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rea-grimm · 8 days

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Merfolk Law

It was more of a coincidence that you ran into each other. You lived in the city, but when you had the chance, you went to the cottage you had right by the bay that led to the sea. It was quite windy there and since you lived quite far in the north, the water was too icy for your taste.

Maybe if you were more tough, but that was completely out of your control. In addition, you had a lot of events and work, so you went there, for example, once a month or once every three months. That was different.

For your next visit to the cottage, you decided to make your time pleasant by taking a little walk around the fjord when you saw it. Or you saw an orca's fin rolling in a pool of blood by the water and a harpoon sticking out of the fin.

From a distance, however, it seemed too small for you. Again, it was too big for the baby. You moved on to it more when you got stuck.

You knew it didn't fit the size of the orca, but you didn't expect a merfolk. The young man was very pale, his eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily. You had no idea what to do.

You moved closer to him as he opened his grey eyes and slashed his hand at you. However, the movement hurt him and he groaned in pain. You jumped to the side wondering what to do next. In the end, you decided to run home to get the first aid kit, as it would be difficult to help him with empty hands.

However, before you went back to him, you quickly found first aid for the harpoon injury over the phone. You weren't sure what to do and most importantly, the ambulance probably wouldn't help you here. You could get him into even more trouble.

You still took a looser sweatshirt with you to keep him warm. Although if he was used to cold water… You had no idea how to take care of a merfolk.

“I'll help you,” you said as you returned to him. However, as soon as you approached him, he slashed after you again. “If you want to bleed here, please, be my guest,” you said and he stopped.

Finally, he let you approach and help him. He watched you suspiciously the whole time you tended to his wound.

“That's it,” you boasted as you bandaged his fin. He just looked at you before jumping into the water and swimming away. Even if he didn't thank you for it, it made you feel good.

Since then, you had the impression that you caught glimpses of him here and there, peeking above the surface before disappearing under the water again. You didn't get any closer to him.

However, on the shore, in the place where you found him, you found a gold coin that was no longer valid.

You were out for a walk and you came to the edge of a small cave that wasn't very deep. You decided to go look inside. Animals never congregated there, so there was no danger in it.

You walked in and were looking around when you noticed movement in the water. You leaned closer as something began to emerge from the water. It was a moment where you immediately caught yourself because it almost hit you in the head.

You fell backwards and landed on your butt. Right in front of you, the same merman you found outside emerged from the water. His wet hair fell into his eyes and the dark circles under his eyes indicated fatigue.

"Why are you following me?" he asked you, his voice as icy as his eyes.

"I don't follow you. I was just out for a walk,” you answered in surprise and settled down better. “Though I'm glad you look better than before,” you added with a weak smile.

"You're weird," he replied after a while, not taking his eyes off of you.

You noticed that there were several fish skeletons in the corner of the cave when a rumbling sound echoed through the cave. You immediately looked at the merfolk who's stomach rumbled loudly. His ice mask broke at that moment and he hid under the water. Only his eyes looked above the surface.

You stifled a laugh and offered him something to eat. You had planned to take a longer walk today, so you prepared a snack. You took your bag off your shoulder and took out the sandwich, along with the onigiri you bought for the test.

At first, you offered him a sandwich, but he frowned at that as if you were trying to poison him. So you offered him onigiri instead. He hesitantly took it from you before unwrapping it and getting down to eating. He bit into it hungrily and began to chew before stopping.

"Thank you," he mumbled as he swallowed.

"You’re welcome," you smiled at him and took a bite of the bread yourself.

Law, you later learned, sat down at the edge of the water and you ate together. You had the impression that he was slowly starting to trust you.

"Aren't you so cold here?" you asked him after a moment as you saw his body shake slightly.

"Not at all," he shrugged, not paying any attention to it. Until you took off your coat and sweatshirt, which was looser on you, and handed it to him. Then you put your coat back on.

Law took the sweatshirt from you and looked it over before putting it on. It fit him like well like a shell. However, it was a strange feeling for him. He was a little dry, but the sweatshirt still stuck to him. After a while, however, it began to warm him pleasantly.

From that moment on, you visited him regularly. Only later did he admit to you that people find him as a child. Two brothers. One of them treated him nicely and taught him many different things. Read, write, etc.

He only told you this after you asked him about his tattoo. You had no idea how else he would get them if he didn't know other people.

After this discovery, you regularly brought him new books, to shorten the long time until his fin was completely healed.

You were afraid that when he recovered, he would swim away somewhere else, but to your surprise, he stayed.

In addition to books, you brought him food and your sweatshirts, which he liked. He kept taking them from you and didn't want to give them back. Only when you promised him that you would wash them and return them did he let you take them.

"I have something for you!" you called him when you came back after a month. You had to go back for a while, but thanks to Law, you looked forward to going back much more often.

Law was already waiting for you on the shore. He was sitting with his fins in the water while wearing a long black hooded sweatshirt and reading something. When he heard you, he put the book aside and turned to you.

“I've got something for your collection,” you said excitedly, handing him the bag of coins you had collected for him.

“Any new pieces? ” he asked you and started looking at the coins. When he saw one he didn't have yet, the corners of his mouth lifted into a satisfied smile.

After this you both had onigiri as you found out it was one of his favorite foods. In second place were fish.

After the food, you lay down in the grass and watched the clouds. You were starting to like it here more and more. You looked at the merfolk who was watching you with interest.

You had to admit how much he had changed since you first met. You still remembered how he first looked at you coldly. Now there was no trace of the cold in his face. Now he was looking at you with a look that made your heart race.

Law scooted closer to you, leaning over you until your noses were almost touching.

“Who would have thought I would find refuge with a human,” he said watching you. You just smiled at that.

“Who would have thought I'd fall in love with a merfolk,” you replied, realizing too late what you had said. Law paused for a moment before a smug smirk appeared on his face as he leaned down and kissed you on the lips.

"Who would have thought that, huh?" he asked contentedly before resting his head on your chest.

Law Masterlist

#one piece #one piece x reader #monster piece #trafalgar law #law x reader #merfolk #merman #merman law #trafalgar d water law #trafalgar d law x reader #merfolk law

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snipetooth · 5 months

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Jonas Taylor - "Do Orcas is Whales? More at 11"

request for anon using one of the face-holding prompts! i ended up leaning more "there's some feelings here but he's in denial HARDCORE" than having an established relationship, so hopefully anon it still works with what you were hoping for :] thank you so much for sending in your prompt, i hope it's worth the wait!! all my works are tagged with "#x reader" for quick filtering btw!

prompt: "[CHECK]: after an unexpectedly violent situation, sender frantically rushes to check if the receiver is okay, cupping their face to look closer." from “Reasons to Cup a Face” by @.soulpromptson for JONAS TAYLOR pairing: jonas taylor x gn!reader words: 1.8k requested: yes!

a/n in advance: look it was either the depth be realistic for mana 1’s location or it be the teeniest realistic for real orca diving depths, we can’t have both 😔🤝

The sound of the monitors whirring to life hummed all around you as you flicked switches to your right without looking away from the wire panel you were scrutinizing. Something somewhere had short-circuited juuust long enough for a couple of buttons’ lights to not activate and you were determined to locate the source and squash the issue.

The metal around you clanged with a rhythmic but hollow tune before pausing long enough for the hatch above to be pried open. “Thought you’d be alongside by now, what with how eager you were to give the Nereus a run. What’s the holdup, Skipper?”

“Don’t start calling me that,” you scoffed as you tugged on what you suspected was the offending wire, “that’s a child’s nickname. And this damn piece of… very expensive hardware decided it wasn’t gonna turn on a couple of lights, so I’m trying to get that fixed before I drop down.”

“It’s literally what the captain of a ship is called,” Jonas wiggled his brows, dropping down into the tiny compartment to crouch alongside you. “Can’t get much more mature or on-theme than that.” He watched you tug fruitlessly on the wire for several moments before you finally dropped it in disgust. “Maybe it was water damage.”

“Pile of junk if it’s meant to go underwater and gets broken by a few drops, don’t you think?” You muttered under your breath as you replaced the panel. A few lights out were annoying, but workable. They weren’t even for anything important, anyway. “And Meiying told me that you call her that, so don’t start using her nickname on me. That’s not something you called a captain, that’s something you called an eight year old. I’m not eight!”

Jonas held up his hands placatingly as you stepped around him to triple check the emergency rebreather and mask box. Or whatever the version of ‘triple check’ that actually means ‘this was looked at three times already by two different people and once more by yourself when you first entered the sub, but what if someone stole everything while you weren’t looking???’ is. “Apologies, didn’t know you heard. And I didn’t mean it t’be demeaning, honest. I more did it to lighten the air since things seemed to be a little… tense, in here.”

You sighed, practically throwing yourself into the pilot’s seat. “I figured. Sorry for snapping at you.”

“Y’wanna talk about what’s got you so wound up?”

You briefly reflected on the day’s events so far. Someone had the grand idea to serve lobster for the station’s dinner last night and you had to spend the early hours of the morning helping various people get over food poisoning. You forgot about your cereal just long enough afterward with how tired you were that it got soggy enough to not be considered edible by anyone with taste. You had to forgo breakfast and in your anger you forgot about the corner edge of the coffee table and stubbed your pinkie toe. Then you proceeded to fall up the stairs. Not down, up. You’re not really sure how that happened. And now those blasted lights were giving you problems.

“...Nah. Thanks though. Gotta get ready for mission launch.” You shooed him out of the sub as you fitted an earpiece. “Mac’s probably throwing a fit upstairs with how long I’ve put it off.”

“Well, that’s Mac’s problem then, isn’t it?” Jonas smirked. “Don’t get yourself killed down there.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” you muttered to yourself as the hatch forebodingly slid shut above you.

“Nereus, all system diagnostics reading clear on our end. You are cleared for launch.”

“Solid copy Mana 1, Nereus launching.”

The dull thud of the sub hitting the water was muffled by the thick metal that surrounded you as you plunged deeper into the ocean. The problematic button lights briefly flickered with life for a few seconds after you entered the water, but they soon died right back out. “Lights are overrated,” you mumbled as you carefully twisted to the side to avoid a rock that came a little too close for comfort. “Mana 1, I’m approaching the sea floor. Want me to look for anything specific while I’m here?”

The earpiece crackled to life. “Negative Nereus, just swim around for about an hour and then come back up. That’s all her maiden voyage needs; besides, I doubt you’d find much of interest when you’re not in the trench.”

“Copy.” You pulled a ways higher above the bottom of the ocean and glided along. The new sub was a breeze to pilot, very unlike the clunky but beloved Capt Bubbles. It moved effortlessly through the water and the new cameras and sonars gave you a perfect view of what was around you. Various shoals of tang, some rockfish, oh a silky shark that’s nice, a pod of orcas….

Wait. Orcas?

You were violently thrown to the side with a scream of terror as the sub flipped nearly upside down. There wasn’t even a chance to right it properly before you got hit again from the opposite side, alarms blaring around you with various screens warning of damages to the outer hull.

“Nereus! Nereus, do you copy? What’s going on down there?!” Mac yelled through your earpiece as you struggled to take back control of your sub. “I think the orcas are pissed I’m in their territory!” You yelled back as you shot out of the tight circle the pod was forcing you in. “Crazy bastards just started ramming me out of nowhere, what gives?!”

A new voice joined the line. “If you can get an I.D. on them with the cam system we might be able to confirm the pod that’s been targeting local fishermen,” Jonas instructed. You almost sighed aloud with relief; his voice was one of the few things that could ground you quickly in a high-stress situation. “Doesn’t exactly surprise me that they decided to give you similar treatment, but that means you’ll need to hightail it out of there, you hear me?”

“What exactly is ‘similar-’ fuck!” You winced as two monitors suddenly cut to static at the same time as a heavy blow from underneath your tail. One of the orcas just took out your camera. “Yeah, no, fuck this, Mana 1 get ready to pick me up. I am NOT exiting this thing while it floats on the surface if they’re within fifty miles of me!”

“Jonas is on his way to provide cover, in the meantime drop flares and come straight up,” Mac ordered. “That’s your best bet right now.”

“Dropping flares!” You slammed a series of buttons in one go with your fist as you yanked down on a lever.

The water around you remained illuminated by your headlights only.

That. Fucking. Wire.

“Mana 1, flares didn’t drop, I’m a sitting duck out here!” You quickly scrambled out of the pilot’s seat to check the diagnostics panel. Flares, predator red beams, and ground stabilization gear were all out of commission, and none of the computer’s proposed solutions could be implemented while you were roughly 3,000 feet under the water and alone. The sub flipped again and you were thrown into the wall and onto the ceiling, groaning aloud with both pain and motion sickness.

“Nereus, I’m on my way. Less than a minute out to your position. Hold on for me.”

You were pretty sure that Jonas’s voice wasn’t supposed to sound as tinny and distant as it did.

Another vicious shake and a new set of alarms snapped you out of your stupor just in time to see an orca swimming past the front with a chunk of metal cutting up its mouth. “DANGER: HULL BREACH IMMINENT. IMPLOSION IMMINENT. SURFACE IMMEDIATELY.”

“Jonas, I don’t have a minute!” You cried, desperately mashing buttons at random in hopes that something, anything would finally work and get the pod off your back. “They’re doing too much damage, I’m gonna die to some fucking orcas with a vendetta against mankind!”

“Not on my fucking watch, you hear me?” Jonas snapped over the radio as if you weren’t currently experiencing life as a sad little shirt being tumbled violently in the world’s angriest washing machine. “We’re gettin’ you out of there, and if we take out a whale or two on the way then that’s fine by me.”

“Are orcas whales? Or are they dolphins?” You wondered aloud blithely. If you were going to go out with a bang, might as well consider one of life’s hardest questions!

A yelp escaped your mouth unbidden as the Nereus suddenly jerked again, this time from a force not belonging to the orcas as you shot upward through the ocean. Through the viewfinder, you could see the pod struggling to keep pace before eventually giving up and being swallowed by the inky darkness of the abyss. “All dolphins are whales, not all whales are dolphins. They’re whales. That answer your question?”

You sagged with relief in your chair, rubbing your temples in a vain attempt to soothe the glaring migraine you got from being thrown into metal so many times while alarms and flashing lights echoed all around you. “I guess, but it’s not as much fun as arguing loudly over a mess hall table just shouting ‘Dolphins! Whales! Dolphins! Whales!’ back and forth to each other.”

Jonas didn’t respond, only chuckled over the intercom as the light outside the sub rapidly grew stronger. Within no time at all you were being hoisted back into the safety of Mana 1 and pulled a bit unceremoniously out of the sub. From what little you could see as you were more or less dragged away against your will, you were just a couple of extra tears away from implosion.

Jesus. At least it would’ve been so quick you wouldn’t notice you died.

“There you are!”

You turned around to see Jonas sprinting toward you. Before you knew it, he had you swept up in his arms and pulled away from the small crowd that had gathered mostly out of nosiness rather than genuine ability to assist. His roughened hands clasped securely onto your face, his fingers pushing stray bits of hair back as he peered worryingly into your eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Y’ve got a bit of a gash on your forehead, we should really get that checked out… any nausea, headaches, strains, pain from possible broken bones? Let me take a closer look at that… ooh, yeah, that might need stitches. Are you bleeding anywhere else?””

You blinked very fishily at him, barely able to move your lips with how he was holding your face, let alone really respond meaningfully. “Jhon’th’s,” you managed to get out. That was enough to snap him back to reality and back away a couple of quick steps, hiding his reddening face behind a cough into his elbow and a hasty glance out to the ocean. “Sorry,” he muttered, refusing to make eye contact as he gestured for you to follow him, “didn’t, uh, didn’t mean to… do that. Let’s get you to Dr. Heller, yeah? Yeah. Right. Can’t, uh, let you bleed out or… somethin’. Let’s go!”

If the sight of his bright ears as he strode ahead of you put an extra bounce in your step, he either didn’t notice or couldn’t bring himself to mention it.

#sighted #x reader #the meg #the meg x reader #jonas taylor #jonas taylor x reader

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yandere-class-1a · 5 months

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I wanna see your head canons on what their fins would look like! (I can imagine everytime they feel happy and warm their tail glows)

Authors note: These are my personal headcannons for the mermaid AU. I might change them in latter stories but I feel pretty comfy with where they are right now. They where all just sorta ideas I have floating around but I hope you like them! Also I actually had the idea of their eyes glowing when they get happy but decided not to add it, so your not that far off with the tail ♡

Shoji has eight silver colored tentacles with a dark blue under belly. His suction cups are a slightly lighter blue and his beak is the same color as the top. I can imagine him being a bit self conscious about it and usually keeping it covered up by the tentacles, kinda like his mask in the anime.

Koda has motly white tail with red details. His tail actually resembles a seahorse but much bigger to support all of his weight above water

Sato's tail is a a soft brown color with black and white stripes. I imagine his tail with a sorta puffy feel to, not supper puffy though, kinda like puffy stickers. It resembles a sort of clownfish look with brown instead of orange.

Ida has a dark blue tail with one of his bottom fins being made out of metal parts, think like toothless from HTTYD. I imagine he would have made it either himself or with Momo's help.

Sero has a long black tail with white puffy streak all around it. The streaks look a lot like tape, to match his original universes quirk.

Shoto has a half red half white tail that colors switch places with his hair. I imagine that he might have a few darker spots on his tail from his past.

Momo has a red tail with beutifull yellow fins at the bottom. It's a pretty basic mermaid tail but it has a little of a rough texture than the original sleek mermaid scales.

Bakugo has a ash blonde tail with large swirls of orange and black. His tail kinda resembles a catfish in all ways except color.

Kirishima has a red tail with specks of black that resembles a shark. I would imagine that Kirishima would sorta be the protection of the pack so his tail would have scars and possibly a healed bite mark out of one of the fins.

Ojiro has a thick skin colored tail with a small tuff of fins at the end. It kinda looks like his tail from the original universe but is more smooth.

Aoyama has a shiny white and yellow tail that has a sort of sequins look to it. He has the ability to change the colors to fit in with the environment but he says that these colors make him ✨️sparkle✨️ more.

Denki had a bright electric yellow tail with little black marking that happen to look like lightning bolts. His tail takes resemblance to a electric eel.

Izuku's tail is a beutifull emerald green with freckles of red and white. The fins are a bit longer than the average mer-man, it is a pretty yellow and looks slightly tattered and torn (Probably from how reckless he is).

Mina, as stated before, has a glimmering pink and yellow tail. Her tail is very strong and has some visible muscles, but not a ton.

Tokoyami had a dark black tail with a white under belly, like a orca.

Uraraka has a pretty white tail with large splotches of pink and brown, it kinda looks like boba.

Jiro had a shorter but strong looking purple tail with flowy fins that resemble earphone jacks hanging from her side.

Hagakure has a long almost clear tail that resembled that of a jelly fish.

Tsu has a beutifull green tail with black swirly stripes all along it. It resembles that of a tadpole. Her type of mermaid is supposed to grow legs but hers somehow stayed like a tadpoles.

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lesbian-octoling · 2 years

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Alright guys, it's time for what you've all been waiting for... Salmonid adopts! They’ll all be $30 base, but I’m also offering a few different discounts!

Availability, rules, and other information below the cut!

What is an adoptable?

An adopt is a pre-designed character that I create, and you can ‘buy’ to be able be able to use and claim as your own character. Of course, since these are splatoon based I’m not selling the concepts of splatoon, just the idea and design of the character itself.

INFO + RULES:

Once you buy the adopts, they’re yours. You’re welcome to redesign, alter, give away and/or trade as you see fit. The only thing I don’t allow is reselling for a higher price (same or below is fine).

Though these are meant to be splatoon adopts, you’re welcome to use them for any setting that you please! They’re not inherently limited to splatoon; especially the more unique characters.

The placeholder names, personality, and info are just.. placeholder/concepts! You can name them whatever you want, give them any pronouns, personality, lore, whatever! I won’t feel bad lol

Once I receive payment, I’ll send you a full size, transparent, unwatermarked image of your adopt!

I can hold them for up to a week!

If one is on hold, you can still message and ask to be next in line if whatever they’re being held for doesn’t work out.

AVAILABILITY + PRICING:

Base price for each adopt is currently $30 USD, however, you can check out some discounts at the bottom!

“STING” - SOLD A stinger who's bark is as nasty as their bite... but maybe there's something sweet under all that venom?

“LOVER” - SOLD A maws who's growth was stunted... though that doesn't seem to bother them. They're more of a lover than a fighter anyway.

“ORCA” - SOLD A flipper flopper who idolizes not dolphins, but a different type of cetacean.

“BUTTER” - SOLD An albino maws who might be dense as a brick, but they're nothing if not a survivor to last this long.

“BIG MAMA (and little shot)” - SOLD ( Come as a pair, you don't have to pay for two ) A big shot and a small package, seemingly on a journey somewhere... though where they're going, I'm not sure.

“HATTY” - SOLD A small Fish Stick flyer with dreams of making it big on stage, through song and dance! Though... perhaps when they get a little more practice in.

“TRAINEE” - SOLD A smallfry currently in training to become a Fish Stick flyer... which would be fine, if they weren't terrified of heights.

“MECHANIC” - SOLD A rough and tumble Steel Eel mechanic who might not take any shit, but does her job well... as well as her secret passion: making sweets.

“KEY LIME” - SOLD A Steel Eel driver who doesn't know the definition of "serious". Sickeningly sweet, when they're not hunting you for sport with a smile under their mask.

“GRILLED” - SOLD One of the few salmonids who ever lived through being deployed inside of a Griller... and are now trying to find their purpose, after becoming too injured to fight and constantly leaking slime.

“COPPERHEAD” - SOLD A retired Steelhead, they've taken up more of a passion with linguistics than fighting in their older age.

DISCOUNTS + DEALS

Yeah, we know this is what you’re here for! I’m going to offer several discounts and deals, which are subject to change, and may or may not pop in and out! This is my first time trying some of this.

COMMISSION BUNDLE If you buy a character from me, you can also get a get a commission of that character for 25% off to come with it! This only applies once, and has to be worked out around the time of purchasing the character. You choose the type of commission you’d like! Commission info is here.

PASSION DISCOUNT If you do a piece of fanwork for one of these characters- come up with extensive lore, a piece of art, a piece of writing, etc- and I can tell you actually put some effort and passion into it, then you can get them for 30% off... making them $20! It doesn’t have to be anything fancy and I’m not going to judge you by how ‘good’ your work is- again, it’s only judged by passion for the character. If I can tell you genuinely enjoyed it and had fun and will love the character you get (instead of having them simply sit on a dusty shelf or resold, etc), you get the discount! If you’re worried about the work taking a while but you want to wait until it’s done to buy them, no worries! I can hold a character for up to a week for you.

BONUS LORE If you wanna shell out an extra $5, I can fully flesh out the placeholder lore for you and come up with something much more fleshed out! Names, backstory, personality, all the bells and whistles. I can also work with you to fit it into any preexisting lore or characters you might want them to be worked with! Once again, you’re welcome to change any of this- but I’ll work with ya on it to make sure it’s something you like!

TRADES I’m a bit iffy on art trades or character trades, but I’m not going to say they’re out of the question. You’re welcome to ask!

#splatoon #splatoon 2 #splatoon 3 #splatoon adopts #adopts #adoptables #my art

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vtimbertiger · 8 months

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RGB OCEAN EXPLORERS

WET SUIT DESIGNS

Sneegs suit is based off of sharks/orca & is made for swimming

Charlie's suit is based off of a crab & is made for walking/rougher terrain

Ranboos got a basic bitch suit atm BUT has a biometric/body diagnostics mask

#rgb ocean explorers #ranboo #ranboofanart #ranboolive #sneeg #sneegsnag #sneegsnag fanart #slimecicle #charlie slimecicle #slimecicle fanart #art #sketch #rgb trio #ocean!ranboo #ocean!slimecicle #ocean!sneeg

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jessamine-rose · 1 year

Note

bro i am eating ur work like a full course meal fr THE MERMAID AU OMG IM DEVOURING IT my motavation to draw them now 📈📈📈

i was wondering if u could have any examples i can use to draw them? or try to explain how u see them if u cant dont sweat it! ALSO CONGRATS ON 1.4k FOLLOWERS!! 🥰🥰💕

Read my Yandere Mermaid AU here ϵ( 'Θ' )϶

Aahh I’m excited to hear that!! Thank you for allowing me to ramble, dear <3

First of all, read this ask. It has important notes for everyone, specifically Pantalone and Dottore. Pls don’t feel pressured to follow all of my headcanons btw :’0

Capitano’s appearance is based on these two designs. (Their art actually inspired this AU!!) Since my version isn’t a royal guard, the armor isn’t necessary unless you want to add it He has his canon hairstyle and mask + more scars.

Pantalone’s jellyfish tail is like this but the top part is slimmer, less like a skirt and more like a classic mermaid tail. His mermaid colors are translucent violet and black + lavender when bioluminescent. He wears his canon jewelry acquired from sunken ships and human victims.

Dottore’s octopus body is shaped like Azul Ashengrotto’s with longer, thinner tentacles. I can’t decide on a color so just pick from black, gray, or deep blue lol (with deep blue suckers if black). He wears a Nautilus shell necklace get it, reference to Ursula the sea witch

For Pierro, just look at the Capitano references and replace the tail + fins with an orca’s. He has the most scars and wears his canon earring. I’d also suggest his blue diamond neckpiece worn as a necklace if you’re up for that :>

It’s up to you if all of them or only Capitano wear their Fatui masks/ glasses. Thanks again for deciding to draw them and requesting my input!! I can’t wait to see how they turn out~

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stillness-in-green · 6 months

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On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XVI - XVIII, Endeavor Agency to Villain Hunt)

My thanks to @codenamesazanka for providing me a few crops this week for less fuzzy looks at background characters than I could manage working just off the Viz online catalogue. I'm hoping this posts okay, because it's about a thousand words longer than any of these have been so far, but has a lot less sub-sub-sub bullets than last week's breakdown of the CRC volume extra. Fingers crossed, and dive in, all!

The Endeavor Agency Arc (Chapters 241-252)

Chapter 245:

Another installment of Bakugou using animal terms, as he calls Hawks a spoonbill (in the Japanese, heradori, loosely meaning carefree bird). Deku asks, with some sweatdrops, if he means Hawks; Endeavor’s sidekicks just tell him he’s got moxie. One of Endeavor’s four consistently illustrated sidekicks is a big horse-like guy, though he’s by far the one who gets the least attention from the narrative; he is notably not in the panel of Endeavor sidekicks praising Bakugou’s go-getter attitude.

The Paranormal Liberation War Arc (Chapters 253-306)

Chapter 256:

Shouji is noted as having done his work study with Gang Orca. I would kill to know if they ever had a conversation about their wildly different approaches to managing their scary heteromorph image, but Horikoshi has not deigned to show us anything to that effect.

Chapter 258:

This chapter gives us the full spread of the PLF regiment advisors. While only a few of them will (as of this writing) get much to do, it’s notable that the percentage of obvious heteromorphs considerably increases at this level. The MLA leadership was, barring cosmetic things like Curious’s skin or Re-Destro’s pointed ears,[1] all quite baseline, but every single regiment has at least one obvious heteromorph in their chains of command. Indeed, a solid third of them are blatant heteromorphs,[2] which is a better percentile than, for example, the Shie Hassaikai or the U.A. staff can claim. It makes sense, given the obvious problems with restricting unlicensed quirk use to the home, that the MLA would attract a disproportionate number of heteromorphs, but the full extent of this will not be apparent for some time yet.

[1] His nose I read as more an exaggeration than a trait that’s specifically intended to be non-human-looking, but if it is supposed to be non-baseline, it’s considerably more obvious than his ears.

[2] That is, the really obvious, extreme heteromorphs, who number seven of the twenty-one advisors. I didn’t count the R2D2 lookalike, the guy with the question mark mask, or Hose Face, who might be heteromorphs or might just be in costume, nor did I count Dabi’s #1, the spiky guy in the cabbie hat, whose concrete divergence of a pronged chin is a lot less noticeable than his being, like, eight feet tall and as broad in the chest as a particularly top-heavy wardrobe. Any of those that are heteromorphs obviously increase the ratio even more.

Chapter 259:

Our only shot to date of the gal who’s probably Natsuo’s girlfriend, who’s a heteromorph in the “mostly human but with some tertiary animal features glued on” mode; in her case, she has mouse ears and, judging by her body language, a fairly mousy demeanor. Notable for being one of the most prominent heteromorph/non-heteromorph romantic relationships in the series, which is setting the bar about a quarter-inch off the ground. Even more notable when you consider Dabi and Shouto’s willingness to sling around dehumanizing microaggressions! I will remind everyone again that Natsuo evaded the topic of his having met someone at school when Fuyumi brought it up in front of their mother back in Chapter 187; while it played at the time as just a young man being embarrassed, this chapter’s splash page makes it apparent that he had a reason to be embarrassed, and was not just that awkward about the very concept of himself in a romantic relationship. Knowing, then, that he had met someone at school, the question for the attentive reader becomes, “So why didn’t he want to tell Fuyumi and Rei about it back then, when Fuyumi gave him such a perfect opening?” At this stage, the most the reader has grounds to assume[3] is that he’s just shy, or he wasn’t quite yet at a point in his relationship with this gal that he wanted to do the whole “introduce her to my family” song and dance, especially given what someone finding out more about his family would entail! Later reveals about Rei’s side of the family will suggest a different, less benign possibility, however.

[3] I’ll go ahead and rule out the idea that Natsuo is an asshole who’s not serious about her as being obviously not in the spirit of what we know about him.

Chapter 267+268:

Mirko has the thought, “Quick as a rabbit!” when focusing on catching up to Ujiko. Later, in the midst of vigorously dehumanizing Shigaraki, she makes mention of her “rabbit survival instincts.” We saw those animal references with Hawks as well, whereas it’s not something we see as much, if ever, from people like Tsuyu or Spinner. As I suggested before, it’s easy to imagine people who have a hard time because of their appearance are more sensitive about said appearances than people who look like drop-dead gorgeous baseline humans but with a few animal features—but only as long as they’re cute or charismatic animals!—pasted on as an “exotic” touch.

Chapter 271:

Dabi addresses Hawks and Tokoyami as yakitori—grilled chicken skewers, localized as “roasted chickens.” This is less eyebrow-raising than him calling Spinner a lizard and then accusing him of being oversensitive for protesting—Hawks and Tokoyami are Dabi’s enemies, after all, and this is hot off of Hawks murdering Twice. However, it certainly doesn’t support a read I’ve periodically seen offered that Dabi Learned From His Mistake With Spinner and Resolved Not To Do It Again.

Geten calls the assembled heroes “dogs of the state.” He’s not addressing any heteromorphs specifically, and of course using “dog” as an insult against someone viewed as overly obedient to a corrupt authority has plenty of history in many languages. Still, I wonder if it’s the kind of usage that is frowned on as insensitive in some circles, similar to using e.g. “blind” to describe willful ignorance.

Chapter 278:

First spoken line delivered by Spinner’s #2, who will go on to be a key figure at the hospital attack. Even the handful of lines he gets here is extremely effective at establishing his personality—grandiose, dedicated to the cause of revolution, and a vocal rallying figure for those he leads. A few pages later, another panel will reveal him as being unusually short, likely taller than e.g. Mineta, but shorter than any of the story’s other teenagers, even the girls. This small stature, combined with the insectile legs protruding from behind his shoulders, give an early hint that we’re looking at a heteromorph, while his mask sets up the possibility that he’s concealing something about his face. Regarding the mask, it's possible that he just wears it for The Aesthetic, save that the MLA—unlike, say, the Shie Hassaikai—don't have an organizational culture towards masks, as the MLA are very geared towards hiding in plain sight, just looking like normal, average members of society. Only three out of the twenty-one advisors (give or take whatever’s going on with the R2D2 look-alike) fully cover their faces; Spinner's #2 is one of those three. It begs the question of why—a question the hospital scene will at least suggest an answer to.

Chapter 281:

Shigaraki lays out, over the course of four pages, his mini-manifesto on why he’s going to destroy Hero Society, in which he talks about how heroes have disregarded, even actively concealed, the suffering of those they couldn’t save. While his mind seems to be mainly on his own experience, we also know that he’s aware of how others like him have suffered. He’s spent months with victims of Hero Society’s repressiveness, one of whom made very clear, by means of shouting it in Shigaraki’s face, the discrimination he’d faced with no one ever coming to help him. Shigaraki knows about heteromorph discrimination the same way he knows about villain quirk discrimination and the dehumanization of criminals. His declaiming here about generations of heroic failure serves to stand in for all of that. Notably, it continues to be the case that the crowd scenes consist mainly of relatively baseline, mostly human-looking folks. Those are the ones who most enjoy protection and safety in the current system; all of two people in thirty across three crowd shots in Shigaraki’s manifesto have heteromorphic features/builds more extreme than some extraneous pointy bits pasted on, and both of those two are dressed as heroes, not civilians.

I count the big energy guy in the cape in the top panel, and the Muppet-looking guy with four arms in the bottom. Everyone in the panel I didn’t include—the one of Tenko walking through the crowd of silhouettes—is baseline-give-or-take-some-pointy-bits. We hardly ever see someone like the Sludge Villain or Shouji, or hell, even Tokoyami, in these crowd scenes as everyday civilians, and the conclusion is, inescapably, that it’s because the present-day society doesn’t accept people like that as everyday civilians.

Note, here, how Endeavor responds to the accusation that heroes ignore the pain of those they can’t save—he takes a breather while Shigaraki rambles and then immediately resumes his attack, not seeming to register for even a second that this could be an opening to talk, to de-escalate, even if only as a stalling tactic to let Aizawa get a blink in, to buy the evacuation more time, to give his compatriots that little bit more time to recover. He’s clearly written off Shigaraki’s words the moment Shigaraki started talking, and no one with him seems to have done any different, not even Midoriya Izuku. This kind of thing is distressingly common in the series: the heroes have absolutely nothing to say about societal inequality, right up until a victim of it turns up acting criminal, at which point the dialogue goes from the stone silence of complicity to the moral scolding of, “This is going too far.”

Chapter 297:

The Tartarus jailbreak chapter brings us Shishikura’s father scoffing at the idea that Gigantomachia could be called human, referring to him instead as, “A disaster on legs, or a wild beast. Just like the rest of the animals we’ve got locked up here.” He goes on to say that “disgusting beings” like the Tartarus prisoners only managed to blend in with society for as long as they did because, “Quirks have warped our standards for humanity.” This is clearly mostly a villain bias issue—with the exception of Kurogiri, all of the villains shown on the page of this dialogue are relatively baseline, with transformation or emitter-style quirks. All the same, it’s worth noting that he repeatedly associates villains with wild animals, dehumanizing them in ugly, startlingly explicit terms. It begs the question: What are Shishikura’s father’s standards of humanity? What is he suggesting his society tolerates that pre-Advent society would not have? I would guess that his beef is with those he views as lacking the self-control or moral standards to refrain from villainy,[4] but rather than just say that, he instead goes to turns of phrase invoking the bestial. I suspect that deterministic rhetoric like his is not uncommon as justification for both anti-heteromorph discrimination and the bias against villains.

[4] This guess is based on his wording, what we know about his son’s personality, and the worldbuilding lore that the crime rates shot up with the advent of quirks and never went back down to pre-Advent norms. The crime rate issue in particular would be highly visible in a society that prided itself on being as peaceful as Japan does in the real-world modern day.

I will note that, of the six people we see making breakouts who we weren’t already acquainted with—five nameless figures and one Lady Nagant, at the time a new face—four of them are visibly, obviously heteromorphic.

The three in the foreground are quite distinct, and the one at the far back looks like he fits the bill as well. Only the one to Moonfish’s immediate left looks baseline, likely an emitter.

The guards, of course, are baseline to a man, with the only exceptions being Gyges and Briareos, who, judging by their costumes, are hero-licensed, not normal wardens.

Chapter 298:

The Central Hospital staff start getting introduced. In much the same way as the police force has a relatively high rate of animal-type heteromorphs in speaking roles,[5] Central Hospital is full of Super Mario Bros. joke characters. This is mostly a silly in-joke at the time, but Dr. Yoshi here will be back to serve as a deeply exasperating, bad faith gotcha during the hospital attack.

[5] The rando guys with riot shields are always hella baseline, but there are, by my count, six recurring roles in the police cast: Tsukauchi, Tsuragamae, Sansa, Gori, and two unnamed men I suspect to be with the National Police Agency (the one who tries to get Nedzu to call off the Cultural Festival and the one with the HPSC President in the scene where she’s giving Hawks his League infiltration assignment). Half of these are heteromorphs.

Chapter 299:

Hawks's dad, whose little elbow winglets prefigure his son's full wings, has a lament about how he could have been, “free as a bird!” There's no animal reference in the Japanese text.

I brought up a panel back in the Kamino arc to demonstrate that there was a higher incidence than usual of heteromorphs in an area that was meant to come off, visually, as somewhat seedy. While there’s always some element of randomness to that sort of thing—I assume the background extras are usually drawn by Horikoshi’s assistants, not the man himself—we see the same thing in the subway station Tomie takes baby Hawks to after they leave home.

Note how run-down the place looks, with cracked floor tiles, dingy walls, and equipment piled up in the open, then note how at least three, maybe four, of the five people in the foreground have heteromorphic features.

Chapter 300:

Dr. Toad at Central Hospital, who will show up in a flashback in the hospital raid that is barely less obnoxious than Dr. Yoshi’s appearance.

Chapter 301:

While not immediately connected to heteromorphobia, this chapter establishes that Rei’s family, the Himura, were once prestigious and much-storied, but had fallen on hard times by the time they were approached by Endeavor about a quirk marriage. The easy assumption for why Rei’s parents are so okay with the arrangement is that they were just that desperate for money, but in retrospect, a quirk marriage was far more sane and normal than what their family had been doing for generations!

Chapter 303:

Hawks mentions Spinner in his accounting of the problems facing Team Hero. This makes him rather unusual—All Might, for example, will later repeatedly fail to mention Spinner in similar situations, though it’s unclear whether that’s because All Might genuinely doesn’t believe Spinner to be a threat or whether All Might is trying to avoid bringing up the brewing race riot enormous mob consisting of members of a long-oppressed minority group, in hopes of keeping his students away from it.

Chapter 306:

I’ve avoided bringing him up until this point because his hero costume makes it very hard to tell if his neck is just a mildly caricatured feature like Re-Destro’s or if it really is covering up a non-baseline feature, but Best Jeanist’s outfit at the press conference is the place to start if you want to make an argument for him having a heteromorphic feature.

If he is a heteromorph, Jeanist covers it up extremely well, to the point that I’ve never seen anyone outside my chat group even raise the possibility that he might be! But that is part of his whole modus operandi, isn’t it? To keep up the appearance of things, to present an unassailable image of heroes, even when they’re running themselves ragged, because that’s what he believes the public needs? Here we see Shouji’s decision about masking himself taken to its logical extreme—being so invested in a harmonious appearance that doesn’t disturb anyone that he doesn’t even register as non-baseline to begin with. I’m very fond of Jeanist, mind you, and I love his awareness of surface and veneer—he feels like someone who has made a conscious, considered, moral decision to uphold the system, a decision he’s given far more thought to than fellow heroes who never get past, “How do I want to present myself to the public?” to the question of, “Why do I believe this presentation is the correct moral choice?” But that veneer is, as the endgame has gone to some efforts to explore, not sustainable for anyone. (Would that Shouji were taking notes.)

The Villain Hunt Arc (Chapters 307-328)

Chapter 310:

This chapter brings us the attack on the giant woman.[6] While the three men—all baseline, all using support goods rather than whatever their own quirks are—attacking her seem to be doing so out of fears that she’s a villain, not explicit hatred for heteromorphs, this is very clear heteromorphobia nonetheless. There’s absolutely nothing about the Ordinary Woman that suggests that she’s remotely villainous—not her attitude, not her dress, not even something like a punky haircut! The only reason to distrust this woman’s intentions is suspicion of her height, her claws, her vulpine face—in other words, her status as a heteromorph. The only other thing remotely dubious about her is that she was out after dark—but of course, so were the men hunting her! Note here the woman’s strong implication that she was attacked before she ever reached a shelter. She says she thought to take shelter at a hero school and, somewhat haphazardly, left her home in the night. She doesn’t finish the sentence, trailing off before apologizing, but it’s plainly nighttime when Deku rescues her, and, by her own words, she’s still in her own town. The story isn’t finished with her yet, and what happens to her next is tied to her experience at the shelter she was trying to reach.

[6] As yet unnamed due to some misguided idea Horikoshi has about keeping her an everywoman; even in her character profile, she’s just the Ordinary Woman.

Deku unthinkingly commits what reads to me as a fairly egregious microaggression here,[7] suggesting that the men who attacked the Ordinary Woman were probably just as afraid as she was of the recent chaos. They were just understandably afraid, so, you know, it’s not really their fault that they viciously attacked you, an obviously terrified innocent woman! You just look so scary!

[7] Though I don’t get the impression Horikoshi registered it.

The two discuss wanting things to “go back to normal.” Normal, in Ordinary Woman’s experience, means not getting attacked right out in the streets of her own town, but it’s worth thinking about how little it took to prompt that attack, and thus to ask how abnormal such violence truly is. As we will find, there are parts of the country that didn’t at all need a slide into lawlessness for an attack like this to be horrifically, appallingly “normal.”

Banjo compares the current circumstances to those around the time of the Advent—darker days in which people lived holding their breaths, trying not to stand out. This phrasing is not exclusive to heteromorphs; even something as simple as being on your own can make you “stand out” as a target, and we know plenty of quirkless people were victimized exactly like that.[8] All the same, it’s self-evidently the case that people who don’t look like everyone else will inherently stand out, and no amount of traveling in groups or refraining from the use of their powers will change that. Lines like this don’t explicitly reference the heteromorph mass slaughters we will later be shown, but they do lay the contextual groundwork that makes those slaughters both believable and predictable. Folding that all together, the Ordinary Woman demonstrates very clearly how difficult it is, especially in times of chaos, to be a heteromorph and just be normal. And when being "normal" is so difficult, what do you do? Try to be normal, gambling that heroes will be there to save you when you’re victimized? Try to protect yourself by becoming the kind of paragon your society admires, knowing it will cost you your voice? Turn against the society that repeatedly fails to protect you, resigning yourself to a life on the run? There's no outcome that doesn't demand carrying the burden of a decision that other, “normal” people are not required to make.

[8] We know this because it’s explicitly explained as what happened to the quirkless man in the One For All dream flashback in Chapter 193.

Chapter 314:

Lady Nagant drops the ugly secret of the HPSC for Deku,[9] telling a heroic character an only very slightly more extreme version of what the reader already knew from Hawks’ duties and backstory. This is not specifically about heteromorphs (though the face we most visibly see her murdering is one), but it does point to the possible difficulties in organizing serious movements to agitate for changes to the current system. The HPSC is so firmly convinced that the Hero System is society’s best and only defense against chaos, and thus any threats to that system can, justly, be disposed via extrajudicial assassination. What chance, then, would an activist leader have as soon as they started being disruptive enough for the HPSC to notice them?

[9] Who will do absolutely jack shit with it, and, indeed, come away from their encounter blaming her fall on AFO, somehow.

Chapter 318:

*meme voice Good For Him*

Introduces the Spinner fanboys, a pair of octopus-type heteromorphs in quite good Spinner cosplay, who will crop back up later at the hospital attack. They’re foreshadowing for the Spinner-as-representative plot, though said plot will not make 100% clear whether or not these two were inspired by Spinner on his own merits, back when he was just another member of the League of Villains, as opposed to after the PLF started pushing his image forward specifically. They’re with a small group of other heteromorphs attacking a trio of baseline folks. Deku defends the baseline group from the attack but apparently does not follow through on chasing down the heteromorphs; he just breaks it up and lets the attackers run off, perhaps feeling like panicky civilians (to whatever extent people literally wearing a wanted villain’s colors are “civilians”) are not threats he needs to facilitate the arrest of, or perhaps just conserving his energy for his big fights with AFO’s people.

Later in the chapter, we see a more abbreviated version of a similar sequence of events, save that this time, there are heteromorphs on both sides, demonstrating that the violence has not entirely broken down along baseline vs heteromorph lines. You saw this in an earlier chapter as well, with one of the people in the group confronting Endeavor being a lady with a dog head, but this is the first place you see it in an actual conflict.

I dig this kappa dude with the Shounen Main Character Guy haircut. And good on his more baseline friends for sticking with him.

This chapter also introduces Dictator, one of the Tartarus escapees singled out as sent by All For One. Dictator drives me crazy because like, okay, yes, he’s a cartoonish and ridiculous caricature of a Villain, down to his quirk name being given as Despot.[10] But I would ask the reader to look at this guy and really, really think about what life must have been like for him when he was, say, Kouta or Eri’s age.

I mean, really.

[10] Remember my thought experiment from early on about who decides what quirks are named, parents or a government official? Yeah. Who’s responsible for giving that quirk name to a four-year-old?

One thing that’s always felt telling to me about Deku’s brief exchange with Dictator here is that Dictator, in amidst a flurry of dramatic supervillain talk, says, “Taking you in will bring me security,” and Deku, Mr. Wants To Understand Villains & Save Absolutely Everyone himself, doesn’t ask, doesn’t even think, about what Dictator could possibly mean by that sentence. I know Dictator’s in the middle of controlling a bunch of people and is working for AFO and Deku’s exhausted and all—the story makes it clear that he took a turn for the more gritty and driven after Nagant quite literally blew up in his face. Still, when you compare the attempts he makes to ask questions and interact with Muscular, Overhaul and Lady Nagant—all relatively baseline when their quirks aren’t in use, and significantly more baseline than Dictator even when they are—his total incuriosity about Dictator does stand out pretty badly.

Chapter 320:

Ojirou mentions being touched by how angry at Shinsou Deku got on his behalf back at the Sports Festival. Recall that Shinsou called Ojirou a monkey back then. Is he not used to other people getting mad for his sake about that sort of thing?

Chapter 323:

Some really fascinating stuff both from and about Nedzu in this chapter. Firstly, Endeavor says that Nedzu’s contributions to “quirk morality education” have made him internationally renowned, yet I can’t help but observe that at least the first year students have not learned anything of the sort. Their classes and exercises are focused primarily on combat, with a secondary focus on teamwork in that most of their exercises see them separated into pairs or small groups. There are also special lessons that boil down to being about how to create their own distinct hero “brand.” What I cannot call to mind are any lessons on the morality of quirk use.[11] That’s not to say there’s none of that in the series at all, but the stuff that I think of is not encountered in class. The focus on dealing appropriately with injured and frightened victims, for example, comes courtesy of the license exam, while the lecture about heroes following the rules and behaving appropriately comes from Tsuragamae after the Stain incident. The remedial course with Gang Orca probably comes closest, and is technically a course, rather than an exam, but Nedzu has nothing to do with it, so it clearly can’t count. Once again, I am left to wonder when exactly Hero schools start teaching these alleged lessons in quirk-based ethics. Offscreen, or only in higher grades? It’s not a real great look, I think, that the priority is on all the cool flashy stuff and not the ethical ramifications of using your power to enact violence on people. And sure, it’s a shounen comic, so you’ve got to keep things flashy enough not to lose the readers, but it wouldn’t take more than a few dedicated pages now and again where Aizawa or Nedzu talk to students about the weight of what they’re doing. We don’t get those pages, so the discussion of quirk “morality” is largely under-explored.[12] This is, of course, not directly about heteromorphobia, but discussion of the morality of quirks would have to include the beliefs people have about quirks, which in turn affect everything about how the world deals with them: quirk discrimination, quirk counseling, the laws surrounding quirk use, the punishment for breaking those laws, and so forth. All things with significant impacts on heteromorphs!

[11] Indeed, if there were any effort from U.A. to provide morals education, you’d think Mineta would have seen some consequences for his egregious behavior ages ago.

[12] Honestly, I think the person who’s ventured the clearest moral stance on quirk use is Yoichi in his flashback, and he’s ludicrously absolutist about it, saying that quirks must only be used to help others, never for personal gain.

My Press X to Doubt response to Nedzu’s contributions to quirk morality education aside, I’m fascinated by his mini-speech that follows:

It’s a great observation of humanity from one who sits just that little bit removed from humanity, and begs a whole series’ worth of questions about Nedzu’s position and his feelings about the species his intelligence has both enabled and required him to grapple with. While he doesn’t specify exactly what sort of intolerance he has in mind, and the flow of the plot ties his words to the anti-hero sentiment amongst the civilians, we’re well past Chapter 220’s introduction of the CRC here, and have more to see yet on the treatment those with “villain” quirks are subjected to.

As one who was, himself, mistreated in a way that fundamentally would not have happened were it not for his (heteromorphic) quirk, yet whose quirk gives him a degree of insight about that very mistreatment, Nedzu is in an amazing position to opine on discrimination. I frankly wish he got way more room to do it in.

Chapter 325:

The Ordinary Woman giantess gal returns to tell us that she was turned away from several shelters because they didn’t allow heteromorphs. It’s hard to overstate how incredibly bad this is—the blatant discrimination of turning away an entire demographic during a national emergency. And not just a national emergency, but one where the actual support personnel—heroes—are going to be concentrating around the shelters, consciously electing to leave minimal aid for people remaining behind in evacuated zones. So like, when this is how bad it is, can it possibly be any kind of surprise that there’s a riot brewing, especially when there are villains stirring the pot behind the scenes?

One thing that really, really gets me is the bit where Ordinary Woman says several shelters turned her down until she made it to U.A. Remember how I mentioned that the strong implication of her original scene is that she’s still in her own city, only left her home that very night, and was attacked before she could reach a shelter? If that’s so, then what in hell happened after Deku left her with All Might? I’m so serious about this. Did All Might just take her to the nearest shelter, drop her off at the door, and then drive off, so concerned about getting back to Deku that he left before he could ensure her safety? That would reflect incredibly poorly on him, and put her right back in danger. Though it would not be the first time he prioritized his mentorship of Deku over his other responsibilities, it would still make him look so bad that I’m doubtful that was Hori’s intended sequence of events. The other possibility I see is that All Might did stay with her, driving her to a few different shelters before getting fed up and bringing her back to U.A., where he could be sure she’d be accepted. This option looks almost as bad for a totally different reason: that even in the face of a refugee delivered to them by All Might himself, with everything the country owes him and the nigh universal love and acclaim he commands amongst the populace, people would still take one look at Josei-san and turn her away. Of course, it’s also possible that I’ve just misinterpreted her initial scene, and she already had been to the several shelters, but couldn’t bring herself to tell Deku why. Her silence on the topic would be its own brand of Relevant For This Essay, particularly given Deku’s baseline state—perhaps she doubted that he would believe her, or thought he might get defensive, if she told him. That’s certainly the least awful of the options. Still, I’d maintain that the way her story is framed—the way she was traveling on foot, the time she says she left vs. the time it was when Deku found her, how unlikely I think it is that there are multiple hero school shelters in timely walking distance,[13] the fact that she’s perfectly willing to tell him about her rejections when they meet again at U.A., etc.—suggests she hadn’t made it to a shelter yet when Deku turned up, and thus either All Might got unforgivably sloppy or there were multiple government officials overseeing shelters who were willing to be gargantuan bigots right to his face.

[13] That’s if hero schools are the only shelters in use at the moment. On the one hand, that feels improbable and unnecessary to me, given that HeroAca!Japan presumably has all the same emergency shelters IRL!Japan has now, and Jeanist’s phrasing in 306 suggests that hero schools are being added to the list of designated shelters, not that they are being designated the only shelters. On the other hand, he does also say the heroes are looking to decrease the amount of area they, with their diminished numbers, have to cover, and specifically calls out hero schools' defensive capabilities and large campuses, while not independently mentioning shelters of the normal sort like I might expect if both were going to be in use. For example, he could say something like, “We are asking people to report to their local emergency shelters, and will be opening hero schools as shelters to help with the increased burden.” I invite readers to come to their own considerations on what’s more likely, but will say that if it is only hero schools being used as shelters, that obviously makes the whole “turning away heteromorphs at the door” scenario even more scandalous.

The baseline dude who’s generally been the spokesperson for the anti-let-the-kid-back-into-school crowd asks Deku if everyone can go back to their old lives after this, if they let him in to rest up. Deku, who has just been told that a woman he rescued was turned away from multiple shelters, reiterates that he and the rest of the heroes will “bring it all back.” No matter when he promises this, he will never exhibit the slightest hint of awareness about what exactly he’s proposing to return.

Chapter 327:

Bakugou makes a conscious effort to call Deku by his given name instead of the derisive nickname of their childhood. It remains to be seen whether he will follow through on that for the derisive nicknames he uses for everyone else, but for what it's worth, I have made it all the way from here up through the point at which he goes down to ShigAFO and have not had cause to jot down anything about him for the purposes of this essay yet. We'll see if he can keep it up through the epilogue!

With Deku safely passed the fuck out, Jirou—a heteromorph, albeit not a hugely visible one—is the one to say that they and the rest of the heroes can’t just bring things back the way they were; they have to make things better. Desperately wish Deku would pick up what Jirou’s throwing down here.

Chapter 328:

328 gives us some cameos of international heroes, cameos from the third movie, World Heroes Mission. The one relevant to this topic is Big Red Dot, the Singaporean hero who the wiki claims is his country's #1,[14] and who appears to be a merlion heteromorph. And like, there is so much I could say about Big Red Dot and his status as top hero and heteromorph! So much! I could talk about the merlion as a national symbol for Singapore, and how heteromorphs who just so happen to resemble local sacred/divine/fortunate animals in their regions might be treated differently compared to heteromorphs like Spinner or Shouji. I could talk about the merlion's status as tourist attraction and subject of nationalistic poetry, and how that imagological history impacts Singaporeans' feelings about the merlion as cultural icon. I could talk about the way the merlion's brand image is maintained under trademark by the country's national tourism board, and how that might relate to or impact Big Red Dot's image as a hero, particularly given that we have no idea what sort of metrics Singapore's HPSC equivalent uses to rank their heroes! I'd love to talk about that, but I'm reluctant to do more than sketch out the above outline for two reasons, both profoundly Doylist.

[14] The fandom wiki does not see fit to cite a source for this. I assume it's mentioned in the movie? Anyway, if he isn't Singapore's #1, the stuff I said is still relevant, just somewhat less pronounced.

Firstly, I read Marvel comics growing up, and I am keenly aware that a tremendously common approach taken by superhero stories dealing with heroes from outside the author's country of origin is to just theme those international heroes after famous (e.g. stereotyped) aspects of their home countries. I highly doubt that whoever came up with Big Red Dot was thinking any deeper than "Singapore = merlion, ergo Singaporean Hero = merlion hero guy".

Secondly, Big Red Dot is, first and foremost, an original character created for the anime, and the anime transparently, desperately Does Not Want To Talk About Heteromorphobia, so I highly doubt they're thinking about ways it might impact their movie OCs. Now, I know Horikoshi comes up with many of the designs of prominent characters in the movies, but I don't know how much he's involved in conceptualizing those characters. That is to say, did Studio Bones ask him for "a design for a top hero from a country of your choice, Horikoshi-sensei," "a design for the top hero of Singapore," or "a design for Big Red Dot, the merlion-themed top hero of Singapore"?

Suffice to say that if I were going to include BRD in a fanfic, I'd be full of things to say about him. For the purposes of this essay, though, I'll just raise some possibilities and then leave the reader to turn him around in their heads some and think about how he fits into the broader tapestry of the heteromorphic experience around the world.

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Come back in (probably) two weeks for what will hopefully bring this essay up through the hospital attack! We'll see after that if I want to continue on into Vigilantes or what-have-you.

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #bnha ordinary woman #ippan josei #my post button is showing now #but will it still be there if i go to edit this later #the villain origin threatens once more #which is to say i'm hoping i got the spaces right on the first try #my writing

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artzychic27 · 5 months

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Blame @msweebyness’s post for this… I call this au Miraculopolis

@imsparky2002

Marinette: Goddess of Luck and Chance. Her symbols are ladybugs and clovers

Adrien: God of Family and Children. His symbols are domestic cats and carnations

Alya: Goddess of Messaging and Facts. Her symbols are spectacles and pigeons

Nino: God of Protection and Defense. His symbols are shields and turtles

Nathaniel: God of the Fine Arts and Inspiration. His symbols are paintbrushes and peacocks

Alix: Goddess of Time and Memory. Her symbols are clocks and rabbits

Juleka: Goddess of Serenity and Inner Beauty. Her symbols are mirrors and ravens

Rose: Goddess of Romance and Love. Her symbols are roses and doves

Sabrina: Goddess of Loyalty and Companionship. Her symbols are rings and wolves

Chloé: Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity. Her symbols are gold coins and bees

Kim: God of Sportsmanship and Victory. His symbols are palm branches and eagles

Max: God of Statistics and Possibilities. His symbols are abacuses and horses

Ivan: God of Poetry and Ballads. His symbols are quills and mice

Myléne: Goddess of Nature and Grains. Her symbols are cornucopias and bears

Marc: God of Literature and Epic Tales. His symbols are fountain pens and roosters

Aurore: Goddess of the Sun. Her symbols are parasols and lions

Mireille: Goddess of the Moon. Her symbols are wool and sheep

Reshma: Goddess of Craftmentship. Her symbols are a needle and thread and spiders

Ismael: God of Mischief. His symbols are apples and foxes

Lacey: Goddess of Siblinghood. Her symbols are rope and frogs

Jean: God of Theater and Entertainment. His symbols are comedy and tragedy masks, and songbirds

Cosette: Goddess of Masking and Adaption. Her symbols are a makeup pallet and chameleons

Zoé: Goddess of Rebellion. Her symbols are broken handcuffs and a tiger

Simon: God of Technology and Surveillance. His symbols are eye-shaped pendants and hawks

Denise: Goddex of Strength and Health. Their symbols are barbells and bulls

Luka: God of Music and Emotional health. His symbols are lyres and snakes

Kagami: Goddess of Combat. Her symbols are swords and dragons

Ondine: Goddess of the Sea. Her symbols are a trident and orcas

Different nations, different mythologies and deities

They’re all powerful deities, but they still act like teenagers, get crushes, drink a lot of wine, have wild parties up in the heavens, and crash mortal parties whenever they please

Being the goddess of Masking and Adaption, Cosette can shapeshift into any animal she pleases while the others only shapeshift into the animals they’re associated with

Cosette: Random animal exit! *Shapeshift into a shark and starts flopping around on the ground before shifting back and gasping for air* Random… Land animal exit! *Shapeshifts into an ostrich and walks away*

Zoé: Even as an ostrich, they’re still gorgeous.

Marc and Nathaniel have been crushing on each other for eons

Rose and Juleka have been girlfriends for centuries now. Juleka is not affected by Rose’s romance-inducing aura, and Rose is not affected by Juleka’s almost ethereal beauty. They just love each other

Adrien has almost this maternal instinct due to being the god of family and children, and as such, he adores mortal infants

A former member of the gods and goddesses of Miraculous is Lila, the goddess of deceit and trickery. Her symbols are jackals and masks. She still has her divine powers, but she’s not allowed back in the skyward abode of the gods and goddesses for a multitude of reasons, and has offended each of the others gods in some way

Also… She was just annoying as hell

*During an outing in the divine garden, long before Lila was banished, Myléne is telling the others about a new tree she had come up with. The others are listening intently when Lila suddenly interrupts*

Nino: Someone, make her stop!

*Nathaniel summons his paintbrush staff and slathers a bit of red paint over Lila’s mouth. It dries in an instant, and her words come out muffled*

Nino: *Sighs* Much butter.

Ismael possesses an object called The Golden Apple of Chaos. Basically, when he throws it, it causes some sort of havoc somewhere

He’s always tempting mortal children to cause a little chaos

Ismael: Just think of it, Manon. You, me. All the chaos. All the discord! ALL THE FREE CHICKEN!

Legend from both Miraculous and Prodigious mythology tells of a monster named Kiku, once a mortal man who wanted to become stronger. One night, he snuck into Kim, Denise, and Kagami’s temples, and stole one of Kim’s medals, one of Denise’s barbels, and one of Kagami’s swords. When they discovered this, the god, goddex, and goddess punished him by turning him into a monstrous bear-like creature. He had impenetrable skin and could tear through entire villages with his claws

One quirk about him is that whenever he gets flustered or excited, a peacock tail will fan out from behind him

A tale from mythology of Miraculous talks about how Nino developed feelings for Alya when she protected him and several mortals from a dangerous monster while they were visiting the mortal realm

Wherever Marinette steps, four-leaf clovers grow

When they arrive in the mortal realm, their entrances are all a sight to behold that you’ll wanna punch yourself if you miss them

According to Miraculous mythology, whenever Rose travels to the mortal realm, she descends from the sky in a flurry of rose petals. And when she lands on the ground, several doves appear at her side, and she emits a pink aura that causes people to momentarily fall in love with the first person they see

When Nathaniel comes to visit the mortal realm, the sky becomes an array of colors as his beautiful, iridescent chariot is drawn by several peacocks.

Reshma descends from the sky, performing aerial tricks using spider web silk. Her feet never touch the ground as a clutter of spiders carry her about, almost making it look like she’s gliding

Lore has it, that centuries ago, Denise nursed a young injured bull they named Aithen back to health, and infused him with some of their divine magic, helping him grow stronger over time until he was able to pull their heavy two ton chariot on his own

And, there is a tale stating that Simon won Denise’s heart after using his wits to vanquish a monster attacking the mortals

According to mythology, Lacey bestows blessings on mortal children and their siblings, helping to strengthen their bonds and know when their siblings are in need

While Lila may be the goddess of deceit and has done some terrible things over the centuries, she still has standards. As such, she refuses to ever interact with Lucien, the god of Onedience and Power, and Emani, the god of Manipulation, who were also ousted from their heavenly abodes

Max’s sacred object is his golden abacus, gifted to him by Kim. Centuries ago, Kim melted several of his prized golden medals to create it for him

During the annual Olympics hosted by the Miraculous, teams from different nations come to compete for glory. The gods and goddesses watch from the stands while disguised as humans or the animals they are associated with. Kim, meanwhile, is in his god form and loudly cheering for the team representing Miraculous

While Nathaniel is one of the kindest gods of Miraculous, but he also has a fiery temper. When provoked, he’ll fly into a rage, and even the other deities know to approach with caution

One way to piss him off is by claiming you’re a better artist than him. He’ll curse you so that any piece of art or art material you touch will turn into dust. *cough* Louis *cough*

Due to being the Prodigious god of not only Theater, but also Entertainment, whenever there’s a party happening in the mortal realm, Jean is known to make a grand appearance. This is usually when he feels as though the party’s reaches its peak. Guests are to be advised that whenever Jean attends a mortal party, it doesn’t stop unless he wants to stop. The longest was a week

Zoé, the Prodigious goddess of Rebellion is also known to frequent parties, usually ones thrown by teenagers who plan and attend it without their parents knowing. From the heavens, she descends using a charriot drawn by two majestic tigers. She describes parties such as that as, “Rebellion in its most premature form!”

#greek mythology #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #mlb au #akuma class #science kids #mlb ocs #I like Greek mythology #random au

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