#that chapter made me so mad

[violetlunette]

Okay, so if you've been following me for a while and have seen my posts on the league of victim mentality—I mean villains, you may have gotten the idea that I hate “tragic” villains. This is not the case, believe it or not. I actually find villains with tragic pasts interesting. What I hate is when the “tragic” backstory is used to justify or overlook their crimes.

Warnings:

*LONG post

*Images

*Anti-Himiko Toga

*Anti-Dabi

*Anti-League of Villains

Spoiler Warnings for:

*Demon Slayer

*Bojack Horseman

*My Hero Academia

*Once Upon a Time (line or two)

*Wanda Vision (one line)

*HP (one line)

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

*Mentions murder, rape, and terrorism

Before reading, keep in mind this is an opinion piece and therefore may be a mistake or two. In other words, take it with a grain of salt.

So, to start this—basically what I said above. While my past posts suggest, otherwise I like villains with sympathetic backgrounds. The villains in Demon Slayer are among my favorites. They’re interesting as characters well as sympathetic. See, when written properly a sympathetic villain could be very entertaining. When written poorly, however, it comes off as them saying, “Look I know they’re responsible for killing a bunch of people, but you have to understand; they were sad once.”

Look, I am a person with a strong sense of justice and morals, and this tends to carry into the fiction I read. (Unless the tone prepares me, but that’s another post.) So when someone does something wrong, I expect the narrative to treat it as such. Now, of course, I’m not rigid, and I’ll have some flexibility on most things, even killing depending on the circumstances. However, I still want characters to be held to some accountability. I guess what I want is for writers to take the Bojack Horseman approach.

Whether or not Bojack is a villain is debatable, but what isn’t is that Bojack did many bad things and hurt a LOT of people. Now he has a sad backstory with abusive parents who abused him in every way but sexually. And the show never glosses over it. It states quite clearly that Bojack was hurt and uses his past to explain how he came to be the way he was so we can understand Bojack. It also makes it very clear that Bojack didn’t deserve the abuse he went through.

HOWEVER!

The creators of the show went out of their way to show and state multiple times that just because Bojack had a shitty attitude doesn’t mean it was okay for him to hurt the people he did. And more importantly, it shows that the people he hurt were people.

Princess Carolyn is a person whose feelings he took advantage of. Todd is a person who he used to make himself feel better and whose friendship he didn’t appreciate till later. Diane is a person who he hurt multiple times. Herb was a person who he betrayed and abandoned. Penny is a person he took advantage of and mentally damaged. Gina is a person he hurt and mentally scarred to the point she suffers from PTSD. Sarah Lynn was a person whose life was lost because of him.

These weren’t perfect people and, in their own way, they contributed to the situations that hurt them.Even so, in nearly all these cases they were victims of Bojack’s actions, and the show never denies or softens the blow. With Bojack, we see who he hurts, why he hurt them, and the results of his actions, most of which came from a choice HE made. Often in stories, these people would just be background filler for the villain to make them look evil, but here they’re people. Bojack Horseman also provides CONSEQUENCES for the title character. Again, Bojack hurt people and he’s held accountable. The League of Villains won’t be. Just watch. Hori has shown us in his other stories that he’ll let a villain walk after a beat down, and all will be forgiven. “But wait, Looney! Bojack Horseman is a TV Show for adults. It’s targeted at a completely different demographic! Plus, it’s a different medium altogether. It’s absolutely not fair to compare the two.” Quite right. There is quite a difference. So, let’s look at something closer to the medium, shall we? Let’s look at another anime of the same genre targeted at the same demographic; Demon Slayer.

In Demon slayer, Demons are humans transformed by a demon named Muten. Once they become demons, they often lose control of themselves and their humanity and turn into beasts that eat demons.

I’m going to use the Spider Demon arc as an example, particularly the Spider Mother.

Now, here's why Demon Slayer works for me and BNHA doesn't;

First, we see the people that the spider demon hurts and how she hurts them;

They’re not just waved off or mentioned in a line or two. We see these people frightened and hurt, begging for help before they are killed. Deaths we also get to see;

True, they weren’t main characters or even people Tanjiro and the others knew, but they were people.

Remind me, who did Dabe kill again? Can you think of any faces? Their voice? Do you know how they died? Did Dabi corner them? Or did he kill them in a burst of hellfire? Were they even aware they were going to die or surprised? We don’t know any of that. The only hint we got that Dabe’s actions hurt anyone was a reporter, but that’s it. The manga doesn’t want to focus on the people that were hurt because they want Dabe to remain sympathetic. Ultimately, his victims mean nothing.

And yet, Demon Slayer did better in making the villain sympathetic;

The Spider Demon Mother was once a human turned demon who joined Rui for protection. She was then forced to change her face and become a “mother” despite being younger than the rest.

We see that she was abused, hurt, and scared--

--So much that she longed for death.

So much so that we pitied her along with Tanjiro.

However, we knew she had to die to atone for the people she killed. There’s no cushion to her crimes; we saw her torture and kill teenagers who were just as terrified as she was. And also know that because she was a demon she had killed and eaten innocent humans regularly.

Shinobu put it best herself when facing Spider Sister; "Bitch you killed a bunch of people and expect that to be okay?" Okay, she didn’t say that. Here’s what she actually said;

Shinobu is pretty merciless here to this demon begging for help but  it’s not unwarranted. Like it or not, she has a point; 

The spider demon here killed many people over the years quite mercilessly. Nature or not, she still did it, and even if Shinobu did show mercy, there’s no evidence that the demon girl wouldn’t just eat more people when she was safe.

However, there’s the fact that the demon here really can’t help it. She was turned into a demon against her will, and her mind is clouded by demon instincts. It’s like getting mad at a cat for killing a bird. It’s sad, but it's nature.

The compromise comes from our hero. Tanjiro knows that he has to kill the demons because they’ve hurt people and will continue to hurt others. However, he still remembers that these demons are people too. So when he kills them, Tanjiro isn’t cruel, or merciless.

Tanjiro made her death as swift and painless as possible. He took no joy in it it, but did what he had to do. Because she wouldn’t stop and those kids that were killed right in front of him deserved justice. The Spider Demons were were victims but they were also killers. THAT’S why they were villains. And so, Tanjiro and Shinobu held them accountable.

Speaking of which--and lacking a better transition--One of the things I love about Tanjiro is that he never allows the villains to use the victim mentality on him. One actually tries it once;

During the sword village arc, they accuse Tanjiro of bullying the meek when said meek is a fiendish killer who spent both his human and demon life blaming his failures on others.

(Picture says it all, doesn’t it?)

How does Tanjiro respond? He calls them the fuck out.

He all but states they’re not victims but attackers. They’re the ones killing innocent people without care and refusing to take responsibility.

Tago reminds me of the meek demon. She is responsible for killing thirteen boys and several thousand people when Shiggy destroyed a city. Yet all she’s thinking about is herself.

During her entire fight with Ochako Tago is thinking of ONE person; herself. Even though thousands are dead and dying because of her. But oh, Ochako’s at fault here for not listening, boohoo! Fuck off. And before you say it, the fact that she’s a teenager only gives her so much leeway.

Ochako calls her out for this and tells her the same thing Tanjiro did.

Unlike Tanjiro, Ochako is treated like she was in the wrong, and it becomes all about poor Tago, who by the way, killed an old lady just to trick her.

See, the difference? Demon Slayer makes its villains sympathetic and accountable, My Hero Academia—like a lot of shows—doesn’t. From here on out Ochako is treated like she did wrong for not “listening” to Tago. (I’m gonna have to make a vent post about this chapter eventually.) But for now, I digress.

And while I tend to give Hori a lot of leeway in BNHA, as I know that the story is heavily influenced by editors and publishers, I know this on him. Why? Because he did it in his other story. I’m going to use the Aquarium arc as an example. Here, whale man abused the animals whom he gave human form and even killed them.

Yet in the end, it’s hinted that he’s going to be welcomed back and given another chance.

But here’s a surprise; Hori could get away with that shit here because most of the main characters are animals. Cruel, but killing is different in the animal kingdom because—as sad as it is to say—there’s a law of survival of the fittest. The animal mentality is different from a human's in a blue and orange way.

In BNHA the people being killed and doing the killing are human. There’s no blue and orange, it’s black and white. Hori can try to say it’s gray all he likes but it's not. He says the heroes are just as bad as the villains but when have we ever seen that? Have we ever seen a hero hurt an innocent? Refuse to save a person? Demand they be paid before doing their job? Nope. The worst we see is Endeavor as an abusive father, and that’s a different can of worms.

So, in conclusion;

Sympathetic villains are great when done right. It makes them engaging and can create empathy for others while showing a different POV. However, most writers refuse to hold them accountable, which can be even more dangerous than creating a villain like Maleficent or even All for One. Why? Because then the audience will use it to justify their own shitty behavior, a fear the creators of Bojack had, especially after an incident with the Rick and Morty fandom and the Mulan sauce.

The show runners of Bojack even had a character in their show flat out state,

“You know that’s not the point of the [show]--for guys to watch it and feel okay.”

“I don’t want you, or anyone else, justifying their shitty behavior because of the show.”

--Diane, Bojack Horseman, Head in the Clouds

And personally, I hate the victim mentality more than anything, especially when the characters exhibiting it have done some truly awful things.

OUAT Regina: "You’re the one who added evil to my name!"

Me: Uh, yeah! After you spent years murdering, raping, and slaughtering villages, then cast a spell that kidnapped hundreds of people and mind raped them. All because your mother—who you KNEW was a manipulative bitch—tricked an eight-year-old into telling a secret!

OUAT Rumpelstiltskin: "Why can’t I have a happy ending?" (Paraphrasing)

Me: Because you caused nearly everything that went wrong in the show and emotionally manipulative and abusive, controlling bastard.

OUAT Zelena: "Sister, why can’t we be BFFs?" (Paraphrasing)

Me: Many reasons, but the biggie is that you raped her boyfriend and eventually got him killed.

OUAT Mary-Margret and David: "Oh, our daughter hates us because we lied."

Me: Uh, there's also the fact you kidnapped an unborn baby from her mother. Then filled her with "darkness" that made it so every choice she made would result badly for her, then sent her to another dimension to die. Oh, and you did that just so you could manipulate your daughter's future instead of letting her have free will! (And how did that work out, btw? Oh, right. She became a thief and went to jail, all “without” darkness in her.)

(Note: Please don't misunderstand, the OUAT actors did a great job, but the writing failed the characters.)

WandaVision Monica to Wanda: “They’ll never know what you gave up.”

Me: Oh poor baby, Wanda had to give up a fantasy family that she literally made up and could create literally anywhere else to set a town free that she mentally enslaved to play out her TV fantasies. Something she knew she did because the government told her so when they came to save them! Wanda mentally tortured a town of innocent people for a year just so she could have her fantasy family life. And no! Her past doesn’t make shit like that okay.

HP Snape: "Why didn’t Lily love me?"

Me: Because you never viewed her as a person but as your dream girl. Also, Lily knew that you looked down on anyone with muggle blood to the point you joined the magical Koopa Klan. (You all know what I mean.) And Lily told you that to your face!

Do you see my point? I could come up with more examples but this post is long enough. The sad backstories of villains are supposed to help the audience understand so we can prevent ourselves and others from ending up like them. They are NOT supposed to be an excuse for their actions or a justification to wipe the slate clean. But that’s what most writers tend to do nowadays, which is why I prefer my evil for the luz villains. They’re fun, entertaining, and interesting, and they don’t waste time making excuses.

Does this mean I want the BNHA villains to die? No. I mean, I won’t cry or anything, but I’ll call it even if they go to jail for a couple of years and spend their lives repenting afterward.

And you know what? I can live with it when fans do stuff like this because that’s what fandoms do. It’s a whole different story when the creators do it as they should know better.

It’s like when a kid says, “fuck you” and when an adult says it. Sure, it’s insulting and infuriating but it's just kids being kids, so you blow it off. If an adult does it, that’s a whole different story as they know the meaning and ramifications of that word.

Anyway, this is long enough, so I’ll end this here.

[honeycreammilkshake]

i wonder if, in another world where sukuna had said yes and yuuji did take blobkuna back with him, they would watch movies together.

sukuna criticizes all of them and seems to be into only the mindless slasher or horror ones (the gorier the better) but one day yuuji puts on something more serious. sukuna complains the whole time as he sits in yuuji's cupped hands, but then the brat stops arguing with him suddenly and goes quiet during the sad part of the film.

it's not the film that moves sukuna. he didn't even bother to pay attention enough to really know what's going on. but for some reason, when yuuji starts crying, hot tears that drip right down on sukuna, the former king of curses can't look away and he doesn't realize until much later that his own eye is wet as well.

he denies it. he makes fun of yuuji for crying. maybe he even licks yuuji's tears off his wrist just to be gross and rile him up. but he can't stop thinking about how close he felt to yuuji in that one moment, almost like they were sharing bodies again, and maybe he would like to go back to living inside of yuuji. if only to make him cry instead of the movie doing it. or maybe he just likes feeling yuuji's emotions. maybe being inside of yuuji is the closest he can come to feeling those emotions for himself. because maybe it's not such a weakness after all.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

So was anyone going to tell me Faust is a bigger menace than EVERYONE in the game put together or like. Was I supposed to play the Impossible Choices event (Vincent and Charles ver) myself. I LOVE that he's the definition of: 'being smarter doesn't make me more mature or helpful, it just makes my inherent lust for chaos/entropy all the more unstoppable' This shit FUCKS

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a character make Shakespeare's life a living hell and the latter didn't expect/see it coming, that was AMAZING. Mf was out here like "What the hell??? You lot don't make me suffer I make YOU suffer. Let a man obsess IN PRIVACY" and then nobody cared. Peak comedic interaction, no notes everyone pack it up

[whatisamildopinion]

Girl, you need to be promoting your Aasimar!Riz fic!!! This last chapter with Kalina was amazing! The chapter before with Garthy was just as amazing!!!

ANFHDJDJISBDBDBJDVWGCRHE this is too funny. I have been such a slacker on fic posting as a Tumblr writer that my buddies are yelling at me affectionately. hilarious.

Friendly reminder for everyone that I have a fic!! it's fun!!! I am putting all the characters with daddy issues and religious trauma in a jar and shaking them to see what comes out.

Have a snippet from the next chapter because this ask is absolutely too funny. I'm also throwing in a sketchy pen drawing that I did of our boy below the cut. The link to the latest chapter will also be down there. Love you, Mads 💜

---

"I thought the whole point of being here was going to Calethriel Tower,” Tracker says, her voice suddenly tight. 

“That is the point,” he says. “We know Aelwyn is here. We’re betting that Adaine is probably here too. But probability and certainty are very different things. I’d like to at least have some kind of backup location to check if this falls through.”

“Oh,” she says. “That makes… an infuriating amount of sense. Fucking Fallinel.”

“Fucking Fallinel,” he agrees.

“I just assumed… in the name of Galicaea, if we came here for no fucking reason-” She breaks off as her speech dissolves into a wolflike snarl, lips curling up to bare teeth sharpening into fangs. Her eyes flash yellow as she does. 

Riz fully looks up, setting down his maps. “Okay. What’s going on? What did you come here to talk to me about?”

Tracker looks a little embarrassed for a second, before she fully peels back her lips to growl under her breath, a deep, subsonic noise that only Riz would have been able to hear. She runs a hand through her short curls, clenching and unclenching her other fist. “Does Kristen ever…” she starts. “Does she ever, like, really piss you off? Don’t you just want to grab her by the throat and shake her sometimes?”

“At least once a week,” Riz says. “Why? What did she do?”

There he is. My favorite little man. Give him some love

[phoenixtakaramono]

Truce - Ch3 Preview 2/?

This is in reference to this. I’m agog that I’d somehow forgotten to share this upcoming scene in Truce its entirety—when I thought I had. Honest mistake, luvs. I shall rectify it immediately.

A snippet of my favorite part from this lil interview section:

“Not to worry. Between you and me”—the chair creaked as he leaned in, lips quirked sideways, his brows expressive, and his hand hovering beside his cheek—“Butcher and I got a secret bromance happening behind the scenes, I tell you what.” The discreet Lavalier microphone clipped somewhere on Homelander’s supersuit had picked up the hushed whisper, making the audio crisp and clear. Thirteen different camera angles captured Jimmy’s brows shooting up. He repeated, “A bromance.” “Yep. A bromance for the ages. Color me stoked.” The plastic shell of his features melted away, resembling a more complete flesh-and-blood human. Easing back into his seat, Homelander said, “I just think, like with any large and aggressive attack dogs, as owners we have a responsibility to properly train and socialize them. Now I don’t own a dog myself but if I did, I would keep my mutt on a short leash—and obedient only to me. He won’t bite, not unless I tell him to.”

The full scene the snippet belongs to:

A/N - I’m sure y’all remember Jimmy Fallon’s cameo in S1. It only makes sense to replace Translucent with Homelander now. I originally considered Cole Cameron to ask the hard hitting questions, but he dies in S4 (thanks, Ashley). So I elected to not go with him.

And the line about Butcher not being caped but quite clearly dark is lifted from the comics, as a lil Easter egg ;) but I changed it from Black Noir to Billy because Homelander’s doubling down on the lie/ cover story that he’s the one who “reached out his hand and brought Billy back from the path of villainy by inviting him into the Seven” 🙄

*Note: as always, keep in mind this is taken from an earlier draft; so there may be a couple changes in the final draft that’ll be posted to AO3 when the chapter’s ready. But this sneak peek is pretty much as close to its final draft iteration as you'll see.

(Chapters 1-2 can be read on AO3)

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

Imagine reading a new manga and joking about it being homoerotic and then it gets explicitly stated that one of the protags is gay

If I don't see any weird romance blossom between those two istg-

[savage-rhi]

Fuschia/Magenta?

[todayisafridaynight]

twitter tl talkin bout translation inconsistencies in IW and ima be honest the only translation error ill die mad bout is the fact they refused to let masato call ichi a pussy in the english dub of Y7

[anaer]

i really do hate jjk

[a-through-l]

so. I started reading the liar game.

[citrine-elephant]

i do believe i must make a verdugo for leon once he arrives and is built...

[blushinggoku]

Been watching some dbs related videos and I'm sosoo glad I gave up on that anime because oh my god the story gets worse with every arc. Wtf are they even doing anymore

[gildeddlily]

two years ago tokyo revengers had the strongest grip on me but now I don't even remember what happens. like. a guy goes back in times a lot of times? my favs were some inui and kakucho for a long time? I didn't like the ending- I think? and now I have (not to be vain but honestly beautiful) fics written on some doc hidden in the jungle that my pc is and I don't even understand what the fuck they're about!!!!

[afternoonblues]

alright. just finished watching kny's hashira training arc season and with that BANGER of a final episode, let's just say, even though i regret not going to the theatres for the mugen train movie release here in my country, i will definitely be there for the infinity castle arc trilogy. you will find me at the theatre all pumped up for sure. i'm not missing any of it, alright?

[claire-starsword]

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 2

Translation notes:

The map in the first page is not the one seen in the final game, but the early version released during development. More info on my pre-release page as usual.

The enemies in that page are also enemies announced early before release: Rune Knights, Dark Priests, Dark Dwarves, Goblins, and the scrapped Mimic of course! That's fun to see.

Save for Lowe's odd age here, the training with Varios is very similar with how it goes in the actual game, with Lowe singing praises of how Max is on par with the knight captain. If none of that sounded familiar to you, you are welcome to hate the localization as much as I do.

Like, you think we're done with this? No way baby, Max's speech on memories is also a reference to a NPC in the start of the game! I legit got angry while doing the comparison on that one, it's a very iconic line that matches both Max's amnesia plot and the series' whole theme of forgotten evils resurfacing, it did not deserve to be replaced by generic slop. I'm glad I get to bring it back here and that it gets space in the manga as well.

Nova seems to have ears instead of horns in his brief cameo during the castle audience scene. Could be an old design, or the manga artist taking liberties or misunderstanding things. I find it curious though, because in the final version he's classified as dragonewt, however the GBA version will notoriously declare Elliot the last dragonewt on earth instead. This would make sense if Nova was intended to be something else at some point, and the GBA version tried to restore that, though it was nonetheless very badly explained.

Let's talk a bit about Max's speech patterns. In the original game, he obviously doesn't speak much, but the ending still shows him using the formal pronoun "watashi" for himself, and speaking casually to Adam, while more politely to the stranger they meet there. This continues in Final Conflict, where he's pretty casual to the team but sticks using watashi at the same time. This changed in the GBA version, where he switches between the more casual and masculine pronouns "boku" (softer) and "ore" (rougher) depending on who he's speaking to. I'm not knowledgeable enough to discuss this in depth but I do get the feeling that the choice of "watashi" for him in the original was a bit unusual. In any case, this manga just makes him use "ore" constantly. At the same time, he's pretty much always polite, even to his teammates. So he definitely doesn't come off as rough.

As example of this politeness, Max here also uses the usual "-san" honorific for basically everyone except Lowe, a literal child. I usually ignore those since they don't flow very naturally in english (at least for dialogue between friends/close teammates), but I did keep a couple instances when he has barely met Tao and Hans, because it felt fitting for a first meeting, especially with him being so notably polite in this version.

Let's talk about the rest of the team now! I've translated their in-game introductions in case you're not aware of how their personalities differs from the english version.

Hans was announced since the early coverage of the game, so every design difference you see here is the artist's choice. At no point was his personality touched upon however. So could it be that we were meant to have edgy rival Hans at some point? I find it unlikely given Hans' cute face, but my theory is that Hans had zero official personality at this point, so the manga artist just threw some elf stereotypes in and tweaked the design to fit that. It's hard to not associate Hans' attitude here with Mae's in the final game though. There's a lot of evidence in the pre-release page I keep linking to for Mae and the other centaurs' prejudice against Max to have been added late in development. So could it be that at some point elves were supposed to be the arrogant ones? Maybe! Could it be that the artist just shoved Mae's personality on Hans instead to erase her instead? Also possible! It should be clear already that the guy is not decent about female characters, and mild spoilers but, Mae is simply not gonna be around for this one save for small background cameos, which is mind boggling when she was clearly the main female character at this point in development. But could it be this has nothing to do with Hans and it's just a coincidence that his personality matches hers here? Also maybe! If it's not obvious I'm just rambling ideas at this point. To close the topic on Hans, he would eventually be confirmed as a noble in Shining Force Gaiden, as his son is mentioned to come from a noble family in the manuals. Though this is just the standard background for most characters in this game.

Tao is a curious case. She is seen in screenshots since the game's announcement, but it took longer until her art and profile were revealed. Said profile also says nothing on her personality, so my take on her here is the same as Hans. I doubt she was meant as the spunky girl we see here, but it's possible that the artist isn't warping her final personality, and she was just a blank state at this point. But it's hard to tell for certain.

Ken, on the other hand, was announced from day one to admire Max, which is probably why he's very much the same as his game version here.

Luke is the only one of the starting team to not be seen in early screenshots, and there's some evidence that Gort was meant to be the first warrior of the team instead. So the manga here gives us a better idea of when Luke was worked on during development.

The fighting tournament Ken mentions is brought up in the ASCII guide book as a tradition of Guardiana. Always fun to see little worldbuilding tidbits like this were planned from the start. And while nowhere else mentions this as the place where Ken first saw Max, it makes a lot of sense.

Finally, the battle at the Gate taking place on the inside, so dark it needs to be illuminated by torches? That's how the place looked in early builds as well.

[livvyofthelake]

reese this book fucking sucks can you get your act together please.