#pink alien on parade

[stillness-in-green]

More and More on Mina, Machia and the MLA

For my readers other than @randomvongenerico, please have this peremptory list of this very lengthy post's contents to help gauge your interest:

Some more discussion on what is or isn’t, would or wouldn’t be blameworthy about various characters’ actions (or hypothetical actions) during the war arcs.   

More discussion about Mina, chiefly about how (and why) her acid powers are handled compared to all the male characters with fire powers, and the way her plot points are poorly set up by the narrative, with the result of shortchanging her development.   

Yet More Complaining About How The Story Is Handling Heteromorphobia, this time featuring a compare and contrast on quirk-based bias as it might affect Mina, Bakugou and Tokoyami, as well as a dissection of Shouji’s contention that the only possible way to know about the violent bigotry in the rural areas of the country is to be from them.   

Some fairly extensive spitballing in response to questions about how I would have handled the scene at Machia’s prison compound if I were writing it, as well as why I have trouble conceiving of anything Hero Society could do to Hose Face for killing Midnight that would actually feel like justice.   

A little bit of basic talk about Tumblr, its functionality and some relevant slang.   

Buried at the very bottom, I stand up in front of God and everyone and explain in brief why Kaminari is a worse character than Mineta, with some particular focus on Kaminari as emblematic of the conflict between what the series tells us versus what it shows us about the legality of quirk use in careers other than heroism.

Hi again, rvg.  Because it's been forever since our last post exchange, let me say again that I appreciate the apology and want to thank you for being such a good sport about it.  Last time I had something like your initial response, that person told me straight out that they’d been condescending and antagonistic on purpose, though they regretted having done so after my reply.  I appreciated the regret, but would have preferred they take a day or two to cool off in the first place!  That’s the experience I was bringing to your comments, but I’ll keep in mind what you said about lack of experience with initiating chats and Tumblr in general.

For what it’s worth, yeah, there is a character limit on both asks and replies, so that’s the trouble you were running into there!  You might also consider using a cut next time before a really long post, though if you’re on mobile, I recall that being a difficult-if-not-impossible feature to find, and it’s not as important as it used to be ever since Tumblr’s started adding default Expand drop-downs on long posts.  That aside, welcome (belatedly) to Tumblr!  I hope you find some good people to chat fandom with; I’m always open to some back and forth about things I know well enough to talk about, though I’m, er, decidedly unprompt with replies.  And, as noted, definitely more of a villain fan, so probably not the most fun person for discussions on the kids.

That said, to your replies!  Other readers should note that, while I wrote all this roughly in response-order to rvg’s points, I reorganized everything after the fact to group together the broad topics.  I’ve tried to provide some bare minimum context for anything that would otherwise be too much of a zero-context non-sequitur, but if anyone wants to see rvg’s comments in their intended order and context, their reblog can be found here.  Otherwise, hit the jump!

  

Would You Have Held It Against ___?

But would you hold it against Mina if she had actually done more substancial damage to Machia? Let’s say, not the face, but Machia’s fingers instead of his claws. Machia still doens’t feel any pain. Would you chastise Mina for it? Even though she’s actively saving Mt Lady by doing that?

It’s hard to say for sure, since I imagine that if Mina’s acid had hit Machia’s fingers instead of his claws, we probably would just have seen them abraded and singed, like how Dabi’s fire damage was drawn on Hawks, not with chunks of skin melting off and exposing naked bone.  Physical damage in BNHA just doesn’t work like that, at least not against named characters.  If Mina were doing realistic damage, I imagine everyone else would be too, and then I’d be criticizing all of them, because, holy shit, that is not okay to do to people, any people, and especially not when you’re acting as an agent of the state.

But hypothetically, no, I think I would be more lenient even if she did do concrete and permanent damage to Machia’s hands, and it’s because she’d be doing it to save Mount Lady.  Shinsou could have taken control of Machia and then just had him lie still while whoever was in charge of this facility redrugged him,[1] and that would have been fine by me—disappointing, sure, but only because Machia’s interesting and I’d like to get more on him than we do, not because I’d be critiquing Shinsou’s actions.

It’s specifically Shinsou and the rest choosing to weaponize Machia against AFO that I object to.  Mina harming Machia would be taking that action herself, to protect someone that’s right in front of her, risking no one’s life but her own in doing so.  Shinsou throwing Machia up against AFO—which he’d made the decision to do before hearing Machia’s angry grumbling—is risking Machia’s life, without Machia’s consent.  And it’s not even for the sake of saving anyone, at least not anyone that’s right there in that moment—AFO is fleeing.

Sure, he still presents a huge threat to lots of people, but given that we’d just seen proof that AFO did not know about Shinsou’s power,[2] they could also have used Machia to, for example, rapidly transport the heroes to some place they could set up a second ambush to trick AFO into responding to Shinsou.  I mean, good god, AFO’s the chattiest villain in the comic; Hawks lured him into at least two extended conversations even after he’d resolved that he needed to leave.  He’s a Demon Lord and thus categorically incapable of shutting up.  And that would have been that, really.  Take control and let the clock run out; end of problem.

It would have been anticlimactic as hell, so obviously that was never going to happen, but there’s no reason the heroes couldn’t try for it, you know?  Instead of the bone-headed decision to just hand AFO his most loyal soldier on a silver platter on the thin chances that they could either prevent the brainwashing from being broken at all or that Machia’s upset would translate to both the capability and willingness to attack his master.

I’ve observed this problem in a few different areas, that Horikoshi sometimes writes the heroes, particularly Hawks, as not taking actions or drawing conclusions that, from their perspective, should seem sensible, well-reasoned, and with solid chances of success; instead, they simply disregard possibilities they should logically be considering but which the reader knows are dead ends, or they benefit from things they could not have known at the time they acted.  That hurts immersion because it gives the heroes victories, both tactical and moral, that they simply haven’t earned.  Shinsou’s control of Machia is a particularly egregious example.

  

Speaking of Monoma. Since we were talking about the morality of Shinso’s Quirk. Would you say Monoma using his Quirk to copy a villain’s Quirk and use it on him and his allies, would also qualify as something that should be criticized? I’m curious.

Nah, I don’t think so.  Taking an opponent’s weapon and using it to subdue him is a perfectly valid tactic, especially since Monoma’s method doesn’t actually deprive his opponent of their weapon, just replicates it for his own use.  It really all does boil down to Shinsou’s method forcing people to fight and hurt their own allies.  Mina causing Machia physical harm, Monoma using a villain’s own weapon against them, even the heroes’ surprise attack: none of those are remotely on the same “holy shit that is a literal war crime” level as what the heroes planned in advance to have Shinsou do to Machia, and what he willingly agreed to do well before he found out that Machia was not as opposed as the heroes thought.

  

I mean, I get what you’re getting at. I’m just wondering. If the heroes hadn’t launched a suprise attack, and had left the villains do the first move and come to them, would you then be criticizing them for being irresponsible and incompetent instead? Sorry for going on a tangent, it’s just something I’ve noticed when it comes to readers criticizing the heroes. It’s either people complaining that the heroes are too ruthless, or that they’re too nice, naive or not pragmatic enough.

(This is in response to some discussion of the heroes' actions in the first war arc's raid on the villa+hospital lab, not the second war's divide and conquer plan.)

I actually don’t really have a huge problem with the surprise attack in principle—I might criticize Cementoss ripping the building in half when there could well have been people on those upper floors, but otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what else the heroes could generally have done to deal with the numbers they were dealing with.  I mean, it’s basically just a scaled-up version of the attack on the Hassaikai base, and I don’t have any moral quibbles with the way the heroes and police handled that.

Rather, my problem with the raid is that I thought the heroes were too effective given the way their forces and those of the PLF had been set up.  It’s not the tactic itself that’s the problem (though individual acts of worse violence within the attack, like Hawks killing Twice or the attempts to outright murder Shigaraki in the tube, are still an issue), it’s the finality, the totality, of how effective the attack was.

To be brief about it (because I’ve talked about this at length elsewhere), I don’t think the heroes should have known where all the PLF bases were, I don’t think they should have been as effective in disordered mass combat as the PLF, I think the advisors should have put up a better fight in all cases, and I think there should have been enough members of the PLF in significant positions of influence or power that the HPSC couldn’t uncover them all, leading to complications when those members realized their organization was under attack.

As it is, the heroes handily win every fight they have with the sole exception of Gigantomachia and Shigaraki.  The PLF is neatly swept off the table save for a few “remnants,” with no attention given to the practical difficulties of detaining tens of thousands of combatants with no motivation to let themselves be quietly arrested, much less how the justice system is going to handle trying and sentencing them all.  That has repercussions going forward, as well: heroes clearing the board of all the (named) PLF members save Skeptic leaves the bulk of villain forces in the subsequent arcs to be prison escapees, and man, if the PLF’s moral nuance has been squandered, the depiction of the prison escapees is even worse.

The raid is, of course, only the first of two big surprise attacks the heroes manage.  I have significantly more issues with the second one, but most of that boils down to the fact that the divide and conquer/Tempt and Trap plan feels crueler, meaner, and much more openly aimed at extrajudicial murder.  And like, that would all be fine and in-character for Hero Society in general and Hawks, the main planner, specifically, but with Deku, Shouto and Uraraka all starting to think Save Villains thoughts, and fresh off the traitor reveal, the kids should never have been as collectively okay with the second war’s tactics as the story has presented them as being.  To echo an older complaint, good god, what universe is Horikoshi living in that he thinks the people that converted a place of learning into an arena they call a “coffin in the sky” are the heroes?

  

I was under the impression Midnight was off to the side from where the MLA minions were passing by, and the Skull Mask guy took a detour to kill her.

I’m not sure from this if you’re explaining how you read Hose Face’s attack on Midnight at the time, or if you’re maintaining that that’s an accurate read, so just to clarify, here are the panels in question:

As you can see, the PLF guys’ path through the woods has them coming in from directly behind Midnight.  Hose Face calls out that he’ll take care of her once they get close enough for the reader to make out who they are, at which point he gets out in front of Scarecrow and hits Midnight from the same direction as their initial approach: directly behind.  He most certainly doesn’t take a detour of any kind, but rather chooses the action that is going to get his group through the obstacle with the least amount of time and effort possible—entirely his prerogative as the highest-ranked member of the Guerilla Warfare regiment on-scene.

  

But if we classify this entire conflict as a war, wouldn’t that mean that both sides are free to use whatever tacticts and methods they feel like as long as it’s not a war crime?

If we classify it as war is irrelevant if the side aligned with the current ruling authority hasn’t done so themselves.  I imagine the Japanese government is in no hurry to validate the terrorists on an international stage by acknowledging that they’re numerous and dangerous enough to declare actual, formal war against!  Calling it a war drags in a whole pile of wartime conventions Japan has signed numerous treaties about; it grants the opposing side some legitimacy as a cohesive, organized force that will need to be negotiated with down the line.  As long as you’re calling it a police action, you don’t have to negotiate shit until you get to the plea deals!  Team Hero never declared war here, so yeah, I still expect them to carry out their plans and actions accordingly.

Also, in the thematic/meta sense, I expect the heroes to either conduct themselves as heroes—admirable, upright, heroic—or face the narrative consequences when they fail to live up to that ideal.  The hyper-encapsulated version of this conundrum is the recurring idea that attacking Shigaraki never actually prevents Shigaraki from coming back worse and more dangerous next time; the heroes are never going to achieve a different result by attacking him again but harder this time, and that’s why Deku is set up to finally try something different.[3]  I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

  

General Mina Points

Regarding your analysis about Mina’s acid being underpowered because it’s harder/less believable to downplay the effects of acid than fire/explosions/etc. in Shounen Damage Logic, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I don’t see anything wrong with just showing the Nebulous Abrasion Damage that’s the ubiquitous, default mode of illustrating nonspecific injury in this comic for Mina’s acid the same way we get it for the boys.

I can see your argument, but like, just for example, when Endeavor first encounters a Noumu, he bathes it in fire under the assumption that it’s a normal villain and then says he’s surprised it’s still up because he’s never seen anyone stay conscious after that attack.  Bathing someone in flames in real life is not a “knock them out” kind of attack; it’s a “severe burn ward for months” kind of attack.  If Endeavor’s been throwing that around at random criminals for thirty years, we are plainly very far away from realistic damage, and I’d be perfectly satisfied with treating Mina’s acid the same way.

If I had to take a guess as to why Horikoshi’s so staunchly avoided letting Mina cut loose—other than regressive gender politics—I’d say it’s that acid simply feels nastier or more morally dubious than fire.  Fire has positive as well as negative connotations; acid’s a lot more, shall we say, unilateral in the collective imagination, especially given what’s going to turn up if you run a web search for “acid attacks.”

To look at it in JRPG logic (and I don’t care if AFO’s admiration stems from a comic; that comic was clearly playing with Dragon Quest tropes), acid is pretty much the same thing as poison, and poison effects are chiefly the realm of enemy characters.  It smacks of underhandedness or cowardice in anything more cognizant than roving toxic plants or venomous beasts.  Certainly you see the occasional party member specialized for status effects who can inflict poison damage on enemies, but I can’t readily think of a main character that does.[4]

Perhaps, then, because readers are somewhat conditioned to think of acid as particularly dangerous and nasty compared to fire, and because there’s a limit to how morally dubious Horikoshi is willing to (consciously) write the students, especially the girls, Mina’s sharply limited in how she’s allowed to use her acid.

That said, I got a very hearty laugh from, “Just look at Dabi.  He can’t even kill himself with fire,” so thank you very much for that.

  

It’s as if Horikoshi only ever figures out what to do with Mina retroactively instead of in the moment (e.g. there were no interactions between Kirishima and Mina until AFTER Kirishima’s backstory, we never got any hint that would connect Mina’s and Midnight’s characters until AFTER Midnight died, when Mina speaks about not giving in to vengeance she references SHOJI’S WORDS which happened in HIS FLASHBACK, and then this whole chapter is technically a flashback too when you think about it).

That’s a big oof, all right.  I know about the Midnight non-connection and the issue of Mina’s anti-vengeance words having first been delivered by Shouji and relayed to the audience by Koda (it being his flashback, rather than Shouji’s), but I didn’t know there was no indication of Kiri-Mina connection until after his flashback.  Wowzers.

  

But also, in one of my comments I had left a link to a post analizing Kirishima’s and Mina’s characters and their dynamic. I don’t know if you checked it out or not, but it was a pretty interesting read. If you did read it, let me know your thoughts on it.

Apologies for not responding to that; I hadn't clicked it because I just wasn't terribly interested in the topic. Having checked it now, I can say that I'm unlikely to read it because I've encountered this person's meta before and, even at a glance, found it to be flawed for reasons I am not comfortable gabbing about in a public space. I'm sure they make some valid points, but I will have to respectfully bow out of reading and commenting on it here.

  

But what about Mina telling Kirishima that “now they’re even” though?

(This is re: my contention that Mina saves Shinsou, not Kirishima, from the Sludge Villain, and that Kirishima was never in any danger from the Sludge Villain.)

I mean, she can say it, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe that she/Horikoshi are accurately portraying the stakes involved.

  

Just for the record, you’re not saying that Mina not giving in to revenge isn’t noble in and of itself. What she does is indeed good.  You’re saying it doesn’t have any emotional weight because Mina has always been a morally good character, so you never thought she would ever give in to revenge in the first place. Correct?

Correct!  As I’ve said, Mina has perfectly healthy emotional regulation: when she experiences negative emotions like anger, guilt, or grief, she doesn’t dwell on them; she vents them to friends and finds healthy ways to channel them into bettering herself and the world and people around her.  She’s got a great head on her shoulders!  But all of that means that her giving into anger about Midnight’s death was never a remotely convincing threat to me.  Of course she wouldn’t; there’s never been a moment that foreshadowed that she was in the slightest danger of harboring that kind of obsessive, vindictive grudge.

That being the case, it feels unfair of Horikoshi to pin a big dramatic monologue on a desire for revenge which Mina was never shown to possess to any greater degree than any of her classmates.  She’s one of the last hero-aligned characters I’d have guessed if you’d asked me who was going to get a beat like that in the endgame.

(To anticipate the obvious question, Aizawa would have been my first guess; he’s even been written for it properly in the way he and Mic have responded to Shigaraki—clearly holding a grudge for something that would have happened to their classmate when Shigaraki was all of six years old.  Conversely, while plenty of the 1-A kids could have believably carried a “struggling with vengefulness” plot if they’d been written with it from earlier on, I don’t think there’s a single one of them who feels like a good match for it in their current incarnations.  Iida’s moved on from his Stain days too smoothly to buy it from him, Bakugou’s only real obsession is Deku, and Deku already had a whole arc of being obsessively negative and driven by dark desires to find and deal with a villain.  If any student was going to show up to the fight with bloody-minded revenge on the brain, it should have been Shishikura.)

  

But What About the Heteromorphobia, Tho’?

(Warning: Incoming off-topic harping about Shouji and the inane resolution of the hospital attack.)

I have even seen someone make a post on Reddit arguing that Shinso being discriminated for his Quirk makes no sense because it’s not villanous, and that it makes more sense for characters like Bakugo, Mina and Tokoyami to be discriminated because they have more villanous looking Quirks. I don’t really agree with everything that guy said. But he did bring up a good point. How come Mina doesn’t get side eyes from people due to her Quirk like Shinso does?

I will have to disagree with Reddit User That Guy that Shinsou’s quirk should be viewed as less villainous than Bakugou’s.  It sounds like he was conflating heteromorphobia with the bias against villains/"villainous" quirks, and while there is overlap, they’re still distinct categories.  Shinsou’s quirk inherently subordinates one’s physical body, allowing him to force his targets to act against their will, or potentially take the fall for things they didn’t willingly do.  Of course people are nervous about it or think it’s more villainous than heroic!

Conversely, the Number 2 Hero has been attacking criminals with fire for decades now, so I think the BNHA general public is more than ready to accept a hero whose quirk lets him fire off explosions.  The commonly accepted idea in the fandom is that “flashy and offensive quirks” are the ones most valued in heroes.  I think that’s a bit oversimplified—Crust was the Number 6 Hero and his quirk was neither—but it’s certainly true that purely elemental quirks (fire, lightning, wind, earth-shaping), no matter how damage-dealing they are, don’t tend to get treated as villainous in nature.  The real “villainous quirks” in the series tend to be the ones that are more creepy, dark, invasive, or impure.  Even Dabi’s fire is that ethereal blue, like spirit fires, instead of everyday orange-red!

Bakugou’s quirk is much closer to the “pure elemental” category than anything very villainous and, indeed, when he got kidnapped from the training camp and that one journalist was suggesting that he might have turned to villainy already, he based that suggestion on Bakugou’s behavior, his conduct during the Sports Festival.  Nothing was said about his quirk at all, but rather his recent public demonstrations of violence and “mental instability.”  That’s perfectly consistent, I think, with the biases we see elsewhere.[5]

Tokoyami has the potential to get hit by both the villainous quirk bias and the heteromorphobia, but I think Japan seeing ravens as emblematic of wisdom rather than death and rot would mean his bird head is less ill-seen there than it would be in the West.  I don’t think it would take much more than the proverbial One Bad Day to get him to a very bad place indeed, though—there’s a reason Mr. Compress judged him a good potential recruit!  Tokoyami was rescued before it became an issue, but if he hadn’t been, I’m sure we would have seen the same journalist mentioned above making similar statements about Tokoyami and his dark quirk/mien.

Mina’s an interesting case study in not experiencing a lot of the same sorts of discrimination others in similar situations do.  She has three distinct heteromorphic traits—her skin, her eyes, her horns—as well as having a potentially extremely deadly quirk which, as I discussed above, could easily attract judgmental side-eye because of the cultural view of acid.  So why doesn’t she seem to face discrimination?

As I said in the post you’re replying to—and as you mentioned is a common headcanon—I think a lot of it boils down to her relentlessly chipper attitude.  If she had, for example, Mustard’s personality, or Muscular’s drive to violence, would people be quicker to say that her Acid is a “villain quirk”?  If she glared more, would people be more creeped out by her eyes?  It’s possible, I think, that we would actually see her facing some of this if we spent more time with her, but the narrative doesn’t make that time, at least not anywhere Kirishima can see it.

  

Well, if I had to guess, I’m sure you would say that would make her a more interesting character. You might get to be interested in her character, which then would probably mean you would be even more upset and disappointed with this chapter.

Ahaha, very fair.  Honestly, Class A would have benefited tremendously from more kids with bite to them.  A Mina whose competitiveness had some real fervor to it, or a Mina who had some heaviness in her backstory she was faking her way through dealing with, would have been a good contribution to that.

  

It really sucks that Horikoshi had to justify Shoji being the only one to experience prejudice by clarifying that heteromorph discrimination is only still prevalent in small villages. I feel like it robbed characters like Tsuyu, Mina, Tokoyami and Koda of being part of an actual narrative and get more depth and development.

Before I talk about this, let me clarify something: Shouji’s line about what his classmates know about heteromorphic discrimination is an example of very crucial nuance being wildly different between translations.

The fan scanlation suggested that Tokoyami and Koda, who grew up in cities, must feel like such violent heteromorphobia resembles something out of a textbook, with the implication that the textbook in question is a history book.  They’re presumed to think that blood-cleansing rituals and children with scars like Shouji are artifacts of a terrible past, not a modern-day concern.

The official Via release suggested that Tokoyami and Koda could know that stuff like this still happens in rural areas because they might have read about it in textbooks.  They’re presumed to know that such rituals and scarred children do exist as modern concerns, but only out in the boonies.

Those are completely different propositions!  Which one was accurate was far beyond my capability to judge, but the official translation did feel a little off to me, so, as I usually do in such situations, I brought it to my trusty Translator Sis.  For possibly the first time ever,[6] she told me that Viz had this one wrong—that Shouji’s implication, to her eye, was indeed that T&K would think such violence was limited to the past, not that it was limited to rural areas.

That established, I was actually talking about that line from Shouji with a friend the other day!  I was aggravated that the writing would portray city-born heteromorphs as so oblivious to the problems facing them in other parts of the country when that seems so counter to my (American) perception of the ways members of threatened groups communicate danger to one another.

My friend reminded me that silence is a much more common Japanese way of addressing (or attempting to address) minority discrimination: trying to make a problem go away by starving it of conversational oxygen, treating oppression like an infection that needs to be quarantined until it dies out on its own.  In that light, it’s entirely possible that Tokoyami and Koda might not know this stuff because no one around them thinks it would be helpful to tell them if it’s not a problem they’re directly dealing with.  A lot of people propose the same approach to burakumin issues in real life, for example.

Also, technically Shouji doesn’t say that Koda and Tokoyami don’t experience heteromorphobia at all, just that the idea of fear and hatred that extreme, that violent, must seem like something out of a textbook, rather than something that happens here and now in certain parts of the country.  Also too, Tokoyami and Koda are teenagers; I can forgive them not having much understanding of life outside their own circle of experience.

That all said, it still feels more than a little telling that Horikoshi thinks everyone in Shouji’s whole class, including and especially all the other heteromorphs, could never have heard in their entire lives about acts of bigotry-driven violence against heteromorphs being carried out in the here and now.

While it’s true that silence is a widely accepted way to address these sorts of issues in Japan, they’re hardly universal!  Activist groups are out there trying to raise awareness, trying to get their issues on the floor of the Diet in hopes of getting laws passed about them.  There’s not some kind of media blackout on talking about it, and, indeed, I’ve read any number of articles from Japanese publications online covering such topics.

In BNHA, however, silence does seem to be universal.[7]

No one but Shouji is from a remote enough place that they knew about violent heteromorphobia.  No one recognized it as a thing that e.g. disadvantages heteromorphic heroes in the public approval ratings.  No one tripped over a magazine article about it and got curious enough to look the topic up online.  No one’s heroic mentors or family members have talked to them about it (particularly egregious with Koda, given the fairly strong implication that his own mother suffered it).  No one had a patch of morbid interests (Tokoyami) that led them to dabble in reading about real-life horror stories of human hatred, or an interest in how their society came to be that might have led them to reading about the CRC and realizing it still exists in the modern day.

They attend a hero school, and yet Shouji seems to be the only one with an inkling that there are heteromorphs out there who need, and have been needing, heroes.

That’s all a lot to ask of the reader, but what really pushes it past plausibility to me is what happened with the Ordinary Woman.  How close to the surface must violent heteromorphobia be even in the cities if the current state of Japan brings it all right back into the open in a matter of weeks?  That none of the students other than Shouji have ever even imagined that heteromorphs can still be victimized in this way represents an over-the-top ignorance that I have to read as either a bleak condemnation of the shallow focuses of heroes or reflective of Horikoshi’s own beliefs about discrimination and the understanding of it possessed by those who aren’t immediately threatened by it.

Whichever is the case, and with Spinner’s higher brain functions out of commission, it leaves Shouji carrying the whole plot on his back and he just can’t do it, both because the audience hasn’t had enough time with him to buy it and because the answers the series uses him as a vehicle to deliver are facile, victim-blaming nonsense.

...And here’s where I admit that even if the hospital attack had climaxed with a whole bunch of heteromorphs from Class A and B and the Pro Hero ranks acknowledging the mob’s feelings while pleading with them to not give into hatred and to stand down, I would still have issues if the resolution didn’t involve concrete suggestions and promises about how the heroes would address the mob’s grievances going forward.  Which canon very much did not, and just adding more voices to Shouji’s wouldn’t have changed that.  But my whole rant about that can be found in the relevant chapter posts, so I’ll not repeat it further here.

  

How Would I Have Done It Instead?

Let’s be real here for a second. Even if Mina had been the one to stop Machia. How would she even do that? I remember back when people were talking about when Mina would get her moment to shine, and that it would involve Machia again, I had serious doubts about that idea ever becoming true because I couldn’t think of a single thing she could do against him. I thought for sure Mina’s moment was going to be relegated to fighting Midnight’s killer, since that seemed more within her capabilities. In the end her shinning moment did indeed involve Machia, and no one really had a confrontation with Midnight’s killer. I actually want to hear your thoughts, if you happen have a thing in mind that you think Mina could’ve done to be the one to stop Machia. I’d love to hear it.+ Btw, since you brought it up, in what way could she have defeated the Sludge villain that would’ve been witty, or skillful? If you don’t have any ideas you don’t need to answer. It’s not that important. I’m just curious of the posibility.

Okay, so, this is the part that hung me up for the longest, because there are a few wildly different possible answers here.

The real truth is, if I had been writing this whole shebang from the start, this confrontation would never have happened this way at all.  Just off the top of my head, I think there’s no compelling reason AFO couldn’t have sent Toga into the hospital to activate and retrieve Kurogiri weeks ago, and with Kurogiri back in play, getting Machia would obviously have gone differently.  I would also never have disposed of the MLA as comprehensively as Horikoshi did; I would have had at least one or two instances where an MLA member who didn’t get uncovered by the HPSC in time was in a position to shift the balance in the villains’ favor—maybe one would have been with the police somewhere.

Barring a top-to-bottom rewrite of the whole arc, however? Well, I'd still say that, feeling as strongly as I do about how morally dubious this whole second war has been, even if I were telling this scene with the same components, I probably wouldn’t be writing towards a hero success because I don’t think the heroes have earned it.  The baby steps the kids have taken towards Saving Villains don’t go far enough for me to want to see the villains defeated here.  The biggest changes there would have been twofold:

1) Shinsou’s voice changer play shouldn’t have worked on Machia.

Machia has a sense of smell so incredibly acute that, if I were trying to logically explain how it worked, I’d make it a psychic ability that just happened to manifest as scent-based.  We’re talking about a guy who could track down Shigaraki after a teleport of over 270 miles, who could smell AFO’s vestige stirring from almost fifty miles away.  There’s absolutely no reason he should think for even a second that AFO is standing right outside his prison.

Now, we do know replications of AFO’s voice has an effect on Machia—we saw as much as the beginning of MVA!  But I would contend that back then, he didn’t have a big loud response to the recording, just curled up around his radio and started loudly purring.  In the scene with Shinsou, he actually responds as though he thinks AFO is there, but again, I don’t buy that Machia should have fallen for that, especially since he was woken by Hose Face’s device emulating AFO’s voice, which would have given his unbelievably keen senses enough time to register that it’s only the voice, not the man, that he's hearing.

But, with Machia up and not immediately prey to Shinsou’s ploy, the other big change I’d make with him becomes apparent.  The series has proved willing and eager to shitcan everything Shigaraki gained in MVA, but not me.  Shigaraki won Machia’s loyalty at the end of MVA, and if Machia’s cranky with AFO for leaving him behind again,[8] that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still have loyalty to AFO’s successor.

Given that his loyalty to Shigs is predicated on his loyalty to AFO, it might seem logical that AFO squandering the latter would free Machia of obligation to the former.  That’s a fair take.  But if it were me, I’d capitalize on Machia’s keen senses and what he was present for in MVA—Shigaraki saying that his followers should do whatever they want.  Hell, if the endgame likes flashbacks so much, let’s have a flashback of Shigaraki and Machia actually talking in ways that would let Machia distinguish Shigaraki and AFO.

In other words, I think Machia’s loyalty should supersede his anger.  If he gets free, his first reaction should be to go to Shigaraki, not to focus on his anger.  That way, it’s not a hero win rewarding their gross sky coffin tactics, but AFO doesn’t get quite what he wanted out of it, either.  This would be one part of focusing the narrative back on Shigaraki and his allies, rather than ruining Shigaraki’s hard work by letting AFO take over and piss it all away.

Incidentally, I will concede that, just because Machia shouldn’t have responded like a dupe to Shinsou mimicking AFO’s voice, that doesn’t mean Machia might not have responded at all—he could have rebuked Shinsou for trying to emulate Master, and that would have worked for Shinsou’s purposes just as well!  So to avoid that, I would add one more element to a flashback showcasing Shigaraki and Machia’s relationship post-Deika: have Shigaraki showing Machia a picture of Shinsou and warning him to be on the lookout for this kid, and to not respond to anything he says.

Horikoshi loves to tie back plot beats to pre-established elements, and one such element is, as I footnoted earlier, that AFO and Shigaraki watched the U.A. Sports Festival together, so they should both know good and well who Shinsou is and what he can do.  Knowing Shinsou’s SF-era capabilities doesn’t predict the voice changer, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if the heroes are pushed to a point of desperation and they have access to a brainwasher, even a non-licensed one, they will try to use that brainwasher on whoever they think is their highest priority target.  Quite frankly, all of the higher-ups and key players should have known about Shinsou.

2) The kids shouldn’t have been tipped off that they were facing Midnight’s killer, or it should have come up in a different context.

Nothing interesting comes of the way the canon deploys it, thanks to Mina’s vengeful feelings having no grounding in the story, and the blunt way it’s brought up serves only to make Hose Face easy for the reader to write off.  As I said in the chapter post where he brought up “that U.A. teacher,” there’s no real reason for him to be focusing on Midnight specifically unless he has a personal reason to think she’s emblematic of the things about Hero Society he hates, or unless he was tuned in enough to U.A. personalities (knew who was teaching there, watched the Sports Festival to get a handle on its students, etc.) to realize that he was facing students he could potentially rattle by bringing up their teacher’s death.

The latter would offer a less awful read on Hose Face’s personality: He’s not bringing up the death out of pure sadism, but as a psychological tactic.  The former would give him some real characterization and motives while also giving the kids something to argue against, rather than the easiest possible reaction of, “Hay did u kno Might Makes Right iz bad?”

Alternatively, if Hose Face has nothing personal against Midnight at all, and doesn’t have an encyclopedic memory of hero wannabe high schoolers, he has no reason to specifically mention Midnight.  Even if the narrative must see her death “answered” in some fashion, it still doesn’t follow that the kids must get emotional closure for someone they lost to the undeclared war they were drafted into.  The audience can take some solace in perceived karma, but lacking a naturalistic way for Mina and the rest to connect those dots, the kids should just have to deal with him as they would any other opponent they come up against, because, surprise surprise, when you’re fighting in a war, you’re not guaranteed to see and know who’s on the opposite side of the gun that just shot down your best friend.

As another alternative, if we go with the idea that Mina was struggling with dark desires for revenge, maybe she should have brought it up!  Not as an accusation—again, she has no way of knowing she’s facing Midnight’s killer without him saying it—but just out of generalized fury with her opponents as a group, the same way Aizawa and Gran Torino hold the pain of their loved ones against Shigaraki when Shigaraki is not the one responsible for causing that pain.[9]  Maybe a more openly vengeful Mina could just freely state that her aim is to take down the PLF to avenge Midnight, only for the enemy in front of her to answer, “Midnight?  You mean that woman I killed in the woods on the day of Liberation?  Here’s your chance, then, girl.”  (Or whatever.)

Of course, Shonen Jump is not in the habit of validating heroes craving revenge, so Mina in that scenario would fail because rage would make her sloppy, same as with Deku, Iida, and so on.

So, in a scenario where Machia is up and not falling prey to Shinsou, but rather prioritizing getting to New Master Shigaraki, and the PLF is likewise loyal to Shigaraki and not AFO, I’d just let it work, because I’d be slanting this whole combat towards an overall heroic loss.  Give Mina a face to obsess over until next time but also let Kirishima get a good eyeful of it so he at least knows there’s a serious problem with his best friend and one of his hero inspirations.

Mineta would have a chance to weigh in, too, as he's a good middle ground: he's got his own anger about Midnight, who he adored, but he's also worried about how that anger looks on Mina. Mineta always worries about his classmates, but he's shared a pretty fair amount of incidental screentime with Mina specifically over the course of the series, ranging from her sweetly offering to put a harem moment into the band performance just for him to stuff like the Clockwork Orange gag, as well as more serious stuff like Mineta being the first one to ask aloud if Midnight's dead, with Mina warmly, and with a confidence it turns out she doesn't truly feel, reassuring him that Midnight's fine.

(I've said before that Mineta should have had more to do in the confrontation with Midnight's killer, but that's not just about his fondness for her. It's also about him being the first to question if the heroes didn't just make the whole situation worse, and, if Mina really took Midnight's death so hard it had her thinking about revenge, it should also have been about Mina and Mineta's shared experience surrounding that death.)

That all said, I suspect that what you really meant is, how would I have handled this scene if I had to use all the same pieces and be writing towards a heroic victory?  So let me at least touch on that.

As far as Hose Face goes, I actually think Kirishima might have been better suited to talking to him?  Like, Mina’s been friendly with people, sure, but I don’t really buy her most pivotal, “shining moment” scene being a bunch of talk about the strength of the weak coming together.  As best I recall—though do correct me if I’m wrong—it's never been shown that Mina regularly struggles with feelings of weakness or inadequacy.  It would be perfectly natural for her to do so after flubbing against Gigantomachia, to be sure, but the series doesn’t make the time to show it, so her lines about forming packs with others does not feel like a natural evolution for her arc.

Likewise, while she’s obviously been depicted as friendly and sociable from the beginning, her lines in 383 suggest that her sociableness has, and always has had, an ulterior motive: covering for her perceived weakness.  The lack of focus on her relationships from her own perspective makes that impossible to verify or even predict, so it just feels like it comes out of thin air, grabbed almost at random by the author in his attempt to find something, anything, Mina could say that would give Hose Face even a moment's pause.

Kirishima, on the other hand, has had a focus on his relationships, places where they’ve been pivotal to his own arc and the greater plot.  (I’m sure I don’t need to harp on this to you, rvg, but I’ll go over it to lay out my perception of these things.)  His relationship with Mina—the ways he’s trying to live up to her example, as well as his desire to support her when she falters—is a profound motivator for him, something we see much more explicitly and from his own perspective than we do Mina's feelings about him.  Meanwhile, while his relationship with Bakugou isn’t given that level of psychological exploration, it’s a critical factor in Bakugou’s rescue at Kamino, and we also get that bit of Bakugou specifically giving Kirishima some advice that leads to the latter’s Unbreakable mode.[10]

So like, we do get an angle on Kirishima and his sense of his own relationships with others.  That awareness allows him to demonstrate what is, I believe, the first unabashed moment of empathy for villains that a hero demonstrates in the entire series!  Specifically, I’m talking about that low-level gang mook he comes up against during his internship with Fat Gum.  That guy does a bunch of yelling about things that speak to Kirishima—fears of weakness, desire to be stronger, a need to help his “bros”—and Kirishima tries multiple times, even after being attacked, to express his understanding and sympathy for the man.

That being the case, if anyone were going to be able to make an impression on Hose Face via appealing to his sense of camaraderie and desire for strength, it seems to me that Kirishima has the better groundwork in place to sell the moment, regardless of whether he could successfully “reach” Hose Face in the way that’s being attempted with Shigaraki/Toga/Dabi.

As to the Sludge Villain, I’d probably either not have him there at all, given how much he claims he just wants to pretend to fight for a minute before getting the hell out of there.  He very much seems like he didn’t want to be here to begin with, so I can only assume that, despite AFO claiming the jailbreakers didn’t need to do anything for him but rampage, he very much did summon a bunch of them back anyway[11] for his final dramatic attack on Deku and Hero Society.

Assuming we’re stuck dealing with him, I’d probably let the Class B kids do it.   Have Mount Lady—who was there for the Sludge Villain’s rampage using Bakugou, and therefore knows what Sludgey looks like and that he can possess people—yell for people to stay away from him.  Let there be a moment of panic and confusion, where it looks for a moment like a repeat of the mess in Chapter 1 where no one had the exact right answer to deal with him, so no one’s willing to step up.

Then, in a 1-2-3 combo move that reminds everyone why Class B is said to have advanced more quickly than Class A, and just as Sludgey lunges for someone, have Yamagi use Poltergeist to manipulate him into a steel drum barrel being held by Yui, let her shrink it down to a good tight fit before dropping it, then have Juuzo soften the ground to half-sink it, top down, then resolidify the earth, trapping Sludgey for later removal.  Ta da, a neat demonstration of the next generation outperforming the old generation when it comes to on-the-fly teamwork and decisive action even when no one individual has the perfect quirk for solving a problem.

…This, of course, is assuming there’s no good way to actually get the Sludge Villain to talk in more depth about why he didn’t want to be here from the beginning and had to be threatened into doing it at all.  It would be nice if someone could broach that topic!  Maybe a quick not-too-serious handful of lines from Mineta, who has his own history of running in terror from fights he doesn’t think he can win.  But even with some sympathy, I imagine Sludge Villain would try to run away regardless, on the (well-grounded) suspicion that heroes are going to want him to go back to prison and finish his sentence, and that’s when B-tachi could step in.

So that just leaves Machia, Mina, and Shinsou.  And honestly, rather than having to power through it, I’d rather see Mina, in particular, talk her way out of it.  This draws on two things.  First, there’s the fact that she’s one of the kids who failed her Final Exams, with her and Kaminari being unable to figure out how to utilize their strengths to get out of Nedzu’s rat maze.   I’d love to see her demonstrate that she’s grown from having no plans but to brute force her way through obstacles!  Second, there’s this sequence:

This is a bit exaggerated, obviously, but the quick demonstration of how quickly and smoothly Mina is able to approach, scold, bond with, then deescalate people in tense situations is rightly portrayed as remarkable.  But where is that facility in real confrontations with villains?  Nowhere, really, save that airless stab at remarking on common ground with Hose Face and the PLF.

I obviously don’t expect her and Machia to wind up breakdancing together when the stakes are as high as they are, but Mina would have at least a bit of an opening—her encounter with Machia in middle school wherein she lied to him about where the Springer Agency is.  I don’t for a moment think that Machia’s forgotten her smell—I doubt he forgets anyone’s, though he may or may not care about them otherwise.

For this version of the scene, I’d probably play Machia as more ambivalent—tired of being abandoned over and over again by the people he’s tried so hard to be loyal for, so not immediately inclined to run off after them, open to a bit more dialogue.  He doesn’t fall for Shinsou for the same reasons I outlined above, so Shinsou and Mina have to talk Machia into acting—or at least stop him from just rumbling off to bury himself under a mountain for the next decade or two.

I don’t know how they’d go about making that argument.  Honestly, I don’t really think there’s anything in the story for Mina or Shinsou to fall back on (by which I mean earlier panels Horikoshi’s assistants can look up and copy/paste into the storyboard to accent a dramatic speech).  Maybe they could ask him why he’s so loyal to All For One and find some commonality, either through heteromorph discrimination or bias against villains.

Maybe Machia is torn on his loyalty, betrayed by AFO one too many times to want to help him but not sure where that leaves him on supporting Shigaraki.  Hearing this, Mina brings up that AFO is threatening Shigaraki right now, but also that a friend of Mina’s is trying to stop AFO/help Shigaraki,[12] so maybe Machia could help them with that and then decide?  Machia doesn’t trust her due to the Springer Agency thing, but that same experience does lead him to believe her when she says she just wants to help people, not hurt them.

That last bit has the benefit of providing an explicit reason for why Mina uses her quirk nigh-exclusively as a watery defense barrier or to take out inanimate objects: She long ago made an active choice not to use her acid against sentient people.  This would give her some room for a little motivation-establishing flashback of her own—maybe canonize that theory about her chipperness being at least in part a front!—and provide a nice alternative to the current state of Mina’s narrative, which has spent nearly 400 chapters refusing to allow her the same free hand people like Bakugou and Kaminari take with their quirks for no established reason.

This doesn’t give Shinsou much to do, but that’s okay: his moment comes against AFO instead.

I realize that Mina's fans want her to have a big badass moment, and simply talking down a confrontation is not the kind of thing that tends to get viewed as "badass" in a shounen battle manga. Sorry about that. She can still jump around and dodge a lot while giving her pitch? Maybe she could get a big badass moment later on? I dunno; that's just what I would do, and obviously my priorities for what it would be cool for the kids to do are not the same as the broader readership's.

I'm also not sure where that leaves the confrontation with Midnight's killer; I suppose that depends on how things go between him and Kirishima in this scenario. Maybe they leave without him when he tries to protest Machia accepting the temporary alliance, or maybe he's soldier enough to take the help where he can get it and worry about later conflict later. Obviously, at any rate, this is happening in a scenario where he hasn't immediately blabbed that he killed Midnight; that can come up as a nasty surprise later on.

  

But does that mean you think Midnight’s killer should totally get away with it scott free and suffer no consequences?

Hnnnngghh that’s a tricky one because I am an unabashed MLA stan and villain supporter and therefore deeply biased about this.  Like, I don’t think soldiers should be put on trial for killing enemy soldiers, no, even high-ranking officer-types.  Obviously it’s different if they attack civilians or are otherwise breaking the codes surrounding conduct during warfare, but I do think Hose Face killing Midnight was basically a soldier killing someone he perceived as another soldier, with no undue cruelty or misconduct.

However, obviously the series itself—and the state authority the PLF is openly trying to tear down in-universe—would disagree with me!  In that context, I can’t even really call the guy “a high-ranking officer” because that would, as mentioned earlier, convey more authenticity to his position than his government wants to grant him.  As far as they’re concerned, he’s probably more like “a key figure in the recent anti-government actions carried out by the terrorist group calling themselves The Paranormal Liberation Front.”  People like that tend to get executed in prison a few years after their short, perfunctory trials.

I suppose the problem for me is that the series wants me to believe that the MLA is Very Bad and they all deserve to be Locked Up Forever, whereas I want more nuance from them than that?  Even setting aside the probable cult upbringing, I have significant trouble unabashedly blaming the PLF for their actions because the series has done nothing to convince me that less drastic avenues for change are available or even survivable for them.

This was a huge issue with the hospital attack sequence, but it applies to all sorts of the setting’s problems: Other than, “Insist that victims of oppression should focus on providing a good example to future generations,” what methods for addressing inequality does Hero Society have?  I want to know what the villains should have done, what they could have done, about systemic inequalities and repression that would have been effective against a government that employs agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks.

The picture Nagant paints is of a society waging a war against anyone who sought to change the Hero System, a war that many people who sought change never even knew they were already in.  The examples she provides of her targets are, of course, corrupt heroes and would-be terrorists, but what her HPSC President said was even farther reaching: that the purpose of her killing was to “preserve hope and faith” in heroes.

The HPSC legitimately does not seem to believe that any system other than the current one is feasible for maintaining stability, and that any attempt to shake or besmirch that system is no different than throwing the country back into the chaos of the advent of quirks.  What’s a few missing activists or tragic accidents compared to that?

Horikoshi seems desperate to have us pretend he never told us that the government his protagonists are defending actively grooms assassins to enforce the status quo, but that’s not a genie he can put back in the bottle.  I see the current events of the series as, in some form or another, basically inevitable because of Hero Society’s active, even violent resistance to change.  Midnight’s death for that cause is thus something I have tremendous difficulty thinking of as a crime that needs to be punished.

Does that mean I think Hose Face should get off scot-free?  Eeehhhhhhhhnnnngh I hate to say it this plainly, but…

Maybe it does?

The thing is, I know that Hose Face is, canonically, a quirk supremacist trying to violently overthrow the rule of law.  In real life, I have no sympathy for people trying to institute fascism, regardless of whether they’re using legal mechanisms or armed force.  But in the fictional world of BNHA, I have nothing but disdain for the way the MLA has been turned into a caricature of themselves in this final arc.  In that sense, my dissatisfaction with Hose Face’s treatment is really based on the ideal version of him and all the rest of the MLA I have in my head—the MLA that’s allowed to have nuance behind their extremism, the one overflowing with members motivated by their lived experience with the flaws in Hero Society, with a generous helping of radicalization from the fact that they’re a cult as much as they are an army.

BNHA has scrapped all that potential and left us with nothing but naked quirk supremacy to fill the void.  In an endgame that’s trying so, so hard to sell the readers on Saving Villains, that’s just poison to the story’s themes, and my villain stanning comes directly from that issue: demanding consistent treatment for the characters whose tragic backstories we haven’t been permitted to see.

Hose Face is clearly a bad person—heck, I was headcanoning him as a hard-edged, ruthless killer even when all we had to go on was him killing Midnight, long before he showed up to espouse open quirk supremacy and gloat about killing a schoolteacher, so it’s not like I ever thought he was a super nice dude or anything!  But I guess I just have trouble with the idea that the current system deserves to be the one to decide his fate, when it has, to all appearances, gone to extreme lengths to stamp out any perceived threats to itself, to the point that the narrative itself is now openly delegitimizing everyone who might otherwise offer cogent critique.

It would be different if we had never seen the dark side of the status quo and the villains really were all just shallow, two-dimensional monsters.  It would be different if the narrative had shown us legal, nonviolent and effective avenues for protest and change.[13]  It would be different if Hose Face had killed some rando uninvolved civilian.

As it is, though, Midnight was a combatant for a terrible, terrible status quo.  She might not have been using lethal means herself, but she was defending a demonstrably lethal, openly acknowledged as repressive, system.  I just can’t find it in myself to demand justice for the fact that she died for it.

But with all that being said, I also don’t think Midnight is a bad person.  She never knew about the government assassins, after all; she’s a member of the system she grew up in, the same way the kids are.  She presumably never saw the extent of the system’s flaws because she was never victimized by them.  At the end of the day, she still deserved to be properly mourned and remembered and it is a crock and a crime that we never got to see her funeral.

If anything, I think Midnight’s funeral would have been an excellent setting for a scene where the protagonists start asking questions about how things came to this, what went wrong and where, that their teacher had to die.  What is it about Hero Society that’s led to tens of thousands of dissidents, and why haven’t they ever heard of this discontent before now That would have given us considerably better set-up for a nuanced PLF, an opening to talk about Shouji’s experience of heteromorphobia, foreshadowing for Lady Nagant, and, to bring this back on-topic, the opportunity to really show Mina struggling with everything that happened as set-up for her later confrontation with Midnight’s killer.

  

Tumblr, How Does That Work?

Honestly I was expecting some sort of notification about your answers if and when you replied to me. Is that not a thing?

Making my reply a fresh post, or just posting replies in the comments section of the post you originally commented on, would not have notified you without me specifically tagging you, which at the time Tumblr wasn’t letting me do.  This problem seems to have cleared up, so you should have gotten a notification about this post going up because of your name being tagged at the very beginning!

What you see for people answering asks depends on a few things. If you send asks anonymously, you won't get a notification if/when the person answers them; you'll just have to keep an eye on their blog. If you send them with your name attached, as you did originally for me, I could choose to answer those asks privately, sending my replies back to your Inbox, or answer publically, posting my replies to my blog. Either way, you'd be notified!

For this round of responses, if I'd just replied to your reblog in comments as you did with my original post, or reblogged your reply with a reply of own instead of staring a new post, you’d have gotten notifications about either!  But I don’t want to put this much wall ‘o text on my followers’ dashboards without a cut, so I haven’t been responding directly, for which I apologize.

(Disclaimer: Notifications can be configured in your Settings menu; you can toggle them on and off for loads of stuff! You might wish to check what you currently have them set for rather than just taking my word for it.)

On the topic of cuts, I mentioned at the beginning that the cut option is hard to find on mobile, but just for reference, it looks like this in the post editor on desktop:

It's the same icon on the mobile post editor, it's just on the far right of the bar of icons along the bottom of the app. My screen cuts it off, so I have to scroll the bar over to find it.

Like I said, the Expand dropdown button Tumblr instituted a little while back has reduced the need for this somewhat, and you can certainly do whatever you prefer, but as I believe having the Expand dropdown automatically clip long posts is still an optional configuration in Settings, I'd feel better about reblogging from you directly if you put the bulk of your reply under a cut.

  

Don’t know what “blorbo” means. Kinda sounds like a demeaning term, but I’m going to assume it’s not.

Sorry, it’s not intended to be demeaning!  It’s just a slangy affectionate term for “character you really like.”  In my experience, I’d say it also has a connotation of protectiveness or self-identification, though I can’t speak for the whole of the internet.  I like plenty of characters, but I wouldn’t call them all my blorbos, just the ones that I really and truly love and want to explore/share/defend their honor to the death.

  

Thanks...? Is, is that a compliment?

(Re: my telling rvg that we seemed to have similar issues with the way Mina was being handled, but they were more willing to do the mental legwork on her than me.)

It’s mostly just an observation, but not a critical one!  As someone who’s very ready to read into the canon every little drip of information the canon will give me And So Much More, I have a tremendous amount of fellow-feeling for people of like minds, even if our taste in characters is different.

    

Buried At The Bottom, Why Kaminari Is A Worse Character Than Mineta, Yes I Said It And I’ll Say It Again

>>I have observably positive feelings for about a third of Class 1-A and only particularly negative feelings about Deku and Kaminari. What’s up with Kaminari?

My irritation with Kaminari boils down to two main things—and forgive me, I know you didn’t ask about Mineta, but Mineta’s pretty important to my feelings on Kaminari being what they are, so he’s a part of this answer.  This is all going to be pretty openly dismissive of Kaminari, as a fair warning, on top of being based on not-exactly-rigorous familiarity with the student material, so apologies to anyone who likes him and finds him an enriching, valuable character. But man alive, that is not me.  And but so:

1) Kaminari is a watered-down Mineta, with watered-down versions of all of Mineta’s flaws, but because he’s watered down, the growth he experiences stands out less than Mineta’s.  More on this in a second.

2) Despite Kaminari being a redundant character who brings virtually nothing to the table that other characters don’t do better—with the only things that are unique to him going underdeveloped in canon—fandom loves Kaminari.  (Disclaimer: I obviously don’t spend much time in the hero-fan circles of the fandom, so this is just my perception.  I’d be curious to get your perspective of Kaminari’s relative popularity, rvg!)

To hit the second point first, Kaminari has a more conventionally attractive cute anime boy face than Mineta, so Kaminari’s pushing of his female classmates’ boundaries gets mostly ignored, while Mineta gets so many fics written about him dying that there’s a dedicated Dead Mineta Minoru tag on AO3 with almost 350 hits. 

Fandom built a whole tottering edifice of fanon about Traitor Kaminari despite the howling absence of compelling evidence in the manga[14] for, so far as I can tell, the sole reason that people wanted the cute anime boy to have crunchy angst.  Then, when the actual traitor reveals landed (first the fake-out and then the real one), fandom deemed Hagakure an ungrateful bitch and Aoyama a whining coward.

So like, the fandom discrepancy is what pushes me over the edge from the bottom end of neutral into active dislike.  But I would be awfully close to it anyway for the whole “redundant-ass character who contributes nothing to this story we couldn’t get better from someone else” thing.

Kaminari being kind of leery and unpleasant about his female classmates would be a lot more glaring if it weren’t stacked up against Mineta’s actual sexual harassment, even though Kaminari is a frequent co-conspirator!   

Kaminari has a brief tussle with fear at the beginning of the war arc, but it’s neither as sustained nor as convincing as Mineta’s frequent wrestling with cowardice, present from USJ all the way up through his terrified confrontation with All For One.   

Mineta is frequently, openly envious of his classmates, a whole extra flaw that Kaminari never demonstrates in more than fleeting glimpses.   

Kaminari’s quirk is redundant next to the other high offense types in the class.   

Kaminari’s personality is not distinct enough to add anything irreplaceable to the classroom dynamic.  That’s not to say he brings nothing to the web of relationships amongst the students or the ways the class as a whole reacts to the events of the series, just that what comes to mind for me is mostly extra layering to existing dynamics, not anything truly original and unique to him.  Which would be fine—I love extra layers!—if he were contributing more as a character on literally any other fronts.

I can think of only two things that Kaminari uniquely brings to the table, but both of them are mentioned once and then never come up again.  Firstly, he’s the only one in the class to voice open admiration for Stain, a willingness to admire cool traits in Villains that never leads him to any interesting conflicts with people (classmates or otherwise) who hew to the more standard flat refusal to consider that a Villain might have or express positive aspects.

The other thing is less about Kaminari himself and more about how he’s one of three places where the story brings up the idea of people using their quirks for non-hero jobs and then refuses to develop that premise.[15]  It’s interesting worldbuilding, but as far as I’m aware, it’s never directly shown—everyone we see using their quirks (legally) in the series is doing it as a hero.  We never get much sense of what other options there are for quirk use because heroism and villainy are the only contexts we ever see it in!  This would be a little annoying on its own, but I also find it undermines a lot of other established facts and characterizations.

(Bear with me and I promise I’ll loop this back around to Kaminari.)

My interests being where they are, the biggest problem for me with the fuzziness about the legality of quirk use is that it leaves Destro and the MLA with no coherent cause.  They want free quirk use, but are they really so incredibly averse to just getting a license that they’re willing to become terrorists over it??

You could argue that naked quirk supremacy is what the MLA is currently after, and that’s obviously incompatible with the laws as they stand, but Destro Classic is never really framed as a quirk supremacist, so why did he so virulently despise the quirk use prohibitions if all they really did was require people to get a license to use quirks in public, no different than a driver’s license or a permit to serve alcohol?  Sure, you get small clutches of people sometimes with that kind of “any government oversight is bad government oversight” black-and-white thinking, but the original MLA was a powerful enough force to stand against the government for years, which doesn’t exactly scream “a handful of malcontents” to me.

Rendering the MLA’s cause mindbogglingly asinine is my biggest problem with the “other jobs can get quirk-use licenses too” tidbit, but there are also things like how totally invisible the entertainment or sports industry is.  That would make perfect sense if quirk use is illegal in those fields—people want to see cool superpowers getting used, so industries that bank on public attention dollars but can’t have their celebrities use their quirks are going to decline when they can’t compete with industries/celebrities that can.

If quirk licenses can be gotten for all sorts of jobs, though, then why have sports and entertainment become so invisible?  If “frivolous” fields like those are not aren’t seen as “contributing to society” enough for quirk use permits, then which fields do?  Why does HeroAca!Japan still mostly look and behave like IRL!Japan if quirks are in use in “all manner” of industries?  And if it isn’t the case that heroism—a dangerous job which sometimes gets people killed and which generally requires cultivating a socially demanding public brand/identity—is the only path to being able to use the special power you were born with to earn a livelihood, why does every single middle-schooler in Deku’s class and countless other classes across the country want to become a hero?

I just feel like the way the world looks and operates, the kinds of repressiveness described by even the heroes, the structures that drive people into heroism and villainy alike—the former because they don’t see any other viable way to achieve the happiness they’re looking for, the latter because they can’t become heroes but still have desires that their quirks could help them achieve—all of that makes much more sense in a world that has super powers but has tightly restricted their use to a single job class of person.

So, tying back, obviously that’s not a fault of Kaminari’s, but he is the character where that gap is most apparent.  If there aren’t many lightning heroes because lightning is in high demand in other industries, it would shed significant light on who Kaminari is as a person if the manga would tell us what those other industries are. 

What other paths could Kaminari have chosen?  What’s so much better about those other industries that people with quirks tailor-made for heroism,[16] in a society that worships popular and powerful heroes, are so willing to choose those other industries instead?  Why did Kaminari not make that same decision?  What does heroism mean to him personally that he chose it when so many others in his situation did not?

Kaminari could present a huge in on that angle of the worldbuilding, but instead he’s a complete dead-end.  Mineta’s motivations are base as hell, but at least we know what they are!  Further, it tells us interesting (uncomplimentary, but interesting!) things that people like Recovery Girl and Deku hear said motivations from Mineta’s own mouth, and shrug and accept them as perfectly valid.

And that’s just his professed motivations!  His final exam scene actually drops an early hint about the admiration for Deku he’ll later wholeheartedly declare in the 1-A vs Deku fight!  I don’t remember Kaminari ever getting anything a fraction so revealing; he just coasts through the story contributing nothing unique or meaningful.  He’s hardly the only 1-A character with that particular lack of depth—Sato, Sero, Hagakure and Ojiro are all similar blank slates in terms of their motivations or histories—but then, none of them are a fraction as popular as Kaminari is in the fandom as I experience it, either.

So to sum up, I dislike Kaminari because he’s a wishy-washy nothing of a character, a generically Inoffensive Anime Cutie Boy adored out of all reasonable proportion compared to more compelling and equally underdeveloped classmates alike.  Mineta is, by any measure, more problematic, and it's even worse that U.A./Aizawa are so blasé about him, but, at least from where I’m standing, he’s still more layered, more compelling, more dynamic, and speaks in more interesting ways to the world around him than Kaminari ever comes close to matching.

(…Kaminari’s thing with Jirou is fine.  Perfectly reasonable character relationship building material.  I just don’t count it one way or the other because it’s a self-contained relationship dynamic that has no bearing on the way either character engages with the broader world/system the series’ overarching narrative is challenging.  They motivate each other in small ways, but that motivation doesn’t lead them to truly grow or change as people, only to overcome modest internal confidence hurdles blocking them from things they already wanted to do anyway.)

--

And that's it! Thanks for forging through, good lord, over twenty pages of this, rvg and anyone else who did! I hope you were at least moderately entertained, give or take my blatant Kaminari slander. See you next time, and enjoy the Footnotes.

---------------- FOOTNOTES ----------------

[1] We’re not shown any personnel or drugs or anything, but I assume they’ve been keeping Machia drugged since Jakku, same as Kurogiri in between interviews.  It’s the only thing that worked on Machia before, so why wouldn’t they have more on-hand?

[2] Despite watching the Sports Festival with Shigaraki, natch.

[3] I would like it if he would do that with a lot less insufferable power scaling bullshit, you understand, but I’m spotting the comic its plot arc here.

[4] Outside of, say, the Persona games, where the MCs can change ability sets by swapping out what companion spirit they’re packing, but even that doesn’t make them specialized for status effects, merely capable of using them.

[5] Interestingly, while Bakugou fought off the villainous sales pitch with as much verve as he brings to all his fights, if he had fallen off the righteous path there, we might have observed that his pridefulness was explicitly fostered by the people around him giving him excessive praise for his powerful quirk and ignoring his resulting violent arrogance.  That is to say, Bakugou would have fallen under the same, “Villains are created by the failures in their society,” pattern that BNHA applies to all of its sympathetic villains.

[6] There was one other instance, but iirc it was an error in the translation C.Cook had done for the BNHA databook.  It would not surprise me that he was being less careful or was more pressed for time when translating the reams upon reams of text in one of those.

[7] At least until the fifteen-thousand-strong mob shows up.

[8] Which frankly should be all he’s sore about.  As others have pointed out, Machia’s anger about being abandoned is kind of incoherent.  Yes, AFO left him on the battlefield, but he didn’t exactly leave him to rot in prison forever.  The moment AFO made his big push, he sent people to spring Machia, so in what sense exactly does Machia think AFO abandoned him?  If it was just the last straw after a string of abandonments from both AFO and Shigaraki, the manga could have stood to make that much clearer.

[9] AFO and Ujiko created Kurogiri out of Shirakumo—as a babysitter for Tomura, yes, but Tomura didn’t choose that.  And as to Shigaraki’s very existence trampling on Nana’s memory and causing All Might pain, well, Shigaraki didn’t ask to be brought into the world, abused by his father, neglected by his family, and then raised by a supervillain, did he?

[10] And speaking of Unbreakable, compare how explicitly we’re shown Kirishima’s growth and the foundations of it with how the inspirations for Mina’s attacks are relegated to passing mentions, not direct depictions.  She just casually tells Kirishima that his Unbreakable inspired her Acidman, and likewise only internally reflects on asking Bakugou and Todoroki to teach her their training method, which let her develop her Max Power Acidman Alma move, without so much as a single scrubbed in doodle depicting said training assistance.

[11] Somehow.  The story is unclear on whether he disseminated threats, contacted them directly, or just used the combination of Search+Warping to drag them all back into his presence, and that last option in particular runs into complications given the limitations of both quirks.

[12] In this AU, we would have gotten to see the class have an actual discussion about Saving Villains, prompted by the way the reveal about Aoyama solidified Deku, Shouto and Uraraka’s desires to help their respective villain foils.  The class would carry that resolve forward not only for those three villains alone, but also Shouji for Spinner, Kirishima when talking to Hose Face, Mina, here, with Gigantomachia, etc.

[13] None of the things I can think of that might be considered evidence of protest meet all the criteria.  The original MLA became violent, Harima Oji was a lawbreaker and also ineffective in the long term, the small group that yells at Endeavor and the rest in Chapter 311 is not portrayed as linked to any broader efforts to unseat “fake heroes,” and the group that “condemned” the newscaster Miyagi Daikaku was ineffective and didn’t even seem to rise to the level of open protest.

[14] "His grades are poor but he namedrops a Hemingway novel! He must be concealing the fact that he's actually super-smart!" "He's doing a Liberation salute! He must be the traitor, even though the Liberation salute uses the other hand, and Kaminari has been using finger-gun gestures to fire off his lightning attacks since at least the License Exam if not earlier, and the League had no connection to the MLA at the time when the traitor was most active!"

[15] A blurb about Kaminari in, iirc, one of the volume extras, Suneater’s flashback to a teacher telling his class that they can “make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs,” and Uraraka’s early mention that she’d considered “getting permission” to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.

[16] See the previous discussion about the kinds of quirks that are popularly accepted as “good hero quirks.”

#bnha #stillness answers #-ish #my writing #pink alien on parade #plf advisors #grape expectations #bnha minoru #gigantomachia #plf arrests #heteromorph discrimination plot #horikoshi stop ignoring the villains' perception quirks challenge #hero society #bnha critical #ethics of heroism #bnha endgame #double-duty brainstorming for the rewrite AUs #randomvongenerico

[supercap2319]

"Superboy, this is Powerpuff Man. He protects the city of Townsville from aliens, giant monsters, and demons." Superman introduced.

Conner sized the young hero up. He was certainly... colorful. Hot pink fingerless leather gloves. Black boots, light blue tights and a green leather jacket. He looks like he'd fit better at a pride parade than being a superhero, but Conner took his father's word for it. "Nice to meet you, Powerpuff Man." Conner tried not to laugh at his ridiculous name.

The other hero shook his hand. "You want to laugh don't you? It's okay. Most people do, but I can't change the name. I've had it since I was six years old."

"You've been fighting crime since you were six?"

"Hell of an age to start, eh?"

Superboy laughed. "I guess so."

Superman smiled. It was nice to see Conner getting along with other superheroes.

#x male reader #male reader insert #male x male #superman #superboy #Superboy x male reader #conner kent #Conner Kent x male reader #joshua orpin #Joshua Orpin x male reader #kon el #Kon el x male reader #kon el kent #kon el superboy #dc titans #henry cavill #dceu #powerpuff girls

[morallyinept]

I mentioned on a previous Ask that I used to be a florist, (man, do I miss that job...) and lovely @doughmonkey suggested I should match the Pedro Boys with flowers... so, here you are! 🪻🌷🌻

Enjoy! 🖤

Jett's Pedro Boy Rambles Masterlist

Flora & Fauna Masterlist

The sunniest flower for our sunniest Pedro Boy, Javi. Sunflowers often represent the sun and Javi just beams like it, doesn't he? Sunflowers also bring good fortune, and represent a long life and lasting happiness. It is often seen as a symbol of faith and devotion, radiating positivity and hope. In some Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, sunflowers are considered sacred and represent spiritual enlightenment. Or, divine inspiration, as Javi would say...

Sweet Peas represent goodbyes and yearning. In Victorian England, for example, sweet peas were often given as a sign of departure or goodbye to a loved one. Considering Joel has lost Sarah, I'd say a Sweet Pea would be a good representation of a flower for Joel. Sweet Peas also can mean blissful pleasure, friendship and gratitude. They come in all sorts of colours too, such as shades of white, pink, coral, red, violet and blue, and some combining two colours.

More subtle than the bold traditional red rose, pink roses typically symbolise admiration, happiness, and love. Pink roses also symbolise sweetness, femininity, appreciation, and admiration - all traits that this handsome agent showers in abundance towards his love interest. I think receiving a bunch of beautiful pink, velvety roses from Marcus Pike would totally sweep you off your feet and totally convince you to go to Washington DC with him.

Red poppies are worn as a symbol of support for the Armed Forces community, and to remember our fallen military personnel. The poppy is a common symbol that has been used to represent everything from peace to death, and even simply sleep. Seeing as Frankie worked in the forces, he would probably tuck a red poppy flower behind your ear then kiss you sweetly, as he walks hand-in-hand with you through the local Veteran Day Parade.

In the language of flowers, wild heliotrope symbolises devotion and an everlasting love, which when you think about Whiskey losing his sweetheart and baby boy, this flower couldn't be more perfect for him. It has a delicious scent and the flowers follow the sun as it tracks across a winters day, hence the name "Heliotrope" which is derived from the Greek Helios meaning sun and tropos meaning 'turn' or 'direction'. Everlasting love is a journey that you rarely falter from the path, so I imagine Whiskey would choose this flower to place on the grave of his sweetheart and baby boy.

Passion flowers, not only look a little alien in their bloom, they also have healing properties, which Ezra could do with in abundance, right? Roman Catholic priests of the late 1500's named it for the Passion (suffering and death) of Jesus Christ. And Kevva, has this prospector suffered... Passion Flower can incite love and passion and help you attract companionship. A perfect flower to represent my main man Ezra, I think...

Colourful, fun and a little kooky looking, gerbera daisies are just flowers that make me smile in abundance. And so does Dieter Bravo. Yellow gerbera daisies tend to symbolize cheerfulness and celebration. Orange gerberas convey that the person you present it to is the sunshine of your life. Red gerberas represent an unconscious love or to be fully immersed in love. White gerberas symbolise innocence and purity. Pink gerberas are a symbol of admiration, adoration, or high esteem for someone. I imagine Dieter would love these because he would be attracted to the variety of colours and they would make him smile, even when high...

Black dahlias aren't truly black, but rather a very deep shade of crimson that appear black. They symbolise betrayal and sadness, so shouldn't be gifted lightly. It also represents inner strength, likely due to the plant's ability to tolerate such harsh conditions. Although a stunning flower to behold, the symbolism doesn't come without it's notoriety; they're associated with the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia Murder) in 1947 in Los Angeles. Black dahlias and Dave York? Nuff' said.

A flower with a bite, just like Max. A carnivorous plant, this flower eats insects. They have simple nodding flowers and leaves modified as hollow pitchers, which function to passively trap insects, luring them with nectar, then digesting them or drowning them with fluids, later to be absorbed by the plant. So, although it looks pretty and alluring on the outside, beware whats hidden underneath - just like our feisty vampire, Max. Nom.

Anemones are my most favourite flower. It was believed that the flower sprang from the blood of the slain Adonis, who was a lover of the goddess Aphrodite. As such, anemones are often seen as a symbol of love and passion. And there's no-one more passionate a lover than Javi P, right? Anemone flowers are available in many colors with each symbolizing a different meaning. White anemone flowers symbolize sincerity due to their delicate appearance. Red and pink anemone flowers symbolize death or forsaken love. Purple anemone flowers symbolize protection from evil. I think Javi would be a purple anemone, due to the job he has... he'd definitely protect you.

With their vibrant orange, yellow and red petals, naturally marigolds are symbols of positive emotions, like joy and excitement. Marigolds also represent energy, good luck, warmth, creativity, prosperity and passion. Oberyn exudes passion in abundance so this flower would be prefect for him. Their vibrant colors and strong fragrance make them an essential part of various traditions, festivals, and rituals worldwide, such as Día de Los Muertos. A perfect flower to represent Oberyn, in both life and death.

The Ghost Orchid earned its name due to its ghostly white petals and the illusion of floating in mid-air when attached to trees, with no visible roots or leaves. The Ghost Orchid is considered one of the most elusive orchids in existence. Its scarcity and remote habitat have contributed to its mythical status among plant enthusiasts. Due to its unique growth habits and specific environmental requirements, sightings of the Ghost Orchid in the wild are extremely rare. A little like our Mandalorian here in the sense you never see his face, he, like the flower, is elusive and a rare specimen indeed. And when you do get an eventual glimpse of it, it is absolutely breathtaking...

Holding on to their shape and color long after being cut, strawflowers are said to symbolize immortality and are commonly known as 'Everlasting' flowers. Their endurance and strength is notable and we can compare this to our resident hero of the Pedro Boys, Marcus Moreno. Everlasting flowers symbolize eternal love, hope, and remembrance. They are often used in wedding bouquets, funeral arrangements, and other special occasions to express enduring sentiments and commemorate cherished memories. Considering Marcus is also a widower, this flower is a great choice to represent him.

The bird of paradise flower symbolizes joyfulness, freedom, anticipation, and excitement. Furthermore, it represents faithfulness, love and thoughtfulness while being the official flower of the ninth wedding anniversary. As someone who is often bogged down in the the dark gloom of investigations, a colourful, peppy flower such as this would brighten Tim's mood instantly after coming home from a long day of work.

Tiger lilies represent courage, strength, and confidence. The main red tiger lily meaning is passion. White tiger lily meaning can be described as purity. Pero would be of the red variety, considering he wields such strength, courage and confidence on the battlefield. Tiger lilies also have healing properties and the lance leaf tiger lily is native to China. Apt considering Pero fights there...

Giving someone one of these small blossoms is a pledge that you will never forget them and that you will think of them often. For this reason, they're also considered a symbol of fidelity and faithfulness. Forget-me-nots represent true love and giving someone this flower means you truly love and respect this person. Similarly to making a wish, if Max gifts you with these flowers, he's not likely to forget you in a hurry.

The most classic of them all, a red rose is a perfect choice for a significant other. This stunning shade most popularly stands for passion and communicates love. It's the rose of romance and deep feelings, but can also relay desire, beauty, victory, harmony, joy, luck, pride and martyrdom. Which if you're familiar with Silva and his traits, this flower is the perfect choice for him.

A flower that is not very common, Petunias display feelings of deep resentment and anger. Despite their amazingly striking appearance, they take people by surprise because of their shocking underlying meanings. And if you know a thing or two about Veracruz, you know he's just like a Petunia - beautiful on the outside, but sinister and resentful on the inside...

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #joel miller #din djarin #frankie morales #oberyn martell #ezra prospect #max phillips #maxwell lord #comandante veracruz #marcus pike #marcus moreno #javi gutierrez #javier pena #silva strange way of life #detective tim rockford #pero tovar #dave york #dieter bravo #agent whiskey #jett's pedro boys and flowers #i love flowers #jett's pedro boy rambles #jett's pedro boys

[forfoxessake]

The Wall was inspired by an experience that Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters had during a stadium show when a fan got onstage, and Roger spat in his face…

“I won’t lie, a lot of the feelings on The Black Parade come from a similar place to The Wall. There’s a degree of contempt in some of the lyrics on this record, and a degree of resignation. This record is like The Wall in that it’s about alienation – alienation of a band, and then the claiming of one’s destiny. This record is largely about destiny, but when I ask the question, ‘Will you be the saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned?’, it’s not for me. I’m not some kind of messiah figure, as has been misinterpreted. It’s simply enough to ask the question – of myself, of you, everybody in our audience – ‘What are you gonna be?’ And it’s almost like the record takes you on this journey and tries to teach you stuff, because if you listen to the lyrics in The End, I say, ‘When I grow up I want to be nothing at all.’ This record is very thought out.”

Gerard Way - new old Kerrang interview

X

#gerard way #quote #interview #my chemical romance #mcr #my chem #the black parade

[clarktooncrossing]

Didn't Wanna Feel Old in 2023? Sucks to be You!

Happy 2023 everybody! It's a new year meaning I've got new goals to meet. Goals like finally publishing something, setting up commissions so people can pay me to do what I love, cross-posting between my account here and on deviantART, summoning more kaijus just so they can play elaborate games of poker, y'know, all that good stuff. It also means the return of my 'list of things that have reached a milestone anniversary' list. However, it seems like I've been doing this for so long that these lists have in fact reached their own milestone. From what I could tell, this is the fifth year of my doing this, at least on deviantART. If that doesn't make you feel right from the gate, I present the following:

If I don't mention this my buddy Volts48 won't let me rest; the highly influential sci-fi movie Metropolis turns 100 years old this year, meaning it is now in the public domain. I plan to take full advantage of this fact later, but for now I have the rest of this list to get to...

Anything from 1973 turns 50 years old this year. This includes...

Schoolhouse Rock! (Jan 6th)

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (June 13th)

Robin Hood (yes, the version with the fox) (Nov 18th)

Pirates of the Caribbean (Magic Kingdom) (December 15th)

Charlotte's Web (the animated movie, not the book) (March 1st)

Godzilla vs Megalon (March 17th)

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (April 5th)

Soylent Green (May 9th)

The Exorcist (December 26th)

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (November 20th)

The Young and the Restless (March 26th)

Star Trek: The Animated Series (Sept 8th)

Super Friends (Sept 8th)

Asteroid (Space Race) (July 16th)

The Night Gwen Stacy Died (MARVEL) (June - July 1973)

'We’re an American Band' by Grand Funk Railroad

'Free Bird' by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album (Oct 5th)

Anything from 1978 turns 45 years old this year. This includes...

Alien (May 25th)

The Cat from Outer Space (June 9th)

The Star Wars Holiday Special (Nov 17th)

The Small One (Dec 16th)

Jaws 2 (June 16th)

Grease (July 8th)

Revenge of the Pink Panther (July 13th)

Animal House (July 28th)

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (Oct 8th)

Halloween (Oct 25th)

Watership Down (Nov 1st)

The Lord of the Rings (animated version) (Nov 15th)

Superman: The Movie (Dec 15th)

Lupin the Third: The Secret of Mamo (Dec 16th)

Fantasy Island (Jan 14th)

The Incredible Hulk (TV series) (March 10th)

The Amazing Spider-Man (TV series) (April 15th)

Hanna Barbera's Godzilla (Sept 9th)

Yogi's Space Race (Sept 9th)

Taxi (Sept 12th)

WKRP in Cincinnati (Sept 18th)

Space Invaders (April 1st)

Anything from 1983 turns 40 years old this year. This includes...

Mickey Mouse Splashdance

Journey into Imagination (EPCOT) (March 5th)

Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore (March 26th)

Tokyo Disneyland (April 15th)

They Disney Channel (Rest in Peace) (April 18th)

Welcome to Pooh Corner (April 18th)

Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (May 25th)

Pinocchio's Daring Journey (Disneyland) (May 25th)

Sorcerer's Apprentice (Atari 2600) (Aug 5th)

Horizons (EPCOT) (Oct 1st)

Mickey's Christmas Carol (Dec 16th)

The first annual Walt Disney World Christmas Day parade (Dec 25th)

Superman III (June 17th)

Jaws 3-D (July 22nd)

National Lampoon's Vacation (July 29th)

Risky Business (Aug 5th)

Cujo (August 12th)

A Christmas Story (Nov 18th)

Scarface (Dec 9th)

Fraggle Rock (Jan 10th)

A-Team (Jan 23rd)

Reading Rainbow (July 11th)

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (Sept 5th)

Alvin and the Chipmunks (Sept 17th)

Cheers (Sept 30th)

The Video Game Crash of 1983

Mirage Studios (Sept 30th)

DC acquires Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and The Question

'Let's Dance' by David Bowie

'Mr. Roboto' by Styx

The My Little Pony franchises as a whole

Anything from 1988 turns 35 years old this year. This includes...

Good Morning Vietnam (Jan 15th)

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Jan 17th)

IllumiNations (EPCOT) (Jan 20th)

Totally Minnie (Feb 25th)

Willow (May 20th)

Big (June 3rd)

Norway (EPCOT) (June 3rd)

Mickey's Birthdayland (Magic Kingdom) (June 18th)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (June 21st)

Die Hard (July 22nd)

Language Arts Through Imagination starring Figment (he's a dragon) (Sept 8th)

Oliver and Company (Nov 18th)

Tin Toy (Dec 30th)

Beetlejuice (March 30th)

Return of the Killer Tomatoes (April 22nd)

Rambo III (May 25h)

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (May 27th)

My Neighbor Totoro (July 13th)

Mac & Me (Aug 12th)

Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf (Sept 14th)

Akira (Oct 19th)

They Live (Nov 14th)

The Land Before Time (Nov 18th)

Scrooged (Nov 23rd)

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (Nov 29th)

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (Dec 2nd)

Twins (Dec 9th)

Count Duckula (Feb 6th)

Denver, the Last Dinosaur (April 1st)

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (Sept 10th)

Alf Tales (Sept 10th)

Garfield and Friends (Sept 17th)

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Nightmares (Oct 8th)

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Nov 24th)

Final Fantasy II (Dec 17th)

Mega Man 2 (Dec 24th)

Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3

Nintendo Power

The Killing Joke by Alan Moore

Batman: A Death in the Family (this was not Batman's year)

'Don't Worry Be Happy' by Bobby McFerrin

'It Takes Two by Rob Base' and DJ EZ Rock

'Parents Just Don't Understand' by Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff

'Nothin' But a Good Time' by Poison

'Cult of Personality' by Living Colour

Anything from 1993 turns 30 years old this year. This includes...

Homeward Bound: An Incredible Journey (Feb 3rd)

Roger Rabbit in Trail Mix-Up (March 12th)

The Sandlot (April 7th)

Super Mario Bros, the unfortunate film (May 28th)

Hocus Pocus (July 16th)

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (July 28th)

Bill Nye the Science Guy (Sept 10th)

Boy Meets World (Sept 24th)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (Oct 29th)

Mrs. Doubtfire (Nov 2nd)

Disney's Sing-A-Long Songs: The 12 Days of Christmas (Dec 1993)

Tombstone (Dec 25th)

Groundhog Day (Feb 12th)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (March 19th)

Jurassic Park (June 11th)

Last Action Hero (June 13th)

Free Willy (July 16th)

Coneheads (July 23rd)

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Aug 13th)

The Thief and the Cobbler (Aug 25th)

Demolition Man (Oct 8th)

Addams Family Values (Nov 19th)

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (Nov 24th)

Schindler's List (Dec 15th)

Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers (Dec 17th)

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (Dec 25th)

Beavis and Butt-Head (March 8th)

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (Aug 27th)

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Aug 28th)

Late Show with David Letterman (Aug 30th)

The X-Files (Sept 10th)

Legends of the Hidden Temple (Sept 11th)

Animaniacs (Sept 13th)

Late Night with Conan O'Brien (Sep 13th)

Fraiser (Sept 16th)

Rocko's Modern Life (Sept 18th)

The Atari Jaguar

DOOM

Sam and Max: Hit the Road

Batman: Knightfall by Alan Grant

'I'll Do Anything For Love' by Meatloaf

'Shoop' by Salt-n-Peppa (Deadpool's favorite!)

Anything from 1998 turns 25 years old this year. This includes...

Movie Surfers (Jan 1st)

Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World (Feb 17th)

PB&J Otter (March 15th)

The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management) (April 5th)

Toon Disney (April 18th)

Disney's Animal Kingdom (April 22nd)

Mulan (July 22nd)

The Parent Trap (remake) (July 29th)

Hercules: The Series (Aug 31st)

Out of the Box (Oct 7th)

Halloweentown (Oct 17th)

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (Oct 27th)

Rollie Pollie Ollie (Nov 6th)

A Bug's Life (Nov 24th)

Mighty Joe Young (Dec 25th)

Elmopalooza (Feb 20th)

The Big Lebowski (March 16th)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (May 19th)

The unfortunate American Godzilla film (May 20th) and it's surprisingly good TV follow up (Sept 12th)

The Truman Show (June 5th)

Saving Private Ryan (July 24th)

Blade (Aug 19th)

Rush Hour (Sept 18th)

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (Sept 22nd)

Antz (Oct 2nd)

The Rugrats Movie (Nov 20th)

The Prince of Egypt (Dec 16th)

Power Rangers in Space (Feb 6th)

CatDog (April 4th)

Sex and the City (June 6th)

Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Aug 5th)

That 70s Show (Aug 23rd)

The Wild Thornberrys (Sept 1st)

Will & Grace (Sept 21st)

The Powerpuff Girls (Nov 18th)

Banjo Kazooie (June 29th)

Spyro the Dragon (Sept 19th)

Half Life (Nov 19th)

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nov 21st)

The Sega Dreamcast

Gameboy Color

Spider-Girl (Feb 1998) - Fitting, considering she makes her cinematic debut this year in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

'I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing' by Aerosmith from the soundtrack for Armageddon

'...Baby One More Time' by Brittney Spears

Anything from 2003 turns 20 years old this year. This includes...

That's So Raven (Jan 17th)

The Jungle Book 2 (Feb 14th)

Atlantis: Milo's Return (Feb 25th)

Piglet's Big Movie (March 21st)

Holes (April 18th)

The Lizzie McGuire Movie (May 2nd)

X2 (May 2nd)

Finding Nemo (May 30th)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (July 9th)

The Simpsons: Hit & Run (Sept 16th)

Lilo & Stitch! The Series (Sept 20th)

Mickey's PhilharMagic (Magic Kingdom) (Oct 8th)

Brother Bear (Nov 1st)

Star Wars: Clone Wars (Tartakovsky) (Nov 7th)

The Haunted Mansion (movie) (Nov 26th)

Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time (Nov 28th)

Destino (Dec 19th)

Kangaroo Jack (January 17th)

Daredevil (movie) (Feb 14th)

Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure (March 18th)

Daddy Day Care (May 4th)

Matrix Reloaded (May 16th) and Revolutions (Oct 27th)

Bruce Almighty (May 23rd)

Rugrats Go Wild (June 13th)

Ang Lee's Hulk (June 17th)

The Room (June 27th)

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (July 2nd)

Freddy vs Jason (Aug 13th)

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Oct 10th)

Elf (Nov 7th)

The Cat in the Hat (movie) (Nov 8th)

Looney Tunes: Back in Action (Nov 9th)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Dec 17th)

Big Fish (Dec 25th)

Mythbusters (Jan 23rd)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (KidsWB animated series) (Feb 8th)

Power Rangers Ninja Storm (Feb 15th)

Red vs Blue (April 1st)

All Grown Up! (April 12th)

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (July 11th)

Teen Titans (July 19th)

My Life as a Teenage Robot (Aug 1st)

Clifford's Puppy Days (Sept 1st)

Devil May Cry 2 (Jan 25th)

Postal 2 (April 14th)

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (June 20th)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (July 5th)

Jak II (Oct 14th)

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (Oct 14th)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Oct 28th)

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (Oct 29th)

Call of Duty (Oct 29th)

Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando (Nov 11th)

Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc

Invincible (Image) (Jan 2003)

JLA/Avengers (Sept 2003)

The Walking Dead (Image) (Oct 2003)

'Where is the Love?' by Black Eyed Peas

Anything from 2008 turns 15 years old this year. This includes...

Phineas and Ferb (Feb 1st)

Horton Hears a Who! (movie) (March 3rd)

Iron Man (May 2nd), The Incredible Hulk (June 13th), and the birth of the MCU

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22nd)

Toy Story Mania! (Hollywood Studios) (June 17th)

WALL-E (aka the greatest movie ever!) (June 27th)

Star Wars: Clone Wars (movie) (Aug 10th)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Sept 16th)

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Oct 24th)

Tinker Bell (Oct 28th)

BURN-E (Nov 18th)

Bolt (Nov 21st)

A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (Dec 17th)

The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie (Jan 11th)

Rambo (Jan 24th)

Kung Fu Panda (June 6th)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (July 11th)

The Dark Knight (July 18th)

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Aug 1st)

Ponyo (Aug 14th)

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (Nov 7th)

Twilight (Nov 21) - I'M VENGEANCE!

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Jan 13th)

Breaking Bad (Jan 20th)

Power Rangers Jungle Fury (Feb 18th)

Spectacular Spider-Man (the best incarnation of the wall-crawler) (March 8th)

Ben 10: Alien Force (April 8th)

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (June 5th)

The Penguins of Madagascar (Nov 28th)

Super Smash Bros Brawl (Jan 31st)

God of War: Chains of Olympus (March 4th)

Dead Space (Oct 13th)

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (Oct 21st)

Little Big Planet (Oct 27th)

Fallout 3 (Oct 28th)

Mirror's Edge (Nov 11th)

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (Nov 16th)

Gears of War 2 (Nov 7th)

Left 4 Dead (Nov 17th)

Sonic Unleashed (Nov 18th)

Grand Theft Auto IV (Dec 2nd)

Lego Batman and Indiana Jones

Final Crisis (May 2008)

Marvel Apes (Oct - Nov 2008)

'I Kissed a Girl' and 'Hot n Cold' by Katty Perry

'Viva la Vida' by Coldplay

'So What?' by P!NK

Anything from 2013 turns 10 years old this year. This includes...

Sofia the First (Jan 11th)

Aliens: Colonial Marines (Feb 12th)

Oz, the Great and Powerful (March 8th)

Iron Man 3 (May 3rd)

Mystic Point (Hong Kong Disneyland) (May 17th)

Monsters University (June 21st)

Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel (Aug 16th)

Disney Infinity (Aug 18th)

Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Sep 2nd)

Toy Story of Terror! (Oct 16th)

Thor: The Dark World (Nov 8th)

Frozen (Nov 27th)

The current run of Mickey Mouse cartoons (Nov 29th)

Saving Mr. Banks (Dec 20th)

Texas Chainsaw 3D (Jan 4th)

Evil Dead (remake) (April 5th)

The Purge (June 7th)

Man of Steel (June 14th)

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (June 16th)

Despicable Me 2 (July 3rd)

Pacific Rim (July 12th)

Turbo (July 17th)

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (Sept 27th)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Nov 22nd)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Dec 13th)

Teen Titans Go! (April 23rd) - HOW IS THIS STILL ON THE AIR!?!?!?

Orange Is the New Black (July 11th)

PAW Patrol (Aug 12th)

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Sept 17th)

Rick and Morty (Dec 2nd)

Tomb Raider (March 5th)

God of War: Ascension (March 12th)

BioShock Infinite (March 26th)

Injustice: Gods Among Us (April 16th)

The Last of Us (June 14th)

Deadpool (video game) (June 25th)

Rayman Legends (Aug 29th)

Grand Theft Auto V (Sept 17th)

The Stanley Parable (Oct 17th)

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Oct 29th)

'Get Lucky' by Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams

'My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)' by Fall Out Boy

'Roar' by Katy Perry

'Wagon Wheel' by Darius Ruckus

'Wrecking Ball' by Miley Cyrus

'Applause' by Lady Gaga'

'What Does the Fox Say?' by Ylvis

'Happy' by Pharrell Williams

And with all that said, I hope you all have a happy new year!

Did I miss any milestones? If I did, feel free to let me know in the comments. For now though, MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

#teenage mutant ninja turtle #equestria girls #my little pony #jurassic park #wall e #whose line is it anyway #whose line #power rangers #mighty morphin power rangers #jungle fury #roger rabbit #the nightmare before christmas #Powerpuff Girls #Freddy vs Jason #pirates of the carribean #elf #doom #hocus pocus #sam and max #alien #robin hood #Youtube #figment #epcot #journey into ima

[genderqueerpositivity]

Meet the South Carolina native who created the transgender pride flag

Monica Helms dabbled with dressing as a woman in the secrecy of her own room while serving as a crew member on the USS Francis Scott Key submarine in Charleston in the 1970s — and she was almost caught by her superiors. Two decades later, Helms created the renowned Transgender Pride Flag in 1999. The road to boldly expressing her creativity and love for the transgender community was arduous. Born in Sumter in 1951, Helms prayed to God when she was 5 years old to make her a girl.

“As I got older, I started trying on my mother’s clothes when I was 12-13,” Helms said. “Because I felt like I wanted to dress as a woman because it was a part of me that was missing.” While serving in the U.S. Navy and stationed in San Francisco in 1976, she went out in public for the first time dressed as a woman.

“I was very quiet about it, of course, obviously. It felt natural,” Helms said. The United States military counted “homosexual acts” as grounds for discharge in the 1970s. After World War I, sodomy was a crime under a court-martial. Helms left the U.S. Navy in 1978. In 1992, she began taking hormones and officially came out as a woman in 1997. Worried that her transition would upset her father, Helms’ mother told her she wasn’t allowed back in her parents’ house in Phoenix, Arizona. At the time, Helms’ dad had Alzheimer’s and diabetes. “That was very painful,” Helms said. “That made me want to get a job out of Phoenix and go somewhere else. That’s why I came to Atlanta.” Throughout the ‘90s, Helms was encouraged by Mike Page, the creator of the bisexual Pride Flag, to create a transgender pride flag. She first flew it in 2000 in a Pride Parade in Phoenix.

“The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender,” Helms explained. Although legal progress has been made in recent years to benefit the LGBTQ+ community, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, Helms said she believes the United States has a long way to go toward equality. Georgia and South Carolina’s transgender community suffers discrimination under state laws, including South Carolina’s recently passed ban on transgender athletes in high school sports. “We’re going to have to get visited by aliens in order for trans people to not be discriminated against. They’re trying every so often to pass laws to restrict transgender kids from getting medical help,” Helms said. “It’s very upsetting.” She encourages anyone with a desire to transition to make sure they have a supportive community around them. Helms didn’t have that while she transitioned as an adult. “I had friends, and I lost some of them. But now, I have more friends that I can count on — people I know real well — than I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Helms gushed.

Now, her relationship with her family is “perfect.” Helms said that no one in her family has a problem with her transition. “My father passed away in 2004. When that happened, my mother wanted me to come back,” Helms said. Helms founded the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) in 2003 and is proud of the organization’s work to encourage the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to publish a directive for trans rights. “We received emails from trans veterans telling us that (the directive) worked. That places that they were not able to get help before are helping them,” Helms said. “I feel that we may have even saved lives, in that respect.” In her free time, Helms builds and launches model rockets. She also loves to produce videos and go camping with her wife, Darlene Darlington Wagner.

June, recognized as LGBTQ+ Pride Month, is one of Helms’ favorite times of the year, and she loves that the month encourages the queer community to be themselves in the face of adversity. “We’re very proud to be who we are,” Helms said. Since the early 2000s, Helms has always been shocked to see her flag in various places globally. “I’m always in wonder of where I see it. I’m always excited to see it in different places. And, you know, (to see it) in conservative states, it’s just, it’s amazing,” Helms said. But there’s one other place Helms wants to see the transgender pride flag fly.

“I need to see it in the International Space Station,” Helms declared.

#monica helms #trans #transgender history #trans pride #trans pride flag #pride month #trans history #queer history #south carolina #news #q

[fic-adict]

Draco x Reader

It's Us Against The World

Ch.2

Read Pt.1 here

Also Read On AO3:

She found him in the bathroom. Bent over the toilet seat, emptying the remainder of dinner from his stomach. Y/n crouched down on the floor beside him, leaning against the sink and gently began rubbing small circles on his back. The rhythmic motions eventually nulled the tension at his shoulders and Draco felt himself relax, allowing the delicate movements to ease away the remaining stress.

This wasn't an uncommon occurrence, one of them hunched over, mentally withdrawing from the latest traumatic event while the other tries to coax in what little comfort they could offer. Not to say that this was the foundation of all their interactions, but it was a comfort knowing that there was an anchor, as damaged and rusted as the other, ready to ground you back. Once y/n was sure that there was nothing else for his stomach to dispose of, she gently urged Draco to sit on the bathtub ledge and began dabbing at his mouth with a damp washcloth.

"Feeling better now?" she questioned, tilting his face towards her own to get a better angle.

Her answer was a small, silent nod. He now seemed intent on gazing at her, trailing after her eyes as she pretended to focus on wiping away the residue at the corners of his mouth and not the way she felt his arms tremble beneath her. Draco always tended to become somewhat disconnected from his surrounding whenever one of these ordeals came to pass. It was as if his mind was in a haze, forcing everything to fade out to the background while it picked up the pieces. That often lead to some out-of-character behaviors slipping through.

Draco reached for the hand on his cheek and guided it to drop the cloth before bringing it back to cup his face, letting out a short satisfied hum as he pressed against her palms and closed his eyes.

It wasn't as if physical contact was unusual between them, they'd held each other before, bumped shoulders and let hands brush and linger. Often when gathered around for another of the Dark Lord's parades and developments became a little too overwhelming, where the only real sense of security they craved could come from one another, resulting in substitute touches under tables or held hands hidden behind backs. Y/n knew that in those moments it was comfort he craved, his subconscious allowing him to be much more forward with his emotions than he'd probably like to admit in a more sober state. She always reciprocated, encouraged him even to let out long agitated rants or voice otherwise contained horrors providing whatever sort of physical closeness necessary, crouching next to each other shoulder to shoulder or squeezing their interlocking hands in support. But whenever his actions boarded on affectionate she always froze solid, the intimate gestures alien compared to the arms-length affection received by all others. It caused her to shut down momentarily, appearing stoic and unfeeling when in reality she was honestly struggling to register the foreign situation. And somehow having a naturally cold demeanor due to a neglectful childhood socialization didn't aid her situation.

Despite that, y/n continued to follow his movements as his thumb stroked her wrist, then shifted his face slightly to press a kiss onto her palm. It was at that moment that Draco became seemingly aware of his actions, eyes suddenly shooting open, panic filling his features as his vision flickered between their hands and her nonchalant expression. Y/n's unbothered façade only seemed to heighten his embarrassment at being caught up in yet another unintentional affection, again. She smiled as his cheeks grew pink, able to feel the heat radiating onto her fingers as her palm remained pressed against his lips. He carefully pried his face from her hand, letting it hover in the air between them for a second, unsure of how to de-escalate the humiliating situation he'd placed himself in.

It was always entertaining to watch Draco grow flustered after another embarrassing episode, his usually sarcastic demeanor buried underneath blushes and mountains of apologies. But this time he stared down at the floor, allowing the mortification to sweep over him.

One method of reducing his self-conscious state was countering it with her own roundabout affection which always seemed to work wonders as her actions equally balanced out his humiliation. So with that, y/n brought his still interlocked hand to her lips and pressed a firm kiss all the while training her eyes onto his own for what felt like an hour compressed to a single second. The raging flame that now re-graced his startled expression caused y/n to practically grin against the kiss, endlessly entertained by the spectrum of crimson he always seemed to have on display. Draco opened his mouth to say something but no coherent letter formation seemed to pass through the air between them and so he promptly decided on closing it again.

Y/n steadily raised her head and nonchalantly reached to pick up the disinfectant sitting above the sink next to them and started dabbing at the dried blood that had caked to form little crescent moons on his now open palm that she still held, continuing to patch him up as though Thor's thunderous equivalence of electrifying tension hadn't just passed between them.

"It's just a little friendly affection" she reasoned, deciding to be the first to break the all encompassing silence, and grant him what she belied to be some relief to his humiliation. Y/n's entertainment relied heavily on Draco's widely reverting reactions. However it was more of a personal mission for y/n to try derail him from spiraling down into a depressive episode after an uneventful evening with the other members, a wave of relief and a sense of stability always followed once she saw Draco start to gradually shift back to his usual character.

"Might no seem so platonic if someone were to walk through" He muttered.

She paused her motions for a second, his unusual commentary breaking her out of her internal monologuing session. She had expected him to jump onto her good natured teasing and attempt to counter it with his own. However much to y/n's obliviousness it seemed now that he was nudging for something else between their blurred limits of friendship but naturally instead of picking up on these subtle hints which had recently become much less subtle he realized, she decided to lean back in to their usual teasing banter.

"I wont tell if you don't"

".....deal" was all he could seem to muster after several beats of silence, the air thick with the humidifying tension of words unspoken, that and the steam that had been gradually building up from his bouts of fiery blushes.

He finally turned his head away to face the casement windows beside them and rested his chin onto (his own) palm, fighting to control the fresh shade of cherry flaming his ears.

So much for roundabout affections.

#draco #malfoy #draco malfoy #slytherin #reader #y/n #self insert #draco x reader #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy imagine #harry potter #hp #hp fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #slytherin reader #draco fluff #draco malfoy fluff #draco angst #draco malfoy angst #draco comfort #draco malfoy comfort

[jekyll-doodles]

I just noticed that in your drawing of the pastel lords drawing, white,yellow, and red and looking at one another and Black is looking off. Also the night before you posted this I was talking about how White would be White diamond yellow would be yellow red would be blue because well he's a drunk and kinda we'll horny (ik that's not how blue diamond is but he still takes blue's place in my opinion) the black is pink since he leaves and maybe becomes scp-035 like how pink diamond becomes rose then Steven

Good eye on the details, although might I point out I don't draw the black lord with noticeable pupils like the rest, because it wouldn't show up. He got black eyes.

As for that comparison; I was referring to the base character, not their storyline. And I don't know if I'd call black's exile the same as pink's. One was on purpose and the other was by force and or kind of by accident if you make the argument that in the black parade article: he didn't Know that placing his mask on the servant would transfer him. It was more of a final act of defiance/suicide, to steal that satisfaction from the Ambassador, by not allowing his mask to be trampled.

Base Characteristic wise, the four lords and diamonds are pretty one-to-one in their shared used of being based on the four humors/temperaments. Both in terms of coloring and general Vibe. Red and Pink are sanguine, the Yellows are choleric, Blue and Black are melancholic, and the Whites are phlegmatic.

Side notes:

The use of bodily fluid between the two groups is no coincidence, given that that is what the four humors refers to (more or less). The mention of the acidic liquids that come from the lord's masks aka their eyes and mouths (most notably in 035 case), and also Rubedo's connection with blood vs the Diamonds using tears. And saliva in Steven's case. And really any water it seems that they come into contact with, they can purposefully change into their essences.

The parallel that in both societies they oversee, there's the similar notions of illegal colors and being "off-color".

While there is a lot of alchemistic reference in Alagadda, which further cements the motif, I couldn't say for certain if there is in relation to the diamonds (my knowledge on both are limited.) However, assuming that the liquid in the gem injector is the diamonds' essences, then wouldn't that be considered a kind of alchemy? The diamonds, including Steven, have shown the ability to bring inanimate things to life so. idk. Like i said, my knowledge about alchemy is heavily limited. I don't have time to do deep dive to figure it out for this.

This all being said however, I feel like I must note that these two groups are vastly different. The diamonds are a broken family of aliens and the lords are Horrible.

#headcanon #scp #scp alagadda #steven universe #greenghostlyjekyll #ask #anon #scp black lord #pink diamond

[kadebronson]

01. come on eileen - save ferris

02. love will tear us apart - fall out boy

03. take on me - reel big fish

04. you really got a hold on me - she & him

05. mickey - b*witched

06. teenage dirtbag - cavetown ft. chloe moriondo

07. i melt with you - sugarcult

08. got the time - the matches

09. 20th century boy - the replacements

10. androgynous - joan jett ft. laura jane grace & miley cirus

11. (we're gonna) rock around the clock - the replacements

12. swingin party - lorde

13. royals - the holophonics

14. dancing with myself - blink-182

15. dear prudence - siouxsie and the banshees

16. under pressure - my chemical romance & the used

17. queen bitch - birdbrain

18. running up that hill - placebo

19. landslide - the chicks

20. pumped up kicks - american murder song

21. crazy - kidneythieves

22. don't stop me now - the regrettes

23. 99 red balloons - goldfinger

24. ...baby one more time - bowling for soup

25. i love rock and roll - britney spears

26. 1999 (i want to go back) - vengaboys

27. paint it black - harley poe

28. chop suey! - nekrogoblikon

29. relax, take it easy - mika

30. you really got me - oingo boingo

31. land down under - leftover crack

32. the boys are back in town - the ataris

33. smalltown boy - orville peck

34. lithium - the polyphonic spree

35. such great heights - streetlight manifesto

36. roots radical - mustard plug

37. rebel yell - the brains

38. love song - jack off jill

39 pink elephants on parade - the circus contraption band

40. the candyman - sloppy seconds

41. sabotage - FIDLAR

42. teenagers from mars - buck-o-nine

43. pet semetary - groovie ghoulies

44. bad moon rising - rasputina

45. immigrant song - trent rezner ft. karen o

46. personal jesus - mindless self indulgence

47. it's a sin - pansy division

48. cry little sister - aiden

49. you're dead/vampire ska - we are the union

50. always something there to remind me - the hippos

51. jolene - me first & the gimme gimmes

52. we're not gonna take it - less than jake

53. don't stop me now - the vandals

54. paint it black - the unseen

55. hurt - johnny cash

56. the ballroom blitz - calibretto 13

57. dancing on my own - dale hollow

58. milkshake - goodnight nurse

59. it's my life - no doubt

60. real wild child - josie and the pussycats

61. smooth criminal - alien ant farm

62. piece of my heart - jaguar love

63. no scrubs - weezer

64. you don't get me high anymore - PUP

65. somebody to love - troye sivan

66. it's the end of the world as we know it - the suicide machines

67. ring of fire - social distortion

68. surrender - anti-flag

you can listen to the playlist here!

#playlist

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 383: Meek Spirits

Pre-cut Positivity—

O Rule and Mount Lady are a fantastic team-up.  Mount Lady is, in general, pretty boss this week.  I want to combine this and my last fandom and give her Barbatos’s mace-chan.  I also have to admire her exercise routine, given that winging around a solid metal wrench as wide as your leg and almost as tall as you are must take considerably more strength than e.g. wielding a similarly sized spear or club made mostly of wood.[1]

O The effects of Mina's efforts on her appearance are neat. The way the blacks of her eyes melt off??  I wonder if Curious’s could do that too, under the right circumstances.  Also, her horns extending out is a cool look, one that I don’t recall ever seeing before.  I wondered briefly if it was meant to represent a quirk evolution like Koda growing in that horn, but Mina’s seem to go kind of droopy afterward, so I don’t know if they’ll be permanently different in shape the way his seems to be.

Hit the jump for the rest. Note that I have seen the leaks, but I’m leaving the writing below as written pre-leaks, if only because I am very much going to want an accurate translation before I start talking in-depth about the Machia content in 385.

On Gigantomachia and the Limits of Emergency Situation Excuses—

The bit about Machia embodying “pure psychological scarring” is very…  Like, guys, That Is A Person.  He is not a symbol, not a metaphor.  He is a human being.  Apart from being a bad look in general, it's especially bonkers to dehumanize Machia in this specific fashion—“From the standpoint of ordinary people”—when the first thing the heroes’ do upon bringing Machia, the soul-numbingly terrifying symbol of everyday peoples’ trauma, under their control is to—stampede him fifty miles back across the landscape over the same path he took before?  What are they going to do, stop to yell at everyone they see between here and Jakku not to worry, he’s working under hero auspices now, please refrain from having any PTSD-induced panic attacks!

As I said last time, turning Machia against his own is the sort of thing trial-at-the-Hague war crimes are made of, or would be if this were an international conflict.  What’s even more maddening is the stench of double standard hanging over it: when Spinner turns up intending to rescue his ally use a mentally conditioned victim as a tool, he got a moralistic scolding from Mic about how “that guy ain’t gonna be your ace in the hole.”  But as soon as the heroes find themselves in a tight spot, all concerns about not using mentally conditioned victims as aces in the hole go right out the window.

The only difference between Kurogiri and Gigantomachia that matters in this context is that the person Kurogiri was pre-mental conditioning was friends with a hero, whereas Machia, so far as we know, has always been loyal to AFO.  That’s it.  If Machia had been best school buddies with e.g. Ryukyu, we would never have seen him used like this; the heroes would never have even thought about it.  We even know that’s the case because the heroes could just as easily have had Shinsou brainwash Kurogiri to open all the portals they needed to kick off this combat; instead, they had Monoma copy the Warp Gate quirk and use it under his own power.

Kurogiri is not to be used as a tool.  Eri is not to be used as a tool.  But Machia?  Break out the psychic hammer and tongs and start beating him into shape; the heroes have lots of uses for him.

I know there’s a measure of shrugging and saying desperate times call for desperate measures out there on this topic, and, indeed, that’s the way Kirishima and Tsukauchi both frame this—a back-up plan, a massive gamble.  But the heroes of BNHA are not just any sort of protagonists; they’re called, by both the narrative and as an in-universe job title, heroes.  That carries a connotation of ideal, of role model, of a character/person viewed as worthy of admiration and acclaim for their nobility and courage even under duress.

@robotlesbianjavert reminded me of a quote by Rich Burlew, author of the webcomic The Order of the Stick, that really encapsulates my problem with the heroes’ tactics and the big shrug those tactics elicit from certain portions of the fandom.

Burlew said, “Being heroic often means rejecting some tactical options that, while potentially effective, violate your personal moral beliefs.” While he was talking in the context of D&D characters with specific moral alignments, I feel it’s applicable when it comes to superhero comics, as well. Certainly it's a plot that comes up with marked frequency in the U.S. comics Horikoshi draws so much of his heroic iconography from.[2]

If I may use a more widely recognized sentiment, “The ends don’t justify the means.”  That’s the issue with the calls the heroes keep making, over and over again.  They condone things being done to their enemies that they would never condone in any other context.  This isn’t admirable Plus Ultra determination; it isn’t heroic.  It’s pessimistic and inconstant, useful only for securing short-term victories.

By all means, that’s a valid story to tell, and heck, sometimes the short-term victory is all you can get, so you do what it takes to get it.  That’s true in real life, too.  Certainly, if the narrative just wanted its leads to be able to do whatever it takes to get the job done, it could have framed them as being harshly pragmatic, doing whatever it takes to get the job done, dirtying their hands and making hard, uncomfortable decisions in order to keep people safe.  That’s the bread and butter of spy dramas and political thrillers! Heroism, however, especially in the sense of cape comic imagery and tropes that Horikoshi is using, requires harder decisions still.

A hero is someone who doesn’t take the easy way out.  They not only have to get things done, but they have to get things done in a way that doesn't betray the ideals they uphold. That means they don’t get to use villainous tactics and still call themselves heroes.  They certainly don’t get to castigate their enemies for their methods and then turn around and use those same methods themselves.

(More on this next time.)

Moments with Mina—

You know, I thought it was a little weird, back in the Class A vs. Deku fight(‘s aftermath), that Kirishima’s “thing” he tells Deku is that he saw the news story about some kid facing the Sludge Villain.  It felt so out-of-left-field, so random—surely there could have been something more relevant to Kirishima than a callback to the Sludge Villain that he had never once indicated he knew about?  But now I wonder if the selection wasn’t about Kirishima in that moment, but rather, undercooked set-up for this one.  Bringing the Sludge Villain back here instead of any place he might confront a character he faced before just felt like such a non-sequitur, but with the earlier setting, at least there’s that tiny bit of connection.  Save that it doesn’t come to anything here, either—I don’t even get the impression Kirishima recognizes him?

Instead, we get a moment for Mina, and—it leaves a bit to be desired, I’m very sorry to say.

O Firstly, okay, Mina failed against Machia before—froze up when she recognized his voice and had a brief, vivid flashback to the fear she felt when she first crossed paths with him.  Yet here, when she comes up against him again, he’s basically incidental to her.  Which, yeah, I guess you could say is progress—she’s come so far she saves Mount Lady from Machia as an afterthought.  On the other hand, though, we’re deprived of a big moment of her facing the fear she failed against before—which Kirishima got!—and instead get her taking out the Sludge Villain, with whom she has no prior interaction, to save Shinsou, so Shinsou can stop Machia.

Not only does her action, then, come down to another example of a girl’s action being crucial to enable and support a boy’s more decisive action, but she even credits it to the training she got from two boys—Bakugou and Shouto—rather than her own efforts.[3]

O Mina being the one to talk about Midnight continues to feel a little strange.  Midnight never had a close-close relationship with any of the students, but surely both Momo and Mineta had more significant moments?  And Momo’s not here; she’s being criminally wasted on the Sky Coffin battle.  Mineta certainly is here, though, and he gets a sum total of bupkis to say or do when faced with Midnight’s killer.

O I wish I didn’t find Hose Face’s writing this week so overwhelmingly exhausting (more on that shortly), because Mina’s line to him about heroes and villains both finding strength in numbers is interesting on its own merits and would be even more so if it weren't being wasted on such a flat caricature.

It has echos of things like Jeanist calling heroes and villains two sides of the same coin and Spinner spitefully accusing the MLA of being the same as him (bandwagon jumpers).  It’s also somewhat ahistorical in the sense that the story alludes a few times to the fact that groups of villains were fairly rare prior to the rise of the League of Villains/the fall of All Might.  Hero teams were likewise uncommon until they had to start banding together to fill the gap All Might left.  The MLA has certainly been cultivating strength in numbers for generations, but it’s still a pretty new thing to both “sides” of the conflict Mina’s talking about.

Anyway, it’s interesting, but I wish I knew where it was coming from.  The closest Mina’s ever been to facing the humanity of her enemies is keeping Shouto company in the wake of the Dabi reveal.  There’s Aoyama, too, of course, but there’s been no collective effort made to extend the class’s experience with Aoyama—forced into “villainy” against his will—to empathy about other villains they don’t know personally.  So wherefore this sudden empathy with villains looking for closeness with like-minded people?

O My final issue with Mina’s big proclamation is that it carries zero weight for her to disavow revenge when she’s never been shown to have a vengeful personality.  Mina’s cheerful!  She’s upbeat!  She doesn’t hold onto anger; she doesn’t brood; she’s extremely well-adjusted in that she cries when she needs to, to get it out of her system, and then she bounces back.

If Mina had been shown to have a particular fondness for Midnight,[4] then maybe I could buy her having to struggle with a darker turn.  In the story we have, though, she lacks both: she has no personal connection to Midnight more significant than “teacher whose classes I enjoyed,” nor did the story spend even a breath of time prior to this on Mina struggling to cope with Midnight’s death.

It’s the same issue I have with, say, Deku’s “mad drive to save.”  I can’t accept the characterization of Deku’s saving instinct as so intense it’s like a form of madness when the story continually fails to treat that instinct as in any way aberrant or alien to the people around him.  Likewise, I can’t applaud Mina for overcoming her rage or desire for revenge when the story never portrayed her wrestling with either.

Way to keep forcing Shouji to be the model minority for everyone else, though.

Hose Face and the Incongruous Belief Set

The PLF material this week is mostly just sigh-inducing and difficult to muster up much enthusiasm for discussing.  To recap, though, the members of the erstwhile MLA are taking every opportunity in this second war arc to double down on quirk supremacy despite tiny little issues like the fact that a great many ranking officers and members of high command have quirks that aren’t suited to getting them ahead in a society built around quirk supremacy. 

I mean, really.  Here’re some impromptu categories and characters that fit them:

Good but unrelated to the function they actually serve in the organization/plot:

o Skeptic – Makes active use of his puppets exactly once; otherwise does nothing that isn’t connected to electronics. o Curious – Quirk has combat applications, but they have little to no relevance to her day job of running the MLA’s propaganda arm.

Okay but not so impressive that you’d think they’d have what it takes to rise to high positions in the society they themselves profess to want:

o Hose Face – His emittance lets him float, and does—what else, exactly?  It’s clearly not lethal to the touch, given that he uses it to float a bunch of his allies, so at best, I can see it giving him a bit of extra punch if he boosts his attacks with it.  Not all that impressive or stand-out compared to things that hit harder or are more versatile. o Galvanize (Taser Dude) – Lightning is a great quirk, except for the fact that elemental quirks seem to be relatively common, so you’d be up against every other asshole in your town that has the same power as you but with some barely more than cosmetic variation.  Hard to make a name for yourself that way!

Just kind of whatever:

o Slidin’ Go – If he were getting as much mileage out of a slip-and-slide quirk as e.g. Captain Celebrity or The Crawler, he’d be more famous and recognizable instead of being basically a joke. o Brand (Pinstripe Shark)– If his quirk is so impressive, why does he bring a katana to the battlefield with him? o Scarecrow and Nimble - Are their heteromorphic appearances all they have going for them?  If not, we sure didn’t see them do anything else, even in the middle of pitched combat. 

Functionally useless in an every-man-for-himself world:

o Trumpet – If he had to live in a dog-eat-dog world where only the strength of one’s own quirk, zero other factors, determined who got ahead, he might as well be quirkless.

There are other issues, of course, but another one that’s on display this week is how quirk supremacy is nowhere to be found in the words of Destro or Re-Destro.  Nowhere in any line Rikiya has ever spoken, even in the privacy of his own mind, has Might Makes Right-style quirk supremacy been in evidence; he has unfailingly thought of nothing but liberation and building a better, freer world.  Here this week, Hose Face’s flashback entails a memory of Re-Destro calling himself and whatever audience he's speaking to comrades, equals, “one and the same.”  What part of your supreme leader calling himself and you equals is in accordance with the law of the jungle?

Seriously, guys, if the MLA were actually supposed to have believed all this in such a heavy-handed way all along, why was Geten[5] the only one who actually brought it up during MVA?  MVA is the arc that introduced the CRC; surely Hori wasn’t worried about the League fighting a bunch of violent extremists!  Or is it rather that he didn’t want to show the League allying with a bunch of violent extremists, so he downplayed the truth as much as he could?

Is it doublethink/groupthink, a cult-enforced unwillingness to ask logical questions if they run you into trouble with the dogma?  Is Hori just simplifying them because he’s rushing the ending and doesn’t have time to resolve their plot lines in the way that would be necessary if they were written as having valid points?

On both the Watsonian and the Doylist levels, I’m completely at a loss.

Stray Notes—

O Hose Face’s face hose gets torn apart, and I have some seriously pressing questions about whether he just lost a limb to what was functionally a hero’s attack.  I suppose it could have been a support item, but no lines between his quirk, his briefly glimpsed fighting style, and an enormous fucking hose on his face leap to draw themselves in my mind.  Again, if his quirk is a biohazard of some kind and he needs a mask to protect him from its effects, like Mustard, surely he wouldn’t use it to float his unmasked allies around the battlefield? So what is it, just dead weight on his mask to make him look creepier?

Anyway, there’s none of the blood spray that has tended to accompany traumatic limb loss in the series to date, but I do wonder.  It would be, I think, the only instance other than All Might pulping AFO’s face of heroic action maiming a villain to such an irrevocable degree.[6]  You know, just to exacerbate the severity of turning Machia on his allies even further.  God knows Shinsou doesn’t tell Machia to hold back, and those claws were plenty lethal against heroes, as we all well know.

O Not sure why Shinsou had to base his Persona Chords arrangement on recordings from Tartarus when he could have just gotten it from the phone call to the Aoyamas.  I wonder how much time he needs to program those voices in?  It definitely drives home that the heroes had been contemplating using Shinsou against Machia for a long time, though.  Which, again, would be perfectly fine if all Shinsou were doing were making Machia stand down.  Not so much all the rest of it, though.

O Would it kill Horikoshi to stop telling us the outcomes of these flashbacks before we spend whole chapters on them?? At least when Mirio came back during the war, we spent like a page and a half on the foregone conclusion before getting on back into the swing of things. The reason the fight with Spinner at the hospital had tension is because we didn't know the outcome in advance. What exactly would have been the issue with ending Chapter 382 with Machia showing up and hurling a mountain at the combatants without revealing that the target is AFO and showing Shinsou and Kirishima?

(Tune in next time for: trying to make heads or tails of what exactly Shinsou thought he was doing.)

------------------ FOOTNOTES ------------------ [1] I’ll take Scale Considerations the Author Probably Wasn’t Thinking About for $600, Alex.

[2] Consider, for example, Bad Future Timelines where the present-day heroes have to debate and, ultimately, defeat jaded dystopian future versions of themselves. Or the perennial question, "Why doesn't Batman kill the Joker?"

[3] This after crediting her Acid Man move as being inspired by Kirishima’s Unbreakable, too, recall.

[4] And I’ll note that both times she’s brought up Midnight, here and in the war arc when Mineta is fretting, it’s in the context of going back to Midnight’s classes.  She never actually brings up Midnight as her own person, Kayama Nemuri, because Mina doesn’t know Kayama Nemuri.  It’s always and only “Midnight-sensei, whose classes I like.”  It can’t be stirring and personal when it’s so staunchly removed from being personal.

[5] The kid whose name means Apocrypha, to repeat myself for the umpteenth time.

[6] Give or take the way the heroes have been pretty openly using lethal force against Shigaraki ever since he got out of the tube.

#bnha #chapter thoughts #bnha 383 #gigantomachia #pink alien on parade #meta liberation army #plf advisors #ethics of heroism #my writing

[lacunasbalustrade]

Paruko Nanana; livestreams & podcasts on a computer, a phone, an iPad, a MacBook, and a headset all at once. "only someone like you could handle all that."waking up on chilly rainy mornings at 6 am after studying till 2am, so used to telling the camera to get your good side that you forgot how some liked seeing you with silly haircurlers in. drinking bubble tea; the joys of youth. can't stretch or flex for your life, but the Easter Bunny couldn't jump higher. your idea of comfort food is french fries in ketchup someone save you from yourself, healthy living is working & playing hard in your book, bicycling in gardens, affection badly expressed, using short forms & text emojis, talkative but comforting, conscious of other people's existence,"YOU. you get me."

Kazane Fujimaya: positivity post accounts, local thrift shops and flea markets, haggling good-naturedly. that specific moment when the sun starts to rise and you've hiked up to the top of some steep hill that smells of fresh bamboo and steamed chestnut buns. it's sunrise over calm waters and there are no clouds if there are you're in the wrong place. being a regular customer, would volunteer at pet shelters but you're allergic to fur, eating egg mayonnaise sandwiches with black pepper and dropping it on your lap, you'll never get that stain out if you soak it for the rest of your life. vegetable soup is so good you swear by it, feeling alienated from everyone by some really hurtful circumstance but going home to face it regardless. "hey, are you awake yet?"

Kuguru Uki: clay scent of contented pottery wheels, oven mitts, potwarmers, the way lavender hangs in the air over the blue that has yet to descend and bring twilight with it, getting ready to leave and sitting down to pull on your shoes over your feet in their padded socks. never yelling in case you startle someone nearby who's working. getting used to warmed-up rice balls in place of actual meals. inhumanly good at playing those claw machine games, even when they're rigged. "fifty points to gryffindor", sitting and revising your notes only to realise that your handwriting is embarrassingly rushed, redoing them although it's still readable. life's a balancing act and you are a champion. compromises. "there you are, I've been waiting for you!"

Megumi Mamakari: buying instant fashion from high-end malls, inhaling the aroma of cold-brew coffee beans in a place so cold your fingers are turning pink, mini whitebread tuna and lettuce sandwiches that crunch underneath your teeth, doing ballet as a kid and never tiptoeing again because your toes are still bruised underneath your socks. crawling under the bed because you take hide-and-seek very seriously. copying people's handwriting is a strange hobby but if it's not fascinating your hair isn't lemonade pink. the most starched out days when moisture hangs so thick you could slice it with a knife, the clouds are as grey as your jumper, lightning may strike any moment, that's part of the thrill. rollercoasters & haunted houses, "laugh all you want. you can't deny it."

Suzuha Amanosuzu: perfect eyeliner. flawlessly groomed, prideful with a reason, being the benevolent queen is difficult but you'll do it with grace and strength if it costs you your beautifully manicured fingernails. "End of discussion - there's nothing more to say" bubbly apple cider bursts against your palate, let it wash down the aromatic basil-topped lamb cutlet that's laid out artisan style on your porcelain plate. korean dramas and scandalous romance novels, you know the myths better than the history professor does, that doesn't disconnect you from reality. snapping a painted fan closed, elegant victorian fashion, stars coming out in a whole parade across the galaxy at 4am (you glow brighter than all, this is light pollution my dear), "what, are my feelings a concern to you?"

Ku Teito: flashy sunsets on the subway, riding on the carousel when the circus comes to town. big hearted only means your heart falls harder, darling; the air smells lonelier at night when you're out patroling on your lonesome: you always work yourself to the bone. chocolate roll bread fresh from the oven that your teeth sink into like butter. drafting reports by using the speech function because you'd rather use your hands to play Minecraft and Nitendo Wii games instead, you actually subscribe to legitimate music services instead of pirating. good for you. the world is so big and you could fit in a pocket of my hands, you need to be protected but only wish to protect others, selflessly, brightly, purely. it's not about the ego for you. karaoke master. "you can never match up to me, but go on and try!"

Mrs Fujimaya: making jokes that aren't funny. stop using your humour to cut wounds open in yourself; those who love you do not want to watch you bleed. i know you've been staying strong all through every trial, just a little longer, keep standing, please. having a picture perfect memory: the differences in the world you move forward through is as glaring as the sun to you, you are the closest to realisation you've ever been. keep going. popcorn salted dissolves in your mouth leaving only hard kernels of truth - the scent of flower pollen is one you'll never forget as you kneel in front of his portrait (in front of him at his grave.) days when you couldn't bear to open the windows and no one kept track of time for you, it's so hard being a mother who has to shoulder her little girl's pain on top of her own. "you don't have to worry, I can push through like a freight train."

Suzumi Mikado: the clouds are so much closer than you thought at first, green crocuses, leaves falling in a crochet pattern, beckoning storms and their irises of calm, the final light of the day, twisted paper cones of salted peanuts, tricoloured pansies, black tulips "you sure don't mess around, do you?" mad rollerblading skills, probably jogged every day before school, had a million graduation photo albums and her son's smile, bulldog terrier as a childhood pet, against light pollution, manic for radio dramas. constantly smells of hugging, how can someone smell like hugging? the one who eats door-to-door salesmen for breakfast, but charms the entire parent support group with your boisterous enthusiasm and courageous grace of carrying yourself well. you are a survivor. "you! stand up on your own two feet!"

Ageha: little white lies. the epitome of showbiz. slightly bizarre but you never want those clicking high heels to stop, champion of climbing trees. snakes and the divine are inextricably connected like the four beasts of the directions that protect a large snake coiled at the centre of the world (isn't that what you are?) time doesn't leave a mark on you, to you it is inconsequential my lady. spray that hibiscus perfume once again and watch me become enthralled by it. pancakes are a go to breakfast with your secret sauce that's really just citrus juice mixed with cream and vodka. kindness in the mask of an expertly carried theatre performance, or the rhythm of a street dancer, you bring tidal waves wherever you step. "you should know by now, that isn't enough to keep me entertained. show me something spectacular!"

Sofia Sakharov: compassion never picked up on, you prefer it that way. sticky food like homemade jam with the pips squeezed out, borscht and rye bread a familiar but not comforting texture on your pale tongue. days and nights blend together when you are the very essence of stars and the sun is right beside you - what more do you need? never have you ever been interested in the moon. putting up with things, a magenta that demands attention. unconsciously mimicking those around you and copying theur behaviour; it must be a pattern by now to blend in. that's all you've ever been asked to do. little ways of being rebellious. blunt and insensitive comments that scream for someone to try and uncover their source. tsarina of a thousand fullstops, sarcasm, matryoshka dolls,"who are you to lecture me?"

Terumi Kuchinawa: hungry looks exchanged between lovers. you probably learned french in school. speaking of that, slightly burnt french toast scarred like the sun's surface with a thousand pits, sweet and thick like a promise. here you are at the steps of the school waiting for the pigeons to take flight, over the rising light that illuminates your world (and you alone.) smell the cigarettes and stamp your foot at the irresponsible person who ruined your beautiful morning. where is the shyness and insecurity that you hide so well under the surface? oh but my dear you are a dragonfruit; when squishy, you burn with a whoosh of fire. not so innocent are you? your worth has pain dormant in yourself all the time you were searching for someone to give it to. "you're pathetic! but then, I guess you already know that."

#future card buddyfight #paruko nanana #terumi kuchinawa #ageha #sofia sakharov #suzumi mikado #mrs fujimaya #Kazane Fujimaya #suzuha Amanosuzu #kuguru uki #an opportunity came up to use my phone so here yall go

[floydmtalbert]

the taste of sunlight

Lou & Tab + “the taste of sunlight” requested by @shoshiwrites actual years ago, from goodness knows what prompt list. Me, procrastinate?

The wind was rising, scattering gravel across the parade ground and sending fat flakes of snow against the windows, moving with a low, mournful howl through the barracks. Louise lay dozing on her bunk, but the noise entered her dreams. A ship in a storm, sailors roaring orders at each other, drenched in rain and spray. The sails thrashed wildly in the wind, an incessant flapping and cracking. Then, as she surfaced through the layers of her sleep, the sound became what it was: the snow squall outside, and someone tapping at the door.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, huffing a sigh at the ache in her lower back, and pushed herself up. “Who is it?”

“Only the bravest and most handsome sergeant in the whole US Army.”

Floyd’s voice was unmistakeable even through the door, and a faint smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Hmm… not ringing a bell,” she called. “Who would that be, then?” After a pause: “Come in—the door’s not locked.”

He stepped inside, snow melting on his shoulders, a look of exaggerated reproach on his face. “You hurt my feelings when you say shit like that.”

“Good. You need taking down a peg or two.”

“Yeah, and you never miss a chance, do you?”

Louise laughed, and gestured to the chair opposite. “I try my best, anyway.”

Floyd shook his head, but grinned. “So,” he said, giving a little look around the room, drab and spartan but for the portable stove with the mess tin for coffee, and the photos she’d cut from magazines and pinned by her bed, “this is where they put you, huh?”

“Mmm.”

“Not bad.” He turned back to her. “You’re okay? I ain’t really seen you since we got here.”

“I’ve been playing truant,” she said without a hint of shame. “It’s surprising, I know, but I didn’t much fancy doing parade drill in the snow, or digging slit trenches, or… painting boulders, or whatever Dike’s got you doing—”

“No, that’s about right.”

“—so I told him I had Sink’s permission to attend to my urgent, top-secret matters, gave him my apologies, et cetera—” she waved a hand— “and I’ve had the last few days to myself.”

“Louise, I’m shocked.”

She fixed him with a look. “The man could have checked with Sink. It was a rather flimsy lie, after all. But God forbid he actually do his job.”

“Uh huh,” Floyd said, starting to smile. “So it’s his fault?”

“I think it must be, yes.”

He laughed. “What’ve you done with all this leisure time?”

“Slept. Stared at the walls. Stared at the ceiling.”

“And to think you get paid for this…” At her shrug, he frowned. “Let me guess. The Mourmelon Blues?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, maybe I can cheer you up.”

As he began to unzip his jacket, she reeled back in mock disbelief and raised her eyebrows. “Steady on, Tab.”

“Oh, grow up,” he retorted, in a fair impression of Louise herself, and tried to conceal a grin as she descended into laughter. With a flourish, he pulled an orange from his pocket and offered it to her.

All pretence gone, she gasped and bolted to the edge of the bed, and took the fruit from him. It seemed like an alien object, its colour impossibly vivid amongst the olive-greens and browns of her shabby little room. “An orange…” she breathed. “How did you get it?”

“Never mind that.”

Holding it almost reverently in her hands, she touched her nose to the peel and inhaled, the smell both sharp and sweet, a reminder of childhood Christmases, and that first week in DC when she and Millie went out and bought oranges and canned peaches and chocolates, all the things they had missed, and spent half the night being sick but, giggling weakly on the bathroom floor, declaring it was worth it.

Floyd dipped his head slightly to catch her eye. “Is it okay?”

She glanced up and simply beamed, taking in the sight of him: his cheeks still pink from the cold, a smattering of freckles across his nose, the last remnants of a long-ago summer. His eyes watching her closely, a little hesitantly.

“Of course,” she said, and touched his cheek, a light brush of her fingertips. “You have cheered me up.”

“Well…” Somewhere between pleased and embarrassed, he smiled, the colour in his face deepening in a blush. “There we are, then.”

Louise turned the orange over in her hands and, at Floyd’s nod, began to peel it, taking the skin off in one long spiral, her fingers growing sticky, and her eyes bright with such excitement that he had to laugh. Beyond the window, in the dark winter night, the wind roared on; snow fell to the ground and was flung away in an instant, leaving behind glistening sheets of ice, building up in drifts against the barrack walls. Inside, the air was warm and scented with the tang of citrus.

She split the orange in two, counting the segments. “Oh,” she said, “it’s an odd number. Look—five and four.”

“You have five.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

She held the first piece of orange briefly to her nose and then put it into her mouth; she bit down, breaking the fine translucent skin, and held it in her mouth like water, the juice running over her tongue, so deliciously sweet that she closed her eyes with the pleasure of it. A sunrise in her mouth.

A second piece of orange quickly followed the first, and then a third. Floyd leant back in the chair, propping one foot up on the cross stretcher, and, with a fond half-smile, watched her eating with a dreamy look on her face, humming in delight, catching drops of juice at the side of her mouth with the tip of her tongue.

Louise gently tore apart her last two pieces. “Oh! There is another piece—it was hiding.” She held it out to him, waving it teasingly. “Yours if you want it.”

Before he could stop himself, Floyd caught her wrist in one hand and took the piece of orange in his mouth. Juice ran down her fingers and over her palm; he flicked his tongue across her hand, tasting sugary citrus and the slight saltiness of her skin. Her lips were parted, half in surprise, half in laughter, and the colour was high in her cheeks, but he kept hold of her hand, lapping at a stray droplet sliding over the fine bones of her wrist, sucking the last of the juice from each finger in turn. He closed his mouth over her thumb and circled it with his tongue, licking it clean, and, slowly, gently, dragged his teeth upwards.

With the pad of her thumb still against his bottom lip, he hesitated, and met her eye. They were very still for a moment, their expressions serious; a sharp gust of wind made the light flicker. Then she leant forward and kissed him, a brief, chaste kiss, little more than the brush of lips and their noses pressing together.

She drew back, and let her hand fall to her lap, and offered him a small, soft smile. “Thank you,” she said, and knew that he understood.

.

Hours later, Louise lay in bed, the scent of the orange lingering on her hands and its taste still on her tongue. The noise of the blizzard outside entered her dreams. An orange grove, the sun warm on her shoulders and the breeze rippling her skirt. At the foot of the cliffs was the ocean, jewel-blue, the waves crashing along the shoreline and rushing up over the sand. The air was tangy with salt and ripening fruit and alive with promise, and there was time.

#[Shows up to this ''writing sideblog'' with actual writing two years late] #Anyway I missed these two and I missed writing them! #And I'm proud that I filled a prompt admittedly VERY late but with minimal agonising over every word and detail #I am learning that not everything has to be perfect #Okay anyway #Fic: Light Amongst The Ruins #OC: Louise Johnson #C: Floyd Talbert #Writing stuff #My writing #(Need a better writing tag; suggestions welcome)

[brothersonahotelbed]

OOOHH nico i want to look through your collection so badly!!!!! its so cool that you have your dads pink floyd the wall are there any other favorites in your collection !! or just list them all if you feel like it bc i will happily listen

aaaa hi, luna!!! i really can't pick a favorite because there are so many that i love so forgive me but i'm just gonna list them all here </3

folie a deux - fob

guardians of the galaxy deluxe edition (my very first vinyl, my sister bought it for me i dont really listen to it i just keep it for sentimental reasons)

plans - death cab for cutie

trench - twenty one pilots

nectar - joji

barriers - frank iero & the future violents

pure heroine - lorde

take this to your grave - fob

the black parade - mcr

danger days - mcr

razzmatazz - i dont know how but they found me

hesitant alien - gerard way

bullets - mcr

greatest hits - queen

revenge - mcr

lemon boy - cavetown

scaled and icy - twenty one pilots

crybaby - melanie martinez

the wall - pink floyd

glory sound prep - jon bellion

sleepyhead - cavetown

from under the cork tree - fob

parachutes - frank iero

blurryface - twenty one pilots

ballads 1 - joji

voicenotes - charlie puth

stomachaches - frank iero

american beauty/american psycho - fob

greatest hits - the monkees

vessel - twenty one pilots

melodrama - lorde

evolve - imagine dragons

16/04/16 - cavetown

my music taste has changed DRASTICALLY since 2019-2020 (when i started collecting vinyls) so there are a few artists i don't listen to anymore like cavetown, charlie puth, imagine dragons, etc. even though i still have their albums. but yeah, this is my collection!!! i still have to go through all my dad's old vinyls to see if he'll let me keep any . ANYWAY THIS WAS REALLY LONG THANKS FOR DROPPING BY LUNA <33333333333

#prettyhatemachinegf

[crying-fantasies]

He compartido 81 publicaciones este 2022

¡Son 62 más que en 2021!

52 publicaciones originales (64 %)

29 reblogueos (36 %)

Estos son los blogs que más he reblogueado:

@sympateawithsugar

@hijackser

@kanatahiba

@alien-bottle

@a-z-u-l-g

He etiquetado 51 publicaciones en 2022

Solo el 37 % de mis publicaciones no incluye ninguna etiqueta

#reader insert: 47 publicaciones

#x reader: 44 publicaciones

#angst: 37 publicaciones

#joestar family: 30 publicaciones

#spotify: 26 publicaciones

#jojo x reader: 23 publicaciones

#jotaro kujo: 16 publicaciones

#jonathan joestar: 11 publicaciones

#jjba pt 1: 10 publicaciones

#josuke x reader: 10 publicaciones

Longest Tag: 38 characters

#crying screaming sliding down the wall

Mis publicaciones más populares este 2022:

5

You and Me, in a Different Way (pt. 5-6)

Synopsis: Stands are the reflection of your soul, they show want you try to hide or feel, how do their Stands react to you or your own Stand? How would they react to your child, the combination of your bodies and souls?

Warnings: implied childbirth, parenthood and some problems that come with it, self doubt, very old music, some fluff.

Giorno Giovanna

Giorno: Golden Experience Requiem

You: Pink Floyd

Result: Space Oddity

- Let's be honest, there was a bet going on with the gang, most putting their money in that Giorno would never get a 'yes' out of you, only Bruno and Fugo had some faith in him, and they ended up winning.

- Because, let's be honest again, Giorno first advance wasn't the best, a good reason to have more than a half of the gang putting their money against him.

"So, I just stole this wallet, want to get some ice cream?"

"Do you wanna die, Giovanna? Return that thing in this instant"

- You had a hero kind of mind, he wasn't complaining but it was quite ironic by the fact that you would beat someone to a pulp if they did you any wrong.

- Like, he really wasn't complaining, especially when he got to see you defending yourself, it was appealing.

- So he changed his approaches, trying to help you, if you permitted, or trying to be more subtle about it.

"I can see that Pinky right arm is way more faster now" he couldn't give you compliments directly, so now he used to give them to your stand, it doesn't matter that your stand is one of the most monstrous out there, he even called it Pinky like a cute nickname.

"Oh, yeah, thanks for noticing" and of course you would blush a little, it would make him smile.

- Following what gave good results he just landed his first date with you.

- It was obvious that he couldn't just parade around just in his usual outfit, not because people feared him, but because he would be recognized and all the people would approach to give him gifts and practically push you out of the way, so he would use GER to change his appearance.

"I'm here"

"Oh, hi Gio- wow, quite the change"

"Don't worry, this is just how I looked before having Golden Experience"

- You would never tell him that you liked his incognito mode a little bit more than his usual self, black really suited him.

- There were many occasions, especially when you first started your relationship, when GER would appear to see you, since it got to be a stand Requiem it gained way more freedom, to the point where Giorno couldn't control it all the time because now it had free will and was totally sentient.

- At first it was normal, he would appear to see you and in rare occasions smile at you.

- Then when you and Giorno got... more intimate with time, he got the habit of sleeping next to you while holding you wrist, other couples would hold hands but Giorno always took your wrist, you figured that this habit was a result of his constant need to assure himself that you were still alive and kicking.

- The thing with GER also got more weird but he did something similar to Giorno, and given that it was sentient it was now normal to have it touching your neck to feel your pulse, you just let it be.

- But then it got way more weird.

"Giorno"

"..."

"Giorno Giovanna"

Descúbrela

40 notas. Fecha de publicación: 19 de noviembre de 2022

4

What Am I To You?

Different kinds of love: JJBA edition.

Synopsis: How they saw you, did they love you? Did they only liked you as a friend? Did they at least noticed?

Warnings: Heart breakdown, Unrequited feelings, character´s death, spoilers

Jolyne Kujo

Wounds heal but scars prevail

- You weren't blind, not yet, every time that you got to California by matters related to the SWF you tried to at least say hi to Jotaro and his little family, that atmosphere was tense and sometimes you thought that was going to affect your son, Rei.

- But no, Rei lived for the days that he could trip with you to California and see his beloved "big sis Jolyne" like he would always call her.

- You called her "Baby JoJo" because the family tradition of everyone getting the same nickname ended with you saying it and having Josuke and Jotaro turn their heads to you, Jolyne was a little kid then, so "Baby JoJo" remained.

- Jolyne was older but she was patient with your gremlin of a son, maybe she inherited that patience from her mother's side, hardly from Jotaro.

- And talking about Jotaro...

"Have you seen him recently?" Jotaro's wife was beautiful, you give her that, but her eyes were swollen, eyes red, a sad expression on her face.

"I haven't seen him since the last month" if she had any tears left in her, she could have spilled them by now.

- You were so gonna punch him in the face.

- The two of you only remain in silence, hearing how Jolyne was telling Rei a story, her japanese was better than the last time.

- She was a kind girl, and you believed that deep down she kept that kindness somewhere.

- Being a police officer helped to know the news, first there were charges, minimal, and most of the time proved that the girl was wrongly accused, you tried to be as unnoticed as possible because you were investigated after being contacted by a person of interest for the PD in Italy.

- Just when you were investigated Jolyne was sent to prison, Jotaro was again in radio silence and Rei ran away from home in the middle of the night, leaving a letter that said "Jotaro-san contacted me, Jolyne-nee needs me"

- You appeared in the prison, with proof that Jolyne was inocent, with your Stand ready to punch Jotaro in the face and to drag Rei back home.

- The moment that you got there it was a mess, Jotaro was half death, Jolyne didn't want the proof because her father's soul was somewhere inside the prison, Rei dressed himself as a girl and got inside with Jolyne before you could stop him.

- It was such a mess.

- And now you were in charge of seeing Jotaro, your jerk ex back in your teenage years, he was almost death, Jolyne and your son were in danger and you didn't give a shit about your work anymore, Josuke would take care of Morioh in your place, he was ready, you believed in him.

"What are you doing here?!" Jolyne didn't know why you would put so much in line for her and her father, in her mind you were some kind of intrusive figure, every time that you could go to her house her mother would cry and ask you for her father but you wouldn't answer, her mother could only contact her father by you.

- Jolyne also kind of disliked Rei, because Rei had black hair and aquamarine eyes, just like her father´s, this only fueled her own conviction, not knowing a thing about Rohan, the father of Rei and Julius, your younger son, who also had green eyes and dark hair.

- Jolyne thought that you and Rei were her father's other family.

- But if that was true why were you there.

"Run away from here!" You thrown Jolyne and Rei out of the way with your Stand, Pucci was coming, fast, and all of you couldn't stand a chance against him.

"Wait, I'm not going to leave you here!" Jolyne screamed, using her Stand to drag you to their side, one that you were totally sure she didn't have before, you were so gonna ask Jotaro about this.

- You got severally injured but Jolyne saved your life.

- Rei activated his stand and got the three of you out, all your group could get to your final point.

Descúbrela

49 notas. Fecha de publicación: 11 de septiembre de 2022

3

Where Is Your Soul?

Synopsis: Everyone can live, everyone can have a future, a brighter one, if you give up your own.

Warnings: Character's death, suicide thought, self-sacrifice, angst, dismembered body, blood, mention of sexual assault, if you don't like this don't read, it's just me searching for some pain.

Jonathan Joestar

- When he declined your offer to keep searching for Dio's possible corpse he didn't believe that it would end like this, he wanted to spent time with Erina after so long, he could have told you, he really should have done it.

"Maybe later" He was trying to get to see her soon, so he left you there, in the street near your home, you only needed to turn around the corner and get safely to your house, "go straight home, it's dangerous at night"

In another reality you did as Jonathan told you

But now you decided to go along your own idea and turned around, entering the dark streets

- He never thought that you would go alone.

- When he heard of the shooting he didn't connect the dots right away, he thought that you would be still sleeping, your hair a mess and refusing to wake up earlier.

- Then, out of nowhere his father was calling for him, he was going downstairs when he noticed his master, Mister Zeppeli, with a gloomy expression that his father was starting to show too.

- His master appeared with something on his hands, when Jonathan saw it he didn't believed.

- He wished that it was a joke of yours, a weird one, a terrible one, a sick one.

"The body was found next to ashes and this..."

- He was holding your revolver, the one that your father gifted you so many years ago, one that your family didn't want back because of such a thing, such a tragedy, happening.

- It had blood over it, and anyone would know that it was yours.

- Jonathan didn't believed such a thing.

- George tried to stop his son but Jonathan was stronger, he was faster, he got to the place of the events in such a short amount of time.

Why wasn't I fast enough when you need him?

- When he arrived he found Speedwagon there, looking perplexed at the officers and a body in the floor, the blanket over it to spare the gruesome scene from the public didn't cover all the blood that was painting the floor or the walls.

"They really did it" he was trembling, crying, in his hand was your coat, the one that you used to carry all your guns around, it was empty, every gun and bullet on the floor, with blood, "They are both death, Dio is death and..."

- Speedwagon got wind of what was happening, but it was already late, when he got there he found you dragging your body on the floor, so much blood on your way, some kind of bloody pulp on your hands that then he realized was the remains of Dio.

- You left them fall in the sunrise light of the new day, smiling at him while it was turned to ashes that got carried away by the wind.

"Hey, Rob, I did it..." Your body on the floor, your hand full of ashes like some other parts of your body before you finally collapsed, he wanted to call for help but the police areived and at first they put the blame of such a crime on him.

- They just concluded that you committed suicide.

- Even if Jonathan asked Robert would never tell him that you used yourself to trap Dio in your embrace and started shooting, the bullets got to him but also your body, it weakened him and you could wait till the sunrise to finally kill him with the sun, the horrible escene would be forever on his mind.

- People would talk about you, about how your soul would haunt forever that street, how even in the future people would find the many bullets that you used in the walls near.

- Jonathan just thought, with tears on his eyes and your revolver in his hands, how reckless you were, just like always, even when he believed that Dio was already death you thought otherwise, not believing that everything ended, and you were right, even so, why didn't you ask him for help when you found Dio, why did you just go there all alone and without calling him for help, but what if you did, what if Dio caught you and you could only fight trying to survive? If you called for help but he was so far away to even know that you needed him there?

- Why did you choose to go there? All alone, almost ready to die for something that was supposed to be his responsibility.

- When his son is born, Jonathan would be overprotective, almost forbidding him to be near the place where the "Crazy ghost" would be roaming, that damned street where his nightmares would take place from time to time, punishing George when he, after a dare, put a foot in that place.

Descúbrela

81 notas. Fecha de publicación: 25 de septiembre de 2022

2

You and Me, in a Different Way (pt. 3-4)

Synopsis: Stands are the reflection of your soul, they show want you try to hide or feel, how do their Stands react to you or your own Stand? How would they react to your child, the combination of your bodies and souls?

Warnings: implied childbirth, parenthood and some problems that come with it, self doubt, very old music, some fluff after the angst.

Jotaro Kujo

Jotaro: Star Platinum

You: All my Love

Result: Bring me The Horizon

- Star Platinum was a strong stand, no one could deny it, it didn't even care that it only could move in a short range, one of it's fists was enough to finish a battle and the ability to stop time didn't have a rival.

- You were quite sure that it was sentient, and there were moments when Star noticed you, affirming your suspicion.

"Oh my" he would appear out of nowhere when you entered Jotaro's studio, he was totally immersed in the papers in his hands, not noticing that his stand was getting near to you with curiosity, "hi there, Star" you would put your hand on their cheek, the stand closing it's eyes at the contact.

"What is it?" Now Jotaro was looking at you both, Star disappeared at that moment, "do you need help?" you wouldn't tell him, he would feel embarrassed of having so little control over himself (it was his own fault after not training his stand for years), so you changed the topic showing the reason why you got there to begin with.

"No, I just found your pen"

- Star Platinum was sentient, that is what you believed, and you also had the heavy theory that it was because Jotaro bottle up many things inside of him, so his stand showed what he couldn't, but it also showed everything that was related to his abilities multiplied tenfold, like the crazy strength or the excellent eyesight.

- That one time with the crazy shit of Alessi you noticed that Star could smile, in an... interesting way to say the least, showing all his teeth and an intense gaze.

- From time to time Star would change his usual estoic face, if Jotaro was enjoying something he would smile, if he was in the verge of laughter or extreme satisfaction, which was pretty rare, Star would show a big, and a little scary, smile.

"I mean, he does looks like you when you guys lost your shit back with the sun stand" you would never let him forget that, and he would never forget how embarrassed he felt when he noticed your horrified expression when he finally could compose himself.

"Give me a break, you also found it funny" he tried to cover his face with his hat, but you took his face in your hands, you could see his eyes looking at another place and his cheeks a little red.

"Nope, I was horrified, totally traumatized that you three just started laughing like crazy when we all almost died" and now you laughed at his angry expression.

- In your now normalized life you almost never called your stand, with Jotaro was the same, but there would be moments that Star appeared out of nowhere, a result of Jotaro not even using Star and leading to his poor performance with his stand.

"pepper, where is the pepper?" Jotaro was just doing dinner, he just felt at ease, and then he felt like he was touching something, but he didn't have anything in his hands, and then the feeling of being surrounded by something almost made him lost his grip on the frying pan, he called for his stand, who was being hugged by you at that moment.

"I couldn't resist it, you get angry if I disturb you and he was just here" you were saying that but didn't let go of the stand.

- Jotaro knew that you didn't use All Love often, mainly because it's eyes were too sensible to the light, it was pain to have such a ability in the middle of the dessert with all the sun, but it helped in the night.

- So he wasn't exactly sure of how to proceed when he found his stand next to yours, he heard that you were mumbling in your sleep, he was still up doing a paper, and now he noticed that your stand was out.

- All Love was big, sharp and twisted fangs, claws, totally black with little luminescent blue sprayed in it's body, big blue eyes that reflected the light, anyone that crossed paths with it could be scared of such a monster, but he didn't even bat an eye.

- Well, in reality it did scare him when he got to share rooms with you for the first time, but you didn't need to know that.

"Is it a nightmare again?" Your stand didn't said anything, just blinking and looking at him, you moved again, sweat on your forehead, "it's okay, I will take care of it from here" he then took place next to you, and your stand understood, disappearing shortly after.

- Jotaro never told you that when you were back in the dessert how good and also how bad your stand was, since the fact that you would scream when the sun got to it's eyes or the fact that All Love could inflict wounds and pain to any enemy near to you, but it also needed that those same injuries were inflicted in you first, and if you fainted due to the pain then your stand would fight for at least 5 minutes before disappearing, if that happened then the wounds would remain in you.

- And, yeah, that's how you ended up scarred.

- Jotaro lost count of how many times he found you in near death experiences, even ending with him accepting the wounds on you in order to safe your life.

"What were you thinking?!" You were bleeding, bad, your eye was almost out of it's place.

Descúbrela

90 notas. Fecha de publicación: 7 de noviembre de 2022

Mi publicación más popular de 2022

What Am I To You?

Different kinds of love: JJBA edition.

Synopsis: How they saw you, did they love you? Did they only liked you as a friend? Did they at least noticed?

Warnings: Heart breakdown, Unrequited feelings, character´s death, spoilers

Jonathan Joestar

The one that held you dearly and loved but not in a romantic way

- Both born from noble families with business involved, both born with a golden spoon on the mouth.

- Jonathan was always the kind and golden star child that everyone knew that was going to have only happiness in his life, you were the crashed little girl with a pompous dress bigger than your body that maybe was going to be a beauty because you were little and for your lineage.

-Then you weren't as beautiful as other expected and Jonathan was what everyone expected.

- He was there for you when the other kids were cruel, he was there for you when your mother didn't show the same care and attention that she showed your sisters, all great beauties, or your father with your brother.

- He was there for you, low and below, in those tender and hard years of childhood.

- Jonathan was bounded to someone, you learned that from a book, for every prince there was a princess, he had a princess somewhere.

- So, with your 6 year old self, you wished him good luck with his love while your love and heart were buried underground by your own tiny hands to spare you a bigger pain in the future, just like the books said: princess were beautiful, gentle and sweet, you were nothing like that description.

- It did help when a certain blond girl appeared, Jonathan was in cloud nine after been with her only for a day, meanwhile you only cleaned the new revolver that you father gifted you the other day.

- And then there were some... strange events that you didn't even have the energy to try to give a proper reason, but in the bat of the eye Jonathan was already married and boarding a cruise to his honeymoon with his loved wife.

"I'm worried about you" he was always so concerned for you, from the moment you got your first gun to the moment you survived all the strange events.

"You are only gone for a few weeks, I will survive" you never told him that you have been recently seen a man, the son of a business partner of your father on Norway, he was decent, he was kind and funny to be with, sometimes kind of strange when he was talking to a wall with that curious red book on his hands.

- You wanted to invite him to your wedding, be the best man of your groom if possible, because he wasn't a social person but you knew that they would get along.

- You were the first one to be there to welcome Erina when she finally arrived to the port, a baby in her arms and another on her womb.

- You promised to Jonathan's empty coffin that you and your husband would help her to overcome all.

Joseph Joestar

The one that was too late to notice

- You didn't have much options to be honest, Joseph was always on the top of the world and he used it to his benefit in some occasions.

- You were born the same year in the same household, both of your grannies best friends, the Joestar household was warm, something interesting to do at any time because 1) Joseph always had this strange never ending energy inside of him and he always put the both of you on trouble, 2) you always had the red magical book of your grandfather, sometimes he would lend it to you or it would appear on your hands from thin air when you wanted it, 3) your big imaginary friend was always there for you doing metal trinkets.

"You are seriously a weird one" Joseph was such a pest sometimes, specially when he caught you with some strange little metallic thing on hands and saying thank you to the nothing.

"Says the guy who uses some kind of weird magic to open a soda"

"Ripple, it's called ripple!" How strange that such a name was on your grandfather's book, with something related to the sun and other things that you didn't understand.

- One thing lead to other, before you noticed you and Joseph were in Italy and you saw the handsomest man that you have ever seen.

"He is hot" it was a mere whisper, but Joseph heard it, he thought that you were talking about him and his new outfit, he did a weird pose in order to still had your attention, but he noticed that your eyes weren't on him.

You were seeing that Italian bubble guy bastard jerk of Caesar.

Descúbrela

130 notas. Fecha de publicación: 9 de septiembre de 2022

Descubre tu resumen del 2022 en Tumblr →

#tumblr2022 #resumen del año #mi resumen del 2022 en tumblr #tu resumen del año en tumblr #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Spotify

[highendphasers]

For the music ask gsme

All of them

You heard me.

you asked and you shall receive motherfucker

questions under the cut

can't stop listening to hesitant alien. i'm on the 10th most listened on lastfm for gerard way.

either the glow pt. 2 by the microphones or bullets i think. the first time i listened to the glow pt. 2 it had been just nearing sunset and by the time i finished the last track it was dark out and it immediately became one of my favorite albums ever

had to look thru my spotify liked for this one but i miss that feeling by tennis is super good i just haven't really listened to anything else by them

FUCK uuhmm. from age of adz by sufjan stevens, i walked, bad communication, and now that i'm older tend to be my least favorites but that doesn't mean they're not very good

hesitant alien by gerard way

are you kidding me. from hesitant alien i don't even KNOW. i guess if i absolutely had to i would take off juarez, no shows, and get the gang together this is horrible im so sorry gerard...

MY CHEMICAL FUCKING ROMANCE

sufjan stevens, ultimate dream

either nick drake or david bowie

i think it had been the trans-siberian orchestra? but the first concert i remember going to had actually been somewhat recent, twenty one pilots

drowning lessons is the one they actually don't perform live but. demolition lovers. fuck.

god this one's hard. for the sake of being able to see tbpid i would say the black parade, buttt i think genuinely it would probably be either revenge or michigan by sufjan stevens (can you tell who my two favorite artists are yet)

definitely gerard way. i would tell them how much their own exploration of their identity in hesitant alien formed my own identity and my relationship with gender and how it feels as an autistic person to be so attached to what they've created. and i would also ask them for a hug

mmmmmmnot really? not counting people like. brendon urie or morrissey, i dont have a particular hate for any band or musician

nobody comes anywhere thats within an hours distance from me so yea

i've been right behind barrier during car seat headrest

frerard fight prorev date unironically i need to be a witness and have a camera

i think that assigning a decade towards the best music is counterproductive and i think great music is being made every single day and all decades arguably had good and bad music (i think it started getting Better in the sixties though imo..)

girard..

cant answer this one

fire escape by foster the people

here comes the sun by the beatles

if i cleaned everything by teen suicide

bloodhail by have a nice life

love my way by the psychedelic furs

fantastic bastards by death spells

inside out by duster

futile devices by sufjan stevens, pictures of you by the cure, motion picture soundtrack by radiohead, pure morning by placebo, summertime by my chemical romance, the owl and the tanager by sufjan stevens, love in the time of socialism by yellow house, 19th nervous breakdown by the rolling stones, lola by the kinks

nancy boy by placebo. can't stand the way brian says lube

in the aeroplane over the sea by neutral milk hotel

hmmmm. wish you were here by pink floyd

crush 40 :(

literally all i wear are band t shirts. i like it sometimes! usually only if its a visible mcr fan though otherwise i get awkward

(mcr) winter - cancer, spring - i'm not okay, summer - s/c/a/r/e/c/r/o/w, fall - early sunsets over monroeville

MCR AND SUFJAN STEVENS. PLEASE GERARD WAY COVER THE OWL AND THE TANAGER

#near answers #god this was long

[ashleyfableblack]

Bit of a larf between my favorite inter-species couple in Equestria and an excerpt from one of my short stories: "Your Friends".

"Your friends still don't like me." the Changeling monarch snipped.

"Whaghmf?" Twilight struggled to respond, wrestling the spoonful of Butterbrickle ice cream from her stuffed cheeks. "Whapparyoo tawgin' abou- ?" She swallowed down the deliciousness in a rushed sputter. "WHAT are you talking about? They all LOVE you."

"They do NOT." Chrysalis replied in a curt, matter-of-fact tone. Twilight knew her wife well enough to read her expressions. Her lips were pursed JUST enough and her brows raised in such incredulity that she knew her beloved bughorse was upset but not enough to be genuinely offended.

Twilight's cheeks puffed out indignantly. She was surprised at how quickly she felt her own anger rising at the thought of her friends STILL bearing malice against her spouse. "Who?"

Chrysalis' lip raised in slight regal disdain, exposing a single fang. She continued gently kneading away at Twilight's shoulders as she replied. "The gay ones."

Twilight's expression warped from slightly injured to a bemused giggle. The outburst forced her to steady the tub of ice cream with her magic. "You're NOT narrowing it down, you know."

Chrysalis rolled her serpentine eyes with a snicker. Her emerald gaze wandered around the room, eyes narrowed in slight annoyance. She rifled through the names she'd attached to the multitude of pastel twits Twilight had introduced her to. "Ffff... you know... The lesbians."

Twilight's pink-cheeked smile erupted into a full-blown laugh. "Still not narrowing it down, honeybug."

Chrysalis grumbled. "Oh..." She rolled a pitted hoof around in a circle as her memory scoured for the names to match the faces. Odd how such colorful little creatures as her wife's 'friends' all started to look alike after a while. She sighed in growing exasperation. "The big smelly one in the hat and the angry little pride parade."

Twilight's forehead bunched into a series of awkward creases. "Big, smelly... Applejack and Rainbow Dash?"

"Those are the ones, yes."

Twilight turned back to her ice cream, poking at it in consideration with a harumpf, fighting a confused smile. "I like the way she smells... Anyways, they BOTH like you just fine."

The changeling monarch kneaded at the muscles of her wife's shoulders, weighing her words as she wrestled the knots of stress from the lavender flesh. "I make them... uncomfortable."

Twilight mulled over this point. Chrysalis did make most other ponies 'uncomfortable' to put it lightly. She made most other creatures, period, uncomfortable, no matter how polite or friendly she attempted to be. As alien as her appearance was, coupled with the history of distrust of her species, the misguided myths and fear, the racial prejudice against her people was a hurdle they were still working to over come. The idea of 'no friendship will matter until bug friendships matter' was still a difficult sell to some creatures.

Still, she couldn't help but chuckle again. "pfft... angry little pride parade..." The way her wife related to others was a fascinating thing to Twilight.

"Wait" She turned about, eyes widening and pointing an accusatory spoon at her wife's obsidian snoot. "You LIKE making Applejack uncomfortable!"

Chrysalis tittered. "Hmmmn... I do, I really do." Her stilletto fangs crept over her lower lip like ivory sabres as she gave a wickedly mischievous grin of pride.

#my art #mlpg4 #twisalis #queen chrysalis #twilight sparkle #lgbtq #lesbian #love #funny story #love story