#the ultra costume arc

[spidops-woman]

............ I've........ I've got a cool announcement I hope...............

[It's a photo of the new Spidops-Woman suit, now in the shiny colours, black and red.]

........ For better stealth...........

[linkspooky]

Dr. Venture vs. Enji Todoroki: How to Write Bad Dads

This is a post comparing two shows about two abusive dads who are the main characters instead of their children. My Hero Academia is a Shonen jump manga that takes inspiration from American comics and shonen manga. Whereas The Venture Bros is an adult swim cartoon that started out as a parody of Johnny Quest, and grew into a seven season long character study of former child star Rusty Venture.

The idea for this post came from the fact that I've noticed a common hot take from MHA fans that Endeavor's redemption arc is bad because it's wrong to make an abuser the main character.

I've always disagreed, and used The Venture Bros as an example of a show where making an abuser the main character works. Rusty is actually a well-liked character in the venture bros fandom. So my question is if these characters are both abusers why is one of them generally accepted and the other one so controversial?

Before we begin I want to say this is a story with fictional characters. Don't bring real life into the equation. We are doing literary criticism here and only talking about the events that happen in the story.

Anyway, My Hero Academia and The Venture Bros seem like the weirdest shows to compare but they are actually pretty similar. They are both comic book shows that are commentating on the comics they're inspired from.

What My Hero Academia is to Spiderman and Dragonball Z, Venture Bros is to Tom Swift Novels, the Hardy Boys, and old Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. They also make the decision to focus on the characters as people rather than heroes. They are telling the stories of real people that exist in a world overflowing with both heroes and villains.

1. Meet the Venture Brothers

If you've heard of the Venture Bros then you've probably heard of the premise that it's an adult parody of Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest for those of you who have a life and therefore haven't seen every old Hanna-Barbera Cartoon like I have is a show where eleven year old Johnny Quest travels around the world with his super scientist father Dr. Benton C. Quest and their bodyguard Race Bannon, going on adventures in Jungle Ruins or fighting villains.

In the Venture Bros the main character Dr. Thaddeus Venture is an emotionally abusive and neglectful father who constantly exposes his sons to danger in his trips around the world. Their bodyguard Brock Samson is a ultra violent and is basically a thirteen year old's idea of what a cool manly man is. The titular Venture Bros, Hank and Dean Venture are sheltered children who are constantly being chased around by men in costumes trying to kill them.

So the basic premise of the show lies in it's dark deconstruction of shows like Hardy Boys, Johnny Quest, these Tom Swift-esque stories where young boys go on adventures by showing the real dangers that children would be exposed to in that kind of life.

Between Johnny Quest, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, what is up with these pie-eyed youths chasing pirates and international diamond thieves and stuff like that? They would get their throats cut the minute that stumbled upon a hideout. And that would be the gag. - ART AND MAKING OF THE VENTURE BROS.

The show does explore Hank and Dean's trauma, but despite the title of the show they are not the main characters. The protagonist is Doctor Thaddeus Venture who himself is other victim of the Boy Adventuring Lifestyle.

Dr. Venture: "Who was, for 43 years, the only son of Dr. Jonas Venture? Who, from the ages of 3 to 17 accompanied him on hundreds of adventures the chilling memories of which rouse him from sleep in a cold sweat to this day?"

Thaddeus used to travel around the world with his father the super scientist Dr. Jonas Venture who was a far more successful super scientist and hero. He's the former star of the "Rusty Venture Show" a cartoon based off of his travels with his father.

Jonas who continually neglected and gaslit him throughout his childhood to the point of not allowing him to go to therapy. He gaslit him so hard there's a scene where he literally pretends to be Rusty's therapist to tell his son to stop complaining.

Rusty: "So I don't know. Sometimes I wish I could just be a normal kid and go out and play with kids my own age and stuff. The only people I get to hang out with are grown ups. The only time I get to leave the compound is to go someplace creepy, like the Bermuda triangle, and then I get kidnapped, by grown ups. And I'm not even sure I want to be a super scientist when I grow up anyway, but I feel all this pressure because of my fa-It feels weird telling you this stuff." Jonas: "Remember Rusty, in here I'm your doctor not your father. Now let's get back to it shall we. You were telling me how you're ungrateful for all the opportunities your father's given you and you blame me for all your problems."

Rusty is both a washed up child star, and a faiilure to his father's legacy. He never formed an identity outside of being the star of the Rusty Venture show or the son of Jonas Venture. He drags his kids all around the world on crazy super science adventures because that's what he knows.

The central premise of the Venture Bros is that Rusty is basically stuck and cannot meaningfully grow up into an adult and his own person, despite the fact he is now a single father trying to raise two sons. The central theme is about three generations of one family, and what it says about the complicated nature of family itself,

As Rusty is both the victim and the perpetrator of the abuse it makes sense he is the main character the story centers around because he's the central link between Jonas and the Twins.

The themes can be summarized in one line said towards the end of the show:

BEN "Just a watch. Tells the time in two time zones. That fourth hand there? Little date window? Those are called complications. Complications make a watch special. More complications the more value. Read the engraving Jonas put on the back there. Elige Tua. It's Latin for Choose your family. Blood doesn't make a family, love does. Choose your family and remember that complications make it special."

In other words it's a seven season long show on how family is complicated.

2. Keeping up with the Todorokis

My Hero Academia is about a lot of things, but the central premise is that in a society where he quirk you were born with can determine a lot about your life, one boy without a quirk sets out to prove that anyone can be a hero.

If Complciations make it special is the central theme of Venture Bros, then the central theme of My Hero Academia is two sentences. "All People are not created equal" and "Anyone can become someone's hero" both said at different points in the story. The story itself is about Deku's attempts to overcome the first statement, that he was not born equal but he deserves to be a hero as much as anyone else because he represents the true spirit of heroes. That heroes don't just show up to beat the big bad, a hero saves people.

The story isn't just about Deku though. We're not even going to talk about Deku in this post, but rather the Tritagonist Todoroki Shoto.

Todrooki is introduced as a foil to Deku someone who is born with an extremely powerful quirk, but who's been groomed from childhood to be a hero.

Shoto's father Enji Todoroki is All Might's ultimate rival. In the world of MHA hers are highly commercialized and ranked by popularity and achievements and Enji has been number two his entire life. He decided to conceive of an heir that could surpass All Might instead.

He purchased a wife with an ice quirk for an arranged marriage to selectively breed for a child with a fire and ice quirk. When Shoto was born he raised Shoto up as a hero, forcing him through grueling training sessions from a young age, and beating his wife when she tried to intervene for Shoto's sake.

That's a lot and I didn't even cover all of it. After this reveal of Shoto's backstory, Enji seems like he's only going to be a one note abuser to give Shoto a tragic backstory to angst over.

However, later on in the show Enji ifinally becomes the number one hero only to realize how empty his lifelong dream has been. He feels remorse for the family he destroyed in pursuit of that dream and starts wanting to make ammends. After this , Enji basically becomes the second most important character of the "Todoroki Family" arc. . A lot of focus is put on Enji's attempts at atonement to the point where some accuse him of stealing the spotlight from his victims.

These two families have a lot in common. They are basically families who are not allowed to have normal lives because the patriarch of the family is a costumed hero. The hero is also someone who is generally well-respected and is considered extremely successful in their chosen career, but are terrible to their family members. They are a hero to the world and a villain to their own family.

If there is a central premise to the Todoroki Family outside of MHA's analysis of what exactly makes a hero, it's this:

Todoroki Shoto: "As a hero this endeavor guy is pretty darn amazing. But it's just like Nasu said. I'm not ready to forgive you... for abusing mom. So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?"

The challenge is if Endeavor can choose his family over being a hero.

You can se the parallels in Venture Bros, as Rusty's main struggle is to try to be a father to his twin sons and help them grow up while at the same time struggling in this dangerous worlds of super science. Rusty is a super scientist constantly getting chased around by guys in costumes, but he's also a normal father trying to raise two sons into adulthood with basically no idea what he's doing because he doesn't have a frame of reference for how fathers are supposed to act or what a normal childhood would even look like.

The comic book super scientist, and the comic book hero are expected to act like real fathers to their sons.

However, as I said above in Rusty's case it's pretty uncontroversial that he is the main character of his story, whereas Enji starts fights within the fandom very time he appears onscreen.

Why is this exactly?

It's not because it's offensive to have an abuser be the main character, but rather how these characters are written and how well they fit into their stories. As I said Rusty is naturally the main character of his story because he's the central link in the chain of abuse, but should Enji be the main character of the Todorokis? Does he fit as well as Rusty?

3. Who's your Daddy?

So as stated above Enji and Rusty simultaneously exist in worlds where heroes exist and yet they are also normal people who are expected to provide for their families and raise their kids. They both exist in what is basically the marvel universe, though in the case of Venture Bros it's the Marvel Universe fused with old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Because of this world some of the things both Enji and Rusty do are things that have no real life parallels. For example Rusty once created a machine using the soul of a dead orphan as a power supply. You can't do that in real life so I'm not going to use that as an example.

Both of these stories are drawing on real life parallels of parental abuse I'm going to be talking about those to tell what kind of neglectful parent each is.

Rusty raised Hank and Dean Venture as a single parent with the assistance of their body guard Brock Samson. They live on the Venture Compound and only leave when Rusty needs to take a trip around the world. Obviously, there's not many real life examples of parents taking their kids into egypt to fight mummies.

However, Rusty's main flaw as a parent is how much he shelters his children not allowing them to make their own choices. They are homeschooled until they are eighteen and almost never allowed to leave their home unsupervised. Rusty could be compared to a helicopter parent that feels the need to micromanage every aspect of their child's lives, sheltering them so much they're unprepared for the real world.

Rusty is a weird combination of controlling and neglectful, because while he doesn't let either of his childre go to public school aor interact with kids their own age, he constantly exposes them to danger. He is often disinterested in his kid's lives and puts most of the burden of protecting them and raising them on his bodyguard Brock, while he chases after whatever super-science project is occupying him at the moment. He's neglectful to dangerous extents too considering they're always getting cahsed around by crazy men in costumes.

Also, he lets them die a lot.

Hank and Dean have died several times over, only to be replaced by clones that Rusty grew in a lab with all the same memories. Once again there's no real life parallel to this, but it's interesting in the context of the show itself.

How do these children survive being chased by villains and constantly kidnapped? The answer is, they don't.

They die, and then Rusty just clones a new pair of boys. That in itself should make Rusty irredeemable but the show presents it in a more ambiguous light.

Dean: "You're telling me I'm a clone, that I'm not even Dean, that I'm some stupid science experiment." Ben: "No, no, no. You're Dean. There's no other Dean, you're it, flesh and blood. Look I was conceived in the back seat of a packard, you were conceived in a tank. So what?" Dean: "So I have no mommy? No nothing!?" Ben: "Dean, you have it all wrong. You have a mommy, and your dad is your dad. They made you by getting drunk and forgetting to wear a condem like everybody else, and your dad loved you so much that when you got a boo-boo, he kissed it and made it all better and made it go away." Dean: "You brought me back to life." Ben: "Yeah okay, well you and your brother had some pretty big boo boos. Have a kid one day, Dean. Hold it's lifeless body in your arms, and then tell me how wrong it is. Jonas, me, and yes your dad, saw it as nothing more than a fucking band-aid for a really big boo boo."

In the story itself it brings up the argument that if any parent was holding their dying child in their arms they'd want to bring them back somehow. That in the logic of the show it's the same as using magic to revive someone from the dead. At the same time it's not because Rusty's let his sons die multiple times and never changed his lifestyle because he can just keep replacing them with clones.

Super-science aside, it is kind of a metaphor for Rusty's parenting as a whole that his sons have been cloned and replaced so many times they're perpetually sixteen and never allowed to grow up. Rusty's so neglectful he's never taken an interest in raising them and this is the result, they literally do not grow up.

It's also probably relevant to mention that Rusty himself is a clone and died and was replaced multiple times much like his sons, and the technology for cloning Hank and Dean was invented by his father Jonas.

However, after season 3 the cloning lab gets destroyed, and the body guard Brock leaves the family. With the safety net removed Rusty actually starts taking a more active role in both of his child's lives. This is basically a mirror to Endeavor's moment of realization after getting number one hero that his entire family has grown up without him and they all resent him.

Season four onwards Hank and Dean develop into their own people outside of Rusty. He responds to them in different ways but he's actually parenting them this time instead of shoving them away like annoyances. Hank becomes rebellious and fights back against Rusty for a long time after Brock leaves because he no longer has a role model and Rusty's response is to always get strict and punish him.

Whereas when Dean rebels not only does Rusty tolerate it, he also spends a lot more time in Dean's life trying to push him into the direction of being a super-scientist like him, supporting his efforts to go to college, while basically ignoring Hank. It's a running gag in the show that Dean is obviously Rusty's favorite, but even when playing favorites Rusty by this point in the show has reasons for why he's making those parenting choices.

Rusty: "Dean believes in this crap! He should have been Rusty Venture, Boy adventurer. Hank got this life thrown at him. And he fights against it. Just like I did."

Rusty playing favorites comes from an attempt to overcorrect for both children. He rejects Hank because he believes Hank doesn't want to be a boy adventure and therefore pushing Hank away from his family and the Venture lifestyle is what he needs. Whereas, he believes that Dean embraces the super scientist lifestyle and he tries to mentor Dean into another scientist like himself therefore he gives Dean most of his attention because he thinks Dean needs that guidance from him.

Of course, Rusty is totally wrong about his sons. If anything Hank is the one who wants to be an adventurer whereas Dean just wants a normal life away from his crazy family but parents often misunderstand their children. He's not actively malicious, he's just misguided in what he thinks is best for each of his sons. He's not really even playing favorites in this case he's choosing to parent his sons differently based on what he thinks is best for each of them, it's just in this case father doesn't know best.

Rusty isn't a stagnant character, but also there's no big redemption arc for him the way there is Endeavor. Rusty never narrates about how he needs to atone for his past mistakes. The result is Rusty is a far more amoral character than Endeavor because he's not trying to atone but the narrative also isn't trying to spin Rusty in any way. It's just showing you Rusty as he is, and with all the bad things he does he's still capable of loving his sons.

The question isn't really "Is Rusty redeemable?" but "When is Rusty gonna grow up?"

Then there's Endeavor (everyone starts booing) who is simultaneously a much better, and far worse person than Rusty.

Enji is honestly more comparable to Jonas, an incredibly successful hero who built a career and an empire in heroics and fame and then tried to force his son into that same lifestyle.He's the exploration of that same idea a supposedly great man with skeletons in his closet. Enji technically has saved thousands of people (such as Hawks one of the other main characters). A person who is so good at playing the role of a hero no one would ever expect there are skeletons in his closet.

"Rusty's father was more successful than you could ever imagine. Jonas Venture Sr. was a manipulative narcissist admired by the world for his scientific accomplishements and his hyper-masculine James Bond meets Doc Savage public persona. He's a geniuine villain who was able to take everything he wanted from the world by seamlessly fitting into the role of everyone's hero." [Source]

Jonas is like showing everything nasty about using someone like James Bond as a male power fantasy. He treats women like objects, he thinks he's aboe good and evil, he's effortlessly charming and suave and uses that to get what he wants out of people. Enji similiarly is everything that is wrong with the ideals of hero society. A society that glorifies flashy, strong quirks that are the best for taking down villains. The only person who even seems to care that he's number two is Enji himself, beause Enji is otherwise rich and succesful, a pillar of the hero community, and allowed to get away with a lot because of his position and influence.

Enji is at least a better hero than Rusty, because Rusty is an incompetent mad scientist who does stuff like mutate college interns into four armed freaks and build death rays.

However, as a parent strip away his status as a hero and Enji is little more than a show parent, pushing his children into a life they don't want in an attempt to live vicariously through them. Once again, resembling Jonas more than he really does Rusty. As Jonas forced Rusty to be a boy adventurer, and then made a cartoon out of it to make money like any show parent.

It's also the idea that generation put that kids into films and it was a very horrible selfish thing to do, they were doing trying to live out their own lives through their kids. That didn't exist before that was something that boomers brought to the world. "Oh I can't be these fun new things I'll make you be it." I think Jonas was a pioneer of throwing his kid at the world. I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. Jackson Publick, DVD Commentary

As stated above Enji gave up on his ambition to be the number one hero and so he decided to create a son with the right quirk to surpass All Might. He then pressured a woman into an arranged marriage, basically purchasing her from her parents and conceived four children until he got his designer baby.

Chapters 301-302 the wrong way to put out a fire, detail the slow descent of the Todoroki Household from Enji entering an arranged marriage with bad intention to create an ideal child to be heir to his legacy, into a full on child abuser. Enji is written like a normal person falling into a cycle of abuse, he never intended to hurt his children at first. Abusers aren't evil monsters, they're just people. Most abusers don't even think of themselves as abusers.

In fact he's shown positively bonding with his first born son who seems eager to learn to use his fire based quirk. He even mentions that he was alright at the time with the idea of Toya being the one to succeed him and letting go of his quirk experiment.

Enji only had kids to carry on his legacy, and only bonded with Toya because Toya was eager to participate in the training and become his heir. However, to give Enji some backstory it's quite clear the death of Enji's own father at a young age left him with no idea on how a father should act.

At a young age Enji witnessed his father attempt to save an innocent girl only to end up a burnt up corpse, and probably at that point conflated strength with being a good father. If his father had been strong enough he would have survived and continued to be a father to young Enji. At that point it's almost understandable that Enji thinks in his mind that earning his keep as the patriarch of the family, and being a powerful hero who will come home alive is the same thing as being a good father.

So Enji conflates masculine ideals of strength and heroism with being a good father, all the while not actually showing up to parent his kids. When Toya seemed like he could live up to Enji's expectations and be strong as a successor everything seemed fine.

However, Toya turned out to be disabled at which point everything in the household began to spiral out of control. After learning Toya could not use his quirk without burning himself, Enji tossed Toya aside and left raising him entirely up to Rei and then pressured her to have more children until one with his ideal quirk would be born.

Toya did not like his father ignoring him and began acting out for his attention. The response of everyone in the household was to politely tell Toya to shut up, because Enji while not being a parent is the money maker and authority in the household no one can stand up to him. When Toya's acting up got too out of hand, Enji would even hit Rei instead of just personally dealing with his son.

At the same time Shoto was finally born and being given his perfect heir after four attempts, Enji eagerly began training him. When Shoto resisted him, Enji stepped up to threats of physical violence and long grueling training sessions to force him to learn. All the while Toya continued to mentally spiral.

One day after his flames turned blue Toya asked his father to meet with him on Sekoto Peak. However that day Enji didn't show up, and Toya lost control of his flames starting a massive forest fire that killed him. Rather than changing anything after his firstborn's death, he doubled down and pushed Shoto even harder.

While being a far worse person, as a parent Rusty is far less malicious. He neglects his kids similarly to Enji at first, but when the safety net is removed and he can't keep cloning them anymore he actually does start taking a personal interest in their lives. Maybe it's too little too late because it's the 14th version of Hank and Dean but he does hear the wake up call and change his ways as a parent.

Enji always doubles down on ignoring his sons in favor of heroics when given the chance to be a father.

Even post redemption arc Enji behaves in the same way. There is no point in the story so far where Enji actively chooses to help or be a parent to one of his sons, when he can choose to be a part of a big important battle instead. Let me break out the list:

In the Pro Hero Arc Shoto sets the challenge for Enji to show what he can be like as a father rather than a hero.

In the internship arc Enji trains Shoto up as a hero but not a father. When he brings the family home to dinner they're attacked by a villain and Enji stands and watches as his son Natsuo gets kidnapped y a villain because he felt like it would be too awkward if he saved Natsuo because then Natsuo might feel inclined to forgive him.

In the War Arc aftewards Toya is revealed to be alive the entire time, and when given the chance to see his dead son come back to life, Enji not only does nothing but he sits and watches as his oldest son tries to kill his youngest without trying to talk to or appeal to Toya.

After the war arc, Enji doesn't bother looking for Toya and goes back to his job as a hero hunting down AFO. He also makes a promise to Shoto that they'll search for Toya together, only to break that promise multiple times.

In the second war arc, when Enji is given a chance to face Toya face to face, he instead sends his other son Shoto to fight him, while Enji fights against the big bad instead as the number one hero.

When Toya is literally dying and about to burn himself alive in front of him, Enji who has chosen to run away from Toya too many times by this point picks the murder suicide option and chooses to try dying with his son in a heroic sacrifice.

Every single chance he is given to act like a father, he acts like a hero instead. Enji Todoroki never steps out of the role of the hero Endeavor. Internally he's changed, yeah. He's remorseful now and realzies what he's done wrong. However, externally he hasn't. He doesn't do anything different. He neglected his family for his job his entire life so his way of making it up to them is... to keep going to his job.

The problem isn't whether or not he deserves to be redeemed, but rather that there's no change in his actions. Endeavor at the beginning of the story would have shown up to fight AFO in the war arc too, because being the hero is what he does. It's the only thing he does. The story never asks him to be anything other than a hero.

Which is I think a fundamental difference in Rusty and Enji in how they're written. Rusty is a flawed parent, but he's still a parent.

He does favor Dean over Hank, but that favoritism takes the form of him giving Hank more chores when Hank acts out, but when it's time for Dean to rebel giving him space and letting him have his own separate room in the attic. It's Rusty letting Dean have access to the family checkbook so he'll have spending money at college, but cutting Hank off from the checkbook because they agreed if Hank didn't want to go to college he needed to find a job to support himself.

Rusty is parenting these children. He's parenting them very badly, but he's still their parent. Enji never wanted to be a parent to begin with, he wanted to be his kid's abusive gymnastics coach. He wanted a prodigy that he could push and push until they won gold at the Olympics.

If you ignore the fantasy elements then you're left with how these men are shown interacting with their kids in their day to day lives.

Rusty has absolutely no idea what he's doing, so even when he has good intentions he screws up. However, he is making an effort to guide these kids.

Enji was an intentional manipulator more in line with Jonas. He controlled everything in the household, and was actively trying to groom Shoto into someone who would obediently carry on his legacy. He made the choice to isolate Shoto from his siblings so he'd have more control over him. Rusty keeps Dean and Hank away from kids their own age and from having a normal life because he never had a normal life. He doesn't even know what a normal life looks like.

Enji for most of his life didn't want kids, he wanted heirs. He even purchased a woman so his heirs would turn out with the right genetics, and tossed aside the ones that were disabled or born with the wrong quirk.

Rusty made the decision to become a parent on his own. In the last twist in the series it's revealed Dean and Hank had no mother. They were conceived in a test tube, raised in an artificial womb by Rusty himself. He is both their father and their mother. Kids were a deliberate decision on his part. He wanted to have a family, probably because his own childhood was so deprived of any familial love.

Dean: Okay, so who is our mom? Rusty: Seriously, Dean haven't we had enough family history for one day? I don't even know who my mom is. All you need to know is that the person who gave birth to you. I promise they do.

Remember as stated above the central thesis statement of Venture Bros is "Elige Tua - Choose your family". Rusty chose to bring those kids into the world because he wanted to be a father, it's an active choice his character makes.

Whereas the central statement of Endeavor's arc is "So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?" but we never witness Enji doing anything outside of being a hero.

Even post-redemption the only time he ever spends with Shoto is when they're either doing quirk training or working as heroes together. Toya as a character presents this challenge to him, because he's Enji's son, but he's also a villain who's killed innocent people. If he's acting as a hero he has to put a stop to Toya, but a father is supposed to put the safety and well-being of their children above everything else.

We never see Enji make that choice to be Toya's father over a hero. Which is why in story he comes off as a worse father than someone like Rusty, because he never makes any attempt to emotionally bond with his children.

Rusty will sit Hank and Dean down and tell them stories from his childhood. He'll find common ground with his sons to bond over because they've both been subjected to the boy adventurer lifestyle.

Rusty: Dean what are you doing? Dean: Hyperventilating into my knees. That smell a little like spit up... because I spit up a little. Rusty: Dean, you just baby burped onto a speed suit. Not a super scientist alive that hasn't coughed a little acid onto his speed suit. Dean: Really? Rusty: Why do you think these things are like 95 percent polyester? You can clean off fear-vomit with a wet nap. Dean: I thought you were used to this. Rusty: Dean I remember when the action man would wake me up with a gun pointed at my head. He'd just hold it there and pull the trigger. I'd hear the click really loud because it was right against my forehead. Dean: So it echoed. Rusty: Right, it sounded like he snapped one of my teeth out. Click! Then he'd go, "Not day Rusty. Not Today." Dean: Golly, and you took it because you had to? Rusty: No Dean, I took it because I was Rusty Venture. Boy adventurer. I didn't ask for this life, Dean, but it's mine. Sure, I fall down in the Speed Suit but I get up and Wet-Nap my puke off.

We never get any moments like this with Endeavor and his kids.

He only goes so far as apologizing for his past abuse. Yes, maybe it's cathartic hearing an abuser apologize for what they've done but that's not the question the story was asking. It wasn't asking "Can Endeavor be forgiven?" It was asking "What sort of dad are you going to be?"

The narrative challenged him to learn to act like a father to his family, and he never did. He stayed in the role of hero from beginning to end. It might be cathartic for his victims to hear him say sorry, but it's not good for Endeavor as a character because he hasn't changed and we've learned nothing about him. We already knew he was sorry at the beginning of the arc. Endeavor is sorry and knows he's done something wrong has already been established, but by Endeavor stepping out of the role of hero and acting like a father we could have learned something new about him or his character but no he stays the same from beginning to end.

They're both awful people but at the end of the day Rusty is a father, and Enji is not.

Stories are kind of like essays your English teacher used to force you to read. You need to make a thesis statement in the story itself, and then have evidence to support that thesis statement. The theme of Venture Bros is choose your family, and family is complicated, and in support of that theme we have Rusty choosing to connect with his sons. Jonas is basically nothing more than Rusty's biological father. Rusty's chosen a different way to connect with his sons, and he is their dad, and they can bond about the complicated lifestyle of being a Venture together.

The actions Enji takes in his story don't line up with his thesis statement. The Todoroki Family subplot is supposed to be about how one family was messed up because Enji only chose to have a family to further his career as a hero, and choosing his career again and again made things worse. The thesis statement was that Enji needed to choose to be a dad, but he's never shown doing that in the story.

So Enji as a character seems like he doesn't fit in with his narrative. Which is what I said at the very beginning about Rusty and why he works as a main character. Rusty is the center, because he's had this horrible life inflicted on him by his father, and he's in the process of raising his sons but he still has a chance to choose to be better.

Enji could also work as the center of his story, he has a chance to choose his family over his work as a hero, but he's ultimately not the one who does that, it's Shoto. Which yes Shoto is the main character of the Todoroki plotline, but by the end Enji's gotten as much screen time as his son. If the plot was going to focus on Shoto and his choices to begin with then he should have been the central point. You spent a lot of in story time asking this question with Enji on whether or not he's going to be able to choose to be a father over a hero, and who Enji is outside of being a hero only to not give the audience any answeres.

This again has nothing to do with Enji the person and whether I think he's likable or not, because Enji's a fictional character. He's an idea. If writing is communication, then a writer is trying to communciate some idea with every character in their novel. We're asking what is the author trying to say with Enji, and do they do a good job of getting that message across?

4. What's the Big Idea?

So the above section was mainly about the personal arcs of each characters: How do both of them fail at fatherhood and do they learn to be better fathers over the course of their narratives?

However, these characters are part of a much bigger world. How a character interacts with both the world around them, and the extended cast of characters is another way a story relates it's theme.

Venture Bros and My Hero Academia both exist in comic book worlds. There are people running around in costumes calling themselves heroes and villains and fighting each other on the streets.

In My Hero Academia heroes are basically professional athletes who sell sports drinks and pose for ads and compete for rankings on a big board, and heroics for the most part has been reduced to a day job for people with particularly powerful quirks. Heroism is an entire industry that's for profit, and run by the shadowy hero council who has far more power over their society than they let onto. You could compare Endeavor being the top hero to him is like a combination of being the best pro athlete, and also the best salaryman ever.

Ironically, the worldbuilding of Venture Bros is pretty similar. In Venture Bros. the villains are all unionized. There is a super villain trade union. It's a secret organization known as the guild of calamitous intent, which makes villainy into a bureaucracy.

All villains in the world have to register with the guild. If you're a part of the guild you receive the protection that the guild offers, as long as you follow the guilds rules and regulations. There's lots of small rules, like you can't torture someone who's having a medical issue, and if you're fighting a good guy and they have a doctor's appointment you have to let them go.

They even rank heroes and villains by their threat levels called "EMA LEVELS (equally matched aggression) and then assign you a hero who's about your equal so you won't get killed by someone way stronger than you. The guild basically decides who you're allowed to fight as a villain and picks a hero for you. The act of being someone's arch villain is called "arching" you show up to harass them once a week like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, fight them, then do it again next week. You're not allowed to kill your hero and you're supposed to follow specific rules. The tradeoff is the heroes won't kill you either, because you have guild protection.

The Monarch: I don't know, just keep it cat and mouse not cat and missile. JJ:: So it's a game? We fake fight? That's ridiculous. The Monarch: No, it's like fencing, it's about the art of the fight. JJ: Well, I'm about to deliver my killing stroke. Then what? Dr. Girlfriend: Then the guild steps up their game. You throw a rock, they throw a knife. You throw a knife, they come to your house when you're sleeping and murder your family. The Monarch: Look Dr. Venture you call the guild and you get the damn rulebook, I'll be waiting.

The justification for why the guild exists is that in world if you didn't give the villains a system with a bunch of rules, then you'd have a bunch of crazy people in costumes running around causing havoc.

Brock: You wanna what? Shoot him? And all his men and his wife? You could steal his cattle, too. Maybe burn his village down? JJ: It's an antiquated system. I mean my father did this fake arch enemy nonsense in the sxities. Maybe my brother is good with this namby pamby guy in a costume chases you around nonsense, but I'm not. Brock: Hey no disrespect Jonas, but it isn't so easy. These guys like their system. It's what they do. You take that away and you're looking at a bunch of pissed off nut bags with ray guns, and giant -- i don't know, a giant octopus / tank with laser eyes.

The villains and the OSI (who are like the GI JOE) of this world have signed a very long and detailed treaty that keeps both sides in a cold world stalemate and lets them fight every week like how the good guys and bad guys fight constantly while maintaining a status quo where neither side wins.

In MHA heroics is a commodity. It's commercialized and sold to the public. Heroes are like professional athletes selling you sports drinks, it's a spectacle to the public, and it's even intentionally made to be that way by the Hero Commission who use heroes as a bright shining light to distract the public while they do shady things like assassinate antigovernmental protestors from behind the scenes. The entire of hero society in MHA is built on the spectacle of heroes.

In Venture Bros heroes and villains are a spectacle too. It's just a job to them. Heroes and villains both show up to work, get in their costumes, fight each other and then go home. In Season 6 of Venture Bros, a parody of the Avengers is actively charging people to provide their services as heroes in the city of New York and you have to sign up for a protection plan if you want to get saved. Then the local mob boss takes a cut of the protection money they're charging.

In both settings the ideas of heroes exist, comic books exist, but the heroes themselves are incredibly mundane, they're just people showing up to jobs and making money for the most part. The only difference really is that in MHA the villains are societal rejects and trauma victims, whereas in Venture Bros they've unionized. In Venture Bros the villains and heroes basically fake fight under strict rules. Even in MHA though the villains need to exist in order to give the heroes someone to fight in front of the public. "Villain" is an actual legal term for a certain kind of quirk criminals with more than three strikes who gets sent to a super max prison if they're caught.

Both of these works are making comic book heroes and villains seem a lot more mundane by deconstructing them with this layer of realism. By making the roles of "hero" and "villain" seem much more mundane, and therefore more human, it also asks us to look at the characters who call themselves heroes and villains as human beings.

The Venture Bros like many richer takes on superhero stories really likes to play with the concept of identity. It's the idea that Good and Evil, Heroes and Villains, are just roles we play. They're not something fundamental or innate they're constructed by the world around us. In the show the main villainous organization the GCI is really just a bureaucracy of larpers sustaining their violent rolelplaying through organized crime. Rich and powerful lunatics who built the world around a game they wanted to play. There's really nothing of substance keeping Rusty on the "Good Guy" side. The good guys are also a mix and match. Shield, GI JOE, FBI. Another exmaple of people who never grew up. Only these people are running things, playing out their childhood power fantasies. They're barely less insane and blood thirsty than the bad guys. So what's even the point of being a good guy in the first place? That's the world Rusty is caught between...[x]

MHA and Venture Bros are both works that feature societies that divide people into two distinct categories "hero" and "villain" and then go on to show that these two categories are not as black and white as they would like us to believe.

Venture Bros features Brock Samson, a character who is ostensibly on the side of the good guys who also highest body count of nameless henchman who we see him gleefully kill onscreen over and over again. There are members of the OSI who are just as trigger happy as the guild so what's the difference between them besides what they've decided to personally identify as? On one side you have the Larpers who are roleplaying villainy, and on the other you have the military soliders who think they're real life GI JOES.

In My Hero Academia you have heroes who are essentially state sponsored peace keepers who suppress anyone who disrupts the status quo with violence, and villains who are rejected from that status quo who eventually turn into violent terrorists. While yes heroes have the responsibility of protecting innocent civilians, most of what heroes do is fight villains, in fact heroes with quirks suited to rescuing people aren't nearly as famous as ones with flashy violent quirks like Endeavor.

You have two sides and one calls themselves villains and the others heroes, but they both use extreme violence as a way to accomplish their goals.

Rusty and Enji are two characters who are caught between these two categories which aren't as distinct and separate as we'd like to believe they are.

Enji is basically the first deconstruction of heroes in MHA. He's a hero who's not interested in saving people, but instead wants to be the strongest and does everything in pursuit of selfish glory.

He's simultaneously the hero with the single most resolved cases in history, but at the same time he's always number two to All Might because he's not "super" enough of a super hero. In a manga where Deku's natural desire to save others make him a candidate to b ahero even without a quirk, we have a character who's a hero for purely selfish reasons. One that only cares about having the strongest quirk because being the best is all that matters to Enji.

In many ways the way Enji treats his family is more like a villain than a hero. Main villain AFO himself comments at one point he wasn't able to manipulate Toya, because his father did too good of a job manipulating him already. In fact you can draw a parallel between his actions of manipulating and grooming Shoto to be his heir, to how AFO raised orphaned child Shigaraki Tomura as his successor.

This is a good use of Enji's character, because making it hard to label him as hero and villain makes us think about who he is as a person instead.

There's an entire episode of Venture Bros dedicated to a villain Mentor named Dr. Henry Killinger, showing up and basically mentoring Rusty Venture when he's at a low point. He gives Rusty money, workers, gets his business up and running again and at the very end reveals that he's setting Rusty up to be a villain to arch his brother as a hero. Rusty is tempted with the idea that he'd make a much more successful villain than he ever would be a hero (because as a hero he's kind of just a loser) but he still chooses to be a hero at the end of the story because he doesn't want to fight his brother.

At which point his mentor, all his hired men, all just walk off and he loses all the money he would have gained and he goes back to being a mediocre super-scientist.

"Doc has the whole thing laid out for him clear as day. This role is here for you. Waiting for you to claim it. You have your nemesis. You have your means. You have the ability and the pain. You can do this and you'd be good at it. And Rusty can look at all of that, everything he's been through and say, "Yeah... but I don't wanna be evil." [x]

Rusty walks away from the chance to be a villain, but he's not exactly a hero either. He runs illegal cloning farms, he does lots of unethical scientific stuff and he's not even remotely the hero his father was considered to be.

Because he doesn't fit well into the category of hero or villain, the show instead asks you to evaluate who Rusty is as a person. He's one of the few characters in the show that's capable of stepping out of those categories.

"That's the great thing about him. Sometimes being disillusioned just means you can see through the whole thing. Sure the whole super science villain game feels stupid. It's not going anywhere. No one's accomplishing anything. It's all violence and roleplay. But at the end of the day it's still real. And it still means something to us. Choosing to be a villain means choosing to be a bad guy. It means relinquishing the premise that you could ever do better, ever actually help anyone. And that's not who Rusty is. He's a scum-bag, but he's a grown up. Even in a show with brilliant characters, old pros, and actual supermen, Rusty is the adult. And adults don't put on rubber masks and terrorize people for fun because that would be fucking silly." - [x]

Rusty spent his entire childhood being terrorized by guys in costumes, so he's now the cynical straight man pointing out how ridiculous this all is. He's the one normal person among the crazies.

Rusty is just too incompetent to ever be like his father. Jonas Venture is scum bag, but he's also a well-respected scientist and a world wide hero. Everyone in the scientific community thinks that Rusty is a joke, and his friends just barely put up with him

Jonas gets away with it because he perfectly fit what society's idea of a hyper masculine strong hero was, and no one questioned it or how he treated his son, whereas because balding, impotent, pathetic Rusty falls so short of toxic masculinity's standards he doesn't get the same respect or leeway that Jonas did. Jonas Venture continually got away with murder, and Rusty can't get away with anything.

He's a pill-popping, middle aged man who ran his father's business empire into the ground who continually gets laughed out of any scientific conference he tries to attend.

He can't be a hero. He can't be his father. He fall short of toxic masculinity's standards. He falls short of everyone's standards. The only way in which he's better than Jonas is that he's a much better father to both of his sons. His greatest triumphs as a character come from bonding with Hank and Dean. Jonas for all his accomplishments wasn't capable of bonding with Rusty because he didn't really care about anyone but himself. Jonas Venture is someone who perfectly fit society's standards of toxic masculinity, but he wasn't a person outside of that.

"Jonas Sr realized this too, but to him, it was a joke. To him it meant being above everyone. Rusty can't be above everyone so he has to meet them at eye level. Part of the bitterness of growing up is realizing that we're all just chidlren who got old. No one knows what they're doing and when you come to terms with that you can look down on people or give them the respect everyone deserves. How you treat children says a lot about how you treat people which in turn says a lot about you." [x]

Now returning to Endeavor we run into the same problem that we did earlier. This whole post is comparing Rusty and Endeavor because they are the protagonists, but Endeavor is far more like Jonas. He's someone who sees through the hero system and only cares about climbing to the top out of his own self interest. He knows it's a game, but he wants to win at the game.

Enji even sort of looks like Jonas.

They're both extremely bulky men at peak levels of physical fitness. Meanwhile Rusty is a balding, short and out of shape middle aged man.

In story Jonas is still widley beloved by the public and is constantly praised, while no one but Rusty is aware of his faults, but there's a reason for that. Jonas is someone who is basically allowed to do anything he wants, because the patriarchy means all of society is built around letting men like Jonas succeed.

Jonas is also someone who literally uses his position as a hero to manipulate people into getting what he wants and glorify himself.

Jonas can casually destroy people's lives, all while still believing he's the good guy because in his world being good guy is just a role to play and he plays it well. One of the best three episodes of the series is the Morphic Trilogy, the opening to season 7 where some of Jonas's past crimes are revealed.

In the past he tricked a married man into making a sex tape with him, and then when that man Don Carraldo aka the Blue Morpho turned out to regret that, he used the tape to constantly blackmail him into doing his dirty work. Killing people in secret while Jonas Venture remained Squeaky clean. After years of being forced to act as a mercenary for Jonas, the Blue Morpho died in a plane crash. Jonas then revived his best friend as a cyborg. He got bored of his new cyborg within a few months and reassigned him to babysit his son Rusty. The cyborg glitched and started to strangle Rusty and then he snaps his friends neck, and throws the cyborg away in the garbage.

Jonas can just completely destroy a man's life because he can. Because everyone around him enables him and no one is going to stop him. Because this is how people in power act when they're given too much power. Because might does not make right.

He's the gold standard. He's the ideal. Who would question him?

Enji occupies a similar position in the story, where he fits the role of a hero so well that even when his family abuse is revealed to the public basically every character and their mom is tripping over themselves to defend him.

Jonas is constantly praised in story years after his death and every bad thing he's done is swept under the rug, but that's because number one Jonas was a manipulative monster, and number two it shows toxic masculinity is a false ideal. This is how Jonas who everyone thinks is the ideal man's man, really acts. This is what he gets away with it, because the thing society glorifies are toxic and bad.

When people bend over backwards to defend Endeavor what does it say exactly? Because we're supposed to believe that Enji's willing to work for redemption even if people don't forgive him. We're not supposed to think Enji is a manipulative monster intentionally twisting people around his finger like Jonas was.

There are some ways Enji is like Jonas, especially in his backstory. He did use his money and influence to buy a woman. Rei was definitely not going to get the option of divorcing him if she actually wanted to leave.

However, in the present time we don't see Enji doing the kind of manipulation that Jonas does, because really he doesn't have to. Hawks does it for him. There is a character in the narrative named Takami Keigo / Hawks who is a little boy that Enji indirectly saved as a child by putting his father in prison. Because of this he is obsessed with making Endeavor live up to the hero he imagined him to be when he was young, and does everything he can to prop Enji up behind the scenes and make him look like that hero to the public.

Hawks is a whole other can of worms, but in effect what this means is there is someone manipulating public opinion in favor of Endeavor so he'll be able to shine in spite of the numerous skeletons in his closet, it's just not Endeavor himself. Hawks also takes away a lot of the active decisions on Endeavor's part. When Endeavor chooses to ignore Toya in the latter part of the story, it's not Endeavor's choice, he's just following Hawks plan to fight AFO. When Endeavor makes a public apology, Hawks is the one who wrote it for him.

The result is that Endeavor comes off as less of a Jonas, after all Hawks is the one manipulating his public image. On the other hand, he's also less good of a character because he's not making choices anymore. It'd be better If Enji was trying to manipulate the public into forgiving him in the wake of his scandal, because that'd be an active choice on his part. When a character makes a choice it tells us something about who that character is.

Horikoshi doesn't want us to think that Enji is the kind of selfish monster that Jonas is, but then who is he supposed to be?

The entire point of this post is to compare Enji to Rusty, but Enji's far too successful to be Rusty. Rusty is a failure in basically everything he set out to do in life. He's the butt of the series jokes. He's the victim in as many ways as he's the perpetrator. He had a lot of money and then wasted it all. None of his inventions are succesful. The scientific community thinks he's a joke, or they don't even know who he is. Women won't even go near him. No one ever defends him. At no point in the story does someone stop and say "Hey, Hank I know your dad's an asshole but he's really good at science so that makes it okay."

Rusty's such a failure at being a hero that he's forced to be a person. He's as equally narcissticic and toxic as his father, he treats women like objects for sex and comfort like his father does, he just doesn't get away with it. You can't point to some heroic feat of his that justifies his toxic behavior because he doesn't have any.

The story however can't stop singing Enji's praises for what a good hero he is. He's never forced to step out of the role of hero and be a person like Rusty is, and because of that the message of his character becomes confused.

Are we supposed to think he's a manipulative narcissist like Jonas is? Are we supposed to think he's an incredibly flawed individual trying to figure out how to be a father late into his kid's lives like Rusty?

Rusty has a clear role in his story, and what the author wants to say with Enji is unclear.

Everyone praises Jonas to death and no one can see him for the terrible purpose he is, because that's the point. Venture Bros is about failure. It's about the death of the space ag optimisme. It's about how much the boomer generation sucked.

From the Radiant is the Baboon Heart Commentary. Question: Did Jonas only keep Rusty around for the press and his cloning tech or did he actually care about him? Answer: . The show has a villain called the monarch, but if you watch all the show the villain is Jonas Venture Sr. He is a bad dad. What you need to realize is that in this kind of baby boomers gen x millenials kind of thing we are of the generation that had bad parents. For the good and the bad of it. The good was we were all left alone by our parents, and we had a freedom in our thought that I don't think the millennials have. Because we made the millennials, and we were like You know what Our parents suck and we're gonna be great parents." And they helicoptered them and they gave playdates. [...] I did hate the boomers, they were awful fathers they were terrible people they did horrible things to our world, and at the time they were celebrated as good people. They were a bunch of hippies and they failed and they did everything wrong that they wanted to fix [...]. You and I are lost people we observed our generation. We are fully aware of it. We observed our parents generation. My actual father was a classic distant father, very bright had a lot of work to do, but I observed that generation and the way that toxic masculinity was set in stone. Just branded onto their tombstone. Toxic masculinity. Our generation grew up wanting to be adults, childhood was something that was not examined. When people were growing up we wanted to be grown ups, we wanted to wear suits, it was something you guys don't have. It was a very different way to grow up. So we wanted to be like this generation that immediately we looked at and went oh my god they're monsters. So Jonas Venture Sr. is a monster.

Jonas is a commentary on how much the boomer generation is glorified, and how much they suck if you look at them critically at all. It's written by authors who were observing basically three different generations of parenting, the way boomers parented, the ways Gen-Xers did in response to that and now the way millennials act as they reach adulthood. Rusty can't escape Jonas' shadow because Toxic Masculinity is set in stone.

The role of Jonas in the story is to serve as an antagonist to Rusty and be the cause of Rusty's struggles, and also his impetus to change because Rusty doesn't want to be like his father. Rusty and Jonas both exist as characters to show the author's observations on parenting through the generations, and yeah it's a very american idea of parenting and family but it's you know... a cartoon made in america.

What is Endeavor's role of the story? If he's a criticism of toxic masculinity he's not criticized enough, because the story spends just as much time glorifying him his obsession with strength and power as it does criticizing him. There's no scenes like this for Rusty to show off how cool he is, or how determined. The story wants you to believe that there's something redeeming in the fact that Enji is always struggling to be the greatest, even though his obsession with being number one is what caused him to abuse his family in the first place

It's criticizing and praising Enji's obsession with power in the same breath, because My Hero Academia can't fully deconstruct toxic masculinity the way that Venture Bros can. It keeps trying to find something redeemable in Endeavor's toxic pursuit of power, but that's the whole point. Toxic masculinity isn't redeemable, because toxic masculinity is toxic. There's nothing wrong with masculinity itself, or the values people traditionally consider masculine but the kind of hyper-aggressive pursuit of physical strength Endeavor chases after is toxic masculinity. In Endeavor's mind men are warriors, protectors and providers and nothing else, and he never learns to be anything else either.

MHA would never treat Endeavor the way Vbros treats Rusty, constantly humiliating him or making him the butt of jokes. It would never make Enji out to be weak or pathetic the way Rusty is.

The central concept of Endeavor is struggle. His chosen hero nae "Endeavor" means to try hard to achieve something. His entire character is based around the concept of struggle. His central struggle is that he's a normal guy trying to compete with a superhero like all might, and everything he does he struggles with even if that struggle is pointless.

However, in the actual narrative itself he doesn't struggle. He definitely doesn't struggle the way Rusty does. Rusty's a lazy, incompetent, and entitled man sitting on a pile of money he didn't earn who thinks he's entitled to more who fails at all he sets out to achieve. Rusty never gets what he wants, and even when he does get what he wants like when his brother leaves him a billion dollar corporation in his will, he bankrupts that company in two seasons. Struggle means that the world isn't going to give you what you want and you keep trying anyway.

Endeavor's never subjected to nearly the same amount of narrative punishment that Rusty is. He's still well-respected. People defend him. He fights in all the major battles of the series and gets victories. No one's disgusted when they hear that he's a wife beater. We are told that he struggles, that the central concept of his character is struggle, but the narrative keeps handing him wins and cool moments.

As I've said above several times, Enji's never really forced to step out of the role as hero because he's not a failure the way Rusty is.

My Hero Academia hits some of the same notes as Venture Bros. It's criticizing apanese hegemonic masculinity, specifically that of salaryman masculinity and the way men in japan completely put their careers over their families. Read about it here in this convenient power point presentation. Enji is essentially an incredibly successful salaryman who has completely disappeared from his kid's lives in order to earn money and success and believes that he's still entitled to be a father because he's performed adequately in his role as earner of the household.

The story does show how giving too much power to the patriarch of a household can cause a house to fall apart. It shows that traditional family roles aren't all they're cracked up to be. Enji is assigned the role of father but he doesn't live up to it. The very rigid and traditional Todoroki Household crumbles because basically everyone fails to live up to their roles. The father isn't present. The mother isn't a good caretaker. The first born is defective. The youngest is given all the responsibility of the first born. No one is able to live up to those roles because maybe those rigid set in stone roles shouldn't exist in the first place.

Once again though, that's all in the backstory. Enji never changes from the Pro Hero Arc to his last showdown with Toya. The story never tells us anything about who Enji is as a person. Therefore, it also never comments on Enji's role as the patriarch. What is Horikoshi using Enji to say about patriarchy besides... it exists?

The story shows you how destructive the idea of patriarchy that Enji represents can be in the backstory, but because Enji doesn't do much for 90 percent of the story it never says anything about how Enji can learn to be a father or if it's even possible for him to be a father this late in the game. Because Enji's story isn't about fatherhood ultimately, it's about him becoming a less selfish hero.

Which might just be a problem with the whole of MHA. Venture Bros is about who the characters are outside of their identity as heroes and villains, but MHA is ultimately more about the optimism of heroes and what it means to be a hero than these characters personal lives.

Rusty is never going to be as sucessful as his father. He's always going to be mediocre, ad even if he's sympathetic he's still a scum bag. However, Rusty has one thing his father doesn't have which are his two sons who he made a deliberate decision to get closer to. Unlike a serial user of people Jonas, Rusty has the ability to actually love and care for people and he chooses to make those connections.

Endeavor never chooses to be a father. He didn't choose to go to Toya's side. He was too busy being a hero and fighting the big bad. As a result of that we never learn anything about Enji as a character outside of being a hero because he never chose to be anything other than a hero.

He also never failed. As I said the narrative kept handing him wins. You'd think never choosing to see Toya would mean he can't save Toya in the end, but in the end of the story Toya's just fine. There are no consequences to his choices. He's revealed to be an abuser to the public but he gets to keep being a hero. Enji never really fails in some big way that forces him to rfelect and change on his actions, so he just keeps doing the same thing from beginning to end.

Which is why Enji doesn't work as a character compared to Rusty. He doesn't fail. He's supposed to be a flawed protagonist struggling against himself, but he never really loses. He's too much like Jonas and not enough like Rusty.

"I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. He was just a shitty parent. When he went to bed he was just, he was moral, and he was fighting the good fight. When he woke up he ignored his son and made his son do terrible things. He voted for nixon like a good american. He was a winner and our show is not about winners. Our show is about losers and people we love." Jackson Publick. n

[yizukikhons]

Gothica Graysons (Title to be determined)

So this story is based off of this post where Danny learns acrobatics from the Graysons. This story is quickly developing into a multi-chap fic, just for the Circus Gothica arc. I don't know where this will go afterwards-i don't know enough about batman-but anyone is willing to take this story and use it for their own story!

The Graysons had been a part of this Circus for a while now. They can't quite remember when they left Haly's circus or why. Something happened. Something....

"Performing death defying stunts without the aid of a net...!"

"Dad!"

They had joined circus Gothica. It was an odd choice, their aesthetic dark and edgy in a way that they didn't really appreciate. It was boring too, the days blending into one another in a way that left them uncertain of how long they had been with the troupe. The other members looked just as bored as them too, their eyes glazed over in the same red haze that plagued their own vision. Not to mention the ringmaster was a total ass. Why they stayed....

you will listen to me minions

Well, it wasn't like they knew where their old troupe was, much less had the time to find them. So even though she and her husband didn't like it, they didn't exactly have anywhere to go.

They did though. There was someone they needed to find....

you'll always be our special little robin...

Mary shook herself as she and her husband got ready for their act. It really was terribly boring here, they didn't even remember changing into their costumes....

That didn't matter. They had an audience to entertain.

"Presenting! Here from beyond the veil to give you a ghoulish performance, the late Flying Graysons!"

That was their cue. Mary plastered a smile onto her face as she and John swung into the arena, flipping over each other in a practiced routine that they knew by heart. The audience beneath roared in excitement as they passed between trapezes, flying over and under each other, dancing through the air effortlessly. It was routine at this point, even if it felt like there was a strange gap in their routine, like there should be someone else...

Mary's eyes caught on a boy.

There wasn't anything special about him. He looked like any other normal teenager. The only thing that made him stand out was that he wasn't dressed like all the others in the audience, his white and red shirt popping out starkly against the sea of black shirts and silver spikes. There wasn't anything noteworthy about him.

But his appearance still made her pause mid-leap, hovering for just a moment in the air in the way only a ghost a true acrobat could, drinking in his raven black hair and ice blue eyes. Eyes that were swiftly clouding over with the same red haze that still tinged her vision. For the first time in a while Mary felt dread pool in her gut in a way that she hadn't felt since she was alive performing their routine with her son for the very first time.

Her son...her son?

"Robin..." she whispered, staring into the red eyes of her boy. Yes, how could she have forgotten? Robin, their son.

***

Sam regretted going to Circus Gothica.

That was never something she would've thought she'd say, but never say never and all that.

"Danny!"

It was just supposed to be a fun outing. A way for her to stick it to her parents, enjoy something she liked for a change, and hang with her friends.

"Danny?!" And it had been at first. Danny and Tucker didn't really get the goth scene, but they were supportive of her interests (when it didn't involve her activism, or her ultra-recyclo-vegetarianism, or anything that would affect them personally, but she was working on it) which was more than could be said about her parents. They were so caught up in maintaining their reputation that they didn't truly care about anything else.

"Danny, where are you?!"

The performance was incredible. The acts had been dark, gloomy, and spoke to her in a way nothing else had. Every person had put on a show that defied human capability-especially the trapeze artists who Sam swore flew through the air like true ghosts could-and even Tucker had been 'oohing' and 'ahing' throughout. It was one of the best experiences she'd ever had, and one she wouldn't soon forget. After the performance she'd finally torn her eyes from the arena and turned to look at her two friends, only to just see Tucker beside her and Danny nowhere in sight.

"C'mon, this isn't funny anymore!"

She'd been angry at first, thinking he'd gotten bored and ditched them (he got so easily distracted), but when they exited the tent and still couldn't find him...that's when they'd started to worry.

When they got home and found their parents angrily waiting for them with no Danny in sight...that's when they started realize that something had gone horribly wrong.

"Danny!"

***

Freakshow had been surprised when the boy had shown up in the tents after the performance. At first, he thought he had been found out by a child too curious for his own good. He'd been about to call for one of his dullard of a minions when he'd noticed the red eyes and assumed that one of them had already overshadowed the fool. When he'd ordered him out of the tent, the boy had turned around to leave. When he'd screamed that he was talking to the ghost, the most amazing, awful thing happened.

The boy became one.

A white ring of ectoplasmic light formed around him and split, transforming the boy into a specter that hovered in front of him, still staring at him with red eyes and the same blank expression that all his minions did.

The boy was a ghost.

This boy had managed to do the one thing he'd always craved, turned himself into one of the beings of the other side. The one thing he'd cried and sobbed about every night as his parents ignored another birthday, holiday, school performance in favor of their research, wishing more than anything that he could be the one thing that they cared more than anything about...

He'd struck him. He'd kicked and punched and screamed, demanding to know how he'd done it. When the answer had come it only made him angrier. Science. The boy's idiotic parents had made a portal to the Infinite Realms through science, the one thing his parents never studied. The one subject he'd struggled in more than anything else, too steeped in the occult and mysticism to ever truly grasp it. The boy was beginning to turn black and blue when a snarl erupted from behind him and the Grayson specters leaped between him and the ghost child, eyes completely red and expressions filled with a rage that broke through the thrall of the Pret Niyantran. Silently, Lydia materialized between him and the two infuriated spirits, her aura thick in the air, intimidating them into submission (or at least not attacking him) until he composed himself. His hands were white around the staff as he exerted his will. The red crystal glowed as it amplified his will, strengthening his mind until the ghosts had no choice but to fall back under his thrall. Immediately the enraged expressions disappeared, their eyes returning to their original shape and their bodies becoming lax, awaiting his commands. He ordered them out of the tent, telling them to take the abomination with them. If his dim-witted minions cared for the child so much, then they could be responsible for him. He couldn't stand to look at the demon who'd achieved his greatest wish for a moment longer. Without a word, all three left, phasing through the cloth walls as if they weren't even there. The stab of envy as he watched the display of power was no stranger to him, but it's sharpness at now knowing there was a way to become one of them that didn't involve his own death...that he was unprepared for. He threw the table when he felt the freezing touch of Lydia against his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. He screamed at her to get out, uncaring about the concerned look she gave him before turning to leave as well. He didn't want to be pitied by the lesser beings under his command. He wouldn't. His hands shook with rage, only steadying whenever they landed on something solid before it was halfway across the tent. The sounds of shattering glass and breaking wood fell on deaf ears as he raged. And if his minions stayed quiet in their tents? Then all the better.

He didn't want to see any filthy ghosts right now.

***

John watched as his wife cooed over their son, brushing his hair in an attempt to get it to lie flat. He chuckled as each time, the untidy mop would poof up higher and higher, loaded with static charge from being run through with the natural bristle brush so many times. It had been so long since their boy had been with them and she was smothering him in affection in an effort to make up for the lost time. Mary hadn't tried this hard to style their boys hair since his sixth birthday when they had had enough money to take their boy somewhere nice. That had been a very productive season-he was getting off track, lost in nostalgia the same way his wife was. His sons red eyes watched him back, blank in a way that concerned him. The ringmaster didn't like their son. He could see it in the way his eyes narrowed at the boy every time he crossed his sight. The way his teeth grit and his hands tightened on the staff he always carried with him, strangling the wood like he wanted to strangle something else.

John never let him have that opportunity. He still remembered the feeling of something being wrong, wrong, wrong, of rushing towards that feeling only to see the ringmaster standing over their little Robin, hand raised to strike him. The all encompassing fury that had overtaken him in that moment, a snarl he hadn't known he was capable of ripping itself out of his throat as he put himself between their son and the ringmaster. What happened after that was a blur. The next thing he remembered was floating out of the circus and back towards town. His wife and child trailed behind him as they made their way to the jewelry store and began loading the sacks they had been provided with as many valuables as possible. John didn't know why they were stealing these things. A small midwestern town wouldn't have anything of higher quality, so it wasn't like the ringmaster would be getting a significant amount of whatever was stolen here. Most of the precious metals were of low quality, and all the gems were lab grown. Plus, it just felt...wrong. He and Mary were carnies, Romani born and raised. There were more honest ways of swindling peoples money than stealing it from their banks. It was so...petty.

Not that the ringmaster would listen to any of them. Instead, John made sure his son stayed near as they phased through the walls and grabbed everything they could before flying back towards the circus. The police gave a valiant chase, but it was hard to track something that could walk through walls, disappear, and fly. It wasn't long before the wailing of the sirens faded away and the three of them landed in Freakshow's tent. The heavy sacks of ill-gotten goods fell from their lax fingers and smashed into the bare ground, metal clinking against metal and the hissing rattle of gems smaller than a pin shifting in the bags as they settled on the ground. The ringmaster seemed pleased as he scooped up their spoils and ran them through his fingers, though he quickly snarled at the three of them to leave afterwards. John was only too happy to oblige.

He and Mary quickly made their way to the circus arena to begin practicing their routine. It had been so long since all three of them had worked together, and they needed to rehearse as much as possible before their next performance. It's a good thing they decide to do this too, as their son can't seem to remember any of the routine at all. Or any acrobatic skills. What had the boy been doing all this time? He and Mary have to start him on the basics all over again. They share a look as their boy swings clumsily across the arena. So much for doing their normal act. They'd have to bring out their first routine they did when D-when their little Robin was 4, They'd have to account for his bigger size and weight, but the routine was deliberately simple so that even a beginner could do it. John slowly floats up to their sons height and begins giving him pointers, showing him how to hold the trapeze bars so he wouldn't slip, how to angle his body so that his weight swings him across the arena instead of using his muscles and tiring himself out too quickly. His little Robin soaks up the lessons like a sponge, his body quickly remembering the old lessons. Once sure that their boy wouldn't hurt himself, John begins showing him the routine for tonight's performance.

"Danny!" The voice startles the three of them out of practice and they all turn to look down at the ground. A girl with black hair is staring up at them with wide, purple eyes, her face open with shock and horror. She stands, rooted to the ground with open dismay.

"Dude! What are you doing?!" The boy next to her cries, not frozen with emotions like his friend. "Everyone's looking for you! Your parents are worried sick!" John tilted his head in confusion at the boy. How could their sons parents be worried? They were right here; and their boy's name wasn't Danny. It was...it was...It didn't matter. Their son was here now. There was no need to be looking for him now that he was finally back where he belonged.

"My...parents?" Robin croaked-the first words he'd said since that first night- and glanced towards him and his mother with his own confusion and incredulity, obviously not understanding any more than they did.

"Yeah dude! Jazz is worried sick! She's convinced you've been kidnapped!" The dark-skinned boy continues, glaring up at their son as if he was responsible for this family worrying themselves to death.

"Jazz..." Their boy whispers, his eyes gaining awareness, the red color flickering, being replaced by toxic green and icy blue. His face spasming with pain and screwing up as though he's trying to remember something. "Fight it Danny!" The girl screams, finally coming out of her stupor and marching towards the center pole that hold the tent up as if she's going to climb the ladder and drag their son down herself. "Don't let these ghosts brainwash you! We're your friends!" "Ghosts don't have friends," the ringmaster called out. Everyone in the room tensed, turning to look in his direction and he strutted into the arena, Lydia trailing behind him as a silent bodyguard, a quiet threat. "But how interesting it is to see two little vermin sneak in unannounced," he sneered, peering down his nose at them. Both the teens crouched into fighting stances, ready to run at a moments notice. "Well minion? Don't just stand there. Introduce us." The girl locked up in fury, looking ready to tear the ringmaster to shreds. The boy in the red hat wasn't far behind her. Robin stayed silent, his eyes still flickering rapidly between blistering green and blank red.

"Minion? Danny isn't your slave! He's his own person!" The girl shouted, marching forward and getting in the ringmasters face in an effort to intimidate him. Unfortunately her head barely came up to the ringmasters' chest, so it wasn't very effective.

"I don't remember talking to you little girl," the man hissed, his pale, human red eyes glaring down at her hatefully. "I asked you a question you dolt." The ringmasters hand tightened on his staff and the orb on top brightened, the dizzying red color washing every other thought out of John's head. "Answer me," he demanded.

"Don't call Danny that!" The black teenager shouted, leaping forward as if to punch the ringmaster. Unconsciously, John found himself and Mary flying between him and their master, acting as a wall and stopping the boy in his tracks. Both teens watched them warily and didn't try to get closer.

"Their names are Tucker Foley and Sam Manson," Their son responded, staring into the red crystal.

"Manson," the ringmaster repeated, his eyes widened in shock, but quickly narrowed in cunning and delight. His fingers tapped absently on the wood of his staff in contemplation. "As in, daughter of Pamela and Richard Manson? The richest family in Amity Park Manson?" He inquired, his eyes bright as he stared at the young woman with greed. John felt his gut fill with dread again. Behind him, his son went stiff. Sam seemed to catch onto the danger and started backing away. "Now, why leave after you've come all this way? After all, didn't you come to enjoy our hospitality?" The master stepped forward, the rest of the troupe materializing behind him, John stepping in line with them mindlessly.

A white gloved hand gripped both teens shoulders and John looked up to see his son, eyes blazing with green fire glaring straight at them, before all three disappeared from their sight. The ringmaster growled, fingers twisting around his cane in fury.

"Find them!" He screeched. They obeyed.

[alexissara]

My Dream Pokémon Game: Pokémon Contest Legends

Despite the fact that since Ultra Sun and Moon I think Pokémon has mostly been on a decline serving up fairly poor games, especially in the main line entries, Pokémon still has a special place in my heart. So I wanted to talk about what spin off game I would love to see happen in the series.

An element really hyped up in the anime is Pokémon Contests giving full ass contest arcs, this would trickle into the manga as well and in my imagination Contests were a big deal in the world. For me they were always this nice element where you weren't having animals beat each other up but preforming with an animal and that felt very different and very sweet. So this game revolves around Pokemon Contests expanding them into a full fledged game rather than a side event.

Customization

This is the name of the game, this game is all about showing off and feeling like you really are connecting with your favorite Pokémon. Taking the cute mini games of the series and elevating them to not a half ass side show but a fleshed out part of the Pokémon world. Having a full roster of lovely outfits for you and your Pokémon to share. Dressing up Pokémon and yourself was such a massive feature of contests in the Pokémon anime and is a long time requested feature of many fans which has only happened a few times. Cosplay Pikachu was given a limited set of outfits, ash hat pikachus exist to give Pikachu a little accessory, and Partner Pikachu and Eevee were both given several outfits in Let's Go. So I think it's about time the dress up was elevated both for trainers and Pokémon.

Your Pokémon and you preform together in contests showing off your style and kicking butt at bringing the elements of contests together as you aim to be the Contest Master. The Pokémon outfits could work with compatibility frames and work on body type molds so some outfits are for some types of bodies like serpentine bodies, quadruped, humanoid, etc.

Clothing should be totally ungender locked your performers and performers get fucky with gender some times. A lot of human outfits can be meant to match with Pokémon but also should have some fun costumes, references to older trainers in the series, and some modern Harajuku deals to really sell the fashionable customization elements.

Customization could be bolstered like in Animal Crossing by allowing people to upload patterns and designs and really allowing a player's agency to go above and beyond for these contests to create truly dazzling and unexpected performances.

Pokémon Roster

The game mixes things up breaking away from your normal choice of starters by instead leading you chose from one of three Mythical Pokémon who were amazed by your performance getting to chose between Victini, Manaphy, and Celebi as your starting contest Pokémon. Instead equally fun would be a mystery Dungeon esc personality quiz that results in you getting suggested one Pokémon that fits your personality but the ability to instead chose any you like after from a selection of Pokémon. You could even go with just picking between Eevee and Pikachu the series two mascots given Let's Go gave them several adorable outfits already and they are extremally iconic starters most people wouldn't mind not even evolving.

I think ideally this game could work with the existing models from Pokémon Unite along with creating new models of similar qualities since the game already has lots of outfits to dress up your mons in but obviously the 59 final evos with 54ish [not totally sure] Pokémon from the evo lines making a total of 103 Pokémon already model in the style. Double that to like 200 and bam that's a respectable roster for a Pokémon game. If you were getting frisky you could go with 300 even. Add some contest staples from the anime and games like Altaria, Milotic and Seviper and you got a classic roster that is sure to hit generations of people in the nostalgia bones.

Pokémon Catching

Catching Pokémon would work similarly to Legends Arceus with it being quick and easy to throw balls at Pokémon and mostly being a human vs mon kinda vibe but with the ability to send out your Pokémon to help support you in catching Pokémon. The battle mechanics are not the focus and instead the contest abilities simply help you put pressure on Pokémon. You'd have dex like in the legends game with tasks to complete that progress and give you rewards.

This could bring in a classic element, shiny hunting, and more to broaden the games audience and still allow for the really personal feeling of teams in Pokémon games.

That said I could see a method of catching Pokémon that is instead Pokémon basically willingly joining up with you after wild performances but perhaps a system like that and a system like Legends Arecus both could co exist.

Pokémon Raising

Pokémon can progress through capturing Pokémon, entering contesting, clearing dex challenges, and pokefood. Like in legends arecus and go releasing Pokémon can provide you with food to feed your Pokémon to raise their contest stats taking a bit of the old Pokeblock system but adding a new twist to it. In addition other Pokefood could be bought in shops and stuff and sharing a meal with your Pokemon can raise their stats and your relationship together up.

I think taking the existing bounding mechanics and shifting them to work outside of a battle oriented context will be less annoying for the hard core end of players who feel it is breaking their immersion in a Pokémon battle since in a contest feelings, bounds, and relationship all make perfect sense.

Narrative

Narratively I would love for the game to have more social elements and be less focused on saving the world although it could still be a factor, it be silly fun to stop the world from ending by everyone putting on the best Pokémon contest ever. I do think the stakes of just aiming to be the best Contest Master are good enough though letting the player kind of pace their own side goals.

It wouldn't hurt for a Pokémon game to have dating sim elements but if they wanted to skew the game younger then like ya know that could be cut but this is my dream game so fuck it, it has to have dating sim elements and you only be gay in it, my dream game, no straights allowed Pokémon.

Closing Thoughts

There are plenty of areas I could have went into more detail on but this is already fairly long and it was just really like a little idea I wanted to spill out of my mouth after months of thinking about it. Let me know what you think and what you would like to see in a game like this.

Also if you liked this sharing it and liking it let me know maybe I should make more shit like this and even more then that going over to my Patreon and Ko-fi really let me know I should keep doing something. I am easily bought but even more then those two things recommending me for work is always fantastic, I always appreciate being reached out to rather then having to apply from ground zero.

[ladystrallan]

To my mutuals, have you seen Poor Things (2023), and if so, thoughts? I just rewatched for the first time since it came out and I’d love to discuss!

@zelds-spellman @queen-paladin @unclefungusthegoat @isingonly4myangel @songstresstinyteacup

My thoughts: I love this movie. When it first came out one of my friends asked me what I thought of it and I said “it’s the kind of movie that I would like. And I did like it.” Everything is just so so good; the performances are immaculate, the score is amazing, the costumes are beautiful. Visually, a stunning movie. The people who are calling it misogynistic and complaining about how it’s weird that she has a baby brain and has a ton of sex obviously do not understand the satire. One look at the ultra stylized world of the film tells you that this is not meant to be taken 100 percent literally. The men who objectify and seek to control Bella are made to look comically ridiculous and terrible. They are the butt of the joke. What sets this film apart is that Bella is the hero of this story; she does not exist to service a man’s character arc. This is Bella’s story.

[chernobog13]

Ultraman Arc striking a very familiar pose.

I love the costume that harkens back to the original Ultra Brothers. From what little I've been able to find out about the upcoming series, it does not take place in the original M78 universe (where Ultra Q, Ultraman, Ultraseven, The Return of Ultraman, Ultraman Ace, Ultraman Taro, Ultraman Leo, Ultraman 80 and Ultraman Mebius took place). The retro styling may have more to do with director Takanori Tsujimoto's fondness for The Return of Ultraman series.

I'm still hopeful that Tsuburaya will return to the original M78 universe in time for the franchise's 60th anniversary, which is only two short years away.

[ihassheepquake]

DC's Stargirl 3.13 "Chapter Thirteen: The Reckoning" has aired on the CW and I'm here to talk about it.

This is it. Series finale. We've had three wonderful seasons of this show that were split between two different networks, one of which doesn't exist anymore. I can't wait to see how this all ends. I'm hoping we'll get a kind of epilogue scene or something to give us an idea of what's next.

The way Jordan is using Starman, in reality Ultra-Star as I call him now, in his old plot from season 1 almost makes that plan better. Almost. It was still a really dumb plan. But also holy shit, they're actually showing us this?? And as he was truly dying, all Starman could do is call for Pat?? I'm crying.

So the JSA isn't putting together that Ultra-Star is Ultra-Star, but they have realized that he's not who he says he is and that he's been manipulating them the whole time. I like when this show lets them be smart.

Jordan further manipulating Cameron against Courtney and the JSA. And I like how Grandpa Mahkent is still at least kind of on Cameron's side in all this. I do still buy that Grandpa did want to put all this blood feud shit behind them all. But obviously, Jordan isn't to let that happen.

Pat's alive!!! I'm not surprised they didn't actually kill him (especially by burying him alive, that's so dark for this show), partially because we just got this big speech from Courtney about how Pat's her dad and she's so fucking thankful for that. Now, they still might kill him, but I'm betting that they won't.

Here we are, all the way back to the junkyard. We've seen this place quite a few times. Awe, Barbara is going to find Artemis so she can get her vengeance. That's sweet. I love how we only ever see S.T.R.I.P.E. in the season finales.

Okay, there's not gonna be a lot of commentary for the fight. It's hard to do. We'll check in at the big moments.

Grandpa taking a stand!! Good for him. And Grandma got crushed by a car that she shot down! That's what I call comeuppance. Jakeem finally gets how the thunderbolt works. Barbara to the rescue! Cameron joining the side of good.

Fuck yes Courtney! This has been an awesome arc for her, I'm so fucking happy to see her get this moment. She's struggled with feeling worthy, feeling like she was enough for the Staff, for anybody. Not just through this season but over the course of the entire show. And now, she's not just finally accepting that she is. She's choosing it. So much of Stargirl has been about choice. About what legacies we choose to continue, who we honor, and how. For one of, if not really the first time, Courtney is choosing herself. She's choosing to honor what she made.

You know, getting the fuck out of Blue Valley is probably what's best for Cameron. I just wish we'd get the chance to see what he chooses to do next. Personally, I'm hoping that he really does become an artist with his powers. Cameron Mahkent could do something truly beautiful.

All of these confessions and family moments. I'm gonna fucking cry. Beth's parents want to give Beth (and maybe Rick) a new costume. And I'm glad about it. One of the things I always wanted was for them to get new suits. Something to honor the past but be something new for them. Courtney made her own suit, and Yolanda's changed itself to fit her but has all sorts of different detailing when you compare it to what little we saw of Ted's version. Beth and Rick deserve that too. Yet again hoping for an epilogue scene so we can maybe see them.

What's left of Starman will forever and always be calling out for his best friend to save him.

Mike's meeting his mom! Goddamnit, I'm crying again. Fuck this show. And he called Barbara Mom. Courtney is meeting Gambler's daughter. She gave Becky his card. Fulfilled his final wish. Here's Grundy. Everybody gets a moment. Yolanda is even getting a chance with her mom. Courtney and Cameron finally get their moment. The whole family's together.

Of course, Jordan's alive. But Artemis has come for her revenge. He won't be alive for long. Homegirl burned his ass alive. Comeuppance.

Ten Years Later - Epilogue scene!

Tour guide Shade?? JSA Museum?? Courtney became Starwoman. Cindy became Dragon Queen. Jennie & Todd joined. It looks like Mike did become S.T.R.I.P.E. 2.0 eventually. Cameron, Jakeem, & Artemis joined. Sand I assume is Sandy Hawkins, ward/child of Wesley Dodds the Sandman. Damage is most likely Grant Emerson, son of the original Atom. Beth and Rick did get together and are getting married (officiated by Shade, hilarious). Even Grundy got to join!

Holy shit they did a lot.

Jay Garrick?? Hello??? Why do they have to tease us with this in the series finale? But maybe a hint that they'll be some Stargirl characters in the final season of Flash? Maybe just a way to show that the story never really ends. Who knows.

But no matter what, this is the end of this story.

You know, when Stargirl was first announced as part of the lineup of DC Original shows from DC Universe, I never intended to watch it. I didn't know anything about the character, or who her supporting cast might be. But I can now firmly say that this show has made Courtney Whitmore one of my favorite comic characters of all time. And I truly think that this show is among the very best of what this genre can do. I'm so glad I've given this show a chance.

I'm gonna be cheesy for a moment. I don't have a large audience, I'm not going to pretend I do. But I do have a handful of people who have been here for these little commentary posts since the beginning. I'm really happy I decided to do this. It's been a really good time. And I hope that you all enjoyed it. It's been a wild ride.

This show has meant a lot to me. Thank you, Stargirl for showing us what it really means to be a hero. Until next time.

[docrotten]

MOTHER’S DAY (1980) – Episode 261 – Decades Of Horror 1980s

“You get what you deserve in them Deep Barons, you lez-beans! You won’t be causing no one no trouble no more!” Really? That’s all you got? Join your faithful Grue Crew – Crystal Cleveland, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr – as they celebrate one of their favorite holidays Troma-style with Mother’s Day (1980).

Decades of Horror 1980s Episode 261 – Mother’s Day (1980)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! Click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

Gruesome Magazine is partnering with the WICKED HORROR TV CHANNEL (https://wickedhorrortv.com/) which now includes video episodes of Decades of Horror 1980s and is available on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, and its online website across all OTT platforms, as well as mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Two brothers kidnap and brutalize three women for the pleasure of their demented mother.

Directed by: Charles Kaufman

Writing Credits: Charles Kaufman, Warren Leight

Produced by:

Alexander Beck (executive producer)

Michael Herz (associate producer)

Charles Kaufman (producer)

Lloyd Kaufman (associate producer}

Michael Kravitz (producer)

Cinematography by: Joseph Mangine

Editing by: Daniel Loewenthal

Production Design by: Susan Kaufman

Art Direction by: Sandy Hamilton

Assistant Art Director: Rex Piano

Costume Design by: Ellen Lutter

Special Makeup Effects by: Josie Caruso, Rob E. Holland

Selected Cast:

Nancy Hendrickson as Abbey

Deborah Luce as Jackie

Tiana Pierce as Trina

Gary Pollard as Ike (credited as Holden McGuire)

Michael McCleery as Addley (credited as Billy Ray McQuade)

Beatrice Pons as Mother (credited as Rose Ross)

Robert Collins as Ernie

Peter Fox as The ‘Dobber’ (credited as Karl Sandys)

Luisa Marsella as Terry (credited as Marsella Davidson)

Kevin Lowe as Ted

Scott Lucas as Storekeeper

Ed Battle as Doorman

Robert Carnegie as Tex

Stanley Kaufman as Older Man at Pool Party

Mother’s Day, directed by Charles Kaufman and featuring an admirable performance from Beatrice Pons as “Mother,” looks far better than it deserves to look. Except for Pons and cinematographer Joseph Mangine, Mother’s Day features a group of relative novices, and yet, the acting, story, and humor propel this film from beginning to end, even though it’s a bit tough to watch in places. Hey! The three lead victims of Mother’s clan even have story arcs! Eli Roth’s favorite movie can’t be all bad, can it?

At the time of this writing, Mother’s Day is available to stream from Shudder, Tubi, PlutoTV, and several PPV sources. The movie is available on physical media from Vinegar Syndrome in a 2-disc Region Free Set: 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray.

Every two weeks, Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s podcast will cover another horror film from the 1980s. The next episode’s film, chosen by Jeff, will be Roadgames (1981), directed by Richard Franklin (Patrick, Psycho II) and starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis. Get ready for some Ozploitation!

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans – so leave them a message or comment on the Gruesome Magazine Youtube channel, on the Gruesome Magazine website, or email the Decades of Horror 1980s podcast hosts at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com.

Check out this episode!

[marvelfangirl2008cc]

avenegers series cc links

Tony shirt https://www.simfileshare.net/download/2367616

iron man suit https://mega.nz/#F!RcIUnaxR!Vj4HsWzU06gNACC8-AcwyQ

second iron man suit https://thesimscatalog.com/sims4/downloads/clothing/women/costumes-women/iron-man-mark-42-suit/

Tony berad https://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims4-sets/title/volvox-beard/id/1348462/

thor costume is by @plazasims thanks for this amazing cchttps://simfileshare.net/download/633742/

thor hammer is https://quiddity-jones.tumblr.com/post/176509742892/bringing-the-thunder-1-accessory-2-objects-and-10

thor hair https://birkschessimsblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/louis-hair/

black widow suit by @plazasims https://plazasims.tumblr.com/tagged/sims4cc

hair I will use is by @antosims https://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims4-hair-hairstyles-female/title/anto-studio-hair/id/1293858/

loki suit is by @plazasims https://www.patreon.com/posts/59100562https://www.patreon.com/posts/59100562

fury and odin eyepatch is https://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims4-accessories-female-glasses/title/dahngrest-eyepatch/id/1439397/

age of ultra thor and black widow suit is by @xdbogoss95

https://xdbogoss95.tumblr.com/post/110078884558/black-windows-suit-from-avengers-age-of-ultron

https://xdbogoss95.tumblr.com/post/111110153533/thor-costume-in-avengers-age-of-ultron-download

thor cape is https://karzalee.wixsite.com/studiok/post/2017/10/03/Mantlelong-acc

Tony arc reactor https://cantransimmer.tumblr.com/post/661239903963807744/this-here-is-a-lil-arc-reactor-accessory-that

hawkeye cc is by @cantransimmer

hawkeye suit (for the first avengers series) is by @xdbogoss95 https://xdbogoss95.tumblr.com/post/115844901578/hawkeye-suit-from-avengers-film-fixed-download

age of ulrton widow hairs are https://thesimscatalog.com/sims4/downloads/hairstyles/women-hairstyles/anto-stone-hair/ and red room hair is https://simpliciaty.blogspot.com/2018/03/steele-hair.html

red room outfit in game city living pack

[spidops-woman]

mmm

youre not the stakataka guy....

...but youre definitely not dops either....

@unovanra

............. WE ARE SPIDOPS-WOMAN.................. THE WALL IS BROKEN.................

[makeste]

an index of Horikoshi Kouhei interviews

these are organized by date, oldest to newest, and I’m including a brief bullet-point summary of each to make it easier to look up specific interviews by content.

also, please note that although I haven’t spoiler tagged this post, the interviews from roughly 2019 onwards include some spoilers, so please watch out for those if you’re anime-only or otherwise not caught up with the manga. that said, the other interviews I think are all good.

putting this below a cut to keep things tidy.

interview with Horikoshi Kouhei and Kishimoto Masashi, May 2015

(note: this is not the actual interview word-for-word, but includes the highlights)

Horikoshi talks about being a fan of Naruto when he was growing up

Horikoshi says he was inspired by the way Kishimoto shows emotion through drawing hands, and that he loves drawing hands thanks to Naruto

Horikoshi mentions that Gaara is his favorite character and that he really liked the Chuunin Exam arc

Kishimoto praises BnHA and says he knew it would be a hit when he read the second chapter

they talk a bit about the worldbuilding and the process of creating a story where 80% of the population has superpowers

they discuss Naruto and Sasuke’s rivalry and Horikoshi mentions that he found it “frustrating” and that he really liked the Valley of the End and thought it would be the end of the series. he says it was very emotional

they talk a little about the stress of writing manga and about the toll it takes on mental health

pre-anime interview, April 2016

talks about his reaction when he found out BnHA was getting an anime

talks about how the series originally came about

says that BnHA is the story of Izuku and All Might and that their story is the “vertical axis” which runs through the main story

says there is also a “horizontal axis”, which is the side characters and quirks and all of the other elements that he considers to be the “fun part” of the story which mellows out the darker aspects of the vertical axis

mentions that he really likes drawing and writing Bakugou

mentions Deku vs Kacchan 1 as one of the early highlights in the series for him

talks about Ochako being someone who has a more cheerful relationship with Deku, which balances out some of the heavier aspects of Deku and Katsuki’s relationship (again, horizontal vs vertical axis)

mentions that if he could pick any quirk he’d pick a “no need for sleep” quirk

talks about reading Dragon Ball as a child

mentions that he really likes American comic book heroes, especially Spider-Man

mentions Goku and Spider-Man as the two that come to mind when he thinks about heroes and what it means to be a hero (specifically, that Goku is the “win” aspect and that he brings reassurance to everyone, while Spider-Man is the “save” aspect who helps other people)

talks about hearing Deku and Bakugou’s voices in the anime for the first time, as well as Ochako, Iida, and All Might’s voices

another pre-anime interview with konomanga.jp, April 2016

(note: this interview is in Japanese, but Google translate does a servicable job with it)

talks more about Spider-Man, including his favorite costumes and comic artists

gives some American comic book recs

mentions that he likes Godzilla and Gamera and always goes to see those movies

talks about his Star Wars influences

talks about his favorite manga as a child -- Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto

talks about becoming a manga artist, and about some of his influences

says that he likes drawing monsters, creatures, and villains, and says that he really liked drawing the panel where Tomura made his first appearance at USJ

talks a little about composition and frame movement in his work, and about the challenges of drawing a weekly manga

mentions that he knows what the story ending will be, but hasn’t yet figured out how to connect the dots to that point

interview with Horikoshi Kouhei and Umakoshi Yoshihiko in BnHA: Ultra Archive, May 2016

(note: Umakoshi is the anime character designer for BnHA. also, this interview was part of the Ultra Archive character book, so you’ll have to scroll a bit through its other contents in order to get to the interview.)

they talk about the process of creating the BnHA anime and sketching out all of the character designs. Horikoshi says the anime character model sheets look just like how he draws them

they talk about Horikoshi’s obsession with drawing hands lol. Horikoshi mentions that the way Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy) draws hands was a big influence

they talk a lot about art and drawing in general

Horikoshi talks about Ochako’s character design a bit

they talk about the differences between drawing manga and doing animation

Umakoshi talks about his first impressions of BnHA

Horikoshi mentions that he still has a lot of ideas for characters and quirks that he hasn’t been able to implement yet

they talk about the different character designs and which ones they find easy, difficult, and fun to draw

they talk for a fair amount of time about Iida’s character design

Umakoshi talks a bit about other anime he’s worked on

they talk about the character of All Might, and Horikoshi ominously says that All Might’s future will be “a fairly sad affair”

interview with Natalie Comics, June 2018

talks about the 4th anniversary of BnHA, and the release of BnHA: Two Heroes

talks about the Basement internship arc and mentions that it was challenging for him to write

talks about the question “what is a hero?” and how he defines heroes

mentions Mina, Sero, and Shouji as characters he would like to/plans to feature in the future, and mentions that he already has a story planned featuring Shouji

talks about the popularity of the series

talks a little about Koike-san, his first editor

talks about Two Heroes and its development and story

talks about club activities at U.A., and which clubs Deku and Katsuki would be in

talks about his mom and about some of his childhood experiences which inspired scenes in the manga

talks about why he became a mangaka

talks about what percentage of the series is completed, mentions the original planned length was about 30 volumes but that it has obviously surpassed that

mentions that he has an idea of how the last arc will be planned out

interview with Horikoshi and Eiichiro Oda, August 2018

Horikoshi talks about being a fan of One Piece and mentions he even sent artwork to Oda which was included in one of Oda’s galleries

they talk more about OP and about favorite arcs and how it’s influenced Horikoshi’s work

Oda compliments Horikoshi’s art and they talk about cover artwork and coloring (Horikoshi mentions he uses Photoshop)

Horikoshi talks a bit about BnHA Two Heroes

Horikoshi again mentions that he originally thought BnHA would be about 30 volumes (Oda says he should shoot for 50 but Horikoshi laughs and says he’s not sure he can do ten years)

they talk about how fucking long OP is and how manga stories tend to expand once the story starts taking off

Interview with Anime News Network at SDCC, August 2018

talks about his love of American comics, especially Spider-Man, and says that American comics are a lot more mainstream in Japan nowadays thanks to all the superhero movies

talks about how he got started as a manga creator

talks about being inspired by Dragon Ball, and that All Might in particular was inspired by Goku

talks a bit about the process of creating characters

talks about Bakugou’s popularity and that it took him by surprise at first

mentions that he doesn’t have the stamina for BnHA to be a long series like One Piece

interview with Cinema Today Japan, December 2019

(update: here is the link to @hanashimas​‘ translation which is more accurate)

talks about Deku and Bakugou’s characters and their attributes

mentions that at the start of the story Bakugou thinks Deku is above him, so he tries to act intimidating and superior to overtake him

(ETA: apparently this is a mistranslation; he actually says that he intended for Bakugou to be a character who was “above” Deku so to speak, who Deku would eventually surpass. he then goes on to talk about his realization that Bakugou could actually have a much more interesting character arc, which of course we have since seen play out.)

mentions that he planned to have Bakugou and Deku improve on two separate vectors as they entered U.A.

mentions Deku vs Kacchan 1 as a turning point where he had some realizations about Bakugou’s character that humanized him for him

mentions that he always knew Bakugou wouldn’t turn evil and “would never lose to the darkness”

says the scene where Katsuki takes Kirishima’s hand at Kamino was bittersweet because it showed Bakugou’s growth, but also showed the ongoing gulf between him and Deku because Deku knew that Katsuki wouldn’t take his hand

mentions that Bakugou still needs to apologize to Deku

says that Kirishima, Kaminari, and Mina are among the easiest characters for him to draw because they take the initiative and get the other characters excited and help pull the story forward

mentions that he always hears Nobu’s voice in his head now when writing Bakugou

talks about the characters being high school kids still, and that when he expanded on their families he was conscious of that -- “I wanted to show that these protagonists are still children after all”

interview in Volume R (booklet that was released along with Heroes Rising), December 2019

talks again about his manga influences and what inspired him to become a mangaka

talks about the experience of getting his first manga published

talks about what inspired him to write BnHA

has an interesting quote where he talks about the vaguely desperate feeling of “trying one last time”, which was weighing on his mind when he created BnHA, and which also played into Deku’s motivations in the first chapter

mentions All Might as being a character that he’s attached to

talks about his reactions to the anime, the overseas popularity, and the first movie

talks about his heavy involvement in the production of Heroes Rising

talks about designing and creating the bad guys for Heroes Rising

talks about the creation and character design of Hawks and mentions that the original character design was going to have a bird head lol

mentions that Hawks will have a relatively big influence on the story in the future

talks about how the ending of Heroes Rising was his original planned ending for the series

talks about Bakugou’s character development which leads up to that moment

talks about the conclusion of the series, and that all of the characters will come together in the end

interview with all of the past editors of the BnHA manga, March 2021

(note: this is another interview that’s not translated word for word, but summarized. also this interview was with just the editors, not Horikoshi himself.)

they talk about the early reception to the manga, and Horikoshi’s reactions

they talk about the individual moments early on when they realized that the series would be “amazing”

Yoritomi mentions that Horikoshi came up with the designs for most of the Billboard Top 10 pro heroes at the last minute lol

including Hawks (all Horikoshi had decided on prior was that he was going to be “cool” and would be a spy)

everyone praises Horikoshi’s character designs in general

they talk about the start of the anime and that whole process

they mention that Horikoshi cried watching both of the movies

they talk about the overseas popularity of the series

each editor lists their favorite episode of the anime

they talk about Horikoshi sacrificing his original manga ending to be used in Heroes Rising

they talk about that one ending theme song in season 4 that showed the pro heroes’ childhoods, and that Horikoshi had the anime team change Hawks’s to match the backstory he had planned

they talk about the upcoming season 5 and send final messages to the fans

interview in the MHA Drawing Smash Exhibition Pamphlet, April 2021

Horikoshi talks about the art in the exhibition and about the process of creating the artwork

he mentions that the piece with Deku rescuing a falling Ochako took the longest to draw

he says the drawing of All Might was the most fun to draw for him

that’s pretty much it, this one is very short lol

interview in Jump GIGA Spring 2021, April 2021

talks about which characters will play an important role in the final act. specifically mentions Hawks, Ochako, Shouji, Shinsou, Monoma, and Sero

“many characters’ actions will converge into a single one, so maybe the best way to say it would be ‘keep an eye on all of them!’“

says that for Hawks’s flashbacks and the Todoroki family’s past, he was influenced by Sion Sono’s works

mentions that the drawing of Deku and Ochako from the MHA Drawing Smash exhibit isn’t directly related to the main story, but that while drawing it he kept in mind how their relationship would develop if he explored it deeper

says he had the final act (or at least the chapter 306 reveal part of it) vaguely planned for a long time, but started to think about the specifics in volume 21 during the Endeavor vs High-End fight

says he’s already decided on the ending, and that “the path to it has been longer than I initially expected, but the main elements that I’ve decided before starting the series are still the same”

Q&A trivia from Vol. W World Heroes’ Mission, August 2021

(and alternate translation by aitaikimochi)

talks about All Might not having many friends among the pro heroes (but says he’s become “slightly attached” to Aizawa since he started teaching at U.A.)

describes what Bakugou, Tsuyu, and Mineta’s rooms look like

talks about Jirou and Momo’s relationship and the kind of things they like to talk about when they hang out together

says that Shouji’s face will eventually be revealed, and that he is “not sure” about Hagakure’s :’)

talks about the types of YouTube videos Shouto watches (pretty insightful answer which is equal parts sweet and sad)

says that Midnight’s classes were the most popular among the students

says U.A.’s robots once rebelled against their creators (lol wtf)

says his three favorite movies are Akira, The Ring, and Spider-Man: Far From Home. he says Akira in particular is his bible

and that’s it for now, but I will update this post with future interviews as they are posted, and if anyone has links to an interview I’ve missed please let me know.

[justiceleaque]

Hey Leaque! I know you watched the new Justice League movie and I was around when you were doing the very first DC movie reviews back in the day. I would absolutely love a review of this one if you have the time :)

i've been a fan of Snyder's universe from day 1 so i understand this might be considered an off-balance review already, but i want to note that i didn't come in wanting the film to be good or willing to see it as good despite actual impressions. i wanted to watch it as the Justice League movie i was supposed to get back in 2017, the same one i was willing to not watch for years if it meant Zack Snyder got to finish his vision even later down the line

i was actually as neutral as i could possibly get because at this point i don't have any real emotional involvement in whether this version of the DCEU continues or not. WB execs have done some fucked up things with the treatment of the cast/ray fisher, so i take this as Snyder's DC trilogy and nothing more (which makes it bittersweet for me but that's a different topic)

heavy spoilers follow

it's incredibly comic book-like. i remember typing the exact same words back in the Dawn of Justice days: it doesn't read as a superhero film a la Marvel but as a comic book film. each frame could be a realistically painted comic book frame; the dialogues would fit freakishly well if they had to fit speech bubbles. the damn scene overlaps and changes are heavily reminiscent of a comic book. better yet: of a Justice League comic book. if you’re familiar with comic book events where big things happen and it affects everyone, this is how this reads

it’s a heavy film but it’s not hopeless. i’ve been seeing reviews pop-up already: “ZS’s Justice League film is twice as longe and twice as hopeless” is the maybe verbatim title of most articles. the one thing i kept thinking throughout these four hours is how much hope this is filled with. we’re dealing with a post-superman world that was shaken by the loss of a beloved superhero and you see batman, the #1 comic book superhero known for brooding and darkness and all things sad and bad, be the loudest, most hopeful person in the film, trying to get a team together to save the world, and later on being two steps from literally screaming that bringing back superman is what should happen no matter the cost because of his faith and hope in winning. did we watch the same film?

in the same vein, the 4 hours seem like a stretch until you realize each part has an actual purpose that introduces or ties in important aspects related to the film’s one purpose: take down Steppenwolf and Darkseid. i don’t believe any scene was wasted on useless information. it can get tiring in the way watching a shot tv series gets tiring: it does NOT get boring at any point

such wonderful character arcs. seeing each of the team’s personalities and quirks, the way they clash with each other, the way it makes it all work so goddamn beautifully. the way they click because they just keep interacting so much? Whedon’s cut didn’t give me a team, it gave me five different people in costume that were forced to sort of work in the same vicinity as each other. Snyder’s cut gave me a version of the Justice League that worked so flawlessly together by the end of the film it felt like a dance. felt like comic book page spreads

right before the epilogue they all pose together in the rising dawn, clark included, having won. super reminiscent of the JL cartoon intro. i cried a bit

J’ONN J’ONZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU KNOW THE AMOUNT OF SPECULATION ABOUT GENERAL SWANWICK BEING THE MARTIAN MANHUNTER BACK WHEN MAN OF STEEL WAS RELEASED???? VINDICATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

listen to me. i need to make this clear. listen.  j’onn. j’onny boy. the way he’s designed and cgi’d..........the adorable frown............the kind smile......................his obvious need to make others feel better and to simply help......................i love him

his interaction with bruce only comes in the end and it’s super brief but seeing those two still not know how the hell each other works even in film format is hilarious. bruce having accepted aliens and magic and shit is the new norm after like 20 years of only having to deal with the joker attempting to rob neon green hair dyes or some shit is so much bigger of a character development than i ever expected, especially coming from BvS where he’s just a stupid fat-bat-carrying onion

i wasn’t a big fan of Suicide Squad’s joker portrayal but we get to see him at the end of the film while we’re seeing a possible future where lois lane has died and superman is best friends with darkseid playing tic-tac-antilife equation. Snyder somehow managed to turn jared leto into a disgustingly legit comic-faithful joker. dont’ ask me how

in the same scene they mention jason and his death

: - (

we see a few bits of some green lanterns in some scenes, one from the past and one from a possible ultra dark and edgy darkseid future. still convinced bruce simply willingly did not go looking for hal, which, fair

they cut out the fish joke bruce tells arthur when they first meet which immediately turns the whole film into a 1/10 for me

ben affleck’s bruce wayne and batman continue being my favorite on-screen batman iteration to date. we finally move from the usual dark lone soldier version Hollywood is relentlessly giving us into one that belongs with the Justice League. incredibly heartwarming to see

there’s a scene when the JL are first assaulting Steppenwolf’s base and they’re all fighting parademons and shit and there’s a moment where you see batman fighting the Space SWAT From Hell alone and the way he moves? the way he flows from one position to another and another like i’m watching a damn comic book animation????????? sir????????????????????

barry allen saved them

like, literally, barry allen saved them. superman was back and everyone was ready to dance one final time and they were all going ‘steppenwolf fucking SUCKS’ and steppenwolf was crying to darkseid and then the motherboxes did their thing and they all were obliterated into star dust and then barry allen was like ‘bitch i told you i need FRIENDS’ and turned back time and now they’re all okay again :o)

darkseid @ batman through his magic spacetime portal: i’m gonna get your ass one day soon and take you back in time and you’re gonna eventually bring about the end of the world by having every dark twisted batman invade your universe because you inspired them

batman:

batman:

batman: i haven’t read Rebirth bro

i know i’m forgetting stuff but that’s the gist. hands down one of the best comic book film experiences i’ve ever had. with an aside to barry allen being more of a mix of barry and wally, everyone feels incredibly faithful to the source material. also batman definitely killed like, at least 400 parademons in one night, but pest control doesn’t count

(like. he straight up obliterates them)

(pulls out a batbazuka on them)

(amazing)

[thornshadowwolf]

[ID: a bingo card with "Danger Days TV Show" written at the top in red lettering. The top left square reads "killjoys make everything unnecessarily gendered." The next square is "Vinyl and/or Volume entirely cut." Next is "Red and Blue have a mother/daughter relationship." Next "Ultra Vs are the only crew or other crews are treated as "violent gangs."" The last square in the top row says "Vaya and Vamos are white." The first square in the second row reads "Director tragic backstory." The next square says "Cherri is a traitor." Next is "The girl is aged up but not enough for the romance they put her and Val in," followed by "First ep(s) someone escaping Battery City." The last square in the second row says "Korse wears a police or military outfit (no ruffles)." The next row starts with "Dr D is somebody's father," then "Vaya and Vamos are "identical twins" who are clearly meant to be a cis man and a cis woman." The center square that would normally say "free space" is gray with red writing that says "Nobody likes the casting." The last two squares in the row read "The Girl is white," and "Val Velocity backstory episode (probably bear the end)." The fourth row starts with "Fab Four resurrection or fake death." The next square is "The show is on Val's side when he kills Dr D and Cherri." Next is "Drac masks look high-tech and futuristic," followed by "internally consistent timeline but when you think about it it makes no sense." The last square in the fourth row is "Phoenix Witch and zone religions rely heavily on indigenous stereotypes." The first square in the fifth row says "Future montage, time skip, or epilogue." The next square reads "costuming is an entirely different style than any of the killjoy outfits we've seen." Next is "The crews are all men (maybe one all-girl crew) and "protect the women and children of the zones."" The next square says "Girlboss Director," and the final square says "Red and Blue are sidelined or removed." /end ID]

Thoughts that didn't make it onto the card and blank card under the cut.

- in-universe reference to MCR

- one character who is "ambiguously a person of color"

- Red and Blue have a ton of interaction and involvement with the Ultra Vs

- not necessarily explicit but definitely fanservice-y sex scene with Red or Blue

- season ends with Cali being saved but some reference to the rest of the world or at least another state that leaves room for a season 2

- use music as a (literal) weapon

- several side characters and/or twitter characters not shown but referenced

- Mad Gear removed

- The Girl is explicitly stated to be Missile Kid

- The Girl gets flashback scenes to the Fab Four

- Vaya and Vamos are a couple

- Cherri and one of the twitter DJs are a couple

- two of the Fab Four are siblings but NOT Party Poison and The Kobra Kid

- "The Phoenix Witch is real and reveals herself to everyone" conversion storyline

- poorly executed Val redemption arc

- Ultra Vs are all white (or white-passing) and most of the BL/i officials we see a lot of (The Director, Korse, etc.) are POC (even worse if all the BL/i officials are one ethnicity).

- C.A.T. is removed

- The Girl has a conveniently timed "suddenly I understand/I have confidence/I must sacrifice myself" moment that makes her able to use and control her powers

- two of the Fab Four have switched names or outfits

- The Girl's powers work entirely differently (ex. they give her some psychic brainwave/soundwave control)

- neutral town that looks like a "poor foreign village but with a thriving marketplace"

- Phoenix Witch and zone religions rely heavily on romani stereotypes

- party at The Nest has a pole-dancing drag queen

- electricity-soul monster that BL/i controls fights Destroya (bonus points if The Girl comes in and "frees the souls" somehow and the monster dissipates or turns on Batt City)

- season ends with some ambiguous way to bring Red back to life because her "essence" or some BS is still floating around

- Dr D's wheelchair is removed

- Val (an possibly other Killjoys) have their "real names" revealed

- Show Pony is removed

- Show Pony and Cherri Cola are related

- Ultra Vs have to go to a concert for some reason

- Red and/or Blue have to go to an illegal rave in The Lobby for some reason

- Party is Val's father

- reference to in-universe Mike Milligram

- kinda covered in the "unnecessarily genderd" square but the outfits are Bad For That. The men have typical desert apocalypse wear and/or biker outfits, the women have "Harley Quinn as directed and costumed by men" outfits.

- nobody (irl) likes the name they give The Girl

- new fans who don't realize that there is "source material" and flood the tags and get into arguments about our thoughts and HCs from before the show because they're not canon-compliant with the show

- new character who is a rebel within the city, at least at the start (maybe a juvie hall??)

- The Girl is just some random city kid (well, except that she has powers and is The Chosen One) and the story starts with her escaping the city and finding the Ultra Vs (kinda covered by the above and the "first eps are someone escaping the city" but I wanted to mention it being The Girl specifically)

- all characters are aged up OR they are teens played by 35-year-olds

- they remove Val's obsession with Party

- Ultra Vs is short for Ultra Violets and they are referred to as Ultra Violets most, if not all, of the time.

- bike and/or car chase or gunfight on bikes/cars

- the "masks hold souls" lore is dropped

- the Analog Wars/Helium Wars happened hundreds of years ago

[ID: a blank bingo card that is has "Danger Days TV Show" written at the top in red. The middle square where it would normally say "free space" is tinted gray and says "Nobody likes the casting" in red writing. /end ID]

[dragynkeep]

You know what else bugs me about Momo's hero costume? It doesn't even hold up to the "it's practical" excuse. If she wants as much exposed skin as permitted for easy access, she could wear a crop top or tube top! Not a bodysuit with that stupid-looking cleavage/belly window. Then she wouldn't have to stop IN BATTLE and pull her whole-ass tiddies out whenever she wants to create something large. It's a nice enough design without the weak explanation, but they just HAD to pull a Kojima.

Actually, I'm not done ranting about this. They had PROFESSIONAL designers to work on their costumes. WHY on GOD'S GREEN EARTH would you design a suit that has to be TORN for the person to fully use their quirks. LOOKING AT YOU, MIDNIGHT. I KNOW someone—several someones even—in BNHA's vaguely futuristic setting should be capable of synthesizing an ultra breathable material THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO TEAR to crank up your quirk's output. Get these bitches an Edna Mode.

it's wild because she did wear an outfit that fits your description during the tournament arc,

that allows for easier use of her quirk without her having to rip off her shirt. the sports bra still leaves most of her back exposed — there are a ton of designs now that have thinner material on the back & allow it to be adjusted easily — & the overshirt is easily discarded. make the pants into shorts & you now have the fat of the thighs to use at her disposal also.

now there are a lot of redesigns that "desexualize" momo by making her chubby, reducing her breast size or giving her darker skin; all while implying that these attributes are not attractive & therefore momo cannot be attractive while looking that way — but redesigns don't have to & shouldn't follow that mindset. follow what makes sense for the character as who she is. momo is a conservative, upper class teenager who's quirk uses fat cells for creation; yet her main outfit tells a completely different story & it's frustrating, especially when horikoshi hides behind the "excuse" of her quirk's capabilities. like you said ano, her current outfit actively impedes her capabilities & puts her at more risk.

in a better example; momo would've been advised by midnight or mount lady on how to dress for her quirk & they would've reassured her that she doesn't have to sexualize herself to be taken as a worthy hero like they had to. make it a criticism of the patriarchal society these heroes are in & what they have to do to make it, how the new generation is making it better. & for the love of god make edna mode smh / j

[nasaty]

Noctilucence

Student Aizawa x (she/her) student reader, so much angssssttt and grief and a bunch of fluff. (Do not bring any pedo shit into my presence or I will fucking destroy you

MANGA SPOILERS until episode 107 comes out. - also this requires context that I am not providing from MHA manga and the arc with Aizawa in Vigilantes. TW: death. 9 part series.

Ch 1 here | Ch 3 here | Ch 5 here

Ch 4. The Morning

First years don’t do work studies so you had spent a lot of time at home studying general symptoms of invisible illnesses, that way you could properly heal people in need. Your friends were all at least a year above you so they were all in work studies after school, and have been for a while. Nemuri, Aizawa, and Oboro had been studying at His Purple Highness’s agency, and Hizashi was with some other hero you’d never heard of, but he had a voice type quirk so that intrigued Hizashi. Since Nemuri was a 3rd year, she was at the same agency as Oboro and Aizawa but frequently went on different, more high-level missions. You hadn’t seen her costume (or lack of costume) yet, but you saw Hizashi’s. Oboro and Aizawa frequently wore their hero costumes to school anyway, since they were comfortable. Somehow, you were a little jealous that they got to have that experience together, but you chose general studies for a reason, though the thought of being a hero and having your own costume dangled in the back of your mind. Your mind envisioned this while you snoozed your alarm and laid in bed, somehow still didn’t get enough sleep.

But first you had to get through today.

As you got ready for school, usually a mundane task that took no effort, it required a lot more thought today.

‘Should I wear something nice? Maybe then Aizawa would think I looked cute. But maybe he would think I tried to hard, or that I would never have a chance with him.’ Oboro could be totally wrong.

But if you wore what you usually wore, maybe he would think you aren’t serious, and that you don’t care if he likes you. And you definitely do care.

‘There’s no way Aizawa was putting this much thought into today….was there? ‘

You made your way to school, thoughts buzzing in your head, hands shaking, having a silent conversation with yourself about all the possibilities.

‘What if he confesses at lunch? What if he KILLS ME AT LUNCH. What if he doesn’t show up to lunch? Would that make me sad? Relieved? Disappointed?’

You’d never thought about this long enough to even entertain the idea of him finding out you were interested in him. Had this happened to you before? Had you felt like this with anyone else before, ever?

You made your way through your classes in a daze, lazily taking down sorry excuses for notes and daydreaming. Your deskmate leaned over and whispered ‘hello are you there?’ And you realized you were lost in thought while you were supposed to be working on a group project.

‘Man, this is debilitating. How am I supposed to work like this. Why do I have to have a stupid crush’

The bell rang and your heart stopped for a second, recognizing it was time for your lunch hour with Aizawa. You and Aizawa. Together. Alone. You took a deep breath, walked up the stairs, and opened the door to the roof.

No one was there.

‘Maybe he’s late? I did get here pretty fast…’ your heart was racing.

You sat down at your usual spot and got your lunch out, but you were too jittery to eat. You waited 10, 15, 20 minutes and realized he wasn’t going to show up. He wasn’t coming.

‘Probably because he hates me. I’m an idiot for thinking I could ever be with him. Why the hell would I think he could like me??’ Fuckin Oboro must’ve been messing with you.

Your phone dinged and it about made you jump out of your skin. It was a email to all UA students and teachers it read something like;

Please excuse the students in work studies with #4, #6, His Purple Highness, and All Might agencies. There have been a few larger villains that have appeared in their districts, and they’ve asked for the assistance of their students. We do not yet know if these attacks are connected. Thank you for upholding the beliefs of our school.

We wish you a plus ultra day!

Principal Nezu

You sighed, somewhat relieved. Maybe he didn’t hate you, he had been taken out of school for his work study. You didn’t know much about work studies yet, so this didnt even cross your mind as an option while your thoughts were racing earlier, but it was a pretty common occurrence. You settled down and started eating your lunch as it was about to end. You opened up the group chat.

✨ CATfé chat ✨

Y/n - just got the email from the school, good luck today you guys! you don’t need the extra luck though 😉❤️

The rest of the day went without anything out of the ordinary. No one answered you on your chat but that was not surprising, everyone was really busy. Even though Hizashi wasn’t at his work study, he never had his phone out in class, which you found admirable. You made it through the end of the day, heart and soul unscathed, and it made you feel a little brighter about the next day. Maybe this would all be okay, even if Oboro told Aizawa. Your friends were great people, you knew that much, and they wouldn’t let something so small get in between each other.

You went home, kicked off your shoes, and sat on the couch for some studying. Your house was always cold, so you brought over a blanket to snuggle in, and had some quiet music playing, just for fun. You felt content.

And then you got the call.

“Y/n.”

“Zashi? What’s up you never call me?”

“Something happened.”

[chernobog13]

AGON: THE ATOMIC DRAGON

One of the lesser-known kaiju coming out of Japan in the 1960′s is Agon.

Yes, Agon is a portmanteau for “atomic dragon,” as one of our protagonists, reporter Goro “the Suppon” Sumoto, points out.

(A suppon is a carnivorous soft-shell turtle native to China.  Goro is called “the Suppon” because, as he puts it: “When I bite something I never let go.”  He’s basically telling everyone that he’s really tenacious.  But I digress.)

Agon was introduced in a 4-part television miniseries Giant Phantom Monster Agon that aired on Fuji TV in January, 1968.

The miniseries was actually produced by Nippon Television in 1964, two years before Tsuburaya Productions’ Ultra Q series aired.  However Toho Studios believed that Agon was too much like Godzilla, so they prevented the miniseries from airing.

As much as I love Ultra Q I’m curious as to what effect - if any - there would have been on that series if Giant Phantom Monster Agon had actually aired in 1964.

Shinichi Sekizawa, the writer of many kaiju films for Toho, and Fuminori Ohashi, Eiji Tsuburaya’s apprentice, were both involved in the production Giant Phantom Monster Agon.  They convinced Toho that they were not ripping off Godzilla, at which point Toho dropped its opposition to the miniseries being broadcast.

Toho later edited all 4 episodes together into a feature that was released on videotape in the 1990s.

The miniseries, while telling a complete story, is actually composed of two story arcs.  Upon viewing it almost feels like the first two episodes are from a different “season” than the second two episodes (just like the first season episodes of Star Trek: TOS are very different from those in the latter two seasons).  This difference is due to episodes 1 & 2 being written by Sekizawa-san and directed by Norio Mine, while episodes 3 & 4 were written by Kozo Uchida and directed by Fuminori Ohashi.

Giant Phantom Monster Agon is filled with many of the familiar tropes of the genre: hibernating prehistoric beast mutated and revived by radiation from atomic bomb tests; said beast being invulnerable to modern weapons; said beast being able to breathe fire; said beast determined to wreak havoc on mankind; etc.  You get the picture.

What this series has going in its favor, however, is one of the most unusual - if not THE most unusual - ways of defeating the monster I’ve ever encountered in all my years watching kaiju films.  I won’t spoil it here, go see for yourself.  It does set-up one hell of a sequel if ever someone decides they want to make one.

On a further note, the Agon costume was reused, with some modifications, a couple of times for the Ambassador Magma (aka The Space Giants) show.  That show is also noteworthy as it beat Ultraman to the television screen by six days, thus becoming the first color tokusatsu show.