was hoping he'd be a mentor to him here.

in other words, tomura has shown reoccurring interest in older men, who are mentors, that he does not show for anyone else.

early sexual abuse can influence a person's attractions. survivors tend to be drawn to what is familiar, even if it hurt, and so it's pretty common for them to be attracted to and/or desire a relationship with those who resemble their abuser(s).

and afo is an older man who is a mentor to tomura (and others.)

immaturity (& age regression)

tomura, in early canon, is often described by characters in-universe as being childish, especially in regards to how he processes his emotions. (i don't really like to conflate these things with "age" or "being childish" - but the way the manga itself presents these qualities is clearly intended to give tomura a immature/childish vibe.)

tomura's emotional processing, simple motivations, fixation with video games, toys littering his room, and need for close caregiving (kurogiri) all give off the impression that he's had trouble developing the way he "”should”" have--kind of like he didn't really move on at all.

this sort of stunted development tends to occur in people with childhood trauma, especially csa survivors. ptsd at its core is the brain getting "stuck" in the moment of trauma, so if the trauma occurred as a child, then one's development is somewhat halted there, especially in areas of emotional processing, because the brain and body have to dedicate so much energy to just trying to cope and survive. it's pretty common for csa survivors to have trouble coping with and controlling their emotions.

relatedly: i have no real way to confirm this right now, but i’ve heard that during the mla arc, while tomura was kind of going in and out of flashbacks, he started switching to using “boku” - a self pronoun for young boys - as opposed to his usual “ore”). ive since had to wonder if this is a reoccurring state for tomura - it might partly explain why he keeps his toys around despite never showing interest in them on-screen, and has such close supervision from kurogiri.

again, age regression can go for any kind of childhood trauma, but seems very common in child sexual abuse survivors in particular.

Lack of hygiene (esp oral)

look at how tomura's teeth are drawn compared to even another villains. dabis teeth are straight and clean, whereas tomura's have holes and chips, and tend to be drawn uneven with wobbly lines, like they're covered in plaque.

not caring for one's hygiene is common for people with depression too - but failure to care for teeth also frequently crops up in survivors of sexual abuse, due to an aversion to things touching or being inside their mouth, because it can remind them of the abuse.

in a similar vein, tomura's hair looks unwashed and greasy to me, especially when it gets long. it sort of gathers in clumps and appears heavy. survivors may avoid taking showers because they aren't comfortable removing their clothes for long periods of time, or because the abuse occurred in proximity to bathing. (which is a convenient time for parental figures to groom and abuse their children, since it already involves them being naked and the parent touching them closely.)

in general, there just seems to be something off about tomura's relationship with his body. maybe it's the way he barely bats an eye at major injuries, doesn't care for his hygiene, self-injures, and didn't mind undergoing a surgery that altered its shape and function pretty heavily--but i get the impression that tomura sees his body as just a tool more than anything.

which, if someone grew up having their body regarded as nothing but a means of pleasure, kind of makes sense.

his clothing

im not sure if this has the same “connotations” (for lack of a better word) for flat chested people, but tomura always wearing a lowcut shirt that shows off a fair amount of his chest, but covering the rest of himself head to toe--including his face--feels significant to me. as well as the way he covers up even more (his hoodie) when he’s stressed. the hands, too--being covered up seems to be calming for him.

the placement of the hands afo gave him

you can't tell me little tenko placed these hands where they are by himself. the ones on his chest aren’t even from his family or meant to resemble them - they’re additional hands afo gave him to wear. pretty weird place for “afo”’s hands to go...

I feel like theres a little bit something to tomura frequently having his clothes ripped off during fights

not that it's particularly uncommon for bnha characters to get their clothes a bit shredded during fights, but i can't help but feel like there's something to tomura getting torn down to nothing but his pants twice, with both battles heavily involving tomura's traumas, including the ones related to afo. the vs mla arc with how tomura met afo and how he turned him into what he is today, then the war arc where the methods afo used to control and abuse tomura (the hands) are brought back again--and afo repeatedly takes tomura's bodily autonomy away from him.

AFO's predatory behaviors

tomuras own behavior aside, All For One himself has some behaviors and imagery that gives off very predatory vibes. i’ll start with Ragdoll…

most people theorize that she was going to be turned into a nomu, but there are two important things here. ragdoll was found 1. alive, and 2. naked. all nomu are made from corpses - if afo had time to take her quirk and undress her, he certainly had time to kill her, especially since three days had passed since she was kidnapped. (and, what benefit would there be to making a nomu out of a quirkless hero?)

her dazed state is also curious - we've never been told taking or giving quirks has a side effect like this, and i would think itd at least wear off after three days…

there's also not actually a lot to suggest she was submerged in one of the tanks (that i know of); in the full body image, she doesn't seem to be soaking wet or anything. there's no water dripping off her. there's just a bit of liquid on her face and neck, which could merely be sweat, or… other fluids.

this next part is more debatable due to it being more dubiously canon (although My Hero: One’s Justice has been known to basically spoil villain related lore before it appears in the manga) - but he has some dialogue that makes him sound... pretty fuckin enthusiastic about sexual violence.

and time and time again, afo has been... very creepy and obsessive about his brother. who happens to look an awful lot like tomura, and is vaguely connected to nana as a user of OFA, and we know how far afo would go to spite both of them.

The "wow this is pretty much confirmed now" page

i always thought i was just projecting when i read tomura as a csa survivor - until i saw this page, which was so viscerally uncomfortable that it made me nauseous. it definitely made me decide i wasn't just reading into things that weren't there. that's not exactly to say this panel 100% confirmed it (though it certainly did in my mind, personally) -- but the imagery here can't not be deliberate.

tomura is literally shirtless and bent over before afo, and sure, afos not completely standing behind him, but that's partially because his lower half is inside of tomura. and from our previous example of afo taking over tomura's body…

i wish i could find the translation i first saw - this is the viz translation, which is notoriously horrible - but the one i read felt much more along the lines of "i saved you, so i get to do what i want with your body."

that is a line of logic that could have EASILY applied to their earlier relationship. the way afo saved tenko was very much on the forefront of tomura's mind early in the series, possibly either an idea he clung onto to justify the abuse he experienced from afo, or something afo personally reminded him of frequently.

also… part of afos body is definitely wrapped around tomura's upper thigh, and in certain panels seems to be emanating from between his legs.

speaking of, tomura's stance is also notable to me. compared to the panel where tomura first realized afo was taking control of him, where his knees are pretty straight on or outwards in a powerful balanced brace, in these panels his knees seem to be bending in towards his body, like he wants to squeeze his legs shut. huh.

i touched on this before, but it's interesting to me that what finally let afo fully take control of tomura's body, was having a hand (one afo very specifically used to control and abuse tomura into doing what he wanted) placed upon his body without permission.

so, all in all, afo is "inside" tomura's body, using it for his own means, against tomura's wishes.

what else does that sound like? no wonder deku feels like tomura needs help, despite everything...

again, this isn't to say that csa is definitely the cause of these things, just that tomura does have an abundance of behaviors and imagery that could easily be read that way.

[localcactushugger]

Is anyone else amazed that Hawks was only "undercover" with the Leauge for 6 months at the most.

Not only that, one and a half of those 6 months were spent just trying to gain enough trust to infiltrate.

I know it seems like much longer since Hawks made his Manga debut 2 years ago. But he had such a short amount of time on this mission. Hawks was introduced in the manga with his role being the "double agent". We literally have not seen Hawks outside of his "spy" role. Even when he is interacting with other characters outside of the Leauge, his "mission" is still happening in the background.

It seems Hawks made contact with Dabi right before the Hero Billboard chart, this is when he starts trying to infiltrate. His interaction with Dabi in the warehouse begins immediately after Endeavors fight with High-End:

During this time, Dabi is testing out a High-End Nomu for doctor Ujiko. Which means by the time Endeavor fights High-End, the My Villain Academia arc is already happening. Hawks is assumed to be one of the "members" Dabi is trying to recruit:

The Leauge has already made contact with doctor Ujiko, and the Doctor sends Dabi to test his High-End Nomu out on Endeavor (even though Dabi didn't know it would be Endeavor) while the rest of the Leauge battle Machia. At the time, Dabi still doesn't trust Hawks at all and he keeps the hero at arms length. While Dabi and Hawks are sharing ominous phone calls, the Leauge is hauling ass and it take's Shigiraki a month and a half to finally beat Machia. (The MLA is "defeated" too):

After a month and a half of phone calls (while the Leauge gets their asses handed to them by Machia in the background) Hawks is finally allowed into the Leauge when the battle of Dekia City is finally over. Dabi let's him in because Hawks "kills" Best Jeanist.

But there's a problem. By the time Hawks is let in, The Leagues numbers have drastically increased. They have an army at their side, multiple High-End nomu, and are now called the MLA:

Hawks blames himself, saying that he was "too late". That so many civilians would be alive now if he had been faster. He couldn't round up the Leauge when they were a small group, and now they have an army. A powerful one:

He's in too deep now. And you can see the stress on his face. I bet he never expected to be part of an army. He was simply tasked to round up the Leauge members while they were a small group, but the MLA was completely unexpected. Still, he decides to improvise and do the best he can with the shitty cards he's been dealt. It's not like he has another option at this point.

So he slips a coded message to Endeavor ASAP. Basically saying "yo, in four months shits about to go down. Ttyl I'll keep you posted lol". He can't tell the guy in person now, because to make things harder, he has camera's on his wings. (and even though he's being watched by camera's, he also gets followed by guards at the mansion):

After Hawks relays the massge, he stroles around the mansion with his bodyguard and heads towards the cafeteria. With a little eavesdropping (courtesy of his feathers) he also finds out that the Leauges plan is to "Destroy Everything" in four months:

After he relays the massage to Endeavor, he listens to the Leauges plans of destruction as his thoughts run a thousand M.P.H.

Because now "capture the Leauge" has turned into "Holy shit I now only have 4 months to take down a full fledged terrorist organization/army from the inside-out by myself while I'm being monitored 24/7 with absolutely no privacy & also a full time job as a hero + a public image to maintain. And I can only contact my fellow pro's about this mission through code because if the villains find out I'm a double agent I could be killed and Japan could be destroyed. Also some heros have even joined the MLA so who on my own side can I trust? Only a select specific few for now I guess."

If you thought things couldn't get worse your wrong.

Because around 2 months before the raid Hawks' heart (that wants to be free & has a genuine desire to help people) takes shit a bit too far when it makes him get attached to a certain powerful villain.

Hawks quckily finds out that Twice is easily the second most powerful villain in the Leauge after Shigiraki. He's an S ranked villain and he'll kick your ass with the power of friendship anyday. He's a great guy, but him and the Leauge are still planning on doing horrible things within the next 2 months. Twice is going along with it because he wants to stick by his friends, which y'know, is a cool motive. But considering that fact that the people Hawks is trying to protect ALSO have friends, and family's, this makes shit difficult and sends Hawks on some major guilt trips. (I would show all the panels of Hawks sadly smiling as Twice calls him a "good guy", but alas- Tumblr has informed me that I've reached my 10 image per post limit)

And tbh who wouldn't feel bad about suddenly getting attached to such a golden retriever of a man and then realizing you'll have to double-cross him at some point! I'm not surprised Hawks would feel this way, especially considering the fact that he never wanted to take on this mission in the first place.

Hawks is very much a people person, and he HATES lying even when he has no other option. This is a man who got "shivers up his spine" when he had to put on a serious face while handing Endeavor a book with coded messages inside. He literally felt icky and thought "this is low even for me" just because he had to use a deadly expression so that Endeavor would get the gist.

And when the Commission made their "proposal" about this mission, Hawks' first reaction was to call them out on their B.S. for asking him to put civilian lives at risk. He even admitted that he was feeling bad about sending Tokoyami away while talking to Deku, Shoto, and Bakugo. Hawks felt guilty about not being able to spend more time with his student, but considering that things with the MLA were starting to get riskier, and that Hawks literally handed Endeavor a book with a coded message inside about an uprising 2 seconds later, I can see why he wouldn't want to risk Tokoyami being around him. The fact that the camera's on Hawks' wings caught his interactions with Endeavor & the students also makes the creep‐factor worse. The MLA saw everything AND talked about it in a meeting later. Continuing to train with Tokoyami would put him at risk.

I love the complexity of Hawks' character, he's incredibly intelligent, logical, and intuitive. But at the same time throughout this entire mission his heart is constantly battling with his mind. Even when he knows he has to grit his teeth and do something shifty, his heart never fails to put up a fight with his logistics. Honestly it's been a pattern for a while that Hawks' sympathy always "Trips him up" in some way, so idk why I didn't see it coming around to bite him in the ass later.

(Tbh it's hard for me to see Hawks as a this super "Morally Gray" person that the fandom likes to paint him as because of a mission that he only spent 6 months on. I personally, kinda see Hawks as a "good person" who works for a "morally gray" agency. But that's a whole different meta)

Basically, Hawks getting attached to Twice wasn't a surprise. But considering how powerful Twice was, along with his role in the League's destructive plans (He was a lieutenant in one of the MLA's "Units") the discourse going on in Hawks' mind makes sense. By this point Hawks has already figured out all of the MLA's "Units" along with the three "bosses" that support the lieutenants of those "Units". It's noted that those "bosses" are extremely powerful and can match the strength of the heros as well. It took Hawks an entire month just to figure out all of the "Units" members. (I would show the panels explaining all of this but I'm at my photo limit)

All of these members were tasked to follow their lieutenants and bosses, and the plan was to attack all of Japans major cities at the same time. Once the cities were destroyed and chaos had set in, Redestro and feel good inc. Would distribute support items to the remaining citizens in the name of "self-defense". It would create a country full of discourse and destruction where Redestro and Feel good inc. Would rule from the shadows. But Shigiraki would be the main leader. He would become "king" and sit upon a "throne of rubble". (At least this was the MLA's plan, Shigiraki himself just kinda wants to destroy everything. But I suppose this would make things easier for him to do that.)

needless to say, the stakes have been upped excessively. But it took Hawks an entire month to gather this info.

This post is honestly just me marveling at what an M.V.P Hawks is

My guy literally only had 4 months to take down an entire terrorist organization for the inside-out. AND he was being monitored during that entire time. He figured out the MLA's intentions within the first month of being there. And it took him another full month to go into detail and figure out all the members, bosses, and lieutenants, for each of their "Units". Hawks even went as far as to immerse himself in the MLA's ideology, and he had in-depth discussions with the MLA's members. HELL HE EVEN FAKED HIS CO-WORKERS DEATH JUST TO GET IN.

AND HE PRETTY MUCH IMPROVISED ALL OF THIS SHIT!!! The original plan was to capture the Leauge when they were a small group! But by the time Hawks managed to infiltrate, The Leauge already had an army! They were a full-blown organization! And Hawks just kinda rolled with it??? He just kinda bullshitted his way through??

Like, "okay I'm now apart of an army I guess. The Leauge is now an entire organization and they're planning on destroying Japan in March. Let's see how this goes. I'll just have to make this work"???

LIKE HOW THE FUCK IS HE NOT DEAD! WHAT A FUCKING MADLAD

[pluviophile-imagines]

LOWI CONGRATS ON THE FOLLOWER MILESTONE!! 🥺💞💞💞 u deserve it and so much more!! for the kiss prompt could i get 18 with shinsou ?? 🥺👉👈

TYSM SOFFFF so uh. I’ve been fuckin stupid dkfnskfb my dumbass rlly wrote Shinsou correctly on my master post like a week ago and then still managed to write for Shigaraki instead when it came to the actual piece 😳 so thanks to my handyman brainrot you get two—that’s right, two!—characters for the price of one ur welcome ♥️ I cheated a lil bit so shinsou;s not sitting in the reader’s lap it’s just his head but i think its cute 🥺 also Shiggy’s is like twice as long as ive been trying to write them oops i rlly like the jealous reader premise 👉👈 it’s under the read more bc of that and bc of kiiiinda spoilers? if yall arent caught up to the manga you won’t get it but if u are it’s canonical. Whew that was a lot! Enjoy!

Kisses where one person is sitting in the other’s lap

Shinsou

To say that your relationship with Shinsou is new would be an understatement. You’ve been friends for years—ever since the third year of high school when you’d been assigned to him as his support—but you’ve never been particularly close until recently when you’d once again found yourself working on his hero costume and support items.

He’d only asked you out yesterday after nearly two months of tension-filled glances and fleeting touches. Now, the two of you are watching a movie at your mutual friend Kirishima’s apartment, sitting quite awkwardly on a loveseat and pretending like you don’t want to get closer to each other. You haven’t told your friends yet about your new relationship status, but that’s not entirely what’s holding you two back. If anything, it’s run-of-the-mill first date awkwardness (if watching a movie with six of your closest friends around can be considered a date), too afraid to initiate anything.

The movie’s dull; the two of you have pulled out your phones to snark at each other through text, a strategy you’d begun weeks ago after being hushed one too many times by Kaminari because you were talking too loudly. The bright screens probably aren’t all that much better, but you two are in the back anyway; nobody can see it unless they turn away from the TV.

You risk a glance up and end up locking eyes with Shinsou. Your face heats up, heartbeat quickening, as he gives you a charming smile. You watch him glance around the room, unsure at first why he’s doing it until he turns his attention back to you and slowly, silently, moves over across the loveseat into your personal space.

Your legs are touching now, faces so close your nose is nearly brushing his. One of his hands has come to brace against the armrest you’re leaning on, allowing him to stay leaning in.

“Hey,” he says, little more than a whisper and clearly hushed so the others don’t hear.

“Hey yourself,” you respond, earning yourself a low snort.

Instead of vocally responding, he pushes himself back up to a sitting position and then moves his hands to maneuver your legs until you’re no longer curled up against the couch’s backing but sitting like a normal person.

Then he lays down, head resting on your thighs, and turns to face the movie.

You’re grinning uncontrollably. All possible self-conscious thoughts of the others seeing you are dashed from your mind; you like the weight of him in your lap too much.

You spend much of the rest of the movie like that, easily over half an hour. A few minutes in he reaches down to find your hand and bring it to his hair, encouraging you to stroke it. It’s even softer than you’ve imagined in the past, fluffy and thick and genuinely nice to run your hands though. There’s a surge of contentment that rushes through you, and maybe a little bit of pride at the knowledge that you can do this pretty much any time you want now.

By the end of the film, you’re pretty sure Shinsou’s fallen asleep. He gives you the scare of your life, however, when he grabs your arm as you’re trying to pull away. His eyes open, purple irises trained on you.

What happens next you blame on grogginess, him still not quite being awake. He blames it on you; whenever you mention it, he says he saw you and had become consumed with an overwhelming desire to just lean up and kiss you. Whatever the reason, it’s nice for you.

His hand comes up to the back of your neck, tugging you down just as much as he lifts up. It begins soft, kind of sweet, just lips as the two of you melt into each other—but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Within moments the two of you morph the kiss from a quick peck after a movie to a very passionate makeout, and frankly you’d be more concerned if they hadn’t interrupted the two of you.

You pull away when you hear Kaminari’s wolf whistle, left sitting on the loveseat with a burning face and your boyfriend in your lap, still half asleep.

Shigaraki

You’re not jealous.

No, you’ve been dating Tomura for months. You can’t be jealous when he’s, well, yours, and has been for quite some time. You’re his first relationship, his first everything, and it’s frankly foolish of you to feel this insecure just because some floozy is simpering at him from across the enormous room where you and the rest of the League are scattered about. It’s not like she really wants him, or even knows him; he’s just the hew big-shot leader and she’s decided being his lover sounds good. Too bad that role’s already taken.

Still, there’s a sinking feeling in your chest—an ache in your heart, a burning lump in your throat—that says now that Tomura is Grand Commander he’ll drop you for someone better.

You don’t realize you’re glaring daggers at the woman until she catches your eye. She has no business looking that smug; the only reason she’s allowed in the room is to give Tomura reports. You’re the one lounging next to him as she approaches; he has your legs over his lap, his thumb absent-mindedly rubbing circles on your thigh.

And when she bends down to drop the report on his lap (as if your damn legs aren’t there, you want to scoff) she draws the eyes of every League member except the one she wants, because you’re the one who has Tomura’s attention.

He’s wearing Father, but you’ve long passed being afraid when he looks at you from between those lifeless digits and you can see the expression beneath; those lips tugging down slightly in a pout, brow furrowed, eyes far softer than they have any damn business being while hiding behind the severed hand of his old man. He’s concerned, and a little confused.

Tomura plucks the report from your legs and sets it aside, reaching to pull you fully into his lap. To your surprise he takes Father off, too; he buries his face into your neck to prevent the outsider from seeing, lips just brushing your ear so that you can hear him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hm?”

“You’ve been pouting ever since the secretary came in, brat.”

Like hell you’re saying anything in front of her. You remain stubbornly silent.

He doesn’t like that, you can tell, but while the secretary’s interest is lost on him he knows you well enough to tell that you’re uncomfortable with her. Presumably that’s why he doesn’t press the issue and kisses you instead.

You don’t expect it. Tomura’s not exactly one to shy away from PDA (you’re sitting in his lap in front of the whole League, for fuck’s sake), but intimacy is something he’s never wanted to take beyond closed doors. When he’s in a sour mood you’ll kiss him sometimes, even in public (he’s invigorated by your affection in many way, but never anything you’d call heated.

This kiss, though, is. It’s anything but chaste, perhaps even downright lewd. He’s all but initiating a makeout with you while Miss Secretary is standing right there. Maybe his affection-motivated ways are rubbing off on you, but it helps more than it probably ought to.

You’re dazed by the time he pulls away. The sound of the door slamming closed snaps you from your trance. The secretary, ploy foiled simply by your annoyed expression, had left. It doesn’t matter. None of this was ever really about her in the first place.

“There,” Tomura says, audibly quite pleased with himself. “She’s gone. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

You sigh, leaning in to tuck your own head into his shoulder. Your voice is muffled when you speak, quiet so that only he can hear.

“It’s dumb.”

“It’s bothering you,” he says simply. There’s an underlying statement there: tell me so I can destroy it for you. In many ways, Tomura is a predictable man.

You know he’s not going to drop it, so you accept your fate. “She was making a pass at you.”

He tenses beneath you, holding you closer. You risk lifting your head from where it’s buried to see the way his nose is scrunched up. “She wasn’t.”

“Yeah, she was.”

There’s a pause, like he’s processing everything you’re saying. Then, seemingly finally registering what exactly is bothering you, his hands move to grip your hips and maneuver you to straddle him, sitting fully on his lap facing him. “Fine. Why’re you pissed about it, then?”

You lean in again, arms coming to wrap around his neck as you bury your face into his chest and try to ignore the tears that are coming. You’d never be able to live it down if any of the others saw you crying over the fucking secretary.

But you know more than anyone thanks to many late nights assuring your boyfriend he’s the only one for you that Tomura can empathize with this insecurity. It’s a little strange how the script has flipped.

“She’s a high ranking MLA member, she probably has some crazy strong quirk. I’m quirkless. I dunno. I guess I’m scared you’ll drop me for someone like her. Like I said, it’s dumb.”

He doesn’t speak for a moment. You sit there, listening to his heartbeat and matching your breathing to his. Then he speaks.

“Your emotions aren’t dumb. It’s okay that you’re feeling this way. Thank you for telling me.” He’s parroting you, you realize; this is what you tell him every time he comes to you for comfort when he’s gotten in a mood. You feel a little fuzzy, warmth flooding your chest. “But I think we both know they’re irrational.”

“Tomura… I—”

“I’m not interested in some lame-ass NPC,” he interrupts, no hesitation and entirely sincere. He doesn’t even need to think about it. “You’re my player two, my endgame. The only thing in this world worth protecting. You really think that secretary can hold a candle to you? I didn’t even notice her. Why would I when you’re here?”

You can’t help it, you surge upward and kiss him, just as passionately as he had you mere moments before. His right hand traces up your spine to find the back of your neck and pull you closer, sending a thrill through your body as your own arms tighten around him.

“Oi! Horndogs! Get a damn room, don’t make us see that!”

You break away at Dabi’s words, panting slightly, and if the sincerity of Tomura’s little rant hadn’t convinced you that his words were true, the look of utter adoration he’s regarding you with would have.

[fivekrystalpetals]

Personally I thought dabi was acting as he needed to in order to make toga use sad man’s parade. I’m 50/50 on burning toga’s house down. Yeah it was nice but it could just as easily be used to manipulate her more. Afo very recently talking about dabi lacking “friends”/pawns came to mind while I was reading. So it tracks to me.

You know, had you told me this back in the PLF arc, I might have believed you and even been intrigued by how this plot point might develop.

Because at the time, the story had risen from being a normal good-vs-evil story to one where the moral boundaries vanished for the characters. Such as how we were set up to root for the villains-turned-protagonists in the MVA mini arc. However, at the end, we get another plot twist: Shigaraki, instead of killing Redestro, decides to make them his allies. With that, the moral boundaries vanish. Who are the guys we are supposed to root for? It's hazy. Both sides of the conflict have allied.

And, when things are hazy like that, it is easier to introduce and write morally gray characters who are manipulative yet have a bit of humanity from time to time.

But now? Nah, anon, I don't think so. We are close to the end of the manga and introducing (or reintroducing) something like this so late in the story will mean throwing Dabi back into the can-he-can-he-not-be-saved zone. With how the story is going now, we are being made to understand that the villains have to be saved. Especially the main trio. Their childhood was shown to us so we know how they were slowly molded into villains. They are helpless victims of their childhood circumstances -> they can be saved. Just like Aoyama. He had no choice but to go along with his parents' wishes. He is a victim-turned-villain (sorta) -> he can be saved.

(On the other hand, had it been a student who is not really guilty of what they did because their own goals are more important to them than hero course yet are/were good friends with the rest of the class? Can such a kid be saved? idk. Similarly, I don't get an answer from the story for those people whose life went awry somewhere along the way (e.g., Twice and he died) or people who have done irredeemably bad stuff in their lives but later on, want to repent for whatever reasons (such as say, Overhaul—see, I still resent the guy for what he did to a little child but I want to know what his endgame will be—whether the old Yakuza boss will be revived and they will have a reconciliation moment coz atm Overhaul seems to remember nothing but his Boss or he will be in coma forever. I want to know if Overhaul will have a mini-redemption arc or just written off as a minor character) or people like Skeptic who are with the League yet seem to have agenda of their own. What about Geten? He too was led to believe in the ideals of the MLA and trained his quirk without even going to school, right? Is he set up to be saved?)

Only if the story gives me an answer for all these situations will I be ready to entertain the idea of Dabi still being a manipulative character yet can be saved. In a way, I guess, we went from black and white view of the world (heroes good, villains bad) to gray (what I said about the MVA) back to black and white, but now with a difference (victims-turned-villains: to be saved, heroes: saviors).

Okay, I am pretty much rambling now, so tl;dr: if Dabi burning down Toga’s home is one of his manipulation tactics, then it again shoves him into the morally gray area which is difficult to handle properly with the amount of time the manga seems to have.

I’d rather say the author is just trying to show us this parallel and tell us that yeah, Dabi is same as Shouto (i.e. he is kind too even if he doesn’t display it much) and he too can be saved like how Shouto was during the Sports Festival Arc.

I don’t have much of a problem with the new chapter, just that (as I said here) I wanted a scene where Dabi questions his loyalties. Because even till the ‘AFO-has-friends-Dabi-doesn’t’ scene you mention, he didn’t seem much interested with whatever was going on with the League. So, from there to reaching out to Toga and comforting her seems a big leap of character development that seeems to have come out of nowhere. All I am asking for are a few connecting scenes instead of making everything offscreen and show not tell us how Dabi started to care about the rest of the League.

[bigskydreaming]

William Cobb is a total asshat and I hate him, thanks, BUT I will admit there’s a particular AU that’s been dancing around my Brain Cave for a few years that’s like.....hmmm.

Okay, so he’s a full on douchebag, but imagine if he was a full on douchebag who in this AU did still have an actual soft spot for family instead of drinking the Kool-Aid and thinking like ‘being the 1%’s elite murder moppet is actually the greatest honor I could ever hope for myself or any descendant of mine’ he’s like.....not awful about the subject of family and is like ‘well I’M a terrible person, but I will fight for my family’s right to choose to not be a terrible person, because like, they’re family, and its their life to fuck up if they want to be all weird about it or whatever.’

So BASICALLY, what I’m getting at is like, so, the Court was all into nabbing the Gray Son after Dick’s parents died, and William Cobb for once in his miserable existence experienced like, actual Internal Conflict about this because he’s like oh nooooo, but my great grandson is so cute actually and I can speak with some authority to the fact that if the Court gets their hands or requisite-Talons-pun on him, that like.....will not last long.

But then he breathes an undead sigh of relief or whatever the equivalent for him is when Bruce Wayne, one of the most powerful figures in the city, powerful enough for the Court to be wary about picking a fight with him, like, randomly swoops in and makes with the adopting of said great grandson.

And the Court’s like, ugh, what is this feeling of being denied something we want simply because we think we should have it? Do Not Like, 10/10 would absolutely NOT recommend, except to mortal enemies we hate. But whatever. I GUESS Bruce Wayne can keep the brat, but only because we simply don’t care enough to make a big deal about it and definitely not because we’re intimidated by his own power and family prestige. Cuz we’re totally not. We’re not! Shut up.

BUT.

THEN.

YEARS LATER.

The Court is engaged in active conflict with the Batfamily, and his Internal Conflict appeased and years behind him, Cobb’s like, all into the fight and giving it his all, until Something Plot Contrivey happens to unmask Nightwing and Cobb’s like. Oh shit. That’s my great grandson. CURSE YOU, SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE RESURGENCE OF INTERNAL CONFLICT! NOBODY FUCKING ASKED, JEEZ.

And Dick’s just like.....uh, what’s happening right now? I feel like I’m missing context. Can a bitch get an MLA citation here or something?

All of this culminating in Cobb maybe not HELPING the Batfam demolish the Court but perhaps at least oh so conveniently not NOT helping when the Batfam delivers a metaphorical death blow to the Court O’Assholes. Like, the Grandmaster dipshit calls him on his celly to be like COBB! THE COURT HAS BEEN BREACHED! COME DEFEND YOUR MASTERS and Cobb’s like bzzrt....click....whrrrr....sorry going through a tunnel can’t hear you oh no dropped my phone in the sewers, signal lost, much regret.

And he just happens to arrive to the fight too late to change the outcome and he’s like oh dang, did I miss it? Shucks, I KNEW I shouldn’t have taken the freeway. My bad, guys. This one’s on me.

Because of Plot Contrivancey then, by this point the Batfam knows who this dude is and they let him go with a shovel talk like we still know about all the murder, FYI, and we’re doing this for Dick’s sake not yours, so you better not do ANY murder from here on out or its on sight.

And Cobb’s like okay first off, you’re not the fucking boss of me, but secondly, like, eh, whatever. I’m fucking old. I can retire. Its fine.

BUT because being a lying liar who lies about just kicking back and taking it easy and having hobbies is literally encoded into the Grayson DNA, he fucking lies like a lying liar who lies, and after trying to pick up fly fishing for like, two whole hours before calling it quits, he decides to devote his undead golden years to stalking his great-grandson like the creepiest guardian angel that literally nobody ever asked for. Dick included.

Dick keeps trying to like, Old Yeller this situation and is like GO HOME! You GO home now! Go on! But Cobb’s just not having it and he accidentally kills another up-and-coming Rogue who sets his sights on Nightwing. Great-Grandson and Great-Grandpa engage in heated stare-off, Battle of The Wills. Batman arrives and clears his throat menacingly. Cobb’s like oh no I’m so scared, I would totally be sweating right now if I weren’t physiologically incapable of sweating and oh yeah DYING.

And then its Cobb and Bruce engaging in the Battle of the Wills: Grudge Match edition, because they’re both glaring each other down while thinking the identical thoughts of “ugh the literal worst person in the world made one point and one point only and that’s that we must protect this mutually loved person at all costs and taking each other down would ultimately only deprive said loved one of a protector who could like, be key in protecting him from some future Murder Demise or whatnot” which segues neatly into both Bruce and Cobb shaking their fists at the sky and being all CURSE YOU, SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE RESURGENCE OF INTERNAL CONFLICT! NOBODY FUCKING ASKED, JEEZ.

And Dick’s like, okay I can see you’re both very busy right now and this is no longer about me really so I’m just gonna leave you to it and go get ice cream with Damian. I’ll check back in a couple of hours to see if either of you has blinked yet, I guess? Idk. Whatever. You guys do you.

“My family is so fucking weird,” he grumbles under his breath as he walks off into the sunset. His siblings apparate into his presence, mouths open and ready to argue the comparative greater weirdness of their grafted branch of the Wayne family tree and he’s just like first person to bust out a flow-chart isn’t getting any ice cream, FYI, but because they’re all the kids of a billionaire who can be counted on to give them some spending money of a few hundred or so with just a puppy eyes look and a “why yes, Bruce, a hundred dollars IS the price of one banana,” like, they are not actually phased by this threat and it all swiftly devolves into ‘Whose Relatives Are Like, The WORST Worst’ competition that nobody will ever win, not that that actually matters.  

Its like, the Wayne Family Forever War. Just family tradition at this point. You get it.