#mmmasks

[lacunammmm]

I like to make those asks and metas abot.nha bc as much is a dog shit manga (good ideas tossed in favour of abusers)

Have to ask

What you think of MPA?

The concept is cool but can work better in a fanfic, not on this canon. My humble opinion.

Let’s Talk About the MLA (and Why MHA Blew Its Chance with Them)

The Meta Liberation Army arc is peak MHA. But here’s the kicker: their entire existence proves hero society is a dumpster fire beyond repair. Think about it—every villain group before them was either:

F-tier randos: Background noise for heroes to punch.

The League: Society’s rejects lashing out.

Yakuza: Profit-driven thugs.

AFO: A relic cosplaying as a Bond villain.

Then the MLA shows up with 100,000 members—actual people with jobs, families, and grievances. Students, elders, normies, radicals—all united because quirk oppression got so bad they’d rather burn society down than endure it. These guys infiltrated entire districts in secret and built a political party. Imagine if they’d stayed hidden during Shigaraki’s rampage? Heroes collapse, society crumbles… and the MLA swoops in with a legal takeover. They could’ve won without firing a shot.

But nah, the story just uses them to buff Shigaraki’s crew before tossing them in the trash.

Here’s the real tragedy: The MLA exposes cracks the story refuses to fix. Thousands of ordinary citizens joined a revolution over systemic abuse, and MHA just… shrugs. No addressing their grievances, no aftermath for imprisoning 100k people. Where’s the fallout? Do their kids grow up radicalized? How does Japan even hold that many prisoners? Crickets.

Also, let’s clear up a misconception: The MLA wasn’t just about “strongest quirks rule.” Yeah, Geten wanted a might-makes-right dystopia, but revolutions are messy coalitions. Grandma MLA Member #42,041 probably just wanted to use her quirk to garden without jail time. The story frames them as a monolith, but real movements aren’t.

Their ending? A joke. They get steamrolled, thrown in jail, and forgotten. Meanwhile, Re-Destro’s clone does the heroes a massive favor by blowing up the corrupt Hero Commission—something the heroes themselves would never do. Classic MHA: heroes coast on villains doing their dirty work.

And don’t get me started on the Final War arc. Japan’s a warzone, prisons are overflowing, and the heroes somehow have enough guards to watch thousands of MLA/PLF prisoners? Sure, Jan. Villains break out everyone… except the MLA? Plot armor at its finest.

The MLA deserved better. They introduced real stakes—a society so broken it births a civilian army—but the story bailed. Instead of exploring systemic change, we got another “heroes win because villains jobbed” arc. The MLA wasn’t just wasted potential; they were a mirror held up to MHA’s biggest flaw: its refusal to let hero society actually fall.

TL;DR: The MLA was too real, too raw, and too competent for a story that’d rather recycle “heroes vs. villains” than ask hard questions. But hey, at least we got Re-Destro’s clone doing terrorism-for-the-greater-good. Priorities, right? They got wasted on a story that’d rather have Deku punch harder than ask, “Why do 100k people hate us?” Hero society’s a joke—and the MLA was the punchline.

[teapartiez]

And now, this fuckin thing

[halfusek]

I'm listening to trapdoor by twenty one pilots and its giving me serious magenta vibes

you send a twenty one pilots song and IM GONNA SCREAM BECAUSE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

He wakes up early today Throws on a mask that will alter his face 

mmmasks

Nobody knows his real name But now he just uses one he saw on a grave 

=)

He pretends that he’s okay

But you should see Him in bed late at night, he’s petrified 

Take me out, and finish this waste of a life

====)()()90()()0999009)+=00=9

Everyone gather around for a show

why does no one do anything

Watch as this man disappears as we know

there was a joey henry knew but not anymore

Do me a favor and try to ignore As you watch him fall through a bleeding trapdoor

danger watch outportal trapdoor

He thinks that faith might be dead

DREAMING DREAMING DREAMING PEOPLE JUST EAT UP THAT KINDA SLOP

Nothing kills a man faster than his own head

AHAHAHALAHAHAALHAHSHAAAA

He used to see dreams at nightBut now he’s just watching the backs of his eyes

FUCK FUCK FCUKFkd UCkc

‘Cause nobody knows he’s alive

=(

[noeyedloser]

How does your mask have the leaky eye stuff on it? Does it stick directly to the area under your eyes?

its over flowi.ing from ymy eye s.ock.ets. and the e yes .   on my mmmask hav . e. rubber? to he elp it sta y in pl.ace . so rt of li.ke swwimmming. ggoggle.s. so t he tar ca nt go ont o my ch.eek und er the .ma.sk, it h a s .   t o g.o Out.

[sheepydraws]

I'll Kick Your Ass! I'll Kick My Fiancee's Ass! I'll Kick My Own Ass!(5/11)

Last Chapter 

Next Chapter

October

Facebook messenger:

Akane: I think I’m getting somewhere with Ryoga.

Ranma: Should you really be messaging me during class? Don’t you think I might be trying to pay attention?

Akane: You’re playing tetris, like you do every class, because you’re just that lame.

Ranma: And you are somehow taking notes and im-ing me, because you are just THAT lame.

Akane: It’s called multitasking. I’m earning a degree, and breaking off my engagement at the same time.

Ranma: So when is this guy gonna challenge me again? ‘Cause it’s getting too cold for this shit.

Akane: He’s coming along. He’s recovered physically, now I think he needs just another little confidence boost and he’ll be ready to go again.

Akane: I have a plan.

Ranma: I have to make a fool of myself, don’t I?

Akane: No. Just make a mess of your next challenge. Almost lose.

Ranma: You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes.

Akane: You’re right. All I can see is the porn on your tumblr dash.

Ranma: I follow a lot of artists. It’s artistic nudity!!!

Akane: It’s tentabulges, Ranma.

Akane: Grow up and get ready to throw some fights

Genma’s phone———— > Ranma’s phone

Soun and I are coming for the

parent day thing to get my car

back.

                                                                                         Cool. I’ll tell everyone        

                                                                                         you’re my gay uncles.

No, you will not. I was thinking

we could spar. If you win you

get a cheat day.

                                                                                            You’re on.

Kuno’s phone——->Nabiki’s phone

Nabiki Tendo, are you the person

to whom I should submit my

desire to challenge Ranma?

                                                                                       I can tell you’re Kuno

                                                                                       but I have no idea how        

                                                                                       you got this number.

Sister. Has a friend who has a

friend.

Where do I submit?

                                                                                        At my feet.

You keep thr box is there?

                                                                                       Are you okay?

I go my head hit. Mmmask broke.

Remembered I had to tallk to YOU.

                                                                                       Where are you?

Health cenydr cengwe cen

                                                                                    Do you have a concussion?

                                                                                     Kuno?

Kodachi’s Journal:

My only brother!

Twisted as you are

I believed you to be impervious from harm

And guarded against deceit.

But it seems you are as many faced as a hindu god

Yet as weak as a mere mortal.

I have no words for what I’ve seen

or rather i am brimming with unsaid words

But you are deaf to them

(Cause you’re asleep. And I have to sit here at your desk and make sure you can wake up and it’s tedious as fuck and I should really get you to do something for me after this, once you explain why the fuck Nabiki Tendo was the one who told me you had hit your head again. I really can’t figure out how to make a poem about that. I mean, what the fuck? Why was she at the health center, her face all pinched and weird? Then she saw me and she was like, okay, this is everything I know about concussions cause my dad runs a dojo and blah blah blah and I had to sit there for like an hour as she explained everything that the nurse would then spend, like, another hour saying. AND I’VE ALREADY DONE THIS ONCE THIS YEAR. Why does it take so long to say, he needs to rest but not too much? UUUUUUUUGGGGHHHH)

My brother is not impervious without his helmet.

Without him I won’t be either.

Nabiki’s phone———->Ranma’s phone

Kuno may have a concussion, but

he wants to duel you.

                                                                                           Again???

I don’t fucking know. Now you’d be

dueling for Akane instead of his

sister’s honor or whatever, right?

                                                                                I mean, he must have a head

                                                                                injury if he wants to take me    .                                                                               again.

Dude…Shut up.

                                                                                            What?

I was scared, okay? Only for a

minute, but I was really

freaked out when he was

texting me gibberish.

Goddamnit, Tatewaki Kuno

is MINE. The only person

who gets to kill him is

ME.

                                                                                       Jesus christ, Nabiki.    .        .                                                                                      And you tell me I should  .                                                                                      get therapy.

You should.

                                                                               Bet we could get a group rate.

From: Prettyporkchop@gmail.com

To: TexmexTesco@gmail.com

Dear Ryoga,

You haven’t written in a while, is everything alright? You’re making friends, right? I mean, you’re not lonely, are you? You aren’t always great at being social. I know. I had to practically drag you out of the library and shove you into that booth at Ronnie’s for our first date. Of course, later, I really loved that unlike a lot of my friends boyfriends, you weren’t a skirt chaser. You never looked at another girl.

I totally botched the Creamfield bake-off. By the time the buzzer went off the only thing that was done was me. Three weeks of perfecting that custard and it didn’t set. The humidity, I suppose. Or maybe it was me. My cooking has gone completely off the rails. I can barely make a proper sponge turn out. It’s like I’ve been cursed.

Of course, this happens from time to time. I just hoe you’re doing better than me.

Best wishes,

Akari.

——I feel like I’m just missing/something whenever you leave/You’ve got all the ingredients/except you needing me

Mousse’s phone——> Shampoo’s phone

Are you really not going to come

home until Thanksgiving break?

                                                                                    Yes.

We’re literally an hour away.

I’ll make the drive.

                                                                Look. I have a boyfriend, and he’s going

                                                                 overseas for winter break, so I have to

                                                                 make the most of our weekends.

You? A boyfriend? That’s

rich.

                                                                                     So’s he. And British.

Oh, yeah, and I’ll never see him

because he’s always in England?

At least I don’t lie to you.

                                                                I’m not lying. I could ask him if he wants

                                                                 to come over for Thanksgiving break.

Sure. When he respectfully

declines you should consider

coming home this weekend.

Facebook Messenger:

Shampoo: Ryoga, I need you to text this number and say you would love to see us for Thanksgiving break, but you’re going to be in England.

Ryoga: But I won’t be. I have to stay with my mom upstate.

Shampoo: Sure. Say that. Hell, that’s more believable.

Ryoga: Wait, could I stay with you over the break?

Shampoo: No, you have to see your mom, remember? Why wouldn’t you want to see your mom?

Ryoga: We’ve never been close. Not in a bad way, she’s just never around. I don’t really know her.

Shampoo: Didn’t you come here to be closer to her? This is your chance!

Ryoga: Actually, I came here because…I don’t know. I was looking at college applications and Akari wanted us to go together, and I love Akari, but…

Shampoo: But you needed to bond with your mother!

Ryoga: No, I was thinking about how, when I was a kid my parents dragged me from here to kingdom come because of their jobs. Then they split and my dad took me to England. Then one day this girl kind of decided I was her boyfriend, and then she wanted to decide the rest of my life.

Ryoga: I felt like I had never chosen anything for myself. So I made the craziest decision I could. A choice no one would have made for me. That’s why I’m here.

Shampoo: Touching, riveting stuff, Ry-Ry. Really. You should write a book.

Shampoo: TEXT THE NUMBER.

To: Prettyporkchop@gmail.com

From: TexmexTesco@gmail.com

Dear Akari,

Of course there aren’t any other girls [deleted].

Akari, I would never cheat on you. I know you were being a little flippant in your last e-mail, but I’m serious. There are pretty girls here, of course. There are pretty girls from the end of Africa to the tip of Antartica, but I would never touch a single one if I was dating someone else.

I’m sorry to hear about the bake off. Maybe you should make something you never make so that even if it isn’t perfect you won’t be able to tell.

There was a lot of excitement here today. Long story short, one of my friends and her boyfriend [deleted] friend [deleted] and my roommate got thrown in a pond. It was terrifying. Everyone thought they were going to die, or catch pneumonia and then die.

I’ll tell you the whole story when we see each other over winter break. Sorry I won’t be home for the Thanksgiving break they’re giving us (can you imagine?) I want to spend it with my mom. We’ve really been getting on together.

See you soon

Ryoga

Akane’s Diary:

Today was…not a good day.

You’d think a day that ends curled up writing in your diary with someone’s head in your lap would be pretty decent, but so far this is the nicest thing that has happened.

Well, that and the fact that there were crepes at breakfast. You know how in Catcher in the Rye the school always served them steak before the parents showed up, so that if their parents asked what they had eaten for dinner last night they would say steak? Well damnit if it isn’t true. The food was fantastic today: roasted potatoes and cheesecake and chicken tenders and a beef roast. And a crepe bar.

It would have tasted a lot better if I hadn’t been panicking the entire time dad and Nabiki and I were eating lunch. Kuno and Ranma were going to duel at 1:45 (Kuno figured it was when the dining hall would be the most packed so no parents would catch them), and I had to make sure Ryoga showed up and saw Ranma slipping. I wonder if Kuno arranged for the duel to be today because he knew his father would be busy?

Anyway. So I’m sitting there wolfing down my potatoes and half listening to my dad tell me about how things are back home, when Genma Saotome plopped down at our table.

Plopped is not the right word for it. Genma is explosive. He plunks down, tossing his keys onto the table, where they smack into and almost topple my milk glass, then throws one arm over the back of his chair and places the other on the table, taking up as much space as humanly possible before he says, “ ‘Kane, do you know where Ranma is?”

I keep eating. Genma never figured out my deadname, or doesn’t remember it, or maybe just says ‘Kane because he thinks it will get a bigger rise out of me. I don’t know. But I don’t dignify taunts with a response.

Nabiki stabbed a bit of her roast and said, “I can’t imagine why you think Akane would know.”

“My car keys were on his bed-do any of you lock your doors?-but I can’t find him. I’ve been texting him and he knew we were coming, so he must be hiding.” Then Genma laughed that awful laugh of his. Super loud, but grating instead of infectious like a good loud laugh should be. “Scared to take on his old man. Can you imagine?”

“I’m sorry, dad,” I said, standing up and pushing my chair in, “Can you hang out with Nabiki for a bit? I told a friend of mine I would help him study.”

“Didn’t you just finish midterms?” My dad said with a sip of milk, “I thought that was why this was scheduled for today, so you wouldn’t be too worried about class.”

“Yeah, he thinks he really fucked up, so we were going to go over some stuff to calm him down. It shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

My dad shrugged. I call him pretty regularly, so it wasn’t like we had a ton of catching up to do. I think he really came to get Genma’s car back and seeing Nabiki and I was just a bonus. “Alright. I’ll be with Nabiki till dinner, then I’m leaving.”

Nabiki made an interesting face, which may have had something to do with all the contraband in her room, but I couldn’t help her. I had to run down to Ryoga’s room and tell him to watch the duel today.

“Isn’t this a re-run?” Ryoga asked, without looking up from his computer.

“That’s why I want to see it. I’ve heard Kuno intends to win this time.”

“Good for him.”

Obviously Ryoga did not see this as the rematch of the century, so I changed tracks. “Please do this with me, I need some time away from Ranma’s father.”

That got his attention. “Ranma’s father?”

“Yeah. He came down with my dad and is stuck to his side and he’s-“ I made vague hand gestures. I mean, there are words for Genma Saotome, but they are best barked in German, not whined in English.

Ryoga shrugged and stretched and looked around for his jacket. “I guess if you need a break that bad…This won’t take long right?”

“Nope.” I said, although I assumed it would be longer than the last couple of duels. If Ranma was going to fuck around and almost lose it would probably take a while to put on a good show.

Then again, I feel like Ranma has been dealing with these fights faster and faster the colder it gets. He does not like shivering.

We get to the expected spot by the lake and Ranma and Kuno are there, and they’ve decided to wait until two to start, since a lot of people apparently wanted to come to this one. I don’t know how Nabiki gets the word out about these things, but she sure does a good job of it.

Ranma kept checking the clock on his phone, then regretting it and stuffing his fingers back into his pockets.

Ryoga asked me if I was cold like five times, but I was staying warm making faces at Ranma, trying to convey how badly I wanted them to JUST START ALREADY. Ranma says I looked like I was trying not to sneeze.

Finally it was either two or Ranma was really sick of waiting, because he asked for someone to count down from three.

“Should only one of you have a sword?” I said before anyone could start counting.

Ranma gave me a cocky grin. “I can handle him, and his wood. Count us in, darlin’.”

Considering what happened later I feel pretty stupid for blushing at that.

As soon as I said ‘three’, Kuno lunged. He is not a subtle fighter. He refused to go on the defensive. To be fair, his sword did give him a much bigger reach, but it also gave Ranma some time to play up how weak he had gotten. He was slow and wobbly, barely dodging Kuno’s swings, and when he jumped out of the way he couldn’t stick his landings. He didn’t even try to attack, as though Kuno was too fast for him.

“Is he hungover again?” Ryoga whispered to me.

“I don’t think he’s been training.” I whispered back. It was hard to keep a straight face as I said that. I would bet my sister-hell, both of them-on Ranma running, stretching, and lifting weights everyday. Ranma doesn’t do cheat days, and he does not skip leg day.

But he was putting on a good performance, staying just ahead of Kuno, but close enough that even I thought he might lose.

Which meant Kuno thought that too, so he got even more reckless, and in one ill-timed swing and a well timed kick, he was down for the count.

“Goddamnit,” He said as he got up off the ground, “I came here to defend Miss Tendo’s honor. I think of her—“

“Is that the best you can do?”

I froze. Not that I wanted to hear Kuno talk about my porcelain flower or whatever weird metaphor he was about to get into, but I’d take him over Genma Saotome any day.

“Run home to mommy, you fucking pansy.” Genma said to Kuno as he took Kuno’s place in the center of the unofficial ring.

Kuno looked shocked. I don’t think anyone has ever taken that tone with him. Sneering and cruel. Even Nabiki can’t talk like that, like her words are made of splinters.

Kuno drew himself up to his full height. “I take unction at your tone-“ He looked Genma up and down, and made his distain clear before he graciously added, “-sir.”

“And I take unction at you still being in my ring.” Genma went to shove Kuno and Kuno dodged, just as Genma knew he would. Kuno took a sharp kick to the stomach, and though he walked out of the ring with his head held high, he had a look on his face that said he would much rather have doubled over.

“You see?” Genma said, turning to Ranma. “That’s how you deal with a guy like that. None of this wobbling all over the place. Who trained you, kid? ‘Cause it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

“Who the hell are you?!” Ryoga yelled, pretty freaked out.

Genma glared at him. “Genma Saotome. I thought I was Ranma’s teacher, but he clearly hasn’t learned jack shit.” He looked from me to Ryoga and smirked, “This the friend you were helping, Akane?”

“How did you even get here?”

He shrugged. “Heard some kids talking about a duel. I figured Ranma would be around.” He turned to address the crowd at large. “Shows over, by the way. Ranma and I have some family business to settle, so I suggest you all move along.”

I don’t think anyone wanted to be around Genma a minute longer than they had to. I actually had to grab Ryoga’s coat to keep him still. I wasn’t going anywhere. I could see Ranma over Genma’s shoulder, stock still, head down, centering himself. He was preparing for a serious fight. I wasn’t about to leave him alone in it.

Genma saw we weren’t leaving and decided to ignore us. “Might as well have you count us in,” He grunted at me. He took off his coat and tossed it to the side. The man is getting into his fifties, but he is still packed with muscle you can see right through his shirt.

I counted them in, but after I finished they just circled each other. They went around and around, waiting for the first move.

I don’t want to write what happened after that. I’m a little queasy just remembering it. I had thought for a minute that it would be like when my dad and I sparred. Fun and fast, me showboating a little and desperately looking for the upper hand as my father carefully blocked me and sent quick hits my way. My dad’s always gone easy on me—no, my dad always protected me. He could have thrashed me soundly, but he didn’t, because what kind of a sick fuck would do that to their own kid?

Not that Ranma wasn’t giving as good as he got, mind you. He’s been training with his dad his whole life. Still, every time his dad landed a hit I would gasp and grab Ryoga’s sleeve. Genma may have taught Ranma how to dodge, but he’s not as good at taking a punch, and Genma played to that.

I don’t know why my stomach clenched every time Ranma got hit. Maybe it was because it was his dad, and there is something about watching someone’s parents beat them up that makes me viscerally ill. Maybe it’s because I used to be scared of my dad. Not that he had ever threatened me, but, well, Genma’s the worst, but judging by the people dad used to hang out with, he wasn’t always the nicest person, either. There was no telling what he was going to do when I came out.

He cried. It was the last thing I was expecting. Questions, I think. Shock and a long string of questions.

Instead he burst into tears and kept talking about my mom. He didn’t make a lot of sense, and I wasn’t sure what to do, so I poured a bowl of potato chips and cracked open a beer for him. Kasumi usually cooks when people are sad, but that’s about the extent of my culinary skills.

Anyway, at some point my dad calmed down a little and said, “I’m sorry, Akane. When you have kids all you want for them is the best life possible. Then their mothers pass away, and they tell you things like that, and you know their lives are going to be that much harder.”

So I said, “You know, by you being okay with this you’re making my life a lot easier already, right?” and we shared a smile, and for a minute there I felt really good, like everything was going to work out.

I don’t know what Genma said when Ranma came out to him, but for some reason while they fought I started trying to imagine it. Every scenario I came up with made me madder and madder. Chest shaking, vision blurring mad. Rage. I wanted to plough my fists into his chest. I wanted to crack his skull like a cinder block.

That was when Ranma bounced off a tree and flew towards his father. It would have doubled his power if he’d actually hit his dad, but a move like that gave Genma plenty of time to react.

Genma threw Ranma into the lake.

I screamed.

Both Ryoga and Genma jumped.

I think I was screaming words?

Genma blocked as I ran past him.

You ever jumped into a half-frozen pond? Rage can’t keep you warm in there. I swear my heart stopped for a minute. By that point Ryoga was screaming too. Although he was screaming my name and telling me to stop and that he would call security or whatever.

I can’t swim, but I can tread water a little, and that’s all you really need to drag a guy out of a shallow lake.

For a minute Ranma lay on the shore and I kneeled there, shaking and gasping, and thinking, At least if I throw up it’ll be warm.

“We have to get you in a hot shower,” Ryoga said as he tried to pull me to my feet.

“Blankets,” I gasped. My chest was doing that awful thing where you shiver right down to your spine, causing your ribs to vibrate against each other. “A hot shower could put us into shock.”

“Is that what’s happening to Ranma?”

Ranma didn’t look good, but aside from his lips being blue, he didn’t look bad, either. Just dazed. He waved a hand limply and opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but his teeth just chattered so loudly it seemed theatrical. A skull shouldn’t make that noise unless someone is clacking it’s jaw together and reciting shakespeare.

Ryoga helped him up and the three of us staggered to the closest dorm, which was Ryoga and Ranma’s.

Once we were in their room I told Ryoga to go get the pile of blankets on top of my dresser, and tell Nabiki and dad what had happened.

By the time he left the room Ranma had his shirt off and was fumbling with the edge of his binder. Between his numb fingers and the water plastering it to his skin I was the one who had to wrestle it off of him. While Ranma rummaged around for another clean shirt I stripped off my tights, and discarded them next to his binder.

“Do you have a shirt I could wear?” I whispered. The last thing you would expect ice water to affect is your voice, but it closes off your throat like a fist.

Ranma didn’t say anything. He went over to his closet and dragged a big flannel robe off the top shelf.

For a few minutes it felt like a locker room after pe in highschool, both of us carefully moving around each other and pointedly not looking at anything in particular. Except instead of heading off to biology we had to sit there on Ranma’s bed, waiting for Ryoga to come back with all my stuff.

“You didn’t have to do that.” Ranma said as he wrung his hair out in a scratchy white towel.

“I thought your heart might have stopped or something.”

“It wasn’t that cold.”

“I guess.”

I toyed with a loose thread on the robe. I was also wrapped in the comforter off Ryoga’s bed, but underneath my skin still felt cold and clammy where it overlapped.

“Where’d you pick up that blanket thing?” Ranma asked, passing me the towel. “I thought for hypothermia you were supposed to get naked and share body heat.”

I snorted. “Sure, Ranma, but I don’t have a pile of pretty naked people on my dresser.”

“You could if you wanted to.” Ranma said with a wink. I would have laughed if the wink hadn’t made him wince.

“Did he have to hit your face?” I said, softly, as though that would make it less awful.

Ranma touched the spot where he would soon have a shiner. “Well, yeah. I left it open.”

I wanted to scream for a second. Tell him that was the worst thing I had ever heard, but what could he have said? Like it was his fault his father was disgusting.

“Stand up.” Ranma said, and I got off the bed. He gently took Ryoga’s comforter from me and spread it over his bed. Then he climbed back into the bed and scooted over so there was room for me to join him.

I stood there for a minute, weighing the desire to be warm against my desire for things to not be even more awkward, when Ryoga returned with the blankets, my clothes, and my family. He also had this book. I had forgotten I shoved it between the folds of the blankets till it fell out as he unfolded one.

Nabiki immediately ran over and cradled my face in her hands, demanding to know what had happened. I told her while dad checked Ranma and started layering him with blankets. By the time he was done all that stuck out was Ranma’s hair. With all those blankets on top of him, and his hair half red and half black with his roots coming in, my bed looked like we were putting on a production of  the Princess and the Chile Pepper.

Then dad made me get in the bed and worried over us for a little longer, asking if we needed anything, if we were getting warmer, until he had to go get dinner and go home. He kissed us both on the forehead like we were sick kids. Which I guess we were.

Nabiki promised that she would make sure we were okay, and saw him out. On the way they bumbped into Kodachi Kuno of all people, who showed up with two plates full of food from the dining hall. She was all blushey and stuttery, and it was kind of adorable.

Maybe Ranma will go out with her someday. It might be cute.

Don’t tell Ranma, but he’s kind of cute when he sleeps. He doesn’t look like he’s about to start a fight. Slack-jawed and innocent, like everyone else.

Right now I’m sitting up in bed with Ranma’s head on my thigh, and Ryoga typing something at his desk. It’s not just warm, it’s downright cozy in here. I’m probably going to fall asleep like this, because I am far too comfortable to move.

Although lying down would mean moving Ranma’s head.

I’d have to touch it.

I bet his hair is really soft.

No, wait, it got bleached to put the red in.

(It’s really soft).

Ryoga’s phone——->Mousse’s phone

Hey, it’s Ryoga. I’m coming

over with Shampoo for

Thanksgiving. How is that

going to work? Are you

going to pick us up? what

time? Where?

                                                             Who is this? How do you

                                                             know Shampoo?

Well, we met cause I’m

friends with her room

mate.

                                                             Are you the boyfriend she

                                                             was talking about?

Sure. Why not.

                                                             Shampoo’s grandmother will

                                                             be horrified. Let me ask her

                                                             what she thinks.

Mousse’s phone——-> Grandmother’s phone

Grandmother, Shampoo

wants to bring a boy

home for Thanksgiving

break!!!

                                                               How nice. I’d love to see what kind

                                                               of boy could capture her heart.

                                                               Wild as a horse, fickle as a cat.

                                                               Let’s see the man who’d propose

                                                               to tame her.

Grandmother, it’s disgust-

ing!!! They may be having

sex! They might have it

under your roof!!!

                                                              Easy on the exclamation points, son.

                                                              I wouldn’t mind some great

                                                              grandchildren!

                                                              Now stop texting and get back here.

                                                              This lemon chicken won’t deliver itself!

Mousse’s phone——->Ryoga’s phone.

Lot outside the girls dorm,

Friday, four pm. Don’t be

late. I will leave without

you.

A small white spiral bound notebook with ‘Ranma Saotome’ written along the top edge of the cover in block letters with a black sharpie.

I always thought diaries were just plot devices, but Akane actually keeps one and she’s a lot better adjusted than me, so I thought I’d try it for a while.

I’ve never slept with a girl before. Ukyo and I had sex, but that was always in the middle of the afternoon, or in a parked car, or whatever. We never slept with each other.

I guess what I’m really thinking about is that I woke up with a girl. It was weird. I didn’t see Akane the second I woke up. I was staring at the ceiling, one leg and like twenty blankets hanging over the edge of the bed. I was trying to remember the dream I’d been having or some other dumb shit like that, and then I turned over and was nose to nose with Akane.

She looked different with her hair all messed up and pillow creases on her face. She’s usually perfect. Hair tucked back, just a teeny bit of make up, pressed dress. She looked kind of funny drooling on my pillow.

Then she woke up and I freaked out. I mean, all I did was freeze up, but I was sure she was about to scream at me or something.

She smiled. This big, goony smile, like she’d just buried her face in a dog’s belly or had a sip of sweet, creamy, hot chocolate.

“Hey.” She whispered.

“Hey.”

She has huge eyes. Huge and dark with super long lashes.

“You feel okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. You?”

She stretched her arms over the head, pressing her palms against the wall. Then she went back to smiling. “I feel way too relaxed. I have like two essays due this week.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah. We’re taking the same classes.”

I think I blushed. My face definitely got warmer. I’m a fucking idiot.

“Ranma,” Akane said, and the way she was looking at me was soft and intense at once. Cow eyes? I don’t know. Like a soap opera. I thought she was going to tell me she was pregnant, or maybe start crying.

She touched my face. The crest of bone just under my eye. I’m not sure what the word is for something like that. Intimate, maybe. It felt like the most intimate I had ever been with someone.

Then she broke it. Whatever that moment was. She sat up and stretched again, and said, “I should really get to the library and start on that Ottoman essay. I hate research essays. I can never get good sources.” She climbed over me and started gathering up all her stuff. Including a little black book.

“Is that your diary?” I asked, because for some reason I needed to keep talking.

She frowned and shoved it under her coat. “It’s nothing. Make sure Ryoga doesn’t forget my quilts when he comes over.”

Then she left. I’m sure it was a diary, so I figured I would try writing stuff down too and dug out this notebook.

I think this top blanket here is homemade. I think most of these are. They look knit or crochet or something. I wonder if Kasumi made them.

Well. I wrote everything down and I still feel as crazy as ever. I’m gonna go for a run. That always does the trick.

Facebook Messenger:

Shampoo: I JUST GOT MY COSTUME!!!!

Ukyo: Cool. I’m in class.

Shampoo: I LOOK SO GOOD!!! THERE��S THIS HUGE PARTY AT SOMEONE’S HOUSE OFF CAMPUS. YOU, ME, BANGING COSTUMES, DRINKS, DANCING, BOYS? GIRLS? INSANITY!!!

Ukyo: I did bring my costume from last year…

Shampoo: YEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!

Shampoo: Should I invite Ryoga?

Ukyo: I think he’d like that

Ukyo: But he has to wear a costume. Tell him it’s mandatory!

Facebook messenger, Royga:

Shampoo: PARTY!!! YOU ME UKYO DRINKS DANCING MAKING OUT!!!

Ryoga: When?!!

Shampoo: HALLOWEEN! YOU NEED A COSTUME!

Ryoga: Shit. Where would I get a costume?

Shampoo: Oh, baby, do I have you covered.

Ryoga: Can I bring Akane?

Ryoga: Wait, can I do the masked man thing?

Shampoo: You’ll have a mask alright.

Ryoga: No, I mean, the thing where we meet at a party and she doesn’t recognize me and I talk to her and she falls in love with me, and the next day I reveal myself!

Ryoga: This is brilliant! Shampoo, thank you so much!!!

Shampoo: wut.

Shampoo: Nm, you are going to look so hot in this costume you probably will score with Akane.

Kodachi’s Journal

All Hallows Eve

The most wretched of days

When man’s sins run amuck

Lust in the corner with the slutty nurses,

Gluttony lurking by the candy bowl,

Sloth hidden in the cheap hoodies and ski masks

Pride catching on the sequins and cardboard

Of those most fanciful designs

Envy trailing just behind them

Greed stretched across the faces of those

Who would make a quick buck

On shoddy material and cheap sugar

And wrath

Anywhere you don’t expect

Waiting to spring out at you

On the only night of the year when a murder in a ally

Might be performance art

I’m staying in my room,

Windows barred

Poker drawn

Netflix blazing.

Ranma’s Diary

I’m so glad I threw together a costume this year.

There was this really big party, which Kuno of all people clued me in on, cause he was eating breakfast with his sister, and they were talking about how neither of them wanted to go to this big party (although once I got there…well, that’s none of my business), so I asked around and kicked my costume making into high gear.

I had a cape. It was rad.

I don’t regret the costume, but I’m not sure how I feel about how I acted. Bad. But what kind of bad?

Okay, lemme unpack this.

I go to the party. It’s intense. Huge house, filled to the brim with loud, angry, horny, sweaty college students, most of them wearing masks. You walk inside and you get a contact high. I danced for a while, found some people I see at the gym a lot, and that really cool guy who is probably keeping me from failing math, but then I thought, ‘I need a real buzz’, and even I wouldn’t blame myself for having a few sips at a party like this.

Cause I wasn’t Ranma Saotome who has to watch his weight and stay hydrated.

Nah. I was BATMAN.

So I get a beer, and as I’m opening it I bump into someone, and it’s Zelda. And who hasn’t wanted to hit on Zelda? So she says, “Can you grab me one?” and I pass her the already open beer and say, “As you wish my liege,” except I said it in a batman voice.

And do you know what she fucking says?

She laughs and says, “I love that voice.”

“Oh really?” Which is lame, but I said it in the voice, so it was all good.

“Yeah,” And she looks at her beer, and then takes a swig, and I can tell she’s a little embarrassed but she says this anyway, she says, “Batman is really sexy. Not like I want to marry him and deal with his issues, but, I get why Catwoman is always throwing him up against walls.”

Which meant she was calling me sexy.

So I say, “Don’t you think Link might get a little suspicious when the heir to the throne has black hair?”

And I thought she would say something about at least pointy ears running in the family, but instead she got a little closer and said, “I think Link’s busy banging that Zora girl.”

And I said, “Good, because his princess is going to be in another bedroom.”

Which is when she shoved me a little, you know, playfully, and said, “Slow down. Let her majesty finish her beer first.”

When she shoved me I could feel how strong she was. Like, it was probably a challenge for her to not knock me into the drink table. Fuck that was hot.

So we go into the kitchen and talk, me still totally doing my batman voice because I am not about to drop a good thing when I have it. She was pretty cool. We didn’t talk about much, just school, and video games, and comics, which was all in between me flirting with her as hard as I could.

Then she finished her beer, and she put it down very slowly and she said, “There is a trampoline out back, but no one is out there because they think it’s too cold.

Like many college boys, I would gladly freeze my nads off to kiss Zelda.

So we go outside, and there was some light from the stars and the kitchen windows, but where the trampoline is it was pretty dark. We bounced onto it, and kind of rolled around a little before we got into a good kissing position, with her on top and my mask shoved up to the top of my head, and we got a lot of short, stuttery, laughing kisses, and it was great

For like five seconds, before I smelled it.

I mean, there was the weird rubber plastic smell of the trampoline, and me, and my sweat, and the rubber of my mask, and the cheap fabric smell of at least one of our costumes, but then her hair slipped out from under her wig, releasing the scent of her perfume and shampoo. Something in my brain short circuited and I was back on Akane’s bed with ten quilts on top of me, instead of on a trampoline with Akane on top of me.

I keep thinking I should have known somehow. Even with the wig and the make up and yelling over the music, some part of me should have known I was talking to Akane before I was tongue deep in her.

So then I panicked and shoved her off of me, and for a second she was lying there on the trampoline, and I was sitting up panting, because what the fuck had I done?, and she said, “Are you alright?” and it was so exactly her voice, it was so so obviously her, because who else could sound that worried about some rando she was making out with on a trampoline?

I ran. Tore through the garden, jumped a fence, and I was gone.

I can’t tell her. Maybe she doesn’t hate me as much as she used to, but this would just bring all those shitty memories roaring back, right? She would be pissed and betrayed, and no matter what I said about me having no idea until that second, she would never believe me.

Okay, so that’s decided. I just won’t tell her about it and it’ll be like it never happened.

Ranma, that is a great plan.

Latest post from fuckboisgetmoney.tumblr.com

A picture of Nabiki’s legs in sheer black pantyhose and sky high red heels. The picture ends just as the curve of her thigh becomes her ass, and there are some huge pink feathers curling over the top of her thigh.

#her name was lola…. #I still love this costume

Last five posts from okinomiyakimeansiloveyou.tumblr.com

5. A selfie of Ukyo in an Ichigo costume, with five more pictures of her huge replicas of Ichigo’s two swords. #shit you can’t get away with in highschool!

4. A neon colored deluge of artfully arranged candy wrappers

3. A photo of Shampoo looking adorable as Sailor moon in her “by the power of the moon” pose. Then another of her leaning against her bed, boots sprawled out in front of her, looking far more relaxed than Usigai ever did.

2. A picture of Shampoo putting her hair up in sailor moon buns. Her hair has already been parted and now she has gathered half of it in her hand, strands spilling out between her fingers. Only half her makeup is on. Red lipstick, but naked lids. You can just see the bright orange cover of Ukyo’s phone reflected in the mirror she’s using.

1. Read more

———————————————————————————————-

I think that was the most….eventful Halloween I’ve ever had.

It was a really cool party, and some guy asked me if I knew knife tricks, and fuck if I’m bringing TWO swords to a party and not knowing any tricks. I was having a really good time, and drinking mildly spiked soda, so I had a little buzz, I had a little sugar rush—and that was when I saw him.

Tuxedo Mask.

He was leaned up against the kitchen doorway, and he could not have looked more perfect if he tried. I went right up to him, stuck a sword in his face and said, “You have to meet my friend.”

Even Tuxedo Mask doesn’t argue when Ichigo Kurosaki has him at knifepoint. I mean, Ichigo is totally winning that fight.

I must have dragged that guy over the whole house, but we could not find Shampoo. He was getting more and more impatient, but I kept insisting that he had to meet my friend.

Then we were in the backyard. Just us and some dark shapes, and the flickering lights from the kitchen.

“Was this a joke?” Tuxedo Mask asked me.

I think a lot of things happened at once. Running all over the house caused my sugar high to crash, and I think I’m a weepy drunk, and I felt so stupid. I saw this guy and suddenly I’m writing a romance novel in my head. Like he and Shampoo were going to see each other, their eyes would meet, and they would fall madly in love. It just seemed so perfect.

I’m such an idiot. I had thought that for some reason Halloween could make love real, but something like love isn’t going to start existing because of matching costumes.

I started crying, and I think that freaked Tuxedo Mask out a bit.

“I’m sorry!” I blubbered. “I swear my friend was here dressed as Sailor Moon!” and then I think I said that stuff I just wrote about love and halloween.

Instead of running for the hills, which I would have understood at that point, Tuxedo Mask said, “How can you not believe in love?” Which was properly Tuxedo Mask-y, but not what I wanted to hear.

“Love isn’t something worth believing in.” I snapped.

“But it’s apparently worth grabbing strangers at parties. I don’t know how long you’ve known this girl, but already you seem to love her very much.”

That made me stop crying for a minute. I squinted at him, trying to see past his mask and the shadows of the backyard. I hadn’t noticed before, but he wasn’t wearing a domino, like the real tuxedo mask. His mask covered almost everything but his mouth.

He gave me the hanky from his pocket, and patted my head, like he wasn’t sure how to comfort humans. That thought made me laugh, and then his hand slipped a little and cradled the back of my skull. The atmosphere between us shifted. It wasn’t romantic or sexual. It was that feeling when someone touches you at a spot where your skin is stretched thin over your bones and your body asks you if you should smash their skull in before they get yours, or if you can relax.

I relaxed.

It was so comforting I almost forgot all that stuff about love and destiny. Right then it just felt good to have a cool breeze on my tear tracks and a kind person touching me.

Tuxedo Mask smiled, and swept towards the kitchen door, saying, “I see my job here is done.”

It took me a minute to get it, but I yelled before he went back inside, “You didn’t do anything!”

I hadn’t stopped laughing when Shampoo found me.

To: TKuno

From: NabikiTendo

Thought you might like to look at these before I send them to the dean. Do you think I should edit them a little or just send them as is?

Attachment: Two photos. One of Kuno, who is clearly himself, even in a loose kimono and face paint that makes him look like an opera mask. He’s in a poorly lit dining room, standing in front of a beer pong game, although it’s not clear if he’s playing or not.

The next one has Nabiki sitting on his lap in a showgirl outfit that is mostly feathers and a leotard. His paint is a little smeared, and he looks like he would fall over if the chair he was sitting on didn’t have a back. He doesn’t have an arm around Nabiki’s back, as courtesy would demand since she is sitting sideways, because he is holding both her drink and his own. Quite enough evidence for the kendo team to cut him for failing to adhere to the guidelines of the club.

From: TKuno

To: NabikiTendo

What do I have to pay you?

From: NabikiTendo

To: TKuno

You don’t. I will release these photos whenever I see fit.

You’re paying back my sister in fear and stress and wondering when your life will be ruined.

From: TKuno

To: NabikiTendo

What did I ever do to your sister? Didn’t I fight for her honor recently.

From: NabikiTendo

To: TKuno

If you hadn’t gone prying into my sister’s life she never would have been forced out of the closet.

Stew on that while you wonder if I’ve already sent the photos to your father.

P.S. I can’t believe you thought I didn’t recognize you. You deserve it all for falling for that ‘do you work out?’ line.

MY DIARY:

Dear Diary,

Today I did something I am deeply ashamed of.

I went to Nabiki Tendo on my hands and knees and begged.

I have never felt less dignified in my life than I did, my nose not one inch from the worn linoleum of her floor, breathing the scent of fear and regret (which was remarkably similar to fruity perfume and sweaty feet).

“Kuno, babe,” She said, drawing the word out like she was a gangster from an old movie, “There is nothing you could give me that I want more than this.”

“Please, Nabiki Tendo,” I said, trying to meet her eyes, only to see her silhouette against the fluorescent light, “Do not take kendo from me. It has given me everything.”

She shrugged, “You did this to yourself.”

Which is shamefully true. I did go to a party and partake in alcoholic beverages underage, of my own volition.

And, what Nabiki Tendo doesn’t know, is that this is was a ritual of mine. It is the one night of the year I do foolish things. I drink, and I speak in a throughly ungentlemanly way to young women, although I try to refrain from being a lout, and I get to pretend I am one of the great samurais from my dramas.

For the last three years it has been the perfect way to relax and resist doing something even more foolish.

I got cocky. That is all I can say. I saw Nabiki Tendo, and I panicked, of course, but when she did not seem to recognize me I fell right into her trap. I thought it would be my little secret. Whenever Nabiki Tendo berated me I could think, ‘Ah, but little do you know that you once sat in my lap and pressed your cleavage into my chin with a gusto I have never known before’. The cleavage part is still true, but I am too concerned about losing my scholarship, status, friends, and the codes I live for to enjoy it.

“There must be something I can offer you.” I tried, once more, “I would run around campus naked, I would destroy your  enemies, I would give my father a dressing down in front of the entire school. Please do not do this to me.”

Nabiki Tendo was sitting in the swivel chair at her desk as I knelt before her, and she swiveled to the side so she could place her ankle on my shoulder. Her toes are absurdly long and painted devil red. The woman is related to demons, mark my words.

“All I want is to see you doing this for a little while. Then, whenever I get bored, I’ll send the pictures in. I mean, you can come in here every night and do this whole spiel, and whenever I get tired of it you can do it for your dad.”

At that I rose swiftly and dramatically, an action whose drama was somewhat lessened by the fact that it threw Nabiki Tendo backwards and she smacked her head against the wall and I had to make sure she was alright before I could continue. (Take it from a man who has sustained many, head injuries are no joke).

“I see you leave me no choice, Nabiki Tendo, since you will not accept my offer of a fair trade, I will have to create an unfair one.”

“The fuck does that mean?” She said as I turned on my heel to leave, sounding utterly uninterested in my threat.

“It means,” I replied over my shoulder, “That I shall have to find something horrible about you and create mutually assured destruction.”

Nabiki Tendo snorted and turned back to her computer. Her parting words to me were, “Using cold war terms won’t make you any scarier, buddy.”

Now I must do something even more shameful than groveling at Nabiki Tendo’s feet: I must find out something about her that is so awful she will give me those photos back in the hopes that my knowledge will never being released to the public. This is not the sort of errand I ever wished to dirty my hands with, but now it is the only thing to be done.

Facebook Messenger:

Shampoo: You never told me how Halloween went. Did you get to seduce Akane Masked Man Style?

Ryoga: No. I never told you because it didn’t work out like I’d hoped. I did see Akane, but she seemed distracted, and since I couldn’t tell her who I was she got bored with me and left.

Shampoo: :( Boo. I was really rooting for you guys. Guess there’s nothing left to do but ASK HER OUT LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.

Ryoga: You do not get to yell at me—you encouraged me! Also, YOU ARE CONSIDERING PROPOSITIONING YOUR ROOMMATE, SOMETHING WHICH NEVER ENDS WELL!!!

Shampoo: I am not! I mean, I would ask her on a date LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, but she doesn’t do dating anymore. After one bad breakup! I broke up with a guy I was young and stupid enough to think I was in love with, and yeah, he’s still hanging around, and yeah, I’m going to have to spend most of Thanksgiving break with him, but, like, I moved on.

Ryoga: How bad was it?

Shampoo: It wasn’t bad. Just stupid. It was really stupid. We were dating, like, our whole lives. I don’t know why. It was one of those marriage proposals on the playground things, and I never started to dislike Mousse or feel like we were growing apart, or like being without him would be better than being with him, but we were in our senior year and he basically said, “When do you think we’ll get married?” and I realized that all I ever wanted Mousse to be was some guy I dated in high school.

Shampoo: So I dumped him.

Ryoga: Okay, so, basically, it was nothing like what happened to Ukyo, yet you’re comparing it to what happened to Ukyo.

Shampoo: Okay, it wasn’t the same thing, but it wasn’t a clean break, either. You’ve had a rough breakup before, right?

Ryoga: No, but I’m probably due.

Shampoo: Well, trust me, a bad breakup does not suddenly make you aromantic or asexual. It may make you wish you were, but it doesn’t, and Ukyo needs to understand that she isn’t automatically going to get hurt because she puts herself out there again.

Ryoga: Would you care this much if you weren’t interested in her?

Shampoo: She is a wonderful person, and she is doing the world a disservice by acting like she murdered love and must forever repent for her sin.

Ryoga: She would not like that analogy.

Shampoo: Tell me you haven’t noticed how pretty she is. Or how nice or sweet or funny.

Ryoga: She is very sweet. She has a nice neck when she puts her hair up.

Shampoo: Very random compliment, but I’m glad you understand.

Ryoga: Careful, you don’t want me turning into your competition.

Shampoo: Don’t get greedy pretty boy, I know you’re already trying to juggle two girls at once.

Ryoga: 1. HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT??!! 2. Do you really think I’m pretty?

Shampoo: Dude, we’re friends on facebook. I got a ‘you have a mutual friend’ notification, and you may have scrubbed your profile, but your girlfriend sure didn’t.

Shampoo: Also, obviously you’re pretty. Although I should probably be calling you dirty boy, or pig boy or something, since you think you can have all the girls.

Ryoga: Oh, god, please don’t tell Akari. I’ve been meaning to, the time just hasn’t been right.

Shampoo: Not that I actually want to be involved, but what you should really be worried about is me telling Akane.

Akane’s Diary

Do not watch the dark knight trilogy because you’re desperate, do not watch the dark knight trilogy because you’re desperate do not watch the dark knight trilogy bec

To be fair, I’m mostly bored. Everyone is exhausted, because if they’re not worrying about finals they’re still burnt out after Halloween. Meanwhile I’ve got all my homework done, and it’s just not worth it to freak out about finals before Thanksgiving break. Refusing to worry about finals until it’s over is what Thanksgiving break is for.

Still, I shouldn’t go looking at everything batman related like that’s going to bring this guy back, or explain what the fuck happened.

He was nice. Like, he recognized the absurdity of making out on a trampoline, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t trying really, really hard. That was sweet, that earnestness.

I don’t know. I spent like an hour with him. It’s stupid, building him up as this perfect guy, but I can’t help it. I know he was fun to talk to, and even with my Zelda armor digging into my shoulders I felt comfortable with him, but because I know nothing about him I can fill in the gaps with whatever I want. I can pretend he’s an only child, and he won’t freak out when I tell him I’m trans, and he likes the idea of being married and having kids, but probably only two, because he understands I think it’s good for a kid to have a sibling, but two is plenty, and….

See? Too easy.

Maybe he’s in a relationship and a wave of guilt hit him.

Or maybe he remembered he had to feed his cat.

Or maybe he had an anxiety attack.

Or maybe I’m going to watch the dark knight trilogy because between that and thinking about this guy all night I should probably chose the option that’s easier on my sanity.

From TKuno

To: Dean

Sir, as one of your students I would like to bring to your attention that another student, Nabiki Tendo, has been selling contraband out of her dorm room and has probably made thousands selling alcohol and other drugs to minors.

Sincerely,

Tatewaki Kuno.

From Dean

To TKuno

Kuno, why did you put this in a email? Is this a prank? Nabiki Tendo has been accused of this several times before, but her room has never turned up any contraband materials, nor has anyone every given us any proof that she sells contraband.

You wouldn’t be trying to harm another student for some petty reason, would you?

From Tkuno

To Dean

I’m sorry, that was foolish of me. I know that Nabiki Tendo is not the sort of person who would be caught doing things like that. I was being thoughtless. I will consider my words more carefully next time.

From TKuno

To Ghostunkugi

Is it true that you can compile an account of another person’s life for a fair price?

From Ghostunkugi

To TKuno

All social media accounts, anything on public record related to them in anyway, and any thing else that seems interesting. 150

Shadowing, 100 for a day, 650 for a week

Photos +50 dollars every day. 150 for a full week.

Confidentiality assured, unless you murder someone and I have to talk to the cops again.

From TKuno

To Ghostunkugi

Just the first option for now. I will throw in a bonus if you can find any potentially life ruining information.

From Ghostunkugi

To Tkuno

One of those jobs. I get it. [Paypal information] Please pay in a prompt manner. Due to school I probably won’t have a complete file until after Thanksgiving Break.

Kodachi’s Journal

I fear that that which I once loved

That flower that bloomed so boldly

Is wilting in my hands.

Now that our yearly cycle has spun us into

Those brief six weeks

When we all pretend to care about

Peace, love, and good will toward men

(even our families)

It makes me realize that the spring of our love

Gave way not to a passionate summer

But to the bleakness of a winter without you

Ranma

I trace your name on fogged windows at my gymnasium

But I worry I have sucked all strength from it

Like a sweet drained of it’s syrupy filling.

I shall take my time in repose

With my father and brother

And wrapped in their tenuous, florid, masculine embrace

I recall that all men appreciate a swift hard strike when they least expect it.

[maybemissmorstan]

Once you get this message you must give five random facts about yourself and then pass it onto your 10 favorite followers. ♥

I will give this a go, it wont be that great:

1. I have a full tattoo sleeve on my left arm.

2. I feel naked without red lipstick.

3. My best friends live 4,000 miles away from me. But I'll see them soon.

4. I am a Makeup Artist - Working on prosthetics and sfx mainly. 

5. I love London <3

[lacunammmm]

We talked about how much LoV are a bunch of loser. And what about the heroes?

Let’s cut to the chase: Hero society in MHA is a rotten system, and the story kinda fumbles its own critique.

First off, the heroes are hypocrites, full stop. They drag kids into warzones, park high-value targets in hospitals they know villains will attack, and stay silent when one of their own gets exposed as a domestic abuser or a murderer-for-hire. Endeavor screams about Shoto being his “masterpiece” (read: tool) in public, and nobody cares. Not All Might, not the media—nobody. If the #2 hero can openly treat his kid like a science project and still get worshipped, what’s stopping other heroes from doing worse behind closed doors? Spoiler: nothing.

Then there’s the redemption double standard. Lady Nagant murders people for the government, pulls a half-hearted “I’m sorry,” and gets to walk free because she’s “useful.” She chooses to stay in Jail. Hawks would have let her out. Meanwhile, Stain—who at least had principles, even if they were insane—gets butchered for trying to save All Might. Machia? Brainwashed, used as a meat shield, and left to die. But Gentle Criminal, a dude who wanted to be a hero before life kicked him down? He gets a cozy ending with his girlfriend. The lesson? If you’ve ever dreamed of being a hero, the system will cut you slack. If not? Enjoy the ditch.

And let’s not pretend the heroes have moral high ground. They break rules, cover up crimes, and let abusers keep their jobs—just like real-world power structures. Cops with 40% domestic abuse rates? Swap “cops” for “pro heroes” and it’s the same story. Endeavor isn’t a freak exception; he’s the product of a system that says, “Be strong, and you can do whatever you want.” The narrative acts like his abuse is a personal failure, but where are the checks and balances? The oversight? Nowhere.

The kicker? The story wants us to root for these heroes while also showing them as incompetent, reactive, and morally bankrupt. They win not because they’re better, but because the villains are written to trip over their own shoelaces. At the end of the day, it’s all monkeys flinging shit—heroes just have nicer costumes.

TL;DR: MHA points out hero society’s flaws but chickens out on dismantling them. It’s all “Endeavor feels bad now!” and zero “Let’s burn this corrupt system down.” So yeah, why should we respect these heroes? They’re just villains with better PR, who get rewarded with a completely unearned utopian ending that magically solved all of the issues off screen. You see, the problem with All Might beating All For One to death is that he didn't do it on live TV and in front of witnesses, and he also didn't finish the job. Deku beat Shigaraki into dust, and so that solved crime forever. That's why he's better than All Might and the greatest hero.

[lacunammmm]

Do you think UA is really the so called best school for heroes or they just surf on the fame of their big name former students like am and endy (and others)?

UA is a school written by an author who didn't have much interest in the academia of MHA. MHA is a story about escalation and it puts the story beats of where the author is headed above organic storytelling. Example: UA doesn't like Izuku's habit of hurting himself. Aizawa has seen this multiple times now. -The entrance exam. -The quirk aptitude test. -The battle trials. -The USJ where he saved All Might's life. All of these resulted in the guy breaking something and needing to see Recovery Girl. Organic Storytelling: The teachers don't like this, so they address the problem head on: If Izuku breaks bones in the sports festival he really wants to do well in, he's out. So, he won't break his bones. But, this would go against the author's goal to show Izuku competing and hurting himself. So despite the fact that these people have his education and career in their hands and can dictate any command to him and he has to follow if he wants to remain a student there, they just complain after he does something.

As far as UA being the best school? Let's say...yes. The others aren't relevant. They do nothing. Shiketsu is allegedly as good as UA is and is its rival, but Shiketsu is only a handful of names characters. Where was Shiketsu and it's army of graduates when hero society fell? We saw what UA was doing: saving the country/the world. Shiketsu? They sent some guys to help during the final war arc. So by default, since the rest of the schools are non entities or do nothing, UA is the best. Is UA good? No. UA is a comical failure as an educational institution. It's a school where despite having the alleged best educators around and experts in their fields, the student's growth and development is entirely attributed to themselves. Aizawa repeatedly deflects any credit for his student's growth. He's a hands off teacher. He provides them exercises and training methods and the burden of doing the work and improving is on the students themselves. While this makes the class look more bad ass in the eyes of the audience, it asks the question: what are they here for? I think the principals behind UA's methods are very interesting. WHY do they do this? The answers are fun. So, you know how we get Aizawa and Shinso saying how unfair the entrance exam is and how it favors a certain type of quirk? My take is that this is 100% intentional and this mentality informs most of UA's methodology. They only teach students how to hit harder. Technical quirks or abilities that require effort to master can't easily translate into MORE POWER, so they prioritize people who will be top level heroes. Anyone who has a quirk like Endeavor's could be a top hero. The goal is to find as many people like him as possible, teach them to become stronger and hit harder. And teach them restraint and non lethal capture via sparring matches with their classmates. The constant fighting with their peers shows them how to hold back so they only use the exact amount of force needed in the field. As a factory to produce a very specific kind of hero, UA does a very good job. The school is just calibrated to creating a hero who succeeds in All Might's era of hero society. A self reliant hero who is used to doing things by themselves mirroring the solo and highly competitive nature of heroics. By definition, this strategy will exclude a lot of good eggs. So, we have the back paths: -Rescue points, enabling people who can't beat robots to score enough points to get in. Since the teachers are the ones who score this and they assign the points, Nezu could ensure anyone he finds interesting passes the entrance exam. -The Sports Festival, where those who do well and impress the teachers have a chance to move up to the hero course. This is designed to market those powerful hero students and get their names known even before their debuts. It doesn't matter for powerful heroes if people know their weaknesses and how they fight, because they're so strong that they simply obliterate all obstacles and opposition. Is this the intended reading of UA? That Nezu designed the entire curriculum to cater to people like Bakugo and Shoto and ensure they succeed because people like them are the most reliable and viable heroes you can create? Probably not. The author likely was just focused on escalation and making cool scenes. But when you look at it, this all makes sense. I wouldn't call this "good" but it's crafty and it speaks to the world it exists in. It's a fascinating system that's immensely cynical. A microcosm of the MHA world itself.

[lacunammmm]

Hello! I recently saw your reaction to a poll about which ships in MHA you don't like and you had very interesting answers and depth into some in particular... Hawks.

You said, and I won't quote because I frankly can't remember, that Hawks would be a much better character if he actually had more development/nuance to him and I wanted to know how? And why you think his character isn't as nuanced and/or developed as of now?

I'm a large Hawks fan myself, and I was super interested in seeing your opinion, since I've never seen somebody say he needed more development, would you care to share some of your thoughts?

Let's take a look at the bones behind Hawks:

-Child of a villain.

-Was an abused child by his domestic abuser dad.

-A child soldier molded to be the perfect secret agent and hero by the government.

-He's basically in the Japanese CIA.

-He's immensely powerful and also likes Endeavor, who he has a parasocial relationship with because he admired him as a father figure.

-He killed a guy in an incredibly contrived scene (he could have simply drugged Twice before the operation began and spirited him away) but it raised an interesting question: Should heroes kill? And under what circumstances should they do so?

-Dabi bathed him in blue fire after he killed Twice and Tokoyami reacted that his wings were burnt off.

So what's the story do with him?

He just becomes an Endeavor cheerleader.

The HPSC gets killed off by a clone of Redestro, meaning the good guys don't ever have to confront the government at all.

His burnt wings recovered and the worst that happened is he needed some prosthetic blades, which functioned just as good as his original feather swords. Was this man crippled for his future fight against All For One? No.

When he sees Twice again on the battlefield, he yells that they should kill him, showing he's exactly the same as he was the day he killed the guy.

And he doesn't give a single blue fuck about Endeavor being a domestic abuser. He knows the true story, and he simply doesn't care.

This is the same for all of the good guy characters, but Hawks especially experienced an abusive dad.

The guy he idolized turned out to be like his dad, except a hero and not a villain.

And he doesn't care. Have you ever seen the show Law And Order? I want you to imagine how the cops on that show would react if one of the hero cops they've worked with for years was outed as a domestic abuser. There would be an angry confrontation, some hurtful words thrown around, and a fracturing of relationships. Permanent changes to how these people see each other, with different people taking sides. Friction that would spread far beyond just this one event. Instead we get...nothing, I guess, because Endeavor feels sorry for what he did, so it's okay now.

The question of when and if you should kill a villain isn't answered by Hawks or people connected to him. It's answered by Gran Torino. We learn that killing is another way of saving someone if they're too far gone, which Deku apparently takes to heart.

What's worse is that Nagant exists. She took the last bit of intrigue Hawks' character could have had.

I firmly agree with @class1akids that an arc where Hawks fell and joined the villains fits a lot better than inventing a new character out of whole cloth, and then inventing a government conspiracy of the previous regime to go with her, and then this never going anywhere.

Imagine, if you will, a universe where everything is played straight. Tomura decays Endeavor during their battle, so he's dead.

Dabi truly did burn off Hawks' wings entirely, so those are gone.

And in the chaos that follows, the public despairs and wants someone to blame. So, the HPSC uses a scapegoat.

And that person ends up being Hawks. The guy who planned the raid. The guy who spied on the villains. And, according to the government the reason for the heroes' failures.

He's useless to them now because he doesn't have his quirk anymore. And he's reeling from the reveal of who Endeavor actually was.

So at his lowest moment, stripped of his hero license and his legacy tarnished, All For One appears.

It works even better if you merge the elements of Nagant's character into this version of Hawks.

Hawks was a secret agent who assassinated numerous people on the HPSC's orders. Hawks believed in the system and while he had some doubts, this event completely destroyed his faith.

We can also accomplish something else, here. AFO could test a beta version of the rewind drug the Doctor made on Hawks, which restores his wings to the point they were at in canon after Dabi burned them. It 1, gives Hawks his iconic wings back in a plausible way, and 2, foreshadows All For One's endgame desperation move. The audience just isn't told what Hawks was injected with until the final war arc.

And then he gifts the guy with the same quirk Nagant had. And sends him to capture Deku.

Now suddenly this battle against Deku actually means something and it's between two people who know each other and who the audience has a connection to.

How, then, does Deku restore Hawks' faith in heroes when it's been shattered so terribly? A true test of Deku's abilities to understand villains and turn them. He doesn't have the easy win he got against Nagant, but the fact that he knows Hawks means he has more information to work off of.

The reveal that Hawks is no more than a contract killer for the government while having a happy, smiling face in public is a train car to the gut for Deku.

You can still end the fight with a fakeout, as the story loved to do at that time.

After he decides to switch back to team Deku, he has a bad reaction from the drug and collapses and is apparently dead.

We just bring him back later like they did to Nagant. He got saved offscreen. You know, like how Nagant survived exploding.

Heaven forbid we kill off anyone loyal to team hero.

[lacunammmm]

Hate how the manga kept trying to seem like it was criticizing sacrificing yourself/pushing yourself too hard as a heroic act wasn’t actually a good thing but it constantly went back to the opposite.

Aizawa and Nighteye criticizing Midoriya about rushing in without a plan? Not a problem, he’s a true hero when he saved Eri!

Pushing limits/getting out of your comfort zone is a good thing to help grow, but the manga never found a healthy balance of that theme.

Nothing encapsulates the phenomenon you described more than Iron Might. The reason Iron Might was bad, besides him absorbing the hero kid's potential fights/contributions vs AFO, the implausibility of this tech and All Might getting access to it in time, and the fact that he kept it a secret, is because it tramples all over All Might's arc for the sake of a "cool" fight We have a whole series teaching us that All Might's brand of self sacrificing heroics is bad and these actions destroy your life and the lives of the people around you. Toshinori has what, three close friends when we meet him? Nezu, Recovery Girl, and Naomasa. He hasn't spoken to Torino or Night Eye in years. Night Eye left him explicitly because of his desire to keep being All Might even if it killed him. He's forgone any sort of close relationships. He doesn't have any family. Everything has been dedicated to being the hero that society needs to the cost of his life. He's fully willing to die to ensure other people are okay. His mentality changes when he meets Izuku because he wants to live to raise him right. Great! So, he loses his powers and then he has to navigate being a mentor and teacher for the next generation. So far, so good. He sees with Deku what a lone gun mentality does. The story even has Bakugo blame all of Izuku's mental problems on All Might's teachings and behavior. Perfect. We've fully established this is bad. And then we learn that, no, actually, he had a super suit designed months ago that would let him 1 vs 1 the quirk devil and he was keeping it a complete secret from everyone. Just so he could don some ironman armor and have one last hoorah as a hero. He doesn't join Endeavor or Deku in their respective battles. No, the guy keeps this to himself so he can pull it out at the most dramatic moment possible. He let himself be swayed by Stain, a notable crazy man and All Might zealot fanboy that no, actually, All Might was perfect and he totally had the right idea about things. I wish this series would allow characters to suffer for their mistakes and arrogance. Do you know what should have happened, if we're going to allow the insanity of a super suit that can fight high level opponents like this? AFO sees Iron Might, then activates his Radio Waves quirk. You know, the quirk that has the effect of releasing an EMP wave if the user desires it? The same one he and Tomura used to bust out of Tartarus? All Might's super suit becomes an immobile metal coffin and he needs to be rescued. He actively put more people in danger because of a selfish decision he made so he could relive his hero days.

Instead of All Might stealing the spotlight from Class A, all of these students have to scramble to get hits in on AFO to save HIM! Because the story isn't going to allow a guy to go against its themes in a selfish, suicidal gambit that All Might should have grown past by now...and get away with it! It's absolutely ridiculous that a story allegedly about the next generation turned into two old men fighting. But this is an issue with MHA: it wants to have its cake and eat it too. Self sacrifice is bad, except when it works out and it's cool.

[lacunammmm]

Dare I ask what are your thoughts on Endeavor? And hell Dabi?both are the most controversial within the Todofam!

He's an author's pet who was coddled immensely by the narrative to the detriment of everyone around him. Dabi's dance was a wonderful moment! Dabi peeled back the truth of hero society and showed that the man they venerated and elevated to the highest station, their number 1 hero rank...was an abuser. That he was just as bad as the hundreds of people he reguarally throws in prison. Or worse, really. A guy who robs banks or steals cars at least doesn't pretend to be anything else. Endeavor put on the airs of a hero while being a monster behind closed doors. Here was a man who bought a woman, bred her for her quirk in an eugenics program, and also abused his family. It's just a shame nobody gave a shit. You'd think this sort of thing would be a massive bomb shell and scandal that would rock an already shaky society to its foundations, right? You'd think that the heroes would be shocked, appalled, and heavily divided about what to do with this information.

Anger, denial, tearful confrontations, a shouting match or two. Lines drawn between people who still support Endeavor and those who think he should be in prison, ASAP. You'd think his colleges and co-workers would be wondering how they never noticed the signs. UA especially. Shoto was a child in their care and he was abused.

Actually, no. All of the people who would normally be moral and ethical people mysteriously had absolutely nothing to say in regards to their number 1 hero being a monster. The civilians were upset with Endeavor not for what he did in the past, but how he failed as a hero. The discussion at the press conference was entirely utilitarian: What can Endeavor the hero do for us? And they accepted his words because he promised to use his power to protect them. That's all they cared about. Our supposed "heroes?" Crickets. I agree with keeping Enji around until the end of the war, by the way. I'm not saying they should have instantly thrown him out. But an angry confrontation where he's cornered by Naomasa and All Might who demand to know if what Dabi said was the truth, and then Enji admits it? Boy would these two have WORDS for Endeavor. If he wasn't an author's pet who gets shielded from real negative backlash. He also didn't really suffer any direct consequences for his actions. People might point to the fact that the war absolutely destroyed his body. Yes, that's what being a hero does. A hero gets hurt. Just look at Mirko, All Might and Bakugo. His injuries were primarily caused by All For One, who didn't care about Dabi beyond using him as a pawn. But guess what? All For One would have tried to kill Endeavor even if Touya had never been born. All For One will destroy anyone who gets in his way...and let me remind you, being the number 1 hero and fighting him counts as getting in his way! It's a similar thing with his fight against the High End Hood. Doctor Garaki would have created Hood, with or without Touya existing. Dabi sicced Hood on Endeavor, but Tomura would have done the same thing if Hood was under his command and he wanted to use him to kill heroes. So the guy getting scarred and mutilated, when that's just what happens when heroes fight top tier threats doesn't land. Social consequences would have been great! The guy built his reputation up for years so seeing his sidekicks tell him: "We respect Endeavor the hero but loath Enji Todoroki, the human. We're all quitting your agency after the war is over." Fantastic! He loses something he actually gives a shit about? Perfect! Instead, the story ends with him having his family (except Natsuo, who also had to talk about how cool Endeavor was as he walked out of his life) and his sidekicks and people also still talk about how he's one of the greatest heroes of all time, and kids in the present day want to be just like him! I'd want to be just like him too, if I was a domestic abuser. Being a wife beater in hero society is great. Just become a hero and cry a bit and everyone will give you a free pass. Including your victims. And I want to also go into how he had the most easy mode redemption ever. Only Natsuo was really against the guy. Shoto was cautious but willing to work with him, including working at his agency. Fuyumi always was on his side. His wife? He bought her a flower and she gaslit herself into thinking he still cared. He spent the entire final war arc running away from his son, and apparently learned absolutely nothing, because when confronted with Touya about to blow up... His big idea is to just fly them both into the sky so they can die together. Luckily for both of them, his victims showed up to save the day. Thank God for Shoto, who always comes in clutch to clean up this guy's mess. Bravo, Atonement Man. We Watched You fail miserably at every available opportunity. Best written character in the series, by the way, according to his fans.

I'd also like to talk about his completely unearned power ups. Is there any reason he's able to withstand blows from a high end nomu with super strength, including getting struck in the head, and then falling a distance further than SKYSCRAPERS and hit the ground... And then just get back up afterwards? You know, something similar happened to Midnight but she got murdered by randoms right after. How is it that he allegedly trained himself to his limit to the point where he felt he couldn't progress further...but then he's able to just learn how to fly by seeing Bakugo do it? This implies his quirk had hidden potential and more things it could do the whole time. He never reached his limit at all. So either the guy is an idiot who can only think of hitting harder and using more power, which isn't the case, looking at how he teaches. Or the author decided he needed an upgrade and didn't think of how this makes him look. Why does he go from a guy who Kamino Arc All For One would regard as an ant, to being capable of killing AFO, a man who nearly killed All Might, twice? The same All For One who could keep up with an All Might that is able to launch over 300 punches in the space of seconds, which is how he defeated the USJ Nomu? I guess Endeavor is fast as shit, huh?

Make no mistake, Endeavor killed All For One. The guy was as good as dead and injected himself with a drug in desperation to live a little while longer. Damn, All Might should have really taken Enji with him the first time he fought AFO, huh? Then they'd have totally kicked the guy's ass. Yoichi is probably face palming right about now that the quirk devil could have just been killed by a random dude who trained really hard and had a good quirk. And the everlasting love and glaze of his author, of course. As for Dabi? I slandered him already. https://www.tumblr.com/lacunammmm/777852677278384128/dabi-was-the-most-disastrous-thing-to-ever-happen

[lacunammmm]

A character I hate is mineta. Of course there’s the obvious of his behavior of harassing women and not getting into trouble with the staff at school but I also hate how his character isn’t really anything more than perving on girls to provide fan service for the audience > get punished by his classmates > joke repeats. Any good qualities he gets are overshadowed by his bad qualities

He's a completely empty character with zero redeeming qualities. His best moment was him standing up to All For One to save Tokoyami from having his quirk taken, when that's the bare minimum we'd expect from other characters. Mineta is a liability and the show would objectively be better without him in it. I'd go as far as to say that he and his great value brand copy, Kaminari, should go with him. He's like if Master Roshi taught nothing of value. He's Jiraiya if he shit his pants anytime there was a fight and had to be badgered into actually contributing. He's like Issei if he didn't have the Boosted Gear and no courage. The typical anime pervert formula is that you have a character offset his bad qualities with good qualities, but the author didn't care to do that. What makes it worse is that this is a school for heroes. They're basically just super cops. They're civil servants who exist to police quirked crime and do some degree of community service. But then they keep this sexual batterer here. It actively destroys the believability of this world, since the author isn't trying to say anything about the setting with Mineta's actions. If Hero Society was meant to be utilitarian and the usefulness of Mineta's quirk was deemed more valuable than the discomfort everyone experiences in his presence, then sure, he makes sense. But that's not what they're going for here. It was jarring, for example, how no one especially cared that Hawks killed a man or had ANYTHING to say about Endeavor's crimes besides him failing to stop the villains. If Mineta was the first link in that chain, then it becomes expected. The principal here is that if someone is useful, they'll be kept around. Their world is transactional and it's always about costs/benefits. It's an escalation then. But by definition Mineta would actually have to be useful to justify anyone caring about him. I'll go into next how Mineta's existence actively makes the characters around him worse. Aizawa can expel 154 students across his career and he claims he does this to give students a "taste of death" by making it seem like their dreams will die. But he re-enrolls them after in a retcon meant to soften him. So why not expel Mineta? You can hand out expulsions willy nilly. Yet another example of this man being a toothless dragon. He can expel people for nebulous reasons but he keeps this kid who's causing ACTIVE harm around? Just like how people even still associating with Mineta makes them look bad. If the school insisted upon keeping this walking sexual harassment lawsuit around, why would you want to be friends with him? We don't see Mineta excluded from anything, or treated like the weird little prick he is. We don't see him getting hazed or beaten up during training exercises where people can punish him without getting in trouble. Everyone still wants to be his friend and treats him like a member of the group. We see again that when it suits the author's needs, all of the characters have the exact same voice and attitude. You'd think characters would hold a grudge for him objectifying them, perving on them, or groping them. I guess Deku and Kirishima just don't care about their friends getting groped, huh? Mineta is a cancer. The show would have been better off if he was the first fatality shown on screen when Shigaraki gripped his face and turned him to dust at the USJ. One, because it removes this worthless waste of space and keeps us from having to look at him any longer. And two, because it means Tomura actually gets to succeed at killing somebody, which he utterly failed at for most of the series. He did a true injury to UA that can't be fixed or wiped clean. Let's say three, is that Izuku can also be motivated to be a better hero, I guess, since he saw a classmate die in front of him. Anime perverts are a trope that should have been left in 2006.

[lacunammmm]

Do you think All Might was a good mentor?

You have to understand the following facts of MHA: -Characters can only solve their problems in ways that attribute their success to themselves or their friends. -The characters are meant to be seen as underdogs. -The two above rules always take precedent over logic. See: Shinso. Aizawa repeatedly states he's a bad teacher and he refuses to take credit for any of his student's achievements. When he trained Shinso, he let him figure it out himself. However, his help got Shinso fighting fit and took him from an untrained teen to a contender. But notice that the burden was on Shinso. Shinso did the work to learn martial arts, get physically fit, learn to use the binding cloth, and to train his quirk. Aizawa noticed Momo's lack of confidence so instead of talking to her at the time, he stages a final exam where she and Shoto fight and beat him. It's framed as Shoto and Momo overcoming a weakness or flaw. All Might is the same way. He's the reason Izuku got to be a hero, because he gifted him OFA and got him ready for the entrance exam. Also, notice how Izuku was the one doing the work. All Might wasn't even present when Izuku fully finished cleaning the beach. He just shows up to see Izuku being super hype (and buff) because he did the thing. The narrative just has an agenda that goes counter to the choices he'd make in character, so that's really all the help he gave. Case in point. During the sports festival arc, as a means to make doing well in it put more pressure on Izuku, All Might explains to Izuku that he needs him to show the world that he is here. Because, and he said nothing about this before, he wants Izuku to be the next symbol. So you'd think that a man who is dedicated towards molding this kid into his replacement, the pillar meant to hold society up, a living Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders, would want his successor to actually accomplish that? But he leaves Izuku to his own devices to do his own training, then after the sports festival, he pushes him to Gran Torino. The guy doesn't sign Izuku up to some kind of gym, or leverage his resources, favors, and clout to find a solution to his problem, because that would take away from Izuku's accomplishments. There's nothing stopping All Might from taking Izuku's training seriously ever since the day of the entrance exam. He already knew at the time that Izuku was going to get into UA, and he could have addressed him breaking two legs and one arm that same day. This is what All Might would do if unshackled from a narrative that makes him look incompetent at best and negligent at worst. But if Izuku enters UA already having his quirk under control, how can he be the underdog? Understanding how the narrative binds people who should be able to help our main characters shows you their limitations. So, by the standards of the show, All Might was great. If you use standards where the adults are meant to protect the children in their lives, he was terrible. Just less terrible than the other mentors in the series.

[lacunammmm]

Like you mentioned in your last post about Endeavor, specifically injuries and other things that should put him (and others) out of commission, but then don't is certainly not something new in shonen, but it's certainly something that was unfortunately part of mha from the very beginning. Best example I can think of is Bakugou's quirk, which creates explosions, usually a very dangerous thing to occur. He can break concrete without much issue, which should tell you how dangerous his quirk can be, but when used against a human fighter instead of going to the logical conclusion of inflicting big horrible burns, tearing skin and flesh and so on indiscriminately Horikoshi draws his opponent with some or a lot of lines over their face/body/clothes, which usually indicates a character being a bit dirty or slightly hurt. I know that realism, especially in a shonen doesn't have a lot of ground to stand on, but this and other examples annoys me so much because mha is not something like dragonball, where characters can just shrug of damage as long as their opponent has a lower powerlevel. It doesn't have an internal power system like Ki or Chakra that could let people shrug off damage; it just has random mutations. That is also what most western comics deal with, a hero that has incredible powers, but can still be hurt as well as hurt others. So they have to be careful about the damage they receive as well as dish out. I unfortunately thought this was going to be like that too, but hindsight's 20/20 and all that. Shigaraki made such a big deal of the first Nomu having shock absorption you would think that would mean anything in the series, but then people start shrugging of injuries like it's no big deal, while oh no, certain quirks could mean death to their user, how horrible. I was just beyond words when I heard that Hawks, with some support tech got use of his quirk again after Dabi burned his wings from his back or Gran Torino surviving after Shigaraki almost breaks him in half. I get characters having plot armor, but this feels insane.

People are as durable and as strong as the plot demands they be in that exact moment. It started with the USJ, where Aizawa showed us that the MHA universe is one of Charles Atlas Superpowers. The guy kicked people 20 feet in the air and beat down scores of men at once. He then gets his head smashed into concrete and walks that off with just a scar to show for it. The story paid lip service to the idea that his quirk was weakened as a result of this, but that also never has any negative impact on Aizawa's combat performance, either. The same arc where Torino got turned into a donut and survived is the same arc where Hawks got bathed in blue fire (hotter than lava, btw) without suffering major organ failure. It's also the same arc where Hawks stabbed Twice to death. And the same arc where this happened.

Bakugo walks this off with zero long term negative effects and it might as well have not even happened. Looking back on commentary at the time that chapter came out is HILARIOUS because people theorized about Bakugo's recovery, what this would mean for him, and if him taking a spike through his spine would mean he'd lose the use of his legs. No, none of that happened at all. The brutal maiming that was the catalyst for Izuku deciding to abandon his friends to make the villains focus exclusively on him...had no lasting consequences and Bakugo was up and in perfect form to lead Izuku's classmates to go fight him 19 on 1. You could take the story at face value and assume that these people are all blatantly super human and the genome of these alleged humans is so altered by the existence of quirks that everyone's running around like demi-gods by our standards. Some of that is probably intended to be the reading. Quirks, and the bodies of quirk users, have an ever evolving "soft cap" of how strong they can be that's determined by how far the author wants to escalate. But then you have the blatant inconsistencies.

Such as a single knife stab being enough to take out Uraraka and requiring she get a blood transfusion or she'd die on the battlefield. When we have numerous examples of people surviving worse and withstanding even more punishment with no ill effects besides cosmetic damage. Kaminari's 1 million volts super move, for example, which would cause severe burning, nerve damage, and/or heart failure if it was played straight. But people just collapse and are fine later on. Zero lasting damage or injury. We've got stuff like Mirio having his quirk get destroyed after he gets shot with a quirk destroying bullet, and then he proceeds to fight Overhaul for 30 minutes without his quirk. Are we to believe that Overhaul, who, had Izuku and Eri not changed fate itself to deny him his victory, would have killed everyone and escaped, couldn't finish the job on a quirkless man who was standing between him, his ambitions, and his freedom? Sure, because the author wanted you to think budget Deku was cool. People in this series can do anything if it fits the story the author wants to tell at the moment. The signs were always there, it just got more and more egregious as time went on.

[lacunammmm]

You might have answered this or this ask was a long time coming, but what do you think of Bakugo?

He's an author's pet and fandom darling who makes lots and lots of money, so any "development" he gets is entirely Sisyphean. His redemption arc could have been GREAT.

As it is, it stagnated terribly because the author liked Bakugo when he'd get angry and yell at people. Which is precisely what his supposed development should have him NOT doing. Every single lesson he supposedly learns is just a performance for that moment: he doesn't actually learn that lesson because he's just going to backslide after that. The author refuses to commit. Think about how the series ends: the guy still gets mad and yells at the press, and his hero rankings are actively getting worse. The guy claims he wants to be the best. That he wants to be the number 1 hero. But he does absolutely nothing to reach that goal besides train and improve his battle power. The same as usual. He CERTAINLY has the power to do so, given all the boosts the author gave him! Mirio can't do shit to him. In terms of power, Bakugo absolutely should be on top. The entire series hyping this dude to eventually be number 1 and then the ending portraying him as a loser who failed at his one major ambition because his time at UA and all the previous lessons we supposedly saw him learn didn't stick...is baffling. It reeks of the author's fear of fan backlash. He knew a portion of the fanbase didn't like Bakugo, so he has Tin Tin become the number 1 hero instead. Making you honestly question what was the point of all of this? Bakugo is VERY privileged. We've got characters in this series who get basically ZERO character work, have no personality traits or backstory (Sato!) and then here's Bakugo who gets loads of screentime, a whole slew of power ups, gets to come back from the dead and then laugh off his injuries. Mirko lost multiple limbs, Kyoka lost an ear, Endeavor lost an arm and apparently the use of his legs. But the narrative said maybe Bakugo might lose an arm, but he's Bakugo so of course he doesn't. The author loves Bakugo too much, which is why everything is so easy for him: -Everyone loves him despite his anti social and quite frankly utterly unacceptable behavior. His continued bad actions being tolerated looks like blatant favoritism because of his strong quirk.

-He has the easiest lay-up redemption arc ever. NO ONE knows the extent of how horrible he was in the past except for his victim, who has already forgiven him. There was zero push back for him becoming a better person. He doesn't have a "Dabi" or any real opposition. It's entirely about him learning not to self sabotage.

-Even when he got kidnapped by the villains, they treated him with kid gloves. No torture, no beatings, he didn't have his quirk taken from him. He wasn't subjected to any sort of brainwashing. They didn't have to rescue Bakugo as he was in the process of being turned into a Nomu. The villains didn't take his mom and dad hostage to force him to be a villain. The guy is able to attack them the second they set him free, and then the plot bails him out when he's about to get his ass kicked. Let's explore a "What If?" We'll make Bakugo's redemption arc pop more while also giving Shigaraki the last laugh here. Okay, so Kamino happens and Shigaraki is mega pissed. It's revealed that actually, he believes Bakugo would have been a good villain because he had AFO's "friends" go look into his history, and he got ahold of lots of social media and classroom footage of Bakugo's bullying. Bakugo escaped before Shigaraki could show him all this and further make his point about why Bakugo was 100% villain material. So, he puts all of this unedited stuff together in a truth bomb and AFO's contacts, who he has access through via Kurogiri, ensure this gets to every news station in Japan. There's years worth of material of cell phone footage and social media posts, by his classmates, of Bakugo's asshole behavior. People recorded him bullying, yelling, breaking rules, belittling people. Izuku in particular. But the killshot is the stolen classroom security footage where he told Izuku to kill himself. Instantly, Bakugo's life is significantly harder. The new friends he made at UA see him completely differently. The teachers look like clowns for defending this guy on live TV. All Might is dumbstruck that Katsuki was really that bad before and is appalled.

Bakugo then has to fight an uphill battle where it's seriously questioned if he'll get to stay at UA. Having all of his past actions thrown in his face when he thought he was in the clear makes him take a good hard look at how he acted and still acted. He has a very tough discussion with his parents, Aizawa and Nezu where Nezu points out the pattern of behavior he's personally seen from Bakugo during his time at UA. The excessive force used in the battle trials, his behavior during the sports festival, him ignoring orders to go fight at the summer camp instead of using his quirk to fly away to safety, how he failed the provisional license exam for conduct issues, and then his later fight with Midoriya(Deku vs Kacchan 2,) which they now identified is not a "rivals" relationship, but instead a bullying dynamic. Nezu entered into that conversation fully prepared to expel Bakugo and wipe his hands clean of what he saw as a liability to his school. However, Bakugo's genuine remorse for his actions and willingness to do whatever it takes to make this right causes him to change his mind. He's instead put on probation and takes anger management. If he dips a toe out of line from then on, he's done.

Bakugo has to re-earn his friendships, and deal with major negative PR from what he did in the past. Everyone looks at him differently now and he fights an uphill battle to be a hero. He went from the top all the way to the bottom.

We've accomplished multiple things here. -Shigaraki is significantly less impotent than before and he actually inflicted some lasting damage to hero society, and Bakugo in particular. -We organically furthered Bakugo's redemption arc and made him have to confront his dark past just as it seemed like he reached a turning point. -We gave Bakugo an issue to solve that he's forced to either grow from or kiss his hero dreams goodbye. This isn't something that can be defeated with violence. You could even have Midoriya continue to be Green Jesus in this scenario. He forgave Bakugo ages ago. We just have the other characters react to Bakugo not being who they thought he was. Social consequences hurt way worse than physical ones. Bakugo could laugh off a beating, but how's he react when his friends don't want him sitting next to them at lunch anymore? How's he feel when Mineta's the only guy who wants to be seen with him, since his reputation is already in the gutter?

I'll end this by discussing how this series robbed Bakugo of his humanity. Anger is a secondary emotion. When you feel anger, it first begins as something else. Shame, guilt, fear, weakness, helplessness. Anger is just an easy and motivating emotion to feel that can mask what you actually experience inside. So, we get Bakugo's "apology" where he explains how he didn't like Izuku. But why? The series doesn't dig deeper into what he isn't saying. Was it because he saw a kid with no quirk who was heroic and had people who liked him, but Bakugo only felt valued because of his powerful quirk? Did he ask himself, subconsciously, if anyone would care about Katsuki if he didn't have his power, and in his heart, he said no? The guy is unable to truly accept compliments, but he's an egotist who needs attention and to be acknowledged. Why? What's eating him inside that he needs this constant validation, both internally and externally? If the underlying reasons behind why you get angry are addressed, then you stop feeling angry. If it's based on insecurities and those get fixed, you just feel better. You've learned new coping strategies. Even at the end of the series, the anger is still present. He gets mad because people want to talk to their famous hero who killed the quirk devil? Because people give him the praise he's rightfully entitled to for being objectively one of the strongest people on the planet who uses their powers to help people? So he ends the series....not the number 1 hero. He doesn't have much of a relationship with Izuku anymore. And he's dissatisfied. And his anger problem still hasn't been fixed since the issues behind it never got addressed. Well, I guess Shoto is the only real winner among the important hero kids.

[lacunammmm]

May I ask about your thoughts about the quirk Singularity Theory? I personally never liked it, because it's another thing in the series that contradicts itself. If quirks would get stronger and stronger with each generation till everything eventually implodes in itself is something that sounds interesting until you remind yourself that All For One, the quirk, exists. A power that can steal and give quirks without limit, store and use the quirks without a limit, combine them with no problems and potentially more I don't know about or care to research, because that alone is far too op for one quirk to do, that isn't about warping reality.

There's two ways to look at this. The first is that AFO is an exceptional quirk, because the Shigaraki twins were born from patient zero of the quirk phenomenon. Their power is an enabler of the singularity, enabling them to collect all of the powers their mother's "disease" created. The second is that the AFO quirk itself isn't really anything special. The ability to give and take quirks is only as good as your ability to actually do all of that. It's similar to Aizawa's quirk. Erasure is very strong in a context. But all it does is turn off other people's abilities. AFO fits as an early day quirk where abilities were simplistic. Is AFO "strong?" Yes. Does it require immense effort and danger to use it to its full potential? Also yes. Objectively speaking, when compared to insane abilities like Overhaul, Rewind and New Order, the AFO quirk, and even OFA itself for anyone who isn't Izuku or All Might, pale. AFO and OFA are quirks that offer potentially fantastic, unlimited power through things mostly outside of your control. The earlier OFA users weren't anywhere near as good or as strong as All Might and Izuku got to be. For them, OFA was just a death curse and an infinitely scaling power that got better with practice and training. But a power like Overhaul just offers fantastic power from the start. You can destroy anything you touch, and rebuild anything. You don't need to go steal power, or build up power. Overhaul would probably defeat every previous OFA user except for All Might 1 on 1. He would have killed Izuku had he not twisted fate with Eri's help and his defeat still required Izuku go 100%.

As far as the quirk singularity goes? Fantastic idea, but the execution was comical. The story put a doomsday scenario in front of us and then doesn't care to resolve it. No doubt if this does get addressed, it'll be in one of the MHA movies. Or a spin off, if we get a Boruto style MHA continuation. As it stands, only the villains cared to try to do something about this. -A villain from the Humanrise movie wanted to commit mass genocide to kill quirk users in the hopes of stopping this. -Everything Doctor Garaki did was motivated by his desire to avert this. All For One was his solution to this problem. So, what are the heroes going to do about it? Positive vibes, I guess. And it somehow worked. What was the point? To be a power boost for Izuku and Tomura to make for a better final battle. That was the point. It provided Tomura with a regenerating body that would enable the other characters to all get shots in on him and make it look like they were doing something until Izuku arrived. It kept him alive despite him being under the effects of Erasure nearly the whole time. Real talk: I believed the quirk singularity was how they'd "redeem" Tomura. Given that Yoichi said that the AFO quirk could be the kindest power of all, and the threat of quirk users going out of control could be contained by taking their quirks... I thought this was leading to an easy lay up where they blame every bad thing that's ever happened in MHA on AFO, and then Tomura and Izuku team up to kill AFO and then hug it out after. We get pardons for the League members in the name of reconciliation and healing, and then the ending is Izuku as the number 1 hero, and Tomura as the former villain who decided he didn't need to destroy anymore. And then the author kills off Tomura as well as the AFO and OFA quirks, and what? Are we supposed to just accept that the MHA universe is doomed? Is that how this universe ends? If people with bodies like Tomura are born and who have quirks even more powerful than his Decay, what do the heroes do about that? The series talks about a sharp decline in villains. But nothing about people's quirks. The whole point is that if your quirk goes out of control, you aren't even trying to hurt anyone. It'll just happen. They magically solved the majority of crime that plagued their nation off screen but then just forgot to do anything about the Armageddon that's certainly going to happen. I'm being silly, of course. Nothing is going to happen. Consequences are for villains.