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everyone talks about cutting off a toxic parent

but no one ever talks about the pain of wanting a parent but knowing yours cannot love you the way they should

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And that was the moment I realised: when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear. I decided then my life would be full of all three.

Beach Read, Emily Henry

#book quotes #quotes #hopelessly in love #hopeless romantic #beach read #emily henry #enemies to lovers #bookish #bookblr #litblr #contemporary romance #book recommendations #tbr

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To Build Something Else

Whenever I read a fanfiction that takes place in the future where the hero kids continue their schooling as normal and emerge as pro heroes into the existing system, I always kinda view it as like, “AU where things weren’t as bad” or “AU where everyone is still pretending that this is the way things should be” or “AU where good and evil are morally uncomplicated.” I’m not trying to call anybody out—I’ll still read and enjoy these sometimes—but that’s how I’ve always looked at it. I’m starting to notice other people feeling it too. I’ve read fics where they point out how redundant and unfair it is to go back to being students after saving the world (remember how many pros straight up quit and left a bunch of kids to keep fighting?). I’ve seen people acknowledge how trauma will affect their ability to keep going. Perhaps the trickiest thing to wrap our heads around is how the villains will fit into it all if not through death, punishment, or imprisonment. What about all the other trappings of society? The heavily regulated quirk use, the government-funded pros aiding police control and contributing to cover-ups that maintain the illusion of peace. Hero idolization, quirk counseling, civilian helplessness. Judging a person’s worth or character based on their quirk…

It would sound too obvious and cheesy to simply point out that society isn’t “just the way things are,” that change is possible. We all know this, and yet we struggle to pinpoint exactly where to aim our sights, find the source, make any meaningful progress. The other day I read some articles from my university’s student newspaper around 1970, and it made me feel sick wondering if progress is really an illusion. Fact is, it’s easy to intellectually deconstruct society, but very difficult to imagine how to build something else.

In this fictional world, heroes have offered a mythical vision of safety and triumph. When All Might arrived, everything was going to be okay. But let’s not forget how this story began: with a moment where All Might paused, like a bystander, and in his place, a desperate civilian kid hurtled forward without any common sense. If you ask me, it wasn’t that Izuku was so good and pure and selfless, it was that he disregarded everything.

And so the person who “saves the world” (if we can even reduce it to such a concept) is not the person who puts everyone at ease and makes crowds cheer. It’s the person who makes everyone hold their breath, with a feeling in the air like the pressure changed, and it smells like rain. It is natural to be worried about the future. It’s honest. It means you can see what’s really going on. Hero society has never felt this exposed, but the people are held back from the edge of despair because there is also so much potential brewing. Electricity about to strike. The world will NOT go back to the way it was, no matter what. That much is certain. But what if we still live to see the dawn? What then? What if one person’s courage to break the mold makes all the difference?

I’m not just talking about Izuku, you know. I’m talking about Horikoshi.

To an extent, I’ve given up on predicting how exactly things will play out, because if nothing else, I can tell he’s planning something big—so big, I can’t quite picture it. I’m watching and waiting for the one person who can. I just know where he’s coming from. I think about how he’s never come this far before because his other stories were snuffed out. I know he used to struggle to see the future of his career. I relate to his stubbornly rebellious resolve to do what he wants anyway. To keep dreaming. I know that emotional sincerity is his specialty. And now he’s even directly breaking the fourth wall, having characters talk about what’s supposed to happen in comic books. Gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, we’ve been shown how something else can happen. He’s not done yet.

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At it's core, bnha's theme was always and always be the symbolism, the ideology and the inherent humanity of lending a helping hand and it's ramifications on the people around.

I'm only upset about how a beautiful story gets overlooked because of the awful fanbase but honestly. It's so beautiful.

It's more than power of friendship. It's power of humanity and how we can visualise humanity it's it's raw and condensed form of lending a hand.

Because at the end of day, don't we all want a 'Need a hand? Looks like you need it?'

You see it between izuku and his kacchan. katsuki and his deku. tenko and izuku. ochako and himiko. touya and shouto

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The appeal of a villain friend in fiction is more often than not the thought that someone out there would choose you over the entire world.

The members of the League of Villains were anyone's priority. They felt replaceable or even worse, they knew they were replaceable. They weren't pretty enough, strong enough, normal enough, cool enough. They were wrong in the head, were too violent, too weird, too creepy.

All the rage? The hurt? They were told to swallow it because it was making people uncomfortable.

Stain was their inspiration, but he wasn't the one to pick them. He wasn't the one who looked at them and told them "you have a place". That was Giran. The manga tells us that Giran was putting together a sort of friendship group for violent outcasts like them. That he formed the League for them to have company, a reason to fight for, to exist.

There's a sort of catharsis that fictional villain friendships give that you can't find somewhere else. A sort of short-lived relief that comes when someone sees you being mistreated and decides retribution is needed. Wouldn't it be wonderful if revenge had no consequences and the damage it caused was at once lasting and non-existent?

That's what fiction is for. You put all your feelings there and create scenarios where you purge those feelings. No one gets harmed and you come out of it cleaned, renewed, with a clear head.

So when Tomura Shigaraki creates the League of Villains, it is an instant click for people who had been wronged and are seeking catharsis of their negative experiences and feelings.

The League of Villains punishes someone with torture and failure for misgendering and hurting their trans friend. A shonen manga does that, a gender where nonconforming people are a joke by tradition. Do you get what that means to some readers out there?

Tomura claims to hate everything and everyone, but when Toga asks him, he admits that they are his exception. He wouldn't destroy something they loved. His prioritizing their wishes and their likings. There was no one else above them for him and no one was as important to him as they were.

Suddenly, they are someone's number one people and not out of manipulation. They recognize in Tomura a man who really cares.

Tomura was shown to live in total neglect. He had poor hygiene, was isolated almost completely from the outside world, talked with maybe three or four people tops, ate whatever, liver whatever. He didn't care about his living conditions. It was only when the League asked for clothing and food and other stuff that he began to care. For them.

He wants them to live, to succeed, he wants to hurt anyone who hurts them, to protect what is precious to them.

And now we got confirmation that they matter more to him than his own past.

Tomura would destroy the world simply because they asked him to, because they promised to. He would destroy himself trying because he must be their hero. Remember how every time a villain would question him about his motivation or his ideals, he would talk about his hatred or his need to destroy. We've gone past it and at his very core we found that the thing that truly fuels him is the desire to be a hero.

For them.

It's really something to see people wondering why a reader would be fond of Tomura Shigaraki or the LOV in general. Is it that hard to understand?

Again, that's the appeal of a fictional villain's friendship to real life victims:

To be important, to be picked, to be prioritized, to be felt, to be seen, to be understood, to belong to and be considered, to be irreplaceable. To be all those things to the point the weight of it shatters the universe.

So much love outplacement in someone's love— to matter so much to someone —that to see you hurt would make them want to destroy the world.

#bnha #mha spoilers

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My heart is breaking in a million pieces because Tomura thinks he can destroy the world and go back to the League, but he doesn't know that most of them are either dead or terribly hurt.

He doesn't know Twice died because he refused to betray them. Tomura doesn't know that Mr. Compress sacrificed himself to save him, doesn't know about the way that Compress screamed he loved the League as he went down. He has no clue about what AFO did to Spinner in Tomura's name, the way Dabi explained so perfectly to Shouto the LOV and their philosophies because he always paid attention even if he said he didn't, Tomura wasn't there to witness Toga's breakdown over not being able to use the Dabi's flames or his decay even if she loved them so much.

At his absolute worst, even once the worst of his own past is over, the thought of them keeps him going.

He wants to destroy the world for them.

His League of Villains.

They love him so much. He loves them so much.

They can only imagine it, but they. don't. know.

#crying over the League of Villains again #found family

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:'(

#just broke my heart #mha spoilers #mha 418 #izuku midoriya #tomura shigaraki

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Natalie Wee, Least of all

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gay😔irl

#being queer

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Nostalgia(n) : sepia dreams seen through rose tinted glasses, full of fuzzy, warm, ocean blue air whispering soft as the waves , all mellow and melancholy as the setting sky with its spectrum of muted reds. Forever within the sight but never again to hold and be held, a physical ache constituted of mental anguish almost melodic in its intensity like pretty words in prettier ink bleeding through the rib bones, leaving it's traces in the heart hidden beneath, obstructing with its chokehold made of poetry and proses leaving us breathless in its being.

#modern poetry #nostalgia #kahlil gibran #poetry #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #dark academic aesthetic #dark academia poetry #dead poets society #desi writers #desiblr #writerscorner #i wrote some words #writers on tumblr #prose poetry

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@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

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healing involves a lot more grieving than you’d expect. progress hurts. you’re moving on from things that happened but also things you wished would happen and never did. mourning does not mean you are not getting better.