#theory postan

[super-paper]

"what's afo gonna do next bc there's no way he's getting to Tomura now--" I feel like the real question should be "what's our favorite self-saboteur gonna do next" bc I have this sneaking suspicion that he's about to make everyone miserable (including himself) on purpose lmao,,.

[tanadrin]

Above is my attempt at transcribing the first three lines of TH 496, that haunting fragment of Kuchean poetry. AIUI, in Tocharian B, the transcription convention uses ä for /ɨ/, ṣ for /ʃ/, ś for /ɕ/, c for /tɕ/, and ñ for /ɲ/. The ṃ is just a variant for /n/. So I think these lines would be pronounced something like:

jaltse pikala watɨn le -ɲo tɕi ɲe -- -- -- -- -- -nts po askaskau ma ɲi sa noʃ ɕomo ɲem wnolme la:re ta:ka ma: ra postan cisa la:re mɨsketɨrɲ ciʃʃe laraumɲe ciʃʃe a:rtaɲje pelke kaltta- rrɨ ɕolɨmpa ʃʃe ma: te sta:lle ɕol wɨrɲai taijsu pɨlskanojm sanai ʃarjo

Some fun cognates: śomo is cognate to Latin homo, OE guma (modern "groom," with an intrusive r due to the compound "bridegroom"); ñem is cognate to English "name;" and wnolme is cognate to Latin animus.

At least some of the consonant clusters in Tocharian B were eventually simplified in pronunciation--apparently later in the same manuscript someone has written lykautkañ for klyautkañ, "make, turn into;" the initial cluster was probably pronounced /l/, which makes this an error roughly on par with writing "nkow" instead of "know," because you know there's a k in there somewhere but it's not pronounced.

The Tocharian script is essentially a local form of the Brahmic script, and operates on the same principle: in theory, it is an abugida where each sign is a consonant with an inherent /a/ or /ə/ vowel, and diacritics mark the other vowels (as well as standalone vowels), while a virama marks final consonants with no vowel. In practice, Brahmic scripts (especially older ones) seem to be a a lot more complicated, because consonant sequences are represented by stacking signs on top of one another, and this can produce a dizzying array of fearsome ligatures. The annoying thing about Tocharian is that I actually can't find any good resources online about the writing system as it's actually used--mostly a list of the basic signs (which, as you might expect, are not in fact the majority of signs used in a text like this!), without any indication of what common variants or simplifications look like.

It helps, of course, that cheat sheets exist for this sort of thing, so you can check your work as you go. But I would definitely classify this text--or at least the hand responsible for the first two and a half lines--as "not especially clear examples of the script." I think it would also be kind of annoying to learn in that the division into signs doesn't really match up with natural syllabification at all--there's this kind of fucked up maximal onset principle thing going on where instead of writing <war nai> or <kalt tar rä> you have to write <wa rnai> and <ka ltta rra>, which seems like it would have been very annoying. Seems like it would be very easy to transition an abugida into an alphabet, too--you already have standalone signs for all the vowels!

But there's no denying that like a lot of scripts in the family, it looks great. Just A+ aesthetic, up there with Syriac and katakana.

[super-paper]

Saturn Devouring His Son is a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (known as Saturn in Roman mythology) eating one of his offspring. Fearing a prophecy foretold by Gaea that predicted he would be overthrown by one of his children, Saturn ate each one upon their birth - Wikipedia

In Greek mythology Cronus is from the first generation of Titans. The period in which Cronus ruled was called the Golden Age, as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules. Despite this, Cronus is still viewed as a destructive and all-devouring god.

Cronus’s downfall came at the hands of one child who managed to escape being devoured-- Zeus. Disguised as a cupbearer, Zeus presented Cronus with a chalice of wine that had been poisoned with magic herbs. Cronus thought that drinking this potion would make him unconquerable. Instead, it caused him to throw up all of the children he had devoured. Emerging from their father's mouth fully grown, Zeus and his siblings then banded together to fight their father.

In the end, Cronus is defeated by his children and imprisoned in the depths of Tartarus. Zeus takes the throne and maintains an iron grip as the king of gods, ushering in the Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron ages of man.  

——————————————————

More food for thought on how the final arc might play out, with Izuku (and All Might) as the obvious stand ins for Zeus, All for the One as the increasingly intentional stand-in for Cronus , and the “poisoned chalice” that Cronus is tricked into drinking being OFA. As for the final part of the myth, where Cronus spits up his children fully formed............,,,

Curiouser and curiouser!

There’s a theory floating around that hyper-regen is actually trying to grow new bodies for AFO’s stolen quirks-- and TomurAFO obtaining OFA is going to be the tipping point that enhances hyper regen even further. 

Horikoshi does love having AFO’s greed and callous disrespect for other people’s lives come back to bite him over and over again— and after years of telling Tomura that “all he can do is destroy” and that he “only exists to beckon acts of mourning into the world”.... well, it seems like a pretty fitting punishment if Tomura ends up being the one to give AFO’s victims a second chance at life. 

If AFO wants to be a god so badly, then this outcome is about as close to greek mythology as he can get without like. manifesting a flock of eagles to eat his infinitely regenerating liver ww,,

[super-paper]

Hmmm. So, Keigo "dealt with all traces of Jin's body/blood " and personally cleaned up the crime scene at Gunga....

During Hawks vs Jin, Jin talks at length about Himiko's hankie, what it means to him, and how it both represents her kindness and why he simply can't abandon the League of Villains-- which Hawks completely brushes aside, at the time......

Jin's final clone desperately attempts to return a cloned!hankie to Himiko, but it tragically melts away as he dies....

The real hankie..... just so happens to fall right next to Jin's body, and right next to a big ass blood stain, seemingly forgotten.

[super-paper]

"Hawks can't donate blood to Himiko because they probably don't even have the same blood type. Hawks and Ochako have Type B blood-- If Toga was Type B, too, she wouldn't have needed to transform into Ochako in the first place for the transfusion."

Easily rectified by making Himiko's blood type AB+, the universal recipient. Would be fitting considering the nature of her quirk, no?

[super-paper]

Also thinking about the emphasis on the news helicopter + how Himiko is a victim of sensationalist journalism (embodied by her fight with Ms. Curious, but the way the media handled her attack on Saito definitely played its part in keeping Himiko from getting the help she needed sooner) + Ochako's role as someone who connects the spirit of heroism to the average people by humanizing the heroes (and villains!)... If MHA's goal is to return the spirit of heroism to the civilians and encourage everyone to lend a helping hand whenever they can, then I would like it very much if the media characters also got involved beyond just filming the battles.

The fighting at Gunga is completely over, so now would be an excellent time to step in and start helping the injured.

[super-paper]

So body!AFO has an ace up his sleeve that he's planning to use to reestablish control over Tomura, and the question of the hour is: What exactly is he planning to do? If it's something he specifically needs his body to do, then logically, it most likely has something to do with the fact that he is still able take and pass on certain quirks. His plan may involve either taking a certain quirk from Tomura or giving him a certain quirk that's currently in body!AFO's arsenal....

Ha ha, imagine if it was something completely insane like him having Kotaro's quirk + vestige tucked away or somethin', specifically so he can trigger Tomura's rage and trauma all over again--

>The Kotaro Apparition splits apart, revealing AFO. > Tomura approaches AFO, and the Kotaro apparition suddenly emerges from within AFO and tries to stop Tomura from approaching while looking visibly distressed

[super-paper]

Thinkin’ about how AFO needs hatred/anger to take back OFA, and how the vestiges are constantly warning Izuku to control his anger….

And thinking about the theory that AFO is able to pass on "parts of himself" in the quirks that he gifts others, plus the theory that there’s an AFO vestige or a connection to AFO on the other side of the vault door that the second and third users are guarding…..

Like. Did AFO accidentally give away the part of himself that feels rage and hates others when he passed on the stockpiling quirk to Yoichi…..? Or if he did it intentionally, perhaps he thought that giving Yoichi his hatred and anger would corrupt him and finally bring Yoichi over to his side— but Yoichi was able to overcome it, make it his own, and learn how to use that anger for good… or something.

Whatever the case, AFO definitely has a weird fixation on anger in general. And I think it would be fitting if he ultimately shot himself in the foot by giving Yoichi the one thing he would need to take OFA back, because he thought he could get Yoichi on his side if he could just force Yoichi to feel the same emotions. And it would fit with the ongoing message that anger itself is not a bad thing, as long as you don't lose sight of yourself and others as a result of that anger. But I’ll have to reread some parts before I can form more coherent thoughts.