#very good commentary

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.

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[essektheylyss]

It really is so fun that Essek started mentioning "my partner" like every three lines because he probably doesn't actually get the chance to talk about it that often.

I think there can often be an impulse when you really care about someone to want to shout from the rooftops all the great things you feel and notice about them, and Essek isn't really in a position to do that. The people who he can talk freely to already know him and Caleb, and the people who don't know them likely aren't safe to tell real personal details to. It's one thing to fabricate a parental relationship knowing that there isn't someone to trace that to, but it's an entirely different thing to tell someone honestly about the people you love when any small detail might put them in danger if it fell into the wrong hands.

The Hells are safe to say that kind of thing to—perhaps mostly on a meta level, in that the DM is aware that they are the protagonists—and they also characteristically tend to offer a listening ear to anyone they meet, and I think it's delightful that Essek actually recognized and responded to that.

[torchstelechos]

I love that In Stars and Time gives the nonconsensual kiss a proper horrified reaction, by the way. Most media where a character can kiss someone out of no where either make it a funny thing or the "romantic" thing, but here Siffrin kisses without permission out of no where and Isabeau reacts correctly! He pushed them away! Because thats surprising, and fucked up to do to someone with no lead up and no permission! Isabeau had no context, and at the time when the kiss happened, was under the impression that Siffrin didn't like touch which can have a variety of horrible reasons for it. Not only that but... We don't know what face Siffrin was pulling and I don't think it was a nice one. Which, again, means that we don't have all the context either! This is a horrible event that has horrible consequences and I love that it does. Because it's something that is horrible and objectively one of the worst things Siffrin did to one of the others in the loops, so I'm just!!! So excited it had bad consequences!!!

[skitskatdacat63]

2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Sebastian Vettel(ft. Mark Webber & Jenson Button)

[non-un-topo]

Thinking about Yusuf and Nicolò as young men again

[ranvwoop]

— some sort of doctrine in which you're already missed

bisexualdomtorreto / tinyhappy / the worm king’s lullaby - richard siken / in a dream you saw a way to survive - clementine von radics , for m - mikko harvey / the world is ending - judas h. / loose lips - kimya dawson / arcuiedbrunestud / scp-6476 - tsercele / catalogue of unabashed gratitude - ross gay / no one belongs here more than you - miranda july / creatinghelen / the light that shines when things end -  iaon s. thomas

[egophiliac]

So the final character turns out to be based on Ryugen, but it feels kinda weird how there is also one based on Zangetsu and they aren't brothers

Or what if plot reveals they are brothers and he was actually adopted or stollen

I CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S ACTUALLY RYUUGEN?! I made a joke about it when Toten got revealed but I didn't actually expect... (I'm counting it as a win though, which means I guessed three out of sixteen! ...given how wacky some of these got, I'm actually pretty proud of that.)

he seems very sweet though! I hope he and his secret hamsters are very happy together. 🐹

(also:

THIS WAS MY EXACT TRAIN OF THOUGHT TOO! either this is an incredible bit of meta foreshadowing, or an incredible bit of Takahashi trolling, and I -- I honestly don't know which is more likely)

[alicornze7]

this is what happens when you get 4 hours of sleep for 3 days straight send help-

I love flirty comedy gangle

(even tho she's so bad at it jsjsdhj)

Oh! And happy women’s day btw, pic is unrelated

[unreliable-narratoe]

Accidentally went on MDZS twt and saw a "wwx was SO affected by classism" (valid by itself) take and the subsequent "yzy and jc called him the son of a servant all the time!" (Former did, latter literally says "what kind of servant has their master peeling Lotus roots for them?" He is still classist but I think it's pretty clear wwx is Family to him) takes. For good measure, JGY's name was also thrown around a bit "I don't know how anyone can sympathize with him, classism or poverty or not..." well.

There was also an LQR picked on wwx because he was a servant explanation that got quite a few likes... And I was just... Blocking people left and right for my peace of mind. I was so glad for a second that I've built my own bubble here.

[kohakhearts]

goh parentified child syndrome. go(h)

my time is here at last. thank you for enabling me <3 apologies for taking months to finish writing this giant post!

welcome to my dissertation on this fucking Dynamic <3

ok! first thing, let's establish our criteria for Parentified Child Syndrome. this is obviously not like, an actual diagnostic Thing, but there are a million and one articles out there for us to look through. so i did the tough work of scouring those to find some Symptoms we can use as anchor points here. a lot of this is split into "emotional" (parents seeking comfort from their children, rather than comforting them) vs. "material" (parents assigning their children responsibilities that are not age-appropriate (e.g. grocery shopping, paying bills, etc.)) needs, but for simplicity i'll just merge them together - because realistically, they often go hand-in-hand. so the primary symptoms we'll work with here will be:

disruptive childhood behaviours (particularly at school)

stress and anxiety

reluctance to participate in play/age-appropriate activities with their peers

difficulty acknowledging and accepting one's feelings

insecure attachment styles

need to feel "in control"

distrustful of others/self-reliant to a fault

absenteeism and poor performance in school

passive communication style

the other obvious prerequesite here is the family dynamic. so let's dissect that one a bit!

goh's family situation isn't actually like...100% clear. but i have analyzed every episode where his family is even mentioned like it's my full-time job and i have no reason to believe his grandmother actually lives with him. so in the scope of this essay, i am assuming that she lives nearby, and most likely has a key to the apartment, but does not live with them.

otherwise, we are given enough context to assume that camille and walker have been busy with work goh's entire life (though i'd choose to believe for my own sanity that in his infancy his mother at least wasn't working...though given the type of job she has, that's actually...kinda hard to say for sure). we can also assume that they've at least been self-employed for the majority of his life. it's clear that they are fairly well-established in the city/in their field by jn, and since goh is supposed to be 10 at this point, it makes sense to me that they've been building that company up pretty much his whole life.

in terms of the work they do, goh tells ash, my dad is a system engineer and my mom is a programmer. they run a company together. granted, we don't see very much of their actual workplace, but what we do see is completely void of other people. as in, camille and walker do all this work BY THEMSELVES.

nothing in the anime otherwise disputes this! if anything, goh's explanations of his parents' lifestyle just reinforces it. he also suggests that during periods of harsh weather and heavy system use, his parents are busier than usual. this implies that they are most busy during holidays. this is actually further implied by the flashback in jn015 where they explicitly say to him that they're sorry for having to work through the holiday. his reaction, being completely unengaged, not even really even acknowledging it, tells us that this is the norm.

however!! he also shows off a special device to horace in jn032 that he says his parents made specifically for him, to help him learn more about mew. this suggests that they must have some amount of free time to dedicate to him...but they show their love for him through material gifts related to their line of work (his computer set-up, too; he tells scorbunny that his parents set it all up for him).

otherwise, we see camille and walker privately share their concerns about goh (a clear awareness that he doesn't have many friends, concern about him being lonely because of them, etc.) but never actually confront goh with their concerns or appear to go out of their ways to do anything about it. i wrote a bit about this and the symbolism of having him catch a cubone of all pokemon in the episode we're introduced to his family here but the tl;dr is that camille and walker demonstrate care for goh to each other but not to him - presumably to compensate for their physical absence, we get the impression he's given a lot of freedom and little to no discipline.

which brings me to the first criterion:

disruptive childhood behaviours (with a side of absenteeism, which presumably contributes to poor performance in school)

goh's school life is obviously inconvienent to the plot progression, so for narrative purposes the writers have him just not go to school. in jn049 we get the explanation that goh had made a promise to their teacher to show up to school for tests...but the weird thing about this scene is that chloe's surprised by it:

since in jn001 and jn002 we see that chloe is goh's only point of contact amongst his schoolmates and that she hand delivers schoolwork to him at her dad's lab, the only way this exchange really makes sense to me is if it's a new arrangement. even the fact that goh makes a point of saying "hey, i followed through, go me" to their teacher here gives that vibe.

so, we can extrapolate from that that...prior to whenever this agreement was made, goh just didn't go to school because he didn't want to. but given how schools operate, we can pretty safely assume his parents are aware of this. and i have strong reason to believe that they have at least been on the receiving end of phone calls from teachers or administrators, because of these lines from jn015:

all things considered, this is a weird assumption to make, especially about your hyper-independent introverted child...unless there's a history of disruptive or unfriendly behaviour to inform that assumption. and based on goh's behaviour in jn001 at professor oak's pokemon camp, i don't think it's so out there to say the pattern probably was there.

goh is actually a super sweet kid towards his parents and has a clear admiration for them both. even in flashbacks, his whole thing is kind of like...he doesn't want to bother them. they fall asleep on family vacation and don't spend time with him? well, that's fine! he'll just find something else to do! in that same episode in the flashback sequence, they pick him up on the side of the road alone in the pouring rain and he doesn't say a word to them. even though he was angry and upset before.

so, yeah. i think it would make a lot of sense if he were well-behaved at home and not so much so at school. but camille and walker, even when they learn about things that happen, don't seem to probe or discipline him. whether because of any combination of giving him leeway out of guilt or of not wanting to encourage him to act out at home, we don't know. but the disconnect obviously exists.

which then contributes to

stress and anxiety, difficulty acknowleding and accepting one's feelings, and passive communication style

goh is socially awkward, yes, and clearly very anxious socially especially early on in jn, but a lot of that seems to come from an inability to express his wants and needs. i think jn003 has some of the most succinct examples of this - ash having to realize he's struggling and to reach down to him when they're climbing the tower in order for him to even accept that he can get (and needs) help getting up, and then later one when he stumbles over his words trying to ask ash to be his friend.

i think another good example is in jn007, after he gets knocked out at the flute cup. passive communication relies a lot on shifts in body language and in, well, passive statements. when ash approaches him to tell him to cheer up, goh doesn't actually really...respond to that. he does this

and then runs off. which he does fairly often, actually, even as late as jn135. it's emotional avoidance 101. literally just run away from the thing that's bothering you. something else we see in jn135 is him backing out of admitting he wants to go on a journey - because he is concerned about ash's reaction (though i think it's a little more complex than that, but i'll circle back to that).

and of course there's jn062, which i wrote a lot about in this post. but the whole thesis of the episode is that goh has learned through his relationships up to this point that it's okay to not understand your feelings but you still have to feel them. and it's actually a really beautiful character development moment for him, but also reinforces the fact that he still doesn't know how to grapple with his own emotions. after finally finding drizzile and explaining how he knew he would find it there, he starts to cry and doesn't know why. but even aside from feeling vulnerable, it's kind of a culmination of this stress he's been carrying with him throughout the whole episode...and the sense of responsibility he feels for driving drizzile away. which is a great segue into

insecure attachment styles and need to feel "in control"

if there's one thing i feel like people sleep on regarding goh's character, it's how much of a mother hen he is. he's obviously very thorough and thoughtful when it comes to looking after his pokemon - as in jn062 where he spends all that time chasing down drizzile after it runs away, even to the point of telling ash and chloe that they should stay behind because it's getting late but that he's going to keep looking - but he's the same way with ash.

off the top of my head, things like buying extra scones because he knew ash would want them, making ash wash his hands after eating ice cream, chastising him about punctuality, you know...very parental kind of things. he actually does it with horace too, when they first meet, by bringing a lunch for them both when he goes back to the forest to meet him again.

anyway, being a Mom Friend is cute and all, but it also REEKS of parentified child. taking on responsibilities that aren't yours to fulfill? yeah. that's a need to feel in control. it's what he's used to! it offers him security!

the other side of this is...chloe. goh's first friend, who he refuses to consider a friend, or let consider him a friend. but, like, she obviously IS his friend. and yet our introduction to them gives us this exchange

goh and chloe have a pretty tense relationship at the beginning of jn, wherein she is clearly trying to help him (by you know. getting his homework for him and shit) and he blows her off in a text message, which she complains is a repeating behaviour. chloe is obviously very loyal to him, even though he doesn't seem to repay the favour. again, there's a big disconnect here.

insecure attachments generally stem from anxiety over potential rejection and/or poor self-esteem cultivated in childhood based on parents’ emotional availability (or lack thereof) to their children. by keeping chloe an arm's distance away, goh keeps himself safe from the dangers of vulnerability, taught to him through childhood encounters with emotionally unavailable parents.

i'm not here to armchair diagnose (ok, who am i kidding, yeah i am), but i think goh's attachment style is anxious-avoidant. his clear avoidance of making friends, the multiple times we see him break off his friendship with ash only to minutes later be like "me and the bestie"...yeah, that's avoidance. but he does crave intimacy, arguably even more than he fears it.

hence why even though he knows ash would want him to journey on his own...he still convinces himself that actually telling ash that would be, as he calls it, a "betrayal of [their] friendship." my theory is that he's not concerned that ash will be upset - he's concerned that ash won't be upset enough. which is why when then ash turns it around on him and says he's going on a journey, goh gets upset and pushes him away. he does the exact same thing with horace when they're younger. just a complete 180 - he wronged me once, so he's the worst and i can't forgive him, ever.

the difference with chloe is that she actually takes care of him more than he takes care of her - which changes the dynamic from "i have to do everything to keep this person in my life, including suppressing my emotions for their sake" to "i cannot express to this person that i have needs and desires because they'll think i'm too much and they won't stick around if i do." which is primarily avoidant, but insecure attachment nonetheless.

this is extrapolation, but i think his relationship with chloe is so different because we are supposed to get the sense that they have a more familial dynamic. so, she's the one person he can't push away from him - but as he learned in his actual family dynamic, he also can't be too close to her. he doesn't want to be smothered; he doesn't want her to feel smothered by him. so they maintain a degree of separation that only begins to go away after her father begins literally housing and feeding him, thus integrating him and ash into their family in some honorary way.

which brings me to the last point, i guess, which is

reluctance to participate in age-appropriate activities with peers and self-reliant to a fault

these are, i think, the traits that jn is most blatantly attempting to better in goh throughout his arc. so i won't spend too long hashing it out, because i think these are things we all know he struggled with!

in flashbacks, we see him alone at school; during the first episode, at professor oak's camp, he is always physically distanced from the other kids and chloe even points out that he's basically doing professor oak's job at one point! he's not on the same level as the other kids and it's clear he doesn't want to be. when he meets horace, we see that it takes him some time to get comfortable enough with him to go explore the forest together and become friends.

he doesn't go to school, but that doesn't mean he isn't learning things - he becomes a very self-directed learner early on, from what he see. he's not just like...rotting in his room playing video games. he's studying and researching. the only times aside from with horace that we see him in a flashback doing something that isn't solitary is with pokemon - and even then, he's like...reciting their pokedex entries. his abra story at the end of jn is precipitated by him saying he was going through his dad's old pokedex (which is a whole other thing - this implies walker used to be a trainer, but neither of goh's parents seem to have pokemon...perhaps they're too busy with work to look after them? a theory for another time, i suppose, but it has undeniably being gnawing at my brain since that episode aired lol).

and of course, there's the fact that in jn062 he tells drizzile he was never comfortable with confiding in his parents or his grandmother...suggesting that he never confided in anyone, because we don't really get the sense from the whole "i don't NEED friends" exchange in jn001 that he considers chloe a reliable confidant, either.

the other place we see his flawed sense of self-reliance, aside from like...everywhere in the first 10 or so episodes, lol (something that is reflected pretty beautifully and symbolically in scorbunny's story, too!), is in project mew. he has to learn how to work in a team - and he clearly hates it. at this point he's found one person to rely on, but that already feels like too much. the raid battle with articuno is the most obvious example of this. he isn't good at being a leader, but he also isn't good at being a follower. because he's only ever been responsible for himself, and he doesn't trust anyone else to know how to direct him, but he also has no clue how to work within the parameters of a team.

i also want to say, as a final note, that i actually think this is all extremely intentional writing. obviously in the west we have a strong capitalism culture too, but the work culture in japan is very toxic (just google "japan work culture" and you can see right away how intense it is lol) and i'm not actually surprised at all that pokemon would make such a direct commentary on that - a lot of japanese kids could probably relate to goh and his emotionally absent, work-obsessed parents! they are clearly pretty well-off, but their dedication to work supercedes matters of home and family, because that's how it's supposed to be. as a result, goh admires them a lot for this dedication - but his arc is primarily about letting go of the "work" part of interacting with pokemon and learning how to have fun and make the most of his experiences. and i think that's a really lovely message for modern pokemon to be sending to kids :')

[sysig]

Ellen McLain’s commentary from my trivia playthrough

[xlillyle]

Why in my humble opinion MHA's ending regarding Midoriya Izuku is good and fitting and completes his storyline beautifully 🧵

Or: On what it means to be a hero.

I'm having a slight déjà-vu... oh well. There are lots of opinions on MHA and its ending, now that it is here, so after seeing some I felt compelled to shove my own to the board.

While it's impossible to disregard all other aspects of the ending as MHA is a rich story with many factors and subplots additionally to the main story, I will do my best to focus on my main point, which is: Midoriya Izuku's story is a good one and has been brought to a beautiful and very fitting ending that I like a lot. Here's why:

I have three (four) main points I will go through that are related to Izuku's story that imo were ended well:

One For All & what the quirk did for Izuku & how it ended.

Izuku's on-going career, resulting in him as a teacher.

Izuku's future career with the hero suit.

2 and 3 also both pick up one of MHA's main themes: What it means to be a hero.

So, let me start with One For All (OFA).

OFA is the quirk that kicks off this series because it's the quirk given by the Symbol of Peace All Might to our protagonist Midoriya Izuku, who has been quirkless but dreamt of being a hero. There are a few important things to note about OFA:

OFA is very strong; so strong that All Might, even after agreeing to give Izuku the quirk, makes him train. A lot. And hard. Because a regular body would not be able to handle OFA due to its nature.

We learn later that not only does it cultivate the raw strength of all its previous users, but that it holds their quirks too. And that these quirks got stronger with each generation of OFA user as well.

In fact, the major reason why OFA is so insanely strong when Izuku receives it, is the fact that All Might had been quirkless himself and therefore is the longest holder of OFA as the other users could not handle having their own quirk and OFA as additional one, passing away rather early.

OFA is also the quirk of Yoichi who is All For One's (AFO) brother who, in very simplified terms, have a long history and complicated, but hostile relationship with each other. Yoichi wants to stop his brother.

And, to make a very, over 400 chapters long story short: Izuku defeats All For One and he does so after countless of training and battles where he learned to make the best use of OFA and in the end by transferring OFA to Shigaraki/AFO.

Izuku has always understood OFA as a borrowed power and ultimately as one he'd be the last user of—OFA was a power used to defeat AFO and the fact that transferring it, ultimately what AFO had always desired, is part of what destroys him is very fitting.

OFA has given Izuku the chance to enter the world of heroes—and to help change it in the long run. He was able to open the people's eyes about society, he has shown that even after he gave OFA away, he would still fight and he has animated people to be heroic even if they aren't employed as heroes. He has added more meaning to the word "hero".

Izuku as teacher, part 1 of what it means to be a hero.

Now, I have seen a lot of criticism to Izuku ending up as a teacher and I am here to tell you—it's perfect for him! Izuku is someone who loves learning, he is genuinely enthusiastic about it, and especially about quirks—he loves geeking out about them, he spends his free time analyzing them and drawing out their potential, he is an amazing supporting character for children that need assistance in finding their footing in the world of heroes. Who can you learn better from than from someone who loves learning itself? He's got a contagious kind of excitement that sparks over to you.

And, he knows better than anyone how chasing after this dream of being a hero feels like, knows better than anyone how important people supporting you on the way is—because this is what he has received, back then, when he was in high school himself. Izuku has learned and experienced himself how important support from the people around you is, so he now wants to provide exactly that to the future generation of heroes. He wants to guide them on their path.

This career path also opens a new perspective that MHA has been trying to tell us for so long now: "Hero" isn't just who goes up and picks up this nice certificate and runs around the city with the "hero badge". "Hero" is more than that. Helping people, in any little way, is being heroic and makes you a hero. Teachers are heroes too. Izuku is being a hero, even now that he doesn't do "pro hero" work, because he is helping children—a teacher doesn't only educate, a teacher provides mental support to some extent too, and that goes even moreso for UA and other hero school teachers. Teachers protect their students as well. Izuku is, by all means, still a hero, just not a "pro" hero. He is a guidance to children and is dedicating his life to extend a helping hand to them and their dreams.

And he's happy with it.

Yes, it's also said that he misses the work of a pro hero—but that doesn't mean that what he is doing now is bad or "settling". He could have done SO many other things, but he CHOSE to pursue a career as a teacher—because this, too, is something he enjoys and finds happiness in. Both statements can be true. You can miss something you used to dream of all your life—it's very natural, even, but you can still be happy about where you ended in life right now.

Moreover, even if you don't agree with my take as "teachers" being heroes too, we see just a few panels later Izuku being a hero:

Which further emphasizes the point I and MHA have been trying to make: You can be a hero even if your job title isn't "hero". That's why civilians got statues too, that's why they are considered for the heroes ranking too. You can have a diverging opinion on how effective it is, but that is the point that is being made and the characters in-universe try to bring across too.

The hero suit and the conclusion on what it means to be a hero.

Truthfully, I don't know why people keep acting like MHA ended after Izuku's teacher career, because we have a conclusion that even traces back and argues back against anyone who doesn't agree with my points about him being a teacher and still a hero. And, more importantly, it brings the full manga into a perfect circle:

Because remember what the manga opened with: Can you be a quirkless hero?

And in so many ways across all these 430 chapters, but now even in the most literal sense of itself, MHA is telling you: YES. Yes you can! It shows us that you can be a hero without a quirk because anyone can lend someone freezing or wounded a t-shirt and anyone can reach out their hand to someone who is lost and anyone can sprint to catch a stumbling child.

But, also, our protagonist Midoriya Izuku, who is quirkless and had lived his dream at the age of 15-17 after borrowing a quirk, now is only starting his dream again at the age of 25: He can be a (pro) hero again and that although he doesn't have a quirk.

Yeah, it's expensive and not yet affordable for the average quirkless guy. But that's not the point of the story, because we started with asking "Is it possible at all?" and were first deluded into thinking the answer is "No.", but MHA is here to tell you: Yes, you can be a hero. There is most certainly an argument to made that now that the first one has done it, more might be able to follow in the long run.

So, what does it mean to be a hero?

I think MHA's message on that is: A hero is someone who steps up because they can, who helps people achieve a part of happiness because they have the chance to. You don't have to have a quirk or do grand gestures, you don't have to rely on the "professionals" to take care of it, at least not if you can make a difference already. There is no shame in a little heroic act because it doesn't make the act less heroic. There even is beauty in everyone being a little hero to each other every day.

Some last words about my feelings on MHA's ending.

This isn't really part of the thread anymore, but I still wanted to say this. This is purely personal, but, to me, what was really beautiful was: Midoriya Izuku didn't "peak" in high school, he had one peak in high school, but life is made of multiple "peaks".

Izuku is 25 and hasn't even seen all of the world yet and now he gets to live his dream again. Because you never know where life takes you and even if you may feel hopeless or lost and like you already experienced all the highs of lives, Horikoshi and MHA are here to tell you: There's always another peak yet to come.

MHA has this really beautiful ending that tries to reassure you that even though your teen years feel so intense and like the world is about to end and even though so many others your age may be so much "higher" on the "life achievements" scale, it doesn't mean that you are a failure or should lose hope because you can always catch up later, in your own pace, with your own wishes. Life isn't over at 17. Life isn't even over at 25. Your new dream might only just become true later than you expected.

[chiropteracupola]

lhqr outfit musings... (underlayers, everyday outfits, performance / out on the town outfits)

[tswwwit]

I re-read the one shot of Bill going home after walking in on someone having a raunchy dream about Dipper, and now my mind is thinking what would happen if Bill decided dipper wouldn't last a single day in his shoes (ie reading people's minds all day), so they make a bet to see if Dipper can last 24 hours with a mind reading spell, only for Dipper to realize just how many people are thinking weird things about him

That's an interesting premise! And you just know Dipper's going to think it's all great and fascinating - right up until he doesn't.

[skitskatdacat63]

Here are some other F3 Seb pics I thought were really cute

[dailydegurechaff]

Today's Daily Degurechaff is… Mermay Once Again! (Now polling for public opinion.)