#spinner’s end

[stabbyapologist]

I was recently commenting on a previous post, and I just wanna say that I love how Bellatrix smacks down with everyone in Voldemort’s inner and outer circle, like everyone

Like in the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Lucius has to try to rein in Bellatrix through that whole scene in the Department of Mysteries.

In Spinner’s End, Bellatrix snaps at both her sister and Snape throughout the whole chapter, both about how Narcissa should be honored and grateful that her son is inducted into the Inner Circle and her husband is bashed about being caught and thrown in Azkaban; and Bellatrix smacks down harder at Snape about...well everything.

Fast forward to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Bellatrix basically treats Lucius and Narcissa like they're lower than her; though most likely she's reeling from how Voldemort treats the whole family because of Tonks and Lupin's marriage. But she's pretty rude to them.

Then the Snatchers and Greyback, just yikes.

She's so angry lol 🤣😆

[blackberrylight1]

I've been reading this manga for 6 years now, and League of Villains has become something special to me. The only thing I'm thankful to Horikoshi for is them.

[skeletonoli]

give me adult Severus Snape who still has issues with money

give me adult Severus Snape who still only buys supermarket own brand and reduced food items

give me adult Severus Snape who considers half a tin of baked beans a meal

give me adult Severus Snape who never kicked the habit of buying everything second hand

give me adult Severus Snape who still wears the robes Lucius bought him when they were teenagers

give me adult Severus Snape who still lives at spinners end dispute the fact it reminds him of some of the worst points of his life

[hatsunevita]

as a bkdk fan i am crying shaking and happily giggling because this is almost exactly what i wanted for this chapter

but as a togachako fan. horikoshi,

where the fuck is toga

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

A reminder that Spinner canonically compares himself to Dabi and feels inferior to the rest of the League of Villains.

Part of the reason he allowed AFO to manipulate him is because he wanted to be reliable, as in he wanted to be stronger to be of use to Tomura. So again, he's canonically kinda jealous not only of Dabi's quirk, but of him as a person.

[altho-arto]

"Sun shining down on us after a rough sparring session.. In that instant, I'd never seen anything prettier."

(Or : we all know how Spinner got starry-eyed as Shigaraki created a new, empty horizon in the MVA arc, but what would Tomura's "I have feelings for this man" moment be ?)

[league-of-simps]

You know, despite not getting much information on the villains in the last chapter, I'm growing content with what we did get. Spinner presumably wrote, edited, and found a publisher within an eight year time span. While in prison/rehab and with minimal writing knowledge. That means someone was interested in their side of the story enough to pick it up and mass produce it.

Then the brief showing of Compress and the bittersweet smile he had when he was reading it...

That was his found family. While some of the contents of the book may hold some bad memories, he seems... content... given his circumstances. He and Spinner are the only confirmed members of the League alive as well. So reading about his friends, his family, that he either watched die or heard that they died as he sits in prison has to give him some comfort.

[inchidentally]

Lando with the other drivers he's friends with:

oh hey are you guys talking to me omg don't bully me or I'll come (etc etc)

Lando with Oscar:

Oscar open this for me, Oscar don't do that, Oscar what's that word I'm thinking of, Oscar your arms are bigger than mine, Oscar your taste is terrible, Oscar listen to my music, Oscar don't eat that near me, Oscar what are you drinking is that a smoothie where'd you get it, Oscar open this for me, Oscar your hair does this thing like whoosh, Oscar you're tall, Oscar let me get you out in cricket, Oscar let me win come on, Oscar you're cheating, Oscar I'm beating you so bad at golf, Oscar why won't you get into my interests, Oscar how do you pronounce this word, Oscar you could go between my legs,nah Oscar you are not going between my legs, Oscar you just sang in front of us for the first time, Lando di Piastri, Oscar Pastry, thanks Osc

[haine-kleine]

after sitting with my thoughts about the epilogue for some time, I think the thing that broke the story had started right after Dabi's dance. said thing is LOV' utterly out of character treatment of each other and Shigaraki specifically.

them just standing there and passively observing the scene makes absolutely zero sense, if you use anything from their previously established relationships within the organisation for reference. especially with All for One's creepy comments. Spinner even points out shortly before this chapter that AFO!Shigaraki seems nothing like his normal self and this person is not the one he had chosen to follow.

and yes, Spinner does approach screaming Shigaraki and tries to help him, and his concern later leads him to seeing Shigaraki's mutated form in the cave, and on its own this development for Spinner is in line with his character and all around fine. pretty reminiscent of Toga and Twice, too.

(except Spinner is not allowed to really help Shigaraki in any way, unlike Toga was allowed to help Twice, and this entire thing between Shigaraki and Spinner only ends with Spinner's regrets and survivor's guilt instead of anything good or meaningful that isn't meaningless angst porn)

it isn't Spinner approaching Shigaraki that is the issue, it's the other's complete lack of action or even reaction besides appearing mildly disturbed. this is simply out of character for all of them, just judging by Twice's example who had similar breakdowns and wasn't plainly ignored by the others until his fit stops. this reaction makes even less sense, when you take into account the current state of the League. Twice had just been murdered by Hawks, the double agent who had infiltrated the League via Dabi, and Mister Compress had just sacrificed himself to give the League a chance for escape, and was sent to Tartarus immediately after his condition was no longer life threatening. Kurogiri is also being held captive by the heroes. there are only four of them left, with two dead and two captured. and none of them even mention the dead or the captured outside of the context of Kurogiri and his quirk.

this straight out makes no sense if you look back to the Overhaul arc and remember how far Shigaraki and the rest of them were willing to go to avenge Magne's death and Mr Compress' destroyed arm. this was important.

the event had motivated Shigaraki to be a better leader, because he had realized these people depend on him, and he won't let them be hurt under his protection. it had started the seed of self-doubt in Jin which would eventually grow to the desperation that allowed him to overcome the mental block against his quirk in the MVA arc, because he wanted to do everything he possibly could to help the League. it allowed him to make his clones despite the crippling trauma, because he saw Toga's hurt, bleeding body, and he didn't want her to die.

even fucking Giran, a broker whose very profession requires him to care about himself and his own well-being first and foremost, had sacrificed all of his fingers to prevent Redestro from getting his hands on the League. because he wants to protect them, to save them. and then we never actually see his mutilated hands or hear anything from him ever again.

and when Twice actually dies? all we get in response to that are two upset faces from Dabi and Toga's fury. that's it.

i really want to stress how out of character this barely-present reaction is, because Magne's example is right there and when Overhaul had killed her, the League knew each other for no longer than a month. this League has been together for at least half a year, had been through thick and thin together, had spent months on the run, homeless, having no one but each other to rely on, has defeated the Meta Liberation Army, quite literally, with the power of their friendship. they all cared enough about each other and Shigaraki specifically to stay with him during those months they had to fight Gigantomachia with barely any breaks for rest, still homeless, barely scraping by. it was imperative that they all survive through this together, especially for Shigaraki, who had went on this quest of getting stronger at least partly so that he would become a more reliable protector for the League. and when Twice falls victim to the hero who had murdered him in cold blood, because no one except for Dabi was there to save him, Shigaraki doesn't even get to react to Twice's death, and possibly never even learns about the fact.

on topic of Dabi, his reaction being exactly two frames of sad expressions and including the footage of Twice's murder into his broadcast, and ending immediately after that, also makes no sense. Dabi is someone who holds himself accountable and despite his declarations, cares about the League, it's the very reason he was keeping Hawks from the League and sprinted to Twice as soon as he realized Hawks' intentions with him, to protect him. Dabi's unsuccessful attempt to save Twice is another iteration of Overhaul, a combination of Shigaraki and Twice's roles in the tragedy. but unlike Shigaraki, who had steeled himself into taking care of his subordinates and becoming a responsible and strong leader, or Twice who had never forgotten about his role in the incident, Dabi just somehow forgets about the entire thing as soon as the first war is over. Toga is the one whom the narrative allows to actively react to Twice's death and express her grief. it makes sense that her reaction would be the strongest, as she was the closest with Twice, but why are two LOV members no longer allowed to care about the same incident at the same time? why aren't they allowed to protect each other anymore, when Giran, who is not even in the League, had made that sacrifice for them?

These are pretty small things, but it's these instances of Toga and Dabi preventing Machia from being injected with the sedative, protecting the League that are sorely missing in the second war.

and the biggest act of devotion and protection to the League, which was the last time we saw anything like this for them, Mister Compress' last moments with the League.

Mutilating his own body just to buy them five seconds to possibly escape. Because he loved the League, because he wanted all of them to be happy and achieve their dreams, to be free, and to live.

and in return for the favour, not only do they not come back for him like they did for Kurogiri (because his quirk is important for the plot, while Compress' isn't), but none of them mention Compress ever again. same with Twice (with the exception of Toga), same with Magne. from this point onwards, none of them are allowed by the plot to even care about the League of Villains. the interpersonal relationships between two individuals still shine through, occasionally, like Spinner's devotion to Shigaraki (and him alone), Dabi and Toga's pyromaniac trauma lane visit to her house and him giving her Twice's blood, Kurogiri reaching out to Shigaraki in the very end. but what about the League? ahd what about the dead members of the League, or Mister Compress?

somehow, at the point of the final war it boils down to the generalized conflict of heroes vs villains and the morality gymnastics involved in the concept. on its own, this would have been an okay development, if the examples the story was using to prove its point weren't people who had become very close friends and who had lost four people to this war against the heroes.

if the individual conflicts, like Toga's desperation to be acknowledged as human being deserving of affection, Dabi's familial abuse trauma and Shigaraki's lifelong manipulation by All for One not giving him any chance to be saved at all, were the finishing line of the villains' story development, why join them within the League at all? LOV is a separate concept functioning as a collective uniting all these villains, giving them a place to belong and people who give a fuck whether they live or die. except not anymore, because for some reason after the first war this concept is scratched completely.

so why not make them mere acquaintances who sometimes collaborate to bother the heroes together, if the bond between them got in the way of the story and wasn't the point of the story? why prove the depth of their bond with the Overhaul and My Villain Academia arcs? why make Shigaraki develop relationships and a sense of responsibility for these people at all, if in the very end his desire to save these people is denied by the author himself?

the previous arcs have spent a great deal of effort establishing that the villains are human too. they have human feelings, human desires and human relationships. so why is it that in the final arc their ability to experience human emotions towards each other is turned on and off manually by the author? at the very end even the author stops pretending like anything happening to the villains is evaluated on the scale of human experiences (unlike the heroes, whose injuries and deaths are talked about and mourned in great detail) and Kurogiri and Shigaraki are wiped out like plot inconveniences rather than important and well written characters.

honestly? it's ironically meta that the story ended up proving the very point it has spent 400 chapters arguing against.

[commander-revan]

What the fuck was the point of all this

[stabbyapologist]

I wish that the Spinner’s End scene had been longer in the movie because Bellatrix and Snape cleared up a lot of questions that we as Readers liked to have been answered and people who haven't read the books would like to know too—it's also one of my most favorite chapters in the entire series!

Where were you when the Dark Lord fell?

Why did you never make any attempt to find him when he vanished

What have you been doing all these years while you have lived in Dumbledore’s back pocket?

Why did you stop the Dark Lord from procuring the Philosopher's stone?

Why did you not return when the Dark Lord was reborn?

Where were you when we battled to retrieve the prophecy?

Why is Harry Potter still alive?

They're all really good questions and they make a point for us to see Snape in a certain light before what happens on the astronomy tower.

[into-the-feniverse]

Saw that one promotional (box?) art and was so upset about how Touya looked that I had to do a quick redraw to fix him (also like WHERE is Spinner why isn’t he there 😭)

The art in question + general silliness under the cut

[grimstrawberry]

If I don't make light of everything, I'm gonna explode.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

So quick question, how much do you think Spinner could get away with if he started lying in the book he wrote about the LOV?

I know that if he could —and he could— he'd fuck around and exaggerate everything for his and the LOV amusement. We're talking about a Spinner that doesn't give a single fuck about society since he's past all that, a Spinner full of resentment and who has consumed dangerously amounts of both videogames and real life cult rhetorics.

Give him ten years. Enough time to create a cult to Tomura by total accident, yes or no?

I say yes. Just saying.

[buttercupshands]

MHA didn't create some miracle way of helping others. It was never promised to be this way. And when it came to villains...

Spoilers for manga all the way to chapter 423.

The only way to get anything in life in MHA was to be born "normal" like everyone else and that way of thinking never left Izuku with Toga getting the same treatment she did before from everyone from her family to her "normal" classmates. It was Ochako who helped Toga even if just a little by lifting the weight of all the feelings that Toga had.

She couldn't save Toga the way one could save a civilian by saving them from harm. If it worked that way Dabi would've saved Toga even before Ochako could apologize for failing to notice Toga. She was so lazer focused on saving everyone else, that she was just another villain to stop, not a human.

Even if by the end of it Ochako helped Toga to deal with her grief, acceptance as it was wasn't something possible when a quirk makes you want to drink someone's blood from jealousy.

We got a bittersweet ending with Toga, in which she probably died from blood loss just like her double did in MVA. If it wasn't for Twice she would've died back then.

Giving away her blood for Ochako wasn't a redemption or a way to save Toga in the end, more as it was her being true to herself until the very end.

Just like Twice chose to stay with the League even if Hawks offered him a way to survive that battle. He refused and died protecting his friends who accepted him instead of choosing to betray them and accept Hawks' offer.

After Twice's death... It was a matter of time that more 'active' LoV members would join him as well. As sad as it is, we now can return to Izuku.

Who, after his time OFA-AFO quirk space, now wanted to help a "crying boy" he saw in Tenko just as before with Katsuki in chapter 1. He didn't forgive Tomura and didn't excuse the way he chose to solve his problems.

It didn't mean that Tomura would survive in their battle, even if Izuku didn't see killing others as a way to solve problems. He didn't understand Tomura, but he still wanted to try, and try he did.

The rest of this post was nothing more than a contextual prologue to understand that it's not the first time a hero failed to save a villain and in Twice's case we know that he died and his death was the reason Toga started thinking about her own possible death and Dabi finally revealed himself as Toya.

The goal of saving a "crying boy" never was an end-goal for Izuku in the Final arc, since helping Tomura deal with his feelings just left him hollow with a goal that clashed with Izuku's. As being a hero for villains meant destroying the world for them to help them live freely.

But that was before AFO resurfaced.

Sadly after that Tomura who was talking about making his own choices for a while now stopped doing that. Even if he still had a goal of helping villains and only villains, Tomura was almost gone. And his goals were now unreachable.

Izuku helped Nana who in turn kept Tomura from fading away entirely. In MHA there were countless situations where Izuku's help affected people by helping a different person to keep hope, All-Might being the first one and Nana being the last one at the moment.

Hollow after Izuku helped him to get rid of his hatred Tomura could do the only thing he did - accept the situation as it was.

Accepting AFO as his Sensei, accepting Stain's ideals and Overhaul's deal was the way he solved his problems. Just like Izuku had a problem of understanding something outside of his norm, Tomura was accepting too many things, which lead to his downfall after accepting AFO's quirk.

Just like Twice could've given up everything that he had for his friends so did Tomura.

With Izuku helping as much as he could let Tomura to finally rest as he wasn't really living ever since waking up in the hospital. With his body now affected by AFO's wishes instead of his own until the end.

In a way Izuku didn't succeed in his wish for Tomura to stop ever since PLF war arc. As he "kept fighting to destroy" no matter how hard Izuku tried to stop him.

The only thing he succeeded in was changing Tomura's mind about himself, instead of viewing himself as a monster he accepted that he was a human just like Izuku said. A "crying boy" who couldn't really destroy Izuku's hands in the end.

For a group of Villains who weren't supposed to get profiles of their own at the start of the series, League is slowly fading as the most memorable group that there was in MHA, getting backstories, their own Villain themed arc all the while being as human as anyone else.

As sad as their story is they were not "unlucky", they didn't need a happy false ending where they would need to change to be normal - they chose to live this way and they lived it to it's fullest.

[basiatlu]

Even a prince has summer homework.

I am falling asleep drawing this but I was determined to sketch something today no matter what.