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kiribakuhappiness · 3 years

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Do you have any Baku/OC or Baku/Reader recs?? I just binges yours and they were so freaking wonderful, I can't even begin to describe it

OMG that is literally so nice of you! I'm so so happy that you enjoyed them <3 Hikaru has such a special place in my heart, I love that spicy little smartass!

Here are some that I have bookmarked on my second account. I haven't read some of them fully yet so I can't guarantee what they're like, but they looked interesting to me so maybe you'll like them too!

1. what heroes do by sugiwa - Bakugou Katsuki/Original Female Character Shouto didn't know much about his twin sister. She was an Edgeshot fan, had a raging collection of manga, and liked Natsuo the best. She also wasn't supposed to be at U.A. High School, but he sure as hell wasn't telling their father about it. // I haven't read this one yet but I've heard some good things floating around about it! Apparently it's very much a slow burn (which I love) so I'm excited to start it!

2. Explosive Hatred, Burning Love by pandariia - Bakugou Katsuki/Original Female Character, some Kaminari Denki/Original Female Character Aoi Homura is the prettiest girl in the world. At least, that's what she's always been told. Everyone loves her or wants to be her. Still, her life isn't perfect. Her mother ignores her, and she suffers from an extensive inferiority complex. When she gets accepted into UA, she focuses all her energy on becoming friends with the most powerful, and most attractive people in her class in an attempt to make it to the top. Even though her classmates (mostly the boys) find her charming, someone in particular doesn't seem to be affected by her charm or looks. She then makes it her mission to make that blonde asshole see what he is missing, but, in the process, she becomes acutely aware of her own shortcomings. // I thought this description sounded so fun and fresh!! Everyone is so afraid to write characters who think they're the shit. Literally the first line, "Aoi Homura is the prettiest girl in the world." Dude, I am so intrigued and instantly hooked right off the bat! Like yesss, give me some self-conceited leads, it makes such great content! I've only read a bit of this one so far but I'm very excited to see where it goes! PLEASE MIND THE WARNING TAGS ON THIS STORY!! RAPE/NON-CON IS MENTIONED! I haven't reached that point yet but I feel like it's very important to make you aware of it!

3. love me, love me not by tsuhika - Bakugou Katsuki/Reader as a pro-hero in training, bakugo thought he was prepared for any situation. what he wasn't prepared for were the gifts he got from you in the form of flowers, and the feelings that came with them. // Again, I haven't read this one in its entirety yet but I thought the premise was interesting enough, and I think it's the most liked fic in that category (so you may have already seen it, if so I apologize for recommending it again!)

4. Of Snowscapes & Explosions by sugarbun - Bakugou Katsuki/Reader, Bakugou Katsuki/Original Female Character, Todoroki Shouto/Reader, Todoroki Shouto/Original Female Character The universe is against you, truly. It has been ever since you were seven years old and found out that Shoto Todoroki has a better quirk than you. Now you can't seem to escape him, even on your way to a new high school. Not that he's a bad guy—he's actually really nice, which makes it a lot harder to admit you've been brooding about your differences for years now. It may have been the root cause of most of your personal issues. Maybe no one will understand what it's like to be compared to perfection. Maybe no one will see your potential, even with that chip on your shoulder. Everyone says you're not allowed to dislike Shoto Todoroki. But everybody said that Katsuki Bakugou wasn't allowed to be angry at a quirkless nerd who doesn't deserve the spotlight, too. Everyone said he's not allowed to dislike the kind and amazing Izuku Midoriya. Where does that leave the two of you? // THIS STORY!!! The writing is really, really fun (the description alone totally pulled me in - I LOVE the idea of "everyone says you're not allowed to dislike Shoto Todoroki. But everybody said that Katsuki Bakugo wasn't allowed to be angry at a quirkless nerd." Like yesss, give me all the PARALLELS! We love to see it!) I'm also such a sucker for the title, I think it's interesting, catchy, all of the above!

5. AMOUR IMPROMPTU by mrsackxrman - Bakugou Katsuki/Original Female Character When Mélanie Arnaud — a linguistics student and languages enthusiast — was given a once in a lifetime opportunity to work as the consecutive interpreter of a certain Katsuki Bakugo during his one month stay in the City of Love, she had no clue that the bad-tempered, egocentric, and incredibly attractive hero/model from Japan would turn her life upside down. // Love the idea of a linguistics student. I haven't actually gotten around to this one yet but I've been eyeing it in my bookmarks for WEEKS now, just waiting for the right day to relax and sit back with it.

6. unrequited by txmaki - Bakugou Katsuki/Reader You’re in love with him. Butterflies and red cheeks kind of love, staying up all night because you can’t stop thinking about how good he looked at the sports festival kind of love, daydreaming that maybe he just might feel the same kind of love. You’re in love with him, and Katsuki doesn’t notice a thing. // PLEASE THIS STORY!!! Literally saved my favorite for last - the amount of times I have read this is insane. The angst is so well done, I think the author did a marvelous job of portraying unrequited love. I think they added a second chapter where it turns out that it actually ISN'T unrequited love, but to be quite honest, I enjoyed the story a lot more as an angsty one-shot. Highly recommend!

Now that I've given my recommendations I'm going to put up my own stories because I am a selfish, greedy little writer and I would love to be able to recommend them to others who might be looking for Bakugou Katsuki/Original Character and Bakugou Katsuki/Reader content!

MY WORK:

1. A Longing by Any Other Name Would Feel Just as Shitty by HotShotHappiness - Kirishima Eijirou/Reader, Bakugou Katsuki & Reader 'Eiji won me the biggest teddy they had!' the caption reads, and Katsuki's eyes are quick to take in the details before the image has the chance to disappear on him. Of course Kirishima would give you such an overwhelming monstrosity of a gift, and of course you would melt like damn putty in his dumb hands for it. Showing off like you always seem to do, flaunting how well Kirishima treats you, playing the role of the prideful partner so in love with their budding high school romance that you wouldn't even think twice about sending a picture like this to your boyfriend's best friend. Katsuki's vermillion gaze drank it all in like a stranded man dying of thirst. // This one was a request that I got on my old account back when it was live on Tumblr. It said something like, "Reader is dating Kirishima and Bakugou is pining for them" and they wanted it to involve Snapchat in some way. I had a lot of fun with this one! It's on the shorter side but I feel like it really delivers on that gut-punching unrequited love vibe, yaknow?

2. Where Fools Roam Rabid and Free by HotShotHappiness - Bakugou Katsuki/Original Female Character He met her like he met everything else in his life. With incredible brute force. - “Wait, wait, wait,” Kaminari waved his hands around in a sporadic manner. “Are you telling me that you have been ordered, by the country of Japan, to arrest your hero-turned-criminal girlfriend?"

Katsuki clenched his jaw and refused to answer that with anything more than a raised middle finger. Which did nothing except make that idiot laugh, as if there was anything funny about it at all.

“Dude! That is so messed up! What are you going to do when you see her next? I mean, how are you going to explain that one to her?” Kaminari pestered like this was some poor replacement entertainment for his fucking movie.

“You already saw her, didn’t you?” Kirishima asked in the silence that followed Kaminari’s outburst. “And you… let her get away?”

Katsuki sneered and sat up fast enough to give himself a head rush. “I fucking had to!" // I've edited and re-edited and re-edited this fic over and over, and every time I go through it again, I fall more and more in love with it. Childhood Friends to Teen Romance to Star-Crossed to Lovers, and just about everything else in between!

3. A Tale as Old as Dirt by HotShotHappiness - Bakugou Katsuki/Original Female Character Once upon a time, in the hidden heart of Japan, a group of young warriors trained and lived together in a beautiful estate… - An arrogant young soldier (Bakugou Katsuki) and his peers-in-training fall under the spell of a wicked enchantress, who turns him into a dangerous Beast until he learns to love and be loved in return. The spirited, headstrong village girl (Watanabe Hikaru) enters the Beast's estate after she runs away from an unwanted marriage proposal in order to seek out adventure. With the help of his ghostly servants, Hikaru begins to draw the cold-hearted Beast out of his deep-seated isolation. // A Beauty and the Beast AU! I never really watched Disney growing up but I watched the live-action Beauty and the Beast and I really enjoyed it! So I was listening to the soundtrack and totally saw this story flash before my eyes and I knew I had to write it! I've been having a lot of fun with it.

I hope you can find something fun to read from this list! Thanks so much for reaching out <3

#bakugou katsuki #fic recs #bakugou x reader #bakugou x oc #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki x original character #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfics #mha fanfics #bnha #my hero academia #kirishima eijirou #todoroki shouto #kaminari denki

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violettelueur · 3 years

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— ITADORI YUJI + INUMAKI TOGE + NANAMI KENTO || THEM AS OLDER BROTHERS

↳ featuring : itadori yuji + inumaki toge + nanami kento from jujutsu kaisen

↳ warnings : spoilers for non-manga readers (volume 0) + swearing + grammar issues

↳ form : headcanons

↳ published : 10 may

↳ pronouns : she/her

↳ request : Hi ! Can I please get them as big brother headcanon with itadori, inumaki, nanami with a little sister! If you don't do family fluff please ignore this and have a nice day

↳ barista’s notes : let me admit, i haven’t been feeling the best mentally - probably because of the random exams that have been thrown at me from my school after doing 6 of them around 3-4 weeks ago - so i’m going to close my request box for the time being and maybe take some time to rest (even though...i haven’t been writing for a while until yesterday ʕ ㅇ ᴥ ㅇʔ) but moving on from that, i hope you enjoy your cup of classic black coffee and please return when you can ╲ʕ·ᴥ·　╲ʔ

Itadori being your older brother is basically having an instant best friend in your life because Itadori is the type of brother that is reckless, hilarious, and encouraging.

Itadori will encourage you in anything that you choose to do - except for stuff that is bad, so don’t take advantage of that - but he is a supportive person in your life.

For example, if you want to get into a sport, Itadori is the best person to encourage you due to his superhuman abilities - lowkey, you both will argue that he is cheating.

Since Itadori knows how to cook, he knows how to make your favourite meal and you both will have cooking nights together that will turn into food fights leading Grandpa to yell at you both for the mess that you made.

When it comes to education, Itadori gets average grades but when it comes to science, you both are studying together all night to do well in that certain exam.

During school, everyone knows you because of Itadori and they will ask you about why he doesn’t take any sports club...just say “I have no idea”

After school, you and Itadori will go to the nearest fast-food restaurant at the end of the week and just munch on some food - both of you will steal each other's chips/fries even though you both ordered them, it’s just more tasty for some reason.

When he tells you about the whole Sukuna and curse incident and that he has to be executed by the end of eating all of 20 fingers, you would just take it as a joke at first before realising that he isn’t - it would just be a silent stare at you both after you deep it and tears will appear...that just won’t fall.

Itadori is also the brother that knows how to cheer you up and instantly make you smile, and when he is the one that makes you upset, he knows how to make you smile again - aka giving you our favourite food.

Itadori knows that you can protect yourself but after the whole curse incident, he will become more protective than he has ever been, especially with Sukuna because you don’t know what that old man would do.

Fushiguro is the only guy Itadori trusts you with like Todo is out of the question - he does trust Gojo as well since he is the strongest but Fushiguro seems like a better option.

Overall, Itadori as a brother is a brother that we all wished we had because we do need the hint of happiness in our lives and the support that he would instantly give.

Inumaki as an older brother is a weird one to describe because he is both annoying and caring at the same time to the point where you don’t know what to do.

Inumaki is the type of brother that will play pranks on you from time to time and you will run around, chasing him to hit him leading Maki and Panda to laugh.

Other times, Inumaki is the caring brother that everyone wants since he seems like the type to be perspective on your actions/anything you do - if you are thirsty, he will press a really cold water bottle to your cheek...doesn’t matter if it’s winter.

If you are able to talk or not, you and Inumaki will have a secret language together where you will chat shit about other people - but you both will learn sign languages together.

When you and Inumaki talk together, people are just purely confused about what you are both talking about because how do you understand onigiri ingredients.

Inumaki doesn’t trust any guy with you, so when any guy from the Kyoto side comes to talk to you, he will come from behind, grab your upper arms and just guide you away like the person in front didn’t expect - Todo is also out of the question for this headcanon.

When you first meet Okkotsu, Inumaki will guide you away from him in the beginning because Rika is there and Okkotsu will profusely apologise in the beginning for scaring you - when in reality you understand his situation completely.

When Inumaki and Okkotsu get closer as friends, you are also close with him and Inumaki finds it cute to the point where he will tease you and tell you to confess to him even when you don’t have a crush on him.

One thing Inumaki is thankful for is you carrying spare throat medicine for him when his spare on runs out, and if he needs to go buy more, you already have a cabinet for him.

You both as siblings are also competitive, like when it comes to games, if one person wins, the other will instantly ask for a rematch.

Overall, Inumaki as a brother is a funny experience because you both care for each other to the fullest in your own ways but there are times where you would get annoyed at him due to his pranks - Maki will attack him for you, don’t worry.

Nanami has an older brother that is the stern type to the point where he seems distant (not to the point where you question his brotherly love for you) but does worry about your wellbeing over his.

Nanami wants to make your life as comfortable as possible because he doesn’t want you to live in an endless cycle of work as he does - he wants the best for you, see him as a second parent.

Nanami will text you almost every day to make sure you have drunk water and had something to eat and if you haven’t, prepare to get a lecture through voice message/phone call - and he will come to wherever you are with a bag of food.

When he is on the phone with you, Gojo will always try to sneak in a few words only for the device to suddenly fly away from him because Nanami refuses to let him talk to you.

He will also make sure you are at least 5 miles away from Gojo (maybe 10) because he doesn’t want you to get influenced by his senior and personally, he knows that the white-haired man will flirt with you no matter what your relationship is to him.

When it comes to dating, he will tell you this: anyone is fine but they have to be a good person, anyone is fine...anyone but Gojo Satoru.

So when Gojo somehow gets to flirt with you, Nanami is already standing behind him with his wrapped up blade lifted up - and you would just give the widened eye look because what else are you supposed to say?

When he was a salaryman, you would always come to his work to give him food so he didn’t have to pay for himself and he will try to pay you back - but you refuse even when you secretly want to take it (you still do this for him, so you both would buy food for each other)

You both go to cafes quite a bit when he is free to talk to each other about life since it’s hard to catch up to each other - especially if you are both sorcerers - since it’s a really nice heart to heart conversation.

When you were introduced to Itadori, the first-year can’t help but question if you were really Nanami’s younger sister because you were somewhat more out-going than he is but he can see some similarities in personalities from you both.

Overall, Nanami as an older brother is someone that is an act of service type of man when it comes to his brotherly love to you, he does care about you immensely and will try to make your life a little easier than his since all he wants is the best for you in this world.

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blindbeta · 3 years

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Your Content and Accessibility For the Blind

Hello everyone! I was thinking about accessibility and wanted to make a post to help creators. This is going to cover general accessibility for blind people interacting with your content. Some of it may be obvious to some and this is by no means comprehensive, so feel free to add anything you think of that is helpful. Also, I wanted to include some ideas for DeafBlind people, but I am not DeafBlind or D/deaf, so I simply listed some general accessibility ideas. If anyone has any other tips or things to consider, please add them in a comment or message and I’ll include it here.

Remember, blindness exists on a spectrum. This post will focus on making things accessible for totally blind people, although these tips can also be beneficial for people with residual vision who use screen readers to reduce eye strain, for small text, for clarity, etc. D/deafness and DeafBlindness are also on spectrums. Some DeafBlind people have some hearing, some vision, a little of both, or none of either. If someone asks you for better or different accessibility services for your content, listen and try to accommodate them as best you can. I have provided some links and resources here to attempt to explain accessibility for blind people, which will include blind people who are DeafBlind. The point is accessibility issues can come from both sides whether it be the audio or visual sides.

Some general helpful links:

AFB’s Advice for image descriptions here

Screen-readers here

Improving Accessibility for the DeafBlind community here

How DeafBlind People Use Technology and The Importance of Braille and Transcripts: Understanding Assistive Technology

Online Content:

GIFs, Pictures, Fan-art, PSA and info posts, Memes, Screenshots of Text Posts or Screenshots of Twitter Threads- Provide an image description on your original post! This is the best option, as you probably know your content best and what you wish to draw attention to. More importantly, every reblog will include an image description, which means the blind person doesn’t need to hunt for an image description in the reblogs! If you know more than one language, include image descriptions in those languages.

Note: Always include descriptions when you post images with or about blind people or characters. Particularly fan-art you made of blind characters. If you don’t, consider why and think about how it would feel to be shut out of something about yourself.

What should you include?

Write Image Description in brackets and include End of Image Description at the end for clarification. As for what you should describe, it depends on what the picture is. Include where it is from. For example, “a screenshot of a Twitter thread by BlindBetaIsAwesome”. Include the text and describe any GIFs or images it includes. Write everything out as they appear. Describe emojis as well. When writing out screen names or hashtags, capitalize the first letter of each word. Otherwise screen-readers read it oddly. For example instead of #accessibilityfortheblind try #AccessibilityForTheBlind. If you think someone will want to search a name, include a link.

You should describe what is important in the image, especially for conveying information or humor. General ideas include: image origin, who is in the image, what they’re doing, any relevant colors or clothing, objects they’re holding, their facial expression, any emojis, and any text in the image. Blind people do like to know about color. For NSFW stuff, include ‘NSFW’ at the start, but other than that, yes, blind people also generally like NSFW things described.

Fanfiction:

Generally, fanfic is very accessible to screen-readers and Braille Displays. However, there are a few ways you can make it more accessible.

Pictures: Include alt-text for any images you post such as artwork or character social media posts. Describe it like you would any other image. Alt-text is different from an image description because instead of a screen-reader saying “image” when it finds an image, it will describe the image. An image description is the text included beneath the picture that everyone can see. Including some kind of description, especially for plot-relevant images, can allow all blind readers to experience the fic.

Chat conversations: Again, for hashtags and screen names, capitalize the first letter of each word for the ease of screen-readers. For characters who don’t use capitalization much, you can add a hyphen between each word to make it easier to read like this: blind-beta-likes-fanfic-too.

Emojis: Screen readers can’t fully read emojis like this one that uses keyboard slashes and symbols to create an image ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (image description: emoji of a person shrugging with both palms lifted upwards. End description.) However, they can read emojis that come on a phone such as 🧁which screen readers read as “cupcake”.

Podfics are also good for hearing people with no vision or reduced vision. Having a podfic with good quality (maybe one that can describe images found in the story) will reduce some of the issues listed here and give blind people another, fun way to interact with content. However, I would try to keep in mind the things I mentioned above for the sake of screen-readers and Braille Displays, which are particularly important for some DeafBlind people who may want to read your fanfic and may not be able to hear well enough to use a screen-reader.

Lastly, keep in mind that any kind of comic may be inaccessible to some blind people. Write with them in mind. Include a message at the start of the story, maybe that it contains material from the comic, graphic novel, or print cartoon. If you know of a comic dub, link to it. If there is none, include details in the story so that a non-manga or non-comic reader would be able to understand.

Web-Comics/Web-Graphic-Novels:

First, I did research and found a comic book store for the blind called Comics Empower. Unfortunately, when I click the link provided on Twitter and the articles I read, the site seems to be down.

However, this is about you all and sharing your comics with blind readers. You have a few options:

Alt-text. This is descriptions directly ‘inside’ the image, which is not visible to everyone. You can read about alt-text for comics specially here and you can read general info for alt-text for screen-readers and Braille Displays here.

Image descriptions. These are descriptions of each comic page (hopefully with a paragraph for each panel) that can be visible to anyone. You can describe your comic, who is in it, what they’re doing, and what they’re saying, probably beneath the image.

Comic Audio Performances. These are accessible to both blind and sighted audiences. These are videos using actors for the dialogue, sound effects, and moving comic panels. Pros for this style include increased viewership, increased accessibility for the blind, and perhaps more revenue if you have a way to monetize the content. Cons include that it is more work, could potentially cost money when hiring actors initially, may not be accessible to anyone with hearing loss, and may still require a bit of audio description for some panels that are hard to follow with only sound effects.

What can you do?

A few ideas I had were to use a combination of image descriptions and audio performances to make the comics accessible to a number of people who may be blind, or DeafBlind. Having options is helpful. For ther issue of some panels needing extra description in order to make sense, I thought of including time-stamps and descriptions in the description section, labeling it as image descriptions for the blind. Include dialogue for reference. Or an audio description could be added such as:

Audio narration: “Bee sits on a couch writing.”

Sound Effect of a purring cat.

Audio narration: “Blind Beta picks up an orange cat and puts him on the couch next to them.”

Dialogue: “I’m so glad I have a cat to cuddle with!”

I will touch on this in the video section, but while it is sadly not possible to add audio descriptions onto YouTube as of 2021, you can add them manually through websites you like YouDescribe. For your comics, I suggest, reading about YouDescribe, downloading the app, creating a narration transcript for your web comic performance, and posting the described audio performance onto YouDescribe. Post both versions as close to the same time as you can, and include a link to the described version in the YouTube description. A glance at YouDescribe will tell you not all videos are available with descriptions and not all blind people are aware of this service. Not all videos are searchable in their library either. However, it is an option I wanted to include.

You could also simply include the audio narration in your main YouTube video if you would like. Or any combination of my suggestions you feel comfortable with.

YouTube Videos/Video Clips:

I wanted to cover YouTube videos and video clips shared on websites like tumblr. For small clips, image descriptions and transcripts could probably be listed together. I have seen this done and it seems to help people.

Again, the original poster should post the description with the video. This is because they know the most important parts and because all reblogs of the post will include the description, so no one will have to hunt down a description that may not exist.

For the clip or clip compilation, mention where the clips come from, who is in them, and what they are doing. You could probably have a separate paragraph for each clip and include times-stamps if possible.

For videos you post on YouTube, descriptions can be very helpful! Unfortunately, YouTube does not support adding an audio description track at this time. Ideally, YouTube would have a description track one could turn on and off such as with subtitles. Until then, if you want to add a description, you should add one yourself when you post the video onto YouTube or any other website.

Before I get into how, let’s go over something else.

What videos need descriptions?

-Recipe videos - especially ones with only text. Ingredients, steps, measures, methods, any flourishes or special scenery (such as when shopping for ingredients) should be described. Blind people don’t just want you to read the recipe to them. They want to know what is happening in the video and how it is being done.

-Tutorials - These often contain a voice-over and accompanying images to demonstrate. A creator can opt to simply include more visual description along with the other information in the voice-over or add extra narration later (see the “How?” section below). For these videos, make sure to avoid or expand on any visually dependent parts such as “click here” or “fold here” or “when you finish, it should look like this”. Videos that contain only text and demonstration, however, will need a more traditional audio description the same as any other video.

-Silent aesthetic videos - Sometimes containing music or focusing on natural noise, these videos are usually vlogs with soothing activities or daily routines. They often show scenery, pretty things, or tours. Because these videos are silent, sometimes containing only text, they are not accessible. However, they can be easy to describe, perhaps in a soothing or educational fashion.

-Music videos - Because these videos are by nature visual, they may not be accessible. They may also have inconsistent, poor, or changing lighting for aesthetic purposes or set changes. This means audio descriptions would be helpful.

-Text-based videos - Obviously these are not accessible or may be difficult to read depending on font size, style, or background. For these, putting the text in the description may suffice. Label it so that blind people are aware they are getting the same material. If the text includes pictures or short clips, you could also simply include your own narration on the video itself or see the “How?” section below for another alternative.

-Game Play-Throughs - Games can sometimes be completely inaccessible pe very difficult depending on the person’s level of site. A lot of video games a not accessible or difficult to play, with quick-moving graphics, perhaps small text, or other difficulties. Because of this, blind people may enjoy game plays on YouTube for video games and mobile games.

-Skits or other performances - Think of these as Netflix shows with audio description tracks. Blind people may miss out on some visual humor, plot elements, or other fun visual aspects like costumes.

-Original Films, Animation, Clips From Shows - Again, think of it as any TV show that needs to description to cover visual aspects of what is happening. Scenery, characters, what they’re doing, any text, facial expressions, etc.

Pet videos- Because pets are cute and they should be described! Especially because these videos are sometimes hard to follow, such as a pet doing a trick.

How? How Do We Provide This?

There is always the option to add your own audio descriptions. However, that way confuse already-existing narration or may not be possible for already-published videos. You may also have trouble speaking and wish for someone else to provide audio descriptions. The video may be a music video or one you want to remain silent for the aesthetic. You may want to add a description to a video you enjoy that is not one you uploaded personally.

A free website and mobile app called YouDescribe can help with that. It allows people to add audio descriptions to videos on YouTube. You can even describe videos on a wishlist. Find out more here.

If you describe your video or have it described, be sure to link to the YouDescribe video in the description of your YouTube version so that people can find it easily, or note that it is available on YouDescribe.

Here is a link to the website

And a link to the app.

This site may be a bit too niche, but I figure if it helps one person, I’ll be happy. My entire blog is niche, when you think about it- targeting writers who specifically want to write and read about blind characters. It’ll be fine.

Keep in mind that audio descriptions may not be accessible to all DeafBlind people. An inclusive option could be to include a description under your video so people with Braille Displays can read it.

Print Books, Audiobooks, Large Print Books, or Braille Books?

Let’s get into something you writers might be interested in. Books! Let’s say you wrote a book with a blind character. How do you make sure it can be accessed by blind readers? You want to have a few options.

Print books - These are accessible to people with reduced vision. It is also possible to scan print books to read with voiceover, but I can’t imagine many people buying books simply to scan unless they borrowed/found it. So it could be an option, I suppose. Scanning books also takes time because you need to do each individual page.

Audiobooks - Audiobooks are great. They are accessible to blind people who can hear. They are cheaper to produce than Braille books, take up less space, and are better for the environment. They can be expensive when you buy them. Libraries have extensive collections now, however, because libraries don’t usually have any Braille books and very few large print books, not all blind people use them, even for digital access. However,many blind people love audiobooks so it a good way to make sure your content is accessible.

As of now, my library app is accessible with a screenreader, so reading audiobooks is possible. E-books are not currently accessible with a screen-reader on this particular app.

Make sure to release your print books and audiobooks at the same time or as soon as possible. It isn’t fair for blind people to have to wait, although there are cases where not having an audiobook is understandable. Keep in mind that the less options you have, the less accessible your content will be.

Large Print Books - I used to get large print books myself. I would say it is less likely publishers will want to publish large print books because they are, of course, larger and take up more space. (Not as much as Braille books, but we’ll get into that.) As you may assume, they are also less popular with readers. Publishers make exceptions for textbooks, so if you are making a textbook or an educational book, particularly one with drawings, publishers might allow it. They also might consider making large print editions of children’s books. Large print books can sometimes be found at libraries, although they are usually crammed into their own limited section. That shows how rare it is for large print books to be printed compared to regular-sized books. I have an extra note about this in the children’s book section, but for the most part, I think you can get away with not having a large print edition of your book.

Braille Books - I should you one doesn’t just make a Braille book. Feelings toward them are generally complicated. They can wear down over time, cost a lot, and take up a lot of space. One volume of a book is several volumes of Braille books. Libraries don’t generally have them- you have to request them from various places like The National Library Service for the Blind (NLS). For more information about obtaining or borrowing Braille books, look here.

Braille Books have largely been replaced by refreshable Braille displays and audiobooks. However, they are still important. They can also help DeafBlind people, if a book cannot be read on a Braille display (see the section on e-books below). My suggestion would be to skip Braille books unless you are writing for children (see the Children’s Books section) or your book contains many diagrams that need to be embossed.

Children’s Books -

I wanted to briefly discuss children’s books. With children’s books, you will, of course, want to have a print book and an audiobook available, perhaps even someone reading the book on YouTube. If the book has pictures, descriptions of the pictures would be nice. This is also where I think large print and Braille books may be not only possible or more likely, but important. Children are just learning to read and will continue to explore a love for reading. Therefore, a lack of reading material can be challenging.

If possible, you may want to consider asking your publisher if large print or Braille versions are possible. While websites are available so that children can get books, you may want to ask for your book to be published in these formats if your story has a blind MC.

Braille literacy is declining in the blind community, with children (and frankly many others) choosing to use VoiceOver and audiobooks to read rather than Braille. Being able to read helps reinforce spelling, grammar, meaning in ways that are not possible with having things read to you. That said, children should also be encouraged to learn technology and use audiobooks when they feel comfortable.

If you are publishing a children’s book, particularly with a blind MC, consider what your options are for increasing accessibility.

E-Books:

This is one of the more accessible options, as it can be read with a screen-reader or Braille display. E-books are also common enough that they are released at the same time as print books. The text can usually be adjusted and readers usually have a Search feature. However, accessibility is still a problem with e-books. While authors cannot fix this, they should be aware of it. You can read about accessibility issues here.

I hope all this helped somewhat. I provide sensitivity reading for blind characters for anyone who is interested.

#blind #accessibility for the blind #blindbeta #writing #books #disability

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ctl-yuejie · 3 years

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How the diverse world of the addictive tv series “Cherry magic” got made

(interview with scriptwriter Yoshida Erika by Yokogawa Yoshiaki)

沼堕ち続出ドラマ“チェリまほ”の多様な世界はどうやって作られたのか【脚本家・吉田恵里香さん】2020.12.22 横川良明

for @howdydowdy because we were talking about what a fantastic character Fujisaki is and the notion of consent when it comes to reading someone’s mind

Currently, societal values continue to change rapidly. On one hand the movement of respecting each other’s diverse individualities and making it easier for each and every one to live in society has become more active, one the other hand it is not a rare occasion to be lost for words when suddenly unconscious discriminatory biases – derived from not being able to cut loose old values that are rooted deep in oneself – raise their heads.

How should we exist within this period of polarization? This series is to create the opportunity to think about this topic by having discussions with the toprunners in the entertainment world. The person I am introducing for the first edition is screenwriter Yoshida Erika.

She is behind the script of “Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?!”, the tv series that has grabbed the first spot on the oricon satisfaction ranking for 4 weeks in a row, and has gained fast popularity despite its late-night spot. The enthusiasm for the show can be attributed to the soft view Ms. Yoshida has on the world.

Yokogawa Yoshiaki (YY): I am happily watching the series. I really liked the original work, however the way it was adapted to a television format has been brilliant. One big thing is the making of the character of Kurosawa played by Machida Keita. By Adachi’s magic (played by Akasouji Eiji), the voice of Kurosawa’s heart spills out, and while the original text had him be quite blatant in his expressions overall, the drama carefully examines them.

Yoshida Erika (YE): That is definitely where there is a difference in depth. The original has the premise of a work in the BL genre, readers are expecting a BL-like development, so they can take such things in stride, but the viewership of the tv series is more varied. Under them there might be people who do not like BL. That is why I was conscious about how different people from different backgrounds might watch this show.

It is not okay to assault someone just because you were invited to their house, kissing or touching without consent is not okay and being of the same or different sex makes no difference in this. Treating such things as okay because it is BL would be rude to the parties concerned. Because we are using the BL genre, we want to specifically protect the “firsts” of the parties concerned. That is something the producer Ms. Honma Kanami and the director agreed about and I therefore paid extra attention to.

YY: Adachi himself, as he is about to step into Kurosawa’s house thinks “Not that I might possibly get assaulted?!”, and is very vigilant, but with some soul-searching realizes that that is rude towards Kurosawa. To say it briefly, you can feel the probity of the creators.

YE: I thought that a main character that thinks that he will get assaulted when he steps into the house of someone will not be loveable. No matter how well received the person is who acts it out, if we cannot love them on a human level, this drama will not work. Adachi’s power to read people’s hearts is also the action of seeing people’s darker sides on his own volition. That’s why a character we cannot love as a person will receive push-back by the viewers.

YY: Just like you said, the act of reading peoples’ hearts includes great violence. That is why I think that when he realizes that Kurosawa has fond feelings for him, unlike the original where he reads Kurosawa’s heart on purpose, the drama treats it as an accidental force. Over the whole series, it is of focal importance that Adachi doesn’t overuse his magic.

YE: That is where we were extremely careful. In the manga easy comprehensiveness is important and that type of suspense is interesting - and we don’t intend to deny that - but if you do it as a drama, I didn’t want to make him into a young man using his powers at ease. That is why, especially in the first half, he decides and tries very hard not to use his powers when possible. The scene where he reads the CEO’s heart appears in the first issue of the original, but in the drama we pushed it back to the 5th episode. We made it a point to illustrate how Adachi is filled with the emotion to help Kurosawa and that is why he uses his powers.

That what I don’t want others to do unto me, I do not want to inflict on characters.

YY: His colleague Fujisaki (Satou Ryo) is a Fujoshi in the original and that premise was cut from the series. If you decided to have a Fujoshi character on a prime time show, did you think that misunderstandings might arise easily?

YE: That was definitely a thought. In BL as a genre it is not an issue that a character exists that takes the same viewpoint as the reader, and I love Fujisaki in the original, but the people who are acting it out in reality are real people. At that point, loudly fawning about someone else’s’ love life is not perceived as good conduct. At the least, I thought that I wouldn’t want to be treated like that.

YY: It is fine to envision fictional characters as romantic partners, but it is different when you make a real acquaintance the target of that.

YE:

A thought we had was that if Adachi and Kurosawa were to really date it would be one thing, but grinning at someone - who might even be heterosexual – because you inflate your own BL adjacent delusion isn’t much different from a man grinning at a woman with big breasts and calling her sexy. I wouldn’t want to get treated that way, so I didn’t want to inflict that on the characters in the story as well.

When it comes to Fujisaki it isn’t like she isn’t a Fujoshi. We do not clearly state it, but I thought there was no reason to show it in the drama.

YY: You are saying, that it is fine that people might interpret Fujisaki as a Fujoshi when she is smiling at Adachi and Kurosawa.

YE: Yes. That is where you are free to imagine (laughs).

YY: What I thought was very fresh is that instead of proclaiming her to be a Fujoshi, Fujisaki is turned into someone who “is happily living her daily life even without romantic love”. We don’t often get characters like that in Japanese tv series.

Personally, I also like romantic tv series, but while feeling venerated when the main characters have realized their love in the final episode, when trying to build a romantic connection to someone else in real life it might not go well and beyond that, it is not that it never happens that I, who also holds interests in other things than romance, end up feeling empty because of the lonely feeling of having been left behind (when watching a romance on tv unfold).

But with having Fujisaki appear, it felt like I got rescued.

YE: Until now, for several projects I made the suggestion of a character that is not interested in romance, but I wasn’t understood. “Is it necessary to do that?” “Aren’t you overthinking it?” were things I got told often.

But with this production, when I said that I wanted Fujisaki to be asexual or aromantic, no one denied me. From that stage on I thought that this place was a good one, and thanks to the original writer giving her agreement it got turned into reality.

YY: Since this kind of character hasn’t really appeared in a tv series, it felt like people like Fujisaki were assigned to be non-existent in this world. But thanks to you envisioning her like this, seen from a person that like Fujisaki might say “I got used to acting “normal”” and feel a notion of despair when confronted with people not understanding them, it felt like it got emphasized that people like her also exist in our society. Picking such little voices feels like it is one of the purposes of entertainment.

YE: If that could become the case I would be glad about it. 10 to 20 years prior, a “fairytale gay” (describing the flamboyant gay friend, that mentally supports the heroine by giving some harsh but accurate advice) often appeared in tv series from abroad, but this portrayal slowly changed, finally it has reached the point where the view point that being gay isn’t something special has penetrated the public.

So this time, I believe that one of my duties was to tell the story of people that are not interested in romance or people who do not only love one person, not from a standpoint that is convenient for consumption, but to have properly realized characters up to their individual backgrounds.

I hope the time comes where it isn’t necessary to especially say “This is a BL series”

YY: Please let me speak on something that has confused me this far. Prior, when you explained Fujisaki in context of the script, it felt like it wasn’t okay to call her asexual or aromantic because she herself doesn’t use any of those labels. I was somewhat afraid that an outsider would just selfishly declare that “you are asexual, aren’t you!?” in regards to someone who hasn’t professed anything.

YE: There is the point of both of the terms asexual and aromantic not being widely known in Japan as much as compared to overseas and I also think there are people who just wouldn’t use these words. Even when you think you are not interested in romance at the moment, it could also be that you just haven’t found the person that makes you feel that way. That’s why I can understand how labelling someone has a violent notion.

YY: My next question is also relating to that: This applies to Cherry Maho, but generally when I write about over works that feature a lovestory between men I try not to use the word BL.

This is my own opinion but to me it feels like the term BL has too much of a sexual image.

In private I casually use the word BL. However, for the content of an article that is read by an unspecified number of people, I remember stumbling over labelling something as BL. Using BL as an easy genre specifier has the effect that there will be a layer that won’t get looked at. I simply want to have more people enjoy a piece of work. I don’t object to the editor using BL in the title but in the content I write, I try not to use the term BL story but simply “love story between two men” and keep it close to how you’d address it in reality.

YE: I understand that. Obviously, I don’t intend to shame the taste of people that like BL. However, I understand that there are people that feel a sense of resistance towards BL as a genre. That is why I also don’t use the word BL when I promote on twitter. I do think that it would be great to have a new word.

Just like women have things they don’t want to be subjected to, men also have things they don’t want to be subjected to. This kind of awareness has become more broadly spread bit by bit. However, in order to have it really penetrate society it needs for the voices of the affected people to be heard. But it is also the reality of today’s society that violence is directed at people that raise their voice. That is why I feel like it is the job of the people that create tv shows to speak up instead.

At the least, that is how I want to straightforwardly create the world, so that in 10 years without directly stating “this is a BL series” we have a society that takes it in as a “new cool romantic drama beginning” with “the leads being actor x and actor z” and as nothing unusual. Now we really have such a transitional period, and as a writer I want to build the steps towards it.

original article: https://mi-mollet.com/articles/-/27045?page=3&per_page=1

#cherry magic #thirty years of virginity can make you a wizard #30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい #30 sai made #a bit rusty with my translations but i really enjoyed how they were talking about the writing and character composition in the series and #decided that I had to share #long post

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tsukikento · 3 years

Text

Empathetic Chapter 16 (Please Read A/N for Update)

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

Summary: After your mom, the number 1 hero in America, gets offered a teaching position at U.A., you two pack up your things and head to Musutafu, Japan to start a new life. Pressure for you in America was at an all-time high, and now you’re in Japan, where almost no one knows you, or your family’s past.

This tale starts on your first day of class where your new teacher decides the best way for you to fit in is to fight against the strongest person in your class: Bakugou Katsuki.

Warnings/Genre: This piece will feature some angst and reference to an abusive parent, if you are ever worried about other tw’s feel free to send me an ask and I will let you know. There will also be fluff, slight angst, pining, and slowburn.

A/N: Two chapters in one month?? Your super nice and amazing comments always want to make me write so much more! I’m glad I had some extra time this week to get things out. PLEASE READ NOTE BELOW:

With the recent chapters of the manga in mind, I want to make note that this story is non-canon. I want to keep this story cohesive and not spoil anything that is not in the anime. However, there may be discrepancies or differences because I started writing during the overhaul arc. I understand a lot of people don't read the manga and some things have happened that could impact what I plan to do with this story. So, please keep in mind that this is not canon, but is set in the second year. My main goals are clarity within this story and not spoiling anything. Thank you!

(series masterlist)

The next few weeks passed in a blur because your schedule was now much more packed with various activities. You had cooking on Monday, training with Aizawa-sensei and Shinsou every Tuesday and Friday, and training with Bakugou every Wednesday and Sunday.

On top of that, physical training had increased throughout the class because of the approaching sports festival and many people were asking to train with you. So far, you had trained with the girls a couple of times as well as in other small study groups when the spaces were rented out. Everyone was rather nice about inviting when they could, although you didn’t always say yes.

As of now, it was the Wednesday before the Sports Festival. Class ended with a big endurance workout and then some stretches. Each student was breathing heavily and slowly making their way back to the lockers to change. Knowing you would be training with Bakugou in the next hour, you didn’t want to shower, but also didn’t want to switch back into your school uniform because it would become dirty.

However, you immediately changed your mind as you saw how sweaty you were in the mirror. Strands of hair were stuck to your face from sweat and your face was clearly flushed.

“Did I look this bad all of class?” You frantically asked Momo and Jirou who were ruffling through their own lockers.

Jirou let out a few snickers at your reaction while Momo shook her head and smiled sweetly.

“You don’t look bad at all,” Momo explained while she applied deodorant.

“You’re too nice,” You replied, waving hero off sheepishly before looking to Jirou, “Tell me the truth, Jirou-san.”

“You don’t look too bad,” She responded, “All of us look like a mess. I don’t think anyone would really notice if that’s what you’re worried about.”

You hummed a response, not quite satisfied with her response, but also not about to beg her to call you either gorgeous or hideous. You turned back to your locker, deciding last minute to take a shower. You weren’t going to wash your hair, but you would borrow the hairbrush you knew Ashido has in order to fix your hair.

Once finally clean, with hair neatly brushed and tied back from your face, you leisurely walked back with Ashido and Hagakure to grab your school bags.

“So, now that I am officially in a relationship,” Ashido began, “I figured it was time I played matchmaker for you two hopeless romantics,” The kindred girl skipped ahead of you and Hagakure with a wide smile.

You chuckled low in your throat. “I don’t think that really describes us well,” You retorted, trailing behind slightly.

Ashido simply waved you off and moved around to throw her arm around Hagakure. “What about you, Toru-chan? Do you want me, who is in a steady relationship, to help you and Ojiro?”

“Um,” The invisible girl tentatively started. She was clearly unsure how Ashido would be able to help. “I’m okay with my relationship with Ojiro right now…”

“Really?” Ashido inquired. “You’re okay with just being his friend?” Your small group rounded the corner, approaching the classroom.

“Well,” You were sure Hagakure would be blushing if she wasn’t invisible. “I don’t want to push him into anything because he is shy and likes to go slow. I think it is best if it happens naturally.”

Ashido visibly harrumphed before looking back at you. “Y/L/N-chan!” She explained, moving from Hagakure to you. “Let me be your wing-woman!”

You slid open the classroom door, head turned to reply to Ashido. “I’m pretty sure Bakugou would blow you up before you even had a chance to be my wing woman.”

“Meanie,” The pink-haired girl pouted before pushing past you to go to her desk and grab her bag.

“I just don’t know if Bakugou would want anyone to meddle in the too-small relationship we have now,” You explained, walking over to your own desk. Everyone else’s desks were empty, meaning you were the last three people left.

“Yeah, but you are barely spending any time with him. Not only do I know Bakugou well, but I can help you because I’m dating Kirishima,” Mina countered. “I could talk you up, or lowkey make us go on a double date. It would work perfectly.”

You all walked out of the classroom, closing the door after Ashido and Hagakure both exited, and walking toward the lockers at the entrance to change shoes.

“I feel like I spend plenty of time with him,” You reasoned, adjusting your backpack up higher. You were trying to explain yourself without being too descriptive. You saw him every day at school, ate lunch with him, spent time with him three days out of the week, and saw him in the halls occasionally.

“You mean lunches with all of us and cooking dinner once a week with him and Sero?” Ashido countered. “That’s maybe more time than half the class, but it isn’t very much for a romantic relationship.”

You rolled your eyes and laughed loudly. Personally, you weren’t sure if Bakugou would really spend much time with his partner. He wasn’t a very outgoing person to begin with and you imagined that he would want someone who respected his privacy.

After a short debate, you decided it was best to tell your friends about the additional time you had spent with Bakugou. The time you spent with him was more heavily focused on training than anything else, meaning this information wouldn’t change too much about what your relationship with him meant. “You can’t say anything, okay?” You began your confession. You felt safe telling them but wanted to make sure it stayed in your small circle of friends.

Both girls turned towards you. Ashido’s eyes were wide with curiosity.

“Bakugou and I have been training together every Wednesday and Sunday,” You simply said.

“Huh?” Hagakure spoke up, “Like, you guys happen to be at the gym at the same time?”

“No,” You clarified, “Like, we meet up every Wednesday and Sunday for hours to train together.”

“What?” The pink-haired girl screeched. She turned and moved to be in front of you in order to stop you in your tracks. “Really?”

“Why would I lie?” You replied, shrugging easily.

“I don’t know,” She shot back with a cheeky smile. She looked down and nervously bit on her lip. “I just can’t believe it.” Before you could say anything else, she looked up at you. “I don’t think you even need my help, Y/L/N-chan!”

“Thanks,” You laughed out.

The three of you began walking again before separating to go to each of your respective lockers. You grabbed a couple of textbooks, put a few things from your bag away and into the locker, as well as switched your shoes. You met back up with Hagakure and Ashido at the door and exited together.

The silence was quickly ended by Ashido. “I can’t believe you are training with him.”

“Is it really that unheard of?” You inquired.

“I mean, he doesn’t really train with anyone. The fact that he is training with you is a good sign,” Ashido explained. “But that is also giving you an insane opportunity to spend time with him that almost no one else gets.”

“Wow,” Hagakure finally added. She turned to face you. “You really are lucky huh?”

You felt your cheeks flush. “Oh, well, um,” You stuttered, “I don’t think I’m that lucky. It’s probably just a coincidence.”

Ashido scoffed, “Yeah, we’ll see.”

You simply rolled your eyes at the girls and followed Ashido as she went on to talk about Kirishima while leading you all back to the dorms.

As subtly as possible, you pulled out your phone to check your notifications. Bakugou would often text you after class or in the morning to let you know where he wanted to meet that day. Frequently, it would be in the cityscape, because it was best for his quirk.

In reflection, you were often mostly working for his benefit. Although you definitely improved through practice, small details like the location of the training, or discussion on what to improve often revolved around the blond boy.

You bit your lip, debating if it was bad.

On one hand, you were happy to spend time with him, help him, and still improve yourself.

On the other, is it a bad sign that he is unwilling to help improve your skills?

Well, it’s not like he is unwilling. I’ve never asked, you reasoned. And maybe he doesn’t know how to help me like I know how to help him because I grew up in a hero family.

You sighed at the predicament just as your phone vibrated with Bakugou’s decision on where to meet.

Let’s meet right outside the dorm room. No hero costume necessary.

That’s new. Sure, the first time you met outside the dorms so he could show you where the cityscape was, but he hadn’t done that since.

You shoved your phone back into your pocket as Ashido opened the door to the dorm house. You each quickly went your separate ways. Hagakure rushed to the bathroom, Ashido went to grab a snack, and you went upstairs to change and get ready.

You did your best to tidy up quickly. You didn’t need your hero costume, but you still might be doing some form of combat or exercise so you needed to dress in workout clothes. You dressed in comfortable, dark leggings and a sports bra to match. On top, you wore a sweat-resistant shirt and styled your hair to keep it out of your face.

You bit your lip as you looked in the mirror and thought over what you could do to make your appearance any better. This probably isn’t even something Bakugou thinks about, you thought as your forced yourself to look away and grab your phone.

You had just enough time to pack a small bag with your belongings and go downstairs to fill up your water bottle. When done, you popped your head outside the front door to see if Bakugou was waiting. With five minutes to spare, you were here before the short-tempered boy. And so, you sat down at the large couches by the door and waited for Bakugou to come down while scrolling through your phone.

“I thought I told you to wait outside,” You heard a gruff voice say. You looked up from your phone to see Bakugou walking towards the kitchen to fill his own water.

“I didn’t know how long you would take,” You reasoned and smiled at the blond before getting up to meet him in the kitchen. In reality, you were waiting no more than two minutes before he came down.

“You know I would never be late,” He retorted while screwing the cap onto his bottle.

You shrugged in response, not bothering to reply verbally. The conversation died down as you followed behind Bakugou and out of the house. “So, where are we going?” You asked as you closed the door behind the both of you.

“The library,” Bakugou explained. “I want to do some theorizing stuff, maybe some combat after.”

You hummed and followed behind him on the short trek to the library. “Is there anything specific on your mind?” You inquired, considering this isn’t something Bakugou had wanted to do before.

“The sports festival is this weekend and I want to win. I was thinking we could watch old highlights and strategize what the possible challenges could be and how to approach them,” Bakugou described.

“And we can’t just do this in the dorms?” You shot back.

“Shuddup,” He responded. “It’s always easier to study in a computer lab rather than our rooms.”

“I guess,” You simply replied, not really caring about where you were when you would be analyzing old clips from sports festivals in the past.

“I guess,” Bakugou mimicked back, a habit he formed quickly when you began to talk more. Anytime your accent sounded a little off, just slightly weird, the blond would repeat it, emphasizing the mistake, and snickering at it.

“Oh shut up, you idiot,” You snapped back, not too harshly slapping his name on his arm.

“What?” He loudly reasoned while still laughing. “I’m trying to help you speak better Japanese.”

“No, you aren’t,” You rolled your eyes at him shrugging, “You are just laughing at me.”

Bakugou feigned surprise, gasping and putting his hand onto his chest. “How dare you? I am in the top 10 of our grade academically, and your accent has only gotten better since I started doing this.”

“Yeah, well you suck ass at English,” You mumbled in response.

“I don’t need to have a perfect accent if I am speaking English in Japan,” He retorted before pulling open the door to the school. It led to the library and computer lab that was a few stories up.

“When you speak English here, you will most likely be doing hero work with tourists that unfortunately got caught in something,” You reasoned, “They won’t be able to understand you well if at all when you don’t study tonal English.”

Realistically, yes, they would be able to understand Bakugou. However, you were currently butt-hurt and unwilling to compliment him.

“Then I will leave the talking to you.” Bakugou pressed the elevator door button and waited until it dinged and the doors opened to walk in.

“And you expect me to just be there in the field with you?” You questioned, following behind him.

“What?” Are you going back to America?” He asked back. His voice had a different tone to it. He was no longer teasing you and instead of asking a genuine question.

You pushed away the want to analyze this difference in inflection, knowing it would make you look like an idiot for pausing to reply for so long. “Not anytime soon,” You finally replied, “But we can’t predict the future, and I have no clue where I will go after graduation.”

“Well, you should stay here,” Bakugou simply said.

You couldn’t help but shoot him a shocked and curious look. “Does the Bakugou Katsuki really want me to stay in Ja—”

“It’s not like that, you idiot!” He interrupted you. “Japan is just a lot better for heroism than America so you will learn more and be better if you stay here.”

He had a pout on his face that begged you to not tease him.

So, you didn’t.

However, you weren’t sure what to say so you simply followed behind Bakugou as he entered the library and beelined it to a table.

“And my name isn’t Ka-TSU-ki,” He finally spoke while placing his belongings onto the table.

You shot him a confused look, “What do you mean?” You placed your own things down to his right.

“Put more accent on ‘Ka’,” He explained easily. “You should rush through it to sound more like KA-tski.”

Bakugou shot you a look as if he was waiting for you to say his name. “What?” You curiously asked.

“Practice,” He motioned for you to speak.

“Uhhh, Ka-tski, KA-tski, Katsuki,” You awkwardly attempted. You felt the heat spread from the bottom of your neck to your cheeks and finally to the tops of your ears.

You weren’t a fool. You knew what using a first name meant in Japanese culture and also knew that no one except Midoriya referred to him by any other name besides Bakugou. For him to so casually have you repeat his first name over and over made your stomach flip.

“Good,” He spoke, voice deep and almost raspy. It made butterflies erupt in your stomach. His tone was… different and it made your head spin crazily. The blond sat down and pulled out his laptop.

“I didn’t bring my computer,” You awkwardly explained.

“That’s fine,” Bakugou immediately replied. “I can rent one out from the library if need be, but we can share earbuds and watch videos on my laptop.”

You gulped down the quickly forming lump in your throat and simply kept watching the blond unpack his bag.

From being able to say his first name without him yelling at you to his tone and his willingness to share, Bakugou was acting unusually. And you were clearly flustered by it. You were sure that if Ashido was here, she would practically be stabbing you with her elbow while she winked at you repeatedly.

Luckily, however, it was just the oblivious and preoccupied Bakugou who was currently opening a tab on his laptop and pulling up videos. You were free to push your chair back, gulp down too much water, and attempt to manage your breathing pattern without him noticing.

Or at least that’s what you hoped.

“Here.”

You looked up from the desk and saw Bakugou holding out an earbud to you. Before grabbing it, your eyes trailed down the wire that inevitably connected it to Bakugou’s own ear. Bakugou had moved the laptop to be evenly between you two on the desk, he was also leaning in slightly to give your more room with the earbud wire. Finally, he also had a notebook and pen to his left so he could write down notes.

You moved closer to the blond and put in the earbud. You tried your best not to move too close, but Bakugou easily moved closer once you stopped adjusting and his own shoulder was now brushing against yours.

Oh, great, you thought. You felt a tinge of nerves from Bakugou push into you. Because your shoulders were only brushing, sometimes not touching at all, you could really only see his surface-level emotions. More than anything, he was focused and determined.

Bakugou opened a document that already had a plethora of notes. “These are the past 11 years of sports festivals and what challenges were done each time,” He explained as you scanned your eyes over the expansive document. It was organized by year, then by class year, and finally, by challenge done.

You hummed to simply let Bakugou know you heard him as you searched for patterns.

“The most common one is a race,” Bakugou began, “But it is different every time.” He moved his cursor to open a video. “This is a compilation of the 17 races or marathons that were done.”

Without waiting, Bakugou began playing the video. They were short clips, the teacher hosting the sports festival explaining what each step of the race was as well as a few highlights. You took mental notes while Bakugou scribbled away in his notebook. You immediately noticed him angrily grumbling when last year’s highlights came up, it showed Midoriya expertly soaring into first place.

“These definitely favor flight abilities,” You mumbled as the video came to a close. The notation wasn’t so good for your quirk, but you knew Bakugou would have little trouble.

“Yeah,” Bakugou simply replied, well aware of the disadvantage you would have if it was a marathon-based challenge.

“How are you feeling about your maneuverability?” You asked Bakugou, knowing there was little you could do. Well, except hope that a marathon challenge wasn’t in this year’s sports festival.

“I’m fine,” Bakugou responded, before changing the subject, “Races are least common for second years though, so I’m not sure if we should expect it.” Bakugou leaned back in his chair, “I know that U.A. does some stuff to help prevent repetitiveness between the classes within a year, but also between the same class each year.”

“Damn,” You commented, “You really know your stuff.”

“Yeah, well it makes sense to analyze past stuff,” Bakugou explained, “I can train all I want, but analyzing last year definitely helped me too.”

“I wonder if anyone else is doing this,” You thought out loud.

Bakugou simply shrugged and turned back to his computer. “Usually, every second round is a group-based challenge, but they vary a lot.” You nodded in understanding, “The most common one in the past 11 years is a mini-disaster situation. They love doing this for second-years, but it costs a lot so it has only happened 9 times between all three grade levels.” Bakugou once again pulled up a video and began playing clips from the 9 previous disaster situations.

The first time it was ever done, the teachers played it off as a real situation. It made for great television and a realistic view of how heroes work in the field, but the audience was unaware of the decision and it terrified them. There were actors in place as villains and civilians, but U.A. ended up apologizing and doing it the next year with multiple variations and adjustments to be more family-friendly.

“They didn’t do this last year,” Bakugou elaborated, “So I think they will this year.” He moved back to a new document. It had each year’s disaster detailed on it. It listed hat was the problem, the main highlights, as well as who won and the quirks the team had.

“The grading of this challenge is based on the team’s ability to work well together, how they work against the villain, and how they help rescue the designated civilians.” Bakugou paused for a beat, “I know you haven’t done the hero provisional license, but it is similar to the task during that test, just on a smaller scale.”

You nodded in understanding while reading over the group’s quirks. “Do you know if the students got to pick their teams?” You asked.

“I couldn’t find anything on it, but for our team-based challenge last year, we were allowed to pick groups,” Bakugou replied.

“Who would you pick then?” You asked him, partially out of curiosity for his strategy and partially hoping he would say your name.

Bakugou hummed in thoughts, “Most teams in the past were five people, and I don’t know how great I would be with helping civilians.” Bakugou paused in thought, “I think you, Kirishima, and Ashido would be great with that.”

And there go the butterflies once again erupting in your stomach.

“You would also allow us to communicate across the field, Kirishima would be great for defense if the villains ever attacked the civilians, and Ashido has a great offensive attack and personality that would keep people calm.” He paused for a few moments, “I also think Sero would be great with saving civilians and then moving to help in the offensive.”

“Isn’t that the same team you had last year?” You questioned. You wanted to tease him for being so willing to compliment people, but you knew he would react badly. You made a mental note to tell Ashido later.

“Well, I added you!” Bakugou defended, voice rising in volume slightly.

The librarian shushed him and you snickered at his angry face. “Calm down,” You reassured, placing your hand onto his own.

It was a habit to touch people and help them, you weren’t even thinking about how it would change his feelings. However, you immediately felt the heat from his hand warm your cool skin without processing exactly what you were doing. Although your mind wanted you to snatch your hand back once you felt his warmth, you knew it would only make the situation weirder. Instead, you pushed away his anger and calmed him just slightly, trying not to push your own nerves onto him.

Bakugou looked at you with wide eyes before his face relaxed. Similar to before, you felt his nerves rush into your body. It honestly made you more nervous. Knowing that your focus on nerves would only worsen both of yours, you pulled your hand back, trying your best to seem casual. Thoughts rushed through your head as you tried to figure out why he became so nervous when you touched his hand with your own.

You weren’t an idiot.

You knew what type of nerves he had.

It wasn’t sickness-related and it definitely wasn’t an anxiety-induced nerve. It was the same type of nerves you felt when your stomach would flip at the rare sight of Bakugou smiling. It was the same flutter of your heart when you saw Bakugou dressed in his hero costume.

You could even see the small blush forming on the tips of his ears and cheeks, only helping to confirm your assumptions.

If you didn’t stop yourself, you would have already stumbled out an apology before grabbing your belongings and rushing out of the library. Except, if you did do that, it would be a dead giveaway that you understood his nerves.

Something you reminded yourself over and over was that if anything was going to happen with the blond, you would need to be patient. Over the past few weeks, as you two have grown closer, it was patience and understanding that made him more comfortable around you.

“Sorry,” You apologized after a moment, moving to grab your water and take a few sips.

Bakugou pulled back from you, “It’s okay.”

He knows.

He knows I know.

He knows that I know that he knows.

You closed your eyes tightly to push your anxious thoughts away.

How could he know? He’s just as nervous as I am if not more!

“Sometimes I forget my quirk will just go off, I didn’t mean to change your feelings,” You explained. Although helpful, sometimes it was best for people to feel out their emotions and learn to change them on their own.

“It’s okay,” Bakugou repeated, “It’s for the best anyways. I’d hate to be kicked out of the library…again.”

“Again?” You questioned, quirking your eyebrow at the blond.

Bakugou nodded, laughing at himself slightly. “Yeah, it was when I was tutoring Kaminari last year. That idiot can be so stupid sometimes, I couldn’t hold back my screams when he told me the 4 squared was 8.”

You chuckled at Bakugou’s story, covering your mouth slightly to muffle your laughs. “Oh my god,” You exclaimed in surprise.

“I know,” Bakugou confirmed. “I don’t think he would have passed last year if I wasn’t there to tutor him,” Bakugou smirked while watching you giggle at his joke. Once your laughter died down with a deep breath, Bakugou adjusted himself in his chair to face his laptop once again. “Anyways,” He began, “I think the team I mentioned earlier would be great. We would have well-balanced defense and offense.”

You nodded, “I’ll make sure to keep that in mind if we all make it to the second round.”

“Oh, you better,” Bakugou pointed his finger at you. “I don’t care what the first round is, your better be ready to be the second person at the finish line.”

“Second?” You asked, already knowing where this would go.

“Yeah, obviously I am first,” Bakugou said seriously.

You held back your laugh but smiled all the same. “I’m sure you will be first, Bakugou-san. Now, let’s get back to review so we can make that possible.”

Bakugou nodded and began another small speech about the other team challenges. You listened diligently, watched the videos intently, and provided notes and feedback when you had some to say.

You both started a consistent pattern, reviewing each section before talking about how it could be positive or negative for each person. You theorized different abilities and moves you each had that could assist in a challenge. For example, a less common first challenge was a multi-round skills test.

It was much more used in the past but featured small rounds within the challenge that would add up to give people overall grades. Previous rounds featured breathing tests or aim with weaponry of choice.

“And that’s it!” Bakugou sighed, pushing himself back to rest against his chair. At this point, you and Bakugou had been in the library for over three hours with only one break to get up, stretch, and use the restroom.

You quietly whooped and took out the earbud so you could also lean back into your chair. “My back hurts, but this was definitely worth it.”

Bakugou chuckled at your comment, twisting in his chair to crack his back. “Happy to help.”

“If you are so happy to help, are you going to share this with anyone else?” You asked, looking at him from the corner of your eye.

“No,” Bakugou began, “Probably not.” He grabbed his water. “But you grew up in a hero family so you could help strategize more than the other class members.”

“I guess, but you don’t know that.” You turned to face him as he sipped on his drink. “Not only are you making assumptions about my past, but you are making assumptions about the other students as well.”

Bakugou dropped his head and rolled it to the side to look into your eyes with his own, vibrant scarlet orbs. He had a slight smirk on his lips that made you not quite gasp, but a breath in quickly and suddenly. However, it only got worse when his tongue appeared, slowly swiping across his upper lip. You wondered if the action was intentional, or if he could really look this good unintentionally.

“How many times is it now that you’ve come after me for assuming things about you?” He asked, his eyes squinting slightly at you.

You looked away, knowing you couldn’t respond if you continued to watch him. You were tempted to tell him not to look at you that way but also knew that would make him even more conceited and only edge him on. “Often enough for it to bug me and for you to remember. I think that’s a sign you should have learned by now,” You shot back.

“Oof,” Bakugou replied, moving in his seat to be sitting up straighter, he turned to face you more head-on and lay his right arm across the chair. “Why don’t you just clarify your past for me then?”

You eyed Bakugou closely. “Do you not remember what happened the first time you asked that?”

“You mean when you stormed out like you had a temper worse than mine? Of course, I do,” Bakugou shot back. He paused for a moment and you watched him think over his next words carefully, “Aren’t I your closest friend here?” You could tell it was to more so tease you, but you also wondered, due to his pause, if he was hoping you would say yes.

You scoffed at his comment, “Shouldn’t that be Ashido or Hagakure?” There was a fine line between complimenting Bakugou, revealing your feelings, and just making him more conceited. You feared that if you played into his idea about you two being close, it would give him an upper hand in your relationship. You were not willing to let Bakugou tease you and make you blush like a fool.

Well, it's not like you had too much of a choice in the matter though.

“Oh, please!” Bakugou retorted, “You spend so much more time with me than you do with them.”

“I also spend a lot of time with Shinsou,” You replied.

It was almost like a tug of war. Bakugou wanted you to admit that you spent so much time with him that he was practically your default best friend while you were trying to prove that you weren’t reliant on him. It’s not that the amount of time you spent with him was bad, not at all. You just didn’t want to tell him the truth because it would make him too confident.

“Who?” Bakugou asked, looking at you with a confused expression.

“Are you serious?” You laughed, “Are you really that unbelievably bad with names?” When Bakugou didn’t bother to reply, you continued, “Purple hair? Mind control quirk?”

“Him?” Bakugou exclaimed once realization dawned on him, “How are you spending so much time with that guy?”

“I’m interning with him and Aizawa-sensei,” You explained. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.”

Bakugou slumped over his chair and pouted, “I would have remembered that. Why are you even interning with him?”

“Well, if you must know Bakugou-san,” You began, “I don’t have my provisional license and need a way to train. Plus, our quirks work well together. Aizawa-sensei wants us to get our licenses as soon as possible because he wants to see how well we work together in the field.”

Bakugou grumbled something you couldn’t quite hear so you simply ignored it.

“Are you actually upset?” You asked him, noticing his telltale signs of jealousy, but not quite believing he could be the jealous type. Or if you were worth being jealous over.

“No!” He immediately shot back, earning him another shush from the professor. “I just didn’t know you were training with other people too.”

You didn’t believe this was jealousy over you training with other people but knew pushing the subject would make Bakugou irritated. Forcing someone to share their feelings and emotions was never ideal. You could push slightly to see if they would open up, but if the situation isn’t severe, and you receive push back, it is best to let it go for the time being.

You saw the pout on his lips and simply laughed at his cute and childish actions. “What’s gonna make you feel better, huh? Should I tell you about my family’s deep, dark past?”

Bakugou scoffed and turned his body away from yours slightly. “Don’t tease me.”

“What do you mean?” You asked. “You doubt that my family has a dark past? Doesn’t every hero family have one?”

Bakugou called your bluff, “Then go ahead, tell me yours.”

You paused, not sure what to do. “Okay, w-well,” You stumbled over your words slightly, “It’s not that I don’t have one. I just didn’t expect you to actually ask me to tell you.”

You felt nerves erupt in your stomach, wondering how Bakugou would react to you backing out.

Bakugou laughed lightly, moving in his chair to sit up straight and look at you. “I’m never going to force you to tell me anything, but I’ll be here whenever you are ready.”

Oof.

There goes your heart rate, skyrocketing at Bakugou’s words. You did not at all expect a reaction like this. You didn’t know him for long, and you were well aware that you were on a good side that very few saw, but that comment was out of character for him. Or maybe, rather than being out of character, it was a new side of Bakugou even fewer people saw. You wondered if Kirishima had ever seen this side, or if this kind and patient attitude was reserved for the people he was most fond over.

Could this comment really be the key indicator in demonstrating that Bakugou had feelings for you? The anxiety and doubt that was ever so prominent in your life washed over you like a wave trying to rationalize why Bakugou would say something like that without concluding the specialness it held.

While you panicked, Bakugou began packing up his bag, putting away his laptop and notebook. He could see the gears turning in your head, and he knew that his comment pushed past the walls each of you set up in your friendship.

But maybe he didn’t care. However, it’s not like you could tell with the earbuds in that prevented you from reading his mind.

“You ready to go?” He asked while you stared into space like an idiot. He leaned into your line of view to bring you out of it.

“Huh?” You blinked a few times before locking eyes with the blond. “Yeah,” Your hoarse voice croaked out. Your throat had gone drier than you expected. You grabbed your bag and water quickly, “Do you want to go train at all?”

Bakugou looked out the windows, watching the sun start to set. “It’s a bit late, and I’m sure dinner is ready by now.” He looked down at his phone, “I can’t believe it’s almost 7:00.”

“Really?” You inquired, leaning toward him to check the time on his phone. “Damn, I didn’t expect us to be here so long.” You moved back to give yourself room to stretch. “We’ve been sitting for so long, I feel like I should do yoga and go on a run just to make up for it.”

Bakugou smiled at you, much kinder than you would expect him to. You felt the butterflies once again flutter in your stomach as you turned away to hide your face. Your cheeks were hot, and your mind was rushing quickly with ideas of what today meant. You definitely needed to talk to Ashido.

“If you’re still up for it after dinner, I’d love to go with you to the gym,” Bakugou offered.

“Is the gym usually busy at night?” You asked, trying to brush past his proposition. The idea that Bakugou wanted to spend more time with you than he already did was driving you crazy.

“Hmm, good question.” Bakugou started. “There are a few different ones on campus so that some can be reserved for groups or training sessions with teachers, but I don’t think a lot of people go after dinner. If you’re worried about that, we can always go to the track and use the yoga room which is always quiet and chill.”

You shrugged your shoulders and smiled at the red-eyed boy, “Either sounds good! Now let’s get back so I can eat.” You pouted and rubbed your stomach.

Bakugou snorted at your behavior before leading the way and opening the door for you. The conversation between you two flowed easily, with it mainly revolving around the class and the sports festival.

When you arrived home, you were each greeted by your classmates. Bakugou didn’t bother to reply to their greetings and instead rushed upstairs to drop off his things. You, on the other hand, immediately went to Ashido’s side.

“Bathroom, now.”

You pulled her away from Kirishima’s side and led her into the bathroom before checking to make sure no one else was in there.

“You and Bakugou didn’t even hide that you came home together, literally in front of everyone,” Ashido said before you even had a chance to speak.

“I know!” You exclaimed, smiling widely at the idea. You looked from Ashido to the mirror and checked your appearance, luckily, you still looked just as good when you left. “We literally hung out in the library for over 3 hours, talking about the sports festival, other shit, and being way too close to each other.” You turned back to your friend.

Ashido shook you in excitement while she squealed. “Are you going to give me details or what?” She asked after finally letting you go.

“Yes, of course, okay.” You tried your best to collect your thoughts. “First off, we were watching videos on his laptop, so we were sharing his earbuds and sitting so close that our shoulders were touching.”

“Oh my god!”

“Not only that,” You continued, “But anytime our shoulders did brush, I could tell that, although he was focused on the videos, he was also nervous because of how close he was to me.”

“No fucking way!”

“I know!” You practically shouted. “And you know how I am interning with Shinsou,” She nodded, “He literally was jealous when I brought it up. I didn’t even have to touch him to know because he was pouting, getting defensive, and just clearly upset.”

From per excitement, Ashido practically jumped around the bathroom. “Y/L/N-chan! I think Bakugou likes you!” She spoke in a sing-song voice. The smile on her face was just as wide as yours and you felt your cheeks heat up again.

“You think?” You asked.

She nodded fervently in response.

“Well, guess what?” You began, “I brought up doing yoga and running after dinner and he literally asked to join me.”

“You are literally going on a date,” Ashido immediately insisted.

“No, I’m not!” You sheepishly replied, scratching at your face and looking away. “That’s a little much.”

“Sure,” Ashido mocked you. “And sky totally isn’t blue.”

You rolled your eyes at the girl and waved her off. “I just want to take things slow,” You explained.

Ashido leaned in closer to you, “And that is why you are a great match for him.” She smiled widely, “I totally bet you guys will be together before the end of the year.”

You laughed, “Don’t make a bet on my relationship.”

“Okay, okay,” Ashido held her hands up in defeat. “But just know I’m in your corner.”

You smiled at your friend fondly before changing the subject. “Anyways, I’m hungry. Do you know what is for dinner?”

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academy #bakugou katsuki #bakugou #bakugo katsuki #bakugo #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo kastuki x read #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugo fanfiction #bakugou fanfiction #bakugo katsuki fanfiction #bakugou katsuki fanfiction

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the-nysh · 3 years

Note

Garou is a pretty controversial character in one punch man subreddit. What are your thoughts on this?

For as much as he’s genuinely popular and well-loved over there for sure, it’s also a big enough place where it’s true you’ll find no shortage of threads & comments from the other side of the spectrum too. (The most volatile ones often get downvoted and/or deleted however.) From those who openly express their dislike to flat-out hatred of him, yes.

You’ll often recognize a pattern from them though (and they stick out to me like a sore thumb). Most commonly from newer fans of the series who’ve only read parts of the manga (so their understanding of him is incomplete or doesn’t make sense to them yet, recognizable from those who label him an irredeemable ‘horrible person’ or incorrectly a hero killer like Stain for ex), or who’ve speed-read the webcomic and missed things without connecting the dots about him yet after his big end-arc reveal, but who still come to express their distaste, frustration, or general confusion over understanding his arc as a whole. And because there’s still so much of that reader confusion abound, it’s no surprise why ONE’s had to portray manga!Garou with much less ambiguity compared to the wc, with more obvious reader hand-holding, for instance. That’s the writing trade-off (clarity over subtlety more open to interpretation), even though mischaracterizations still happen from those who hastily jump the gun (not ONE’s fault), but I still love the expanded depth and extra attention ONE’s given his character in the manga. So it’s like ONE & Murata have long noticed those readers’ perceptions to overall modify things for the better, I feel.

So in general, those types of reddit threads aren’t so much a problem, since they usually get the clarification needed from other posters (avid Garou fans) chiming in to correct them (repeatedly with patience!), and leave them newly educated with a fresh perspective and/or appreciation for what ONE’s done. I honestly feel like it really shouldn’t be their job to continually put in the work (like a broken record) for other readers’ sake or (lack of) comprehension, and I may not phrase or approach things the same way they do, or have the same rigid interpretation of Garou as some of them, but I appreciate their dedication and vigilance to defend & address the misinformation about his character all the same. :’) (For example, this user often has insightful and niche things to say about him, different from most others there, which is worth checking out.)

What’s notably not so nice (and what I see as more of a problem) are those other veteran repeat haters, who jump in framing their arguments in ways that sound smart & logical (easily persuading the gullible under the verbose guise of ‘literary analysis’), but when you actually read what else they’re saying, instead of allowing others to see Garou in a new light (informing in a helpful way), their claims contribute towards the opposite: deliberately misleading others in an echo chamber of blatant misinformation. (Which is what I dislike; they can dislike Garou all they want, but don’t do that towards manipulating the trust of the impressionable.) Long story short, I remember exactly who they are too, so I know who to avoid or treat all their takes non-seriously and skeptically with a grain of salt (which is applicable in other fandoms too).

For example, there’s a guy who always bashes on Garou and his purpose in the story, making sweeping claims about his character (in bad faith) and what opm should be about according to him, while also admitting he skips over every fight and chapter without Saitama in it (instant ding to his trust & credibility). It’s then no wonder he ‘hates’ Garou when he’s deliberately chosen to brush all his content and development under the rug. :| (Just don’t sway others to believe what you already admitted knowing nothing about!) There’s another guy who always describes Garou in poor light and condescendingly ‘corrects’ anyone when the anti-hero vs anti-villain conversations come up again, while conveniently ignoring the very words from ONE himself (instant checkmate):

Garou is an “anti-hero,” but I thought he should be more “anti-Saitama” – otherwise, he’d be the same as the other monsters. I didn’t want to show the limits of his potential. He might not be able to win now, but I wanted people to think that if he continues to grow as a monster, he might just be able to fight on the same level as Saitama. The anime emphasized his viciousness, his youth, his whimsical kindness, and his recklessness, which made me look forward to his future.

So taking everything in, I’d love to see how those Garou naysayers would ‘school’ ONE, the professional writer here, with that same fervor they profess to know more about his own work than him, cause I’ll trust the words of the author over what ‘proof’ they’ll try to convince others on the internet with. :P I suppose overall, just trust your gut and use your best informed judgment, to be aware (of who’s being genuinely helpful or an ass) and navigate the subreddit responsibly.

#opm #garou #long post #Anonymous #replies #i may not have an account there but i can still see everything #(the garou haters become easy to spot too)#it also shouldn't need to be said but guys please DO NOT steal/repost my garou edits for karma farming over there either >.<

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tarhalindur · 3 years

Text

Higurashi Gou final thoughts pt. 1

(Spoilers go under a cut:)

Taking this by arc:

Onidamashi-hen: The best executed first cour arc by a significant margin. Probably not coincidentally, it stays the closest to the structure of the OG arc and thus keeps more of OG’s tension ratchet than the other Gou arcs. I have two main issues, and I’m pretty sure both of them can be firmly pinned on the anime staff rather than Ryukishi07 himself. First, it pulls its punch on the stealth sequel aspect. I’m not entirely sure that going for a stealth sequel was the correct decision (it’s a cost/benefit tradeoff), but if you do you’re going for the wham of the sequel reveal, and the anime undercut this by putting the Rika/Hanyuu scene at the start of episode 2 rather than the end of the arc. Second, it overdoes the final Rena fight, making it so over-the-top that it’s difficult to take seriously. Neither of these issues exist in the manga (which has a believable amount of stabbing and has the Hanyuu scene at the end of the arc where it should be), and in the former case we also have a Ryukishi07 interview indicating that this was a change requested by the anime staff, so this goes on them. (Interestingly, by way of contrast I think this approach might actually work well for the Mieruko-chan adaptation that Passione has coming out later this year.)

Watadamashi-hen: The core issue here (above and beyond fridge logic after Satokowaski-hen) is the finale, which landed like a wet fart. It both escalates from zero to 100 *way* too fast and has the worst case of “tell don’t show” in the neo-question arcs - we learn about every single dead body in the arc from Ooishi’s end-of-arc narration. That’s relatively defensible for three of those bodies, which we only learn about secondhand even in OG Watanagashi-hen (though IIRC in OG two of those bodies have foreshadowing from rumors earlier in the arc, and unless I’m forgetting something that’s absent here), but all five? Yes, keeping Keiichi locked away from the final showdown removes fridge logic issues, but you have prominent security cameras - you can at least have him see the aftermath of the showdown on the screens (and freak out because of it). Adding insult to injury, the Keiichi vs. door scenes are also so over-the-top as to damage willing suspension of disbelief. The 0-to-100 issue is harder to fix, because the one thing Watadamashi did right was put the Rika-loses-it scene as an end-of-episode cliffhanger, and “Keiichi et. al. are about to enter the Saiguden” probably wanted an end-of-episode cliffhanger as well for discussion purposes (it might have been able to get away with using the commercial break). The simplest fix is the same one @tsuisou-no-despair floated: cannibalize an episode off of another first cour arc.

Tataridamashi-hen: Amusingly, I think Gou has retained OG’s tradition of having the Tatari- question arc being the weakest question arc. As I see it there are two interlocking core issues here which boil down to the same issue. Tataridamashi-hen goes for a very unconventional method of building tension: it doesn’t, instead relying on the viewer’s realization that something bad has to be coming to do so for it (the old “that can’t be right, we’ve still got twenty minutes left in the episode” reaction I more commonly associate with things like police procedurals). The problem is that this runs into the Endless Eight lesson: even flawless metatext should not be used at the expense of enjoyability of the actual text. And while the arc got some leverage out of “when exactly is this going to diverge?”, there’s a point much like Endless Eight itself when you realize where it’s going to diverge (i.e, not until the end) and that until then you’re sitting through the same events you remember from OG. It works about as well as it did for Haruhi. (Unless you’re a new viewer, but in that case staying too close to Minagoroshi-hen has other issues.) Worse, unlike Minagoroshi-hen itself (which did something similar to build tension but a) non-source readers hadn’t seen it before so it wasn’t foregone the same way and b) you had several more episodes after the subarc for the main event) the arc ends almost immediately after this. (The simplest fix here might have been cutting down on the arc time by speedrunning Minagoroshi events, reducing the amount of time you’d have to wait. You could even have a couple of obstacles collapse faster than expected; this late in the first cour it would serve as foreshadowing for Satokowashi-hen, and would also deal with unfortunate implications concerning the village’s prejudice considering that the staff knew Satoko was going to be the culprit. Trimming an episode would also neatly solve the issue of where to get an additional episode for Watadamashi-hen from!) The good news is that the final confrontation is the best of the first cour arcs (it’s somewhat more realistic than the other two, actually not that far behind some of the more memetastic OG moments except for Teppei’s eyes, and not showing Ooishi’s rampage is forgivable given that they knew they would be actually showing it in Nekodamashi-hen), but that’s damning with faint praise.

Nekodamashi-hen: The best Gou arc. The episode 15 jump cut is the stuff of legends and the best scene in the show by a sizable margin (the one thing the director does well is black humor, it seems), while the rest of the arc isn’t as good, it’s far shorter on demerits than the rest of the show. The one really, really obvious demerit is that they really didn’t need to spend half an episode on the intestines-ripping scene (if Ryukishi07′s comments are to be believed, once again we’re pinning this on Passione), but effects on my stomach aside there are worse issues to have.

Satokowashi-hen: And here we have the other side of the coin; this is the worst Gou arc, and it’s the one spot where I’m pretty sure Ryukishi07 himself gets some of the blame. There’s a few issues here. First, the single most obvious dangling plot thread from Matsuribayashi-hen (Satoshi’s fate) is effectively dropped despite being directly relevant to the other dangling thread that was picked up (how Rika treats Satoko and vice versa); this includes missing an opportunity to show Satoko’s character arc through different responses to learning about Satoshi’s condition. Secondly and compounding, Shion is also dropped along with the Satoshi thread; AIUI this is kind of understandable given final Satoko/Shion interaction in the Matsuribayashi-hen VN (which IIRC never made it into the anime), but dropping her without explanation still leaves something that looks awfully like a plot hole since a single conversation with Shion is potentially enough to stop the events of this arc from ever happening. (”Character X had information that would have stopped the tragedy but never had an opportunity to tell anyone” is a classic tragedy trope, but you should really have a *reason* for that character never having the opportunity as opposed to just having them vanish without explanation.) Finally, there’s just the general issue that while the ending points for both Rika and Satoko are reasonable the path they take to get there just doesn’t quite add up. I can kind of get there via a combination of “blame the director” (the loops montage could and should have easily shown Satoko’s deteriorating mental condition as she watched - using interlaced cuts to her face with changes in facial expression is a classic method) and mind caulk (Rika was exaggerating for effect when she described her desire to go to St. Lucia’s as a long-time thing and it only really kicked in after Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko originally only planned to suicide in Matsuribayashi-2 and only took Rika out with her as a crime of passion after feeling betrayed, hence the next few loops lacking her murdering Rika) but being mind-caulkable is not the same as actual good execution.

I mean, I’ve banged on this drum before, but... the basic concept works. Really well. Satoko’s abandonment issues and Rika’s treatment of Satoko are two of the major dangling plot threads from OG Higurashi (*eyes both Minagoroshi-hen and anime-only Yakusamashi-hen*). It makes perfectly good sense that the latter comes back to bite Rika, especially in a sequel literally titled “karma”. I already suspected Satoko was on the autism spectrum based on OG, her being ADHD in addition to or instead of that makes perfectly good sense given those conditions often overlap. Rika’s desire to escape the well morphing into a desire to escape Hinamizawa entirely? Sure, just present it as that. Satoko steadily losing her support network as her friends are torn away from her by changing life circumstances, then going to a boarding school that she hates, that strips the rest of her support structure for her and starts to take even her one remaining friend (her childhood friend, no less - and one that Satoko is at this point attracted to romantically in true osananajimi fashion) away from her, and then starting to snap with some prodding from a certain witch? That’s a compelling story idea! But as present it just doesn’t quite work, and that’s on the execution.

(Side note: I wonder if some of what went wrong with Gou was just the kind of production issues endemic to modern anime, amplified by the pandemic. I remember at least one comment/blog post somewhere in the wake of WEP’s issues noting some of the effects that production issues can have on an anime, and one of the things they noted was excessive slavishness to the source material as a time-saving measure; that sounds awfully similar to some of Ryukishi07′s comments about how he didn’t expect Passione to take his script quite so literally, and to my admittedly untrained eye it sure looked like there were a bunch more other animation studios than usual mentioned in Gou’s credits...)

Final score: depends on your exact rating system, but given the range I’m looking at I can’t see how I can give it any score other than 3.4/5 for obvious reasons. (Pending Sotsu, anyways. It’s possible that Sotsu will resolve some of these issues - in particular, Ryukishi07 always has struck me as the kind of author who would get a kick into baiting us into falling for the same twist twice; it’s not impossible that the apparent lack of unreliable narrators so far is a double bluff, and that could affect the “question arc” scores in particular. More on this in a forthcoming solution space post.)

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gofancyninjaworld · 5 years

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OPM manga chapter 119 Review: A Conspiracy?

Buckle up, this review gets long. I was away on family business for a few days so I missed this one’s drop. It’s meant though that I’ve had longer to ponder my thoughts.

Core take away for me is that like Hellfire Flame and Gale Wind trying to recruit Sonic set us up to better understand the Ninja arc when it showed up in the webcomic, this ‘glimpse behind the scenes’ at the conspiracies brewing sight unseen is foundation for what will burst into the open later, apparently from nowhere.

Anyway, onto the review. Much more under the cut. First though, One-Shotter is still alive! Looks like his mechanised parts are much more extensive than initially appeared.

I tell you, it doesn’t pay to be a cyborg hero in OPM. It’s just inviting gratuitous cruelty into your life.

Soon Gets Sooner

This chapter, I honestly expected Drive Knight to just leave with Nyan and stay the international Cyborg of Mystery he'd been to date. But he stuck around to talk to Sekingar and what we got was a glimpse indeed to the mystery plot that has been brewing from the very start.

We find out just why Drive Knight has a 100% win record: he never, ever fights unless he has carefully studied and formulated an excellent battle plan. Even if it means sacrificing his fellow heroes like pawns.

And then things get weird. After offering data on the strong monsters in the MA, Drive Knight changes the subject to asking Sekingar about the state of the Hero Association, being very interested in just which capable heroes were left available��to respond and whether or not Blast was likely to attend if the Hero Association were attacked. And then Drive Knight went into full tin-foil hat conspiracy mode, painting the loss of the Metal Knight as a deliberate action by Dr Bofoi to gift the Monster Association with the way to take out the Hero Association.

When Sekingar spoke of not expecting the support heroes to carry out their mission without injury, I’m sure he couldn’t have imagined ending up a casualty. When he tries to call the Hero Association to check, none other than G5 shows up to shoot his hand off. As G5 approaches, Drive Knight makes no move to either attack G5, claiming lack of power, nor to protect Sekingar. Even in extremis though, Sekingar is still thinking about the support team, the hostage, and what action he could yet take. Truly, a hero is being forged before our eyes. He just has to survive the experience.

‘Why not me?’ That’s the central question heroes ask themselves.

Fee, Fi, Do, Fum, Cinderella's At The Ball

We'd seen Garou, who I'd dubbed Sleeping Beauty awaken from his unconsciousness. With a roar, he pummelled PPP into the ground.

Cyborg Cinderella, whom we'd left vacuuming and washing dishes while the others went ahead, may be attending the ball late, but his entrance was no less spectacular. With timing worthy of Saitama himself, just in time, one mighty kick all but split G5 in half, arriving so fast the robot barely had time to register his presence. It's interesting what summoned him; Saitama's punch may have gotten his attention, but it was G5's energy signature that really got him on scene.

Insane kicks, flips -- and upgrades

Kuseno magic extends to clothes: the last time he used Jet Drive Arrow, he ended up naked. Now Genos isn't just very fashionably dressed, but his raiments are fire-resistant and wonderfully form-hugging. Until the clock strikes twelve (or ten in his case), he is here to cut some terrifying shapes.

And now all the pieces are in play.

The chapter ends suddenly and ominously. On one side, we have Genos asking, looking about as cunning as a newborn lamb, what’s going on:

On the other, if it’s possible for an expressionless face to look unamused, then the very cunning Drive Knight looks most unamused:

Meta: “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.”

-- from the webcomic ‘Schlock Mercenary’ (more here)

I’d wondered why ONE had split Genos off from the rest, in difference to the was he’d gone together with the rest in the webcomic. It was definite that ONE intended to test Genos in a situation where he had no support, bu the potential for him to discover something new and relevant to his quest is the last thing I expected.

A peek behind the scenes indeed! Where from and why Genos came to fetch up at Saitama’s door in chapter 7, telling a tale of evil cyborgs and total extermination, we know not. It’s seemed increasingly far-fetched as nearly nothing happened with that storyline and the monsters we meet have nothing to do with the sort of intelligences behind any such cyborg. It’s led to some, too many, fans claiming that in that absence the ‘mad’ cyborg must be Genos himself -- in a twist of logic too stupid for real life [Then again, the typical SF story seems to be written by an individual who never met an actual human being...]. I don’t know about the veracity of 90% of what Drive Knight said, but there is a conspiracy indeed.

So, now we get to understand a bit more about Drive Knight. It’s something I’ve long wondered about:

The thing about Drive Knight is that he hasn't told us who he is yet. At present, he's a blank slate for whom many alignments are possible without betraying who he is. He could be entirely a hero, just acting in ways that are more independent than most would appreciate. He could be a member of The Organization, acting as a mole in the Hero Association. He could be an entirely amoral person, aligning himself to one group or another as suits his goals and all would be consistent with what we don't know about him. Once he declares who he is, we'll be down to many fewer possibilities. -- myself, Reddit post

“Everything that can be used must be used.” With that, Drive Knight has finally told us who he is. He is highly calculating and will use anything he can to achieve his ends. At the expense of anyone and anything.

What to make of all of this? One thing we can be certain of. Drive Knight really hates Bofoi, considers him a threat and reads the worst possible motives into his actions. He wastes no time in trying to sew suspicion about Bofoi whenever possible. Why? We don’t know.

At its most benign, Drive Knight may be like Zombieman and the House of Evolution, seeing evil in Metal Knight and a grand conspiracy where none actually exists. A less benign possibility is that Drive Knight may be projecting his ambitions onto Metal Knight and describing what he fears Metal Knight has in possession in order to thwart them (whoever ‘them’ is).

Since we as readers have a quasi-omniscient view of the story, we know that quite a lot of what Drive Knight said about Metal Knight is factually wrong. We know that he is wrong bout the circumstances under which Bofoi lost the Metal Knight. We know that he is wrong about its fate. We know most of all that he is absolutely wrong about Bofoi wanting the capable heroes scattered or defeated. Dr. Bofoi has been furious with the Hero Association executives for risking the lives of any heroes raiding the Monster Association precisely because he feared what might happen if the ranks of the heroes were thinned.

Interesting that G5 is definitely its own entity! Once I realised that the tactical transformations formed around Drive Knight, I’d started to entertain the possibility that the two of them were the same. That said...

I could well understand Drive Knight having done his own work to understand the nature of the strong monsters actually in the Monster Association base. However, there is one piece of information G5 has that it could not have reasonably obtained without Drive Knight sharing it.

When they ran off a second time, they ran off separately. More pertinently, there’s no reason for G5 to show Sekingar this information: it puts psychological pressure on him, but if G5 just wants to kill him, there’s no point to it. Instead, Drive Knight drawing attention to the support team and G5 drawing attention to the hostage act as a double-team interrogation to see if Sekingar has some way yet of reaching Blast in time of most extreme need.

We’ve also learned that Blast is all but retired. It falls into line with what we've gleaned from the webcomic and suggests that he's quite old.

He's just a poor boy from a poor family: spare him his life! (and limbs)

Dr Kuseno's occasionally prodding Genos to not forget his primary task of finding the 'mad' cyborg, as well as his warning not to fight it alone both make great sense. In OPM, you get good at what you actually practice. Fighting monsters as a hero has been very useful for Genos developing raw fighting prowess. It has done nothing to prepare him to face the cruel, conniving, and creative people that the not-quite-mad cyborg and those behind him are. Watching Genos ask straightforwardly what the situation and contrasting it to Drive Knight's complicated narrative was to realise how painfully naive Genos is.

It's all very well to counsel non-engagement, but you deal with the monster before you: situations aren't neat and don't wait until you feel prepared. I'd hoped for another conversation between Genos and Drive Knight but this looks far more dangerous. I've no doubt that Genos won't die, but his participation in this battle could be VERY short.

So many ways this story could wend. A few that come to mind:

The most tragic:Drive Knight convinces Genos of his predicament, perhaps offering data on the cadres as a sweetener and Genos escorts him and the fallen heroes out of the war zone. As soon as Drive Knight is sure Genos is safely underground, he'll kill Sekingar... and probably the support heroes into the bargain. If he burns them, the only fire-wielder known is Genos. If he's really clever, catching up with Waganma and Food Battler, dragging them back and burning them too creates a compelling narrative of Genos (already suspected of colluding with the monsters) waylaying the support heroes as they tried to retreat and killing them all. Drive Knight can show up at the Hero Association and continue his activities. No witnesses, a convenient scapegoat, and near total freedom to carry on his agenda.

Mortal combat. No matter what changes to the webcomic ONE has planned, Genos isn't about to get killed, so Drive Knight is either going to have to run for it or else get killed. Knowing who Drive Knight is, there is no possibility that he would defeat Genos and leave the latter alive -- even if he were that careless, Genos announcing that any enemy that gives him trouble will find that he comes back very quickly and very much stronger would put paid to that. (yes, he’s so naive!) Either way, Drive Knight won't be working as a hero any longer. For Genos, victory is likely to be expensive -- he runs the risk of sustaining critical damage, which will force him to retreat, or of wasting precious, precious energy that he could really use later. Very interesting repercussions will definitely follow.

Hit him in the heroism. Drive Knight could use the heroes and Sekingar as hostages and get Genos to allow him to leave unmolested. He won't be coming back to the HA but it looks like he knows all he needs to. Genos won't like it, but as a person who has long established his willingness to take incredible punishment to protect others from harm, he won't have any other course of action. I suspect that this is the most likely outcome.

Whatever actually happens! Only ONE (and Murata) know. I know I need the next instalment!

Bonus question. Where is the cat? Drive Knight dropped it when G5 showed up and it hasn't been in evidence since.

#OPM #manga #review #meta #long #Drive Knight #Sekingar #Genos #heroes #yay Genos is back #and ominious #wah ending on such a tense moment #please be a little cunning Genos #just a little

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keepyourpantsongohan · 5 years

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10 reasons you like kakayama

1. Partnership - There’s something really nice about the way that Kakashi is always asking Yamato to be around. It’s one thing that he’s assigned to Team 7, but then Kakashi consistently wants Yamato by his side for stuff. Not just Naruto’s training, but on the Itachi Pursuit Mission, or to see the Raikage. It’s more than about duty, because especially with the latter event, it’s a non-combat mission and is also far outside the bounds of what could be reasonably asked of Yamato. But they go together, because they trust each other and they’re a team in every sense of the word.

2. Teasing - I’ve already talked about this at length, but I genuinely think it’s so funny how playful their relationship is? Like I said here, it’s shown that Yamato was well aware of what Kakashi was doing here (i.e. “sweet-talking” him) and yet he falls for it anyway. And then, as shown in that same post, he’s just as ready to make fun of Kakashi at the Kakuzu and Hidan fight. I love that they have such a relaxed relationship.

3. Synchronicity - I love how often they won’t even exchange words to communicate a plan, but somehow they know each other well enough that it doesn’t matter. You see this almost every time they face an obstacle together - from the Itachi Pursuit Mission, where Kakashi merely says, “Yamato” to have him launch a jutsu multiple times, to the Land of Iron, when they perfectly surround “Madara” in seconds. This could also fall under a “Battle Couple” trope, if you wanted to label it that way.

4. Their established history - Tied to the last point, but I love how they’ve got this background context you can play with as you like? The anime gave them a specific story, but you’re not limited by that if you want to change the duration of their history, or how exactly it played out. All the specifics we get from the manga are that “[Yamato] was teamed with Kakashi in the ANBU,” and that the name Kakashi knows Yamato by is “Tenzo.”

But take for example when Kakashi uses the rasengan: Naruto is absolutely shocked. We, as the readers, are shocked too, because we’ve never seen Kakashi demonstrate this ability. But Yamato isn’t the least bit surprised! He just looks faintly proud. You could come up with dozens of reasons why Yamato might know this about Kakashi. With such a long-standing bond, you have so many moments to play with, both past and present.

5. Parallel Powers - A lot of the most significant relationships in Naruto (romantic or otherwise) are built on common ground. Kakashi and Yamato are no different. Both had their powers, in part, foisted upon them, in bodies that weren’t really meant to handle it. No one can understand those burdens more than each other.

6. “Tenzo” - This is a part of their history but I think it deserves a point of its own. I love that there is a name that only Kakashi calls Yamato by. Not only does it mark their closeness, but it’s such a sweet name too. One definition, as referenced here, is “heavenly creation.” It’s particularly an endearing thing to call Yamato, given that his powers were artificially induced.

7. Taking care of each other’s kids - Again, this is something I’ve already spoken on at length but it is so significant to me that Kakashi goes out of his way to make sure Sai knows that Kakashi accepts him, and that Yamato does the same for Sasuke. I’m a sucker for a good Found Family trope.

8. Office Romance - Since we already get this impression that there’s a lot of talking behind the scenes between Kakashi and Yamato (Yamato telling Kakashi personally about the Tenchi Bridge mission, them arranging Team 8 to partner with Team 7, them being in a tent together after the Pain attack) the idea that all these conversations took place while they were A) kissing, or B) possibly vibing with each other, is a lot of fun.

Even if they were to get together when Kakashi’s already Hokage, it’s still an office romance because Yamato’s ANBU. The idea of Kakashi dating one of his ANBU guard is both hilariously unprofessional and incredibly entertaining. (“Kakashi stop assigning your boyfriend to guard this room so you can kiss him,” says Shizune. “I’d never do that,” Kakashi replies, even though he definitely would and did.)

9. Tenzo genuinely seems to have feelings for Kakashi - Tenzo makes it clear that he thinks Kakashi is a strong ninja; he tells Tsunade he would be honoured to take on Kakashi’s team, and he believes that Kakashi should be Hokage after the Five Kage Summit more than Kakashi does. The data books even put Kakashi in his “Would like to fight” section which is generally code for That’s Who I Think is Strongest (e.g. in the first data book Naruto wanted to fight Sasuke and the Third Hokage, Sasuke wanted to fight Itachi, Kakashi wished to fight Minato, etc.)

But more than that, there seems to be a running subtext in a lot of the Naruto media that Yamato’s a little into Kakashi. The data books describe Yamato’s feelings as “bordering on adoration.” It’s hard to chalk up a phrase like that to mere idolization, especially given how many times he offers a contrary thought to Kakashi both to his face and indirectly.

If I’m being real for a moment, I think on Kakashi’s end, any relationship people want is a projection of who you think he’s suited for. He doesn’t express romantic feelings for anyone for the duration of the series. The only time he ever addresses romance at all is in regard to Rin, and even that’s tied up in a whole lot of guilt so you can’t be certain how he feels in all of that. But to me, since there’s this person whom I perceive to have feelings for Kakashi, who is his friend, who balances his traits, whom he relies on, teases, and who knows him so well, it’s very easy for me to see a situation where he could look at Yamato and be like, “Oh shit. Me too.”

10. Happy endings - They have such a rough go of it. Especially during the war, where they are both forced to confront the sources of their deepest trauma. Kakashi, dealing with Obito being a different person, a person who hurt all the people he cared about, and him, and then changed his mind and died. That’s so much to unpack, and it happens in the span of a few days. And Yamato, dealing with being subject to mokuton experiments again and used against the people he cared about. So I love the idea of these two characters who have struggled and fought their way to recovery finding some measure of peace in each other. I just want the characters I like to be happy and goofy and in love (see Konoha Hiden for them smiling at each other while wedding planning for Naruto like the saps they are).

#adding a cut bc this got REAL LONG #kakayama #tenzashi #mangacaps #naruto meta #long post #top 5 asks #or top 10 lmao #this is so excessive lmao i guess i had some Thoughts #ask meme

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cheekymochiiii · 5 years

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100 Year’s Quest Chapter 18-20 Tea Time

*camera pans to me sleeping on loveseat only to be woken up by my producer throwing a mug at my face*

Me: Mother*beep*! damn it Craig you *beep*! throw that at my mother *beep* face again and I’ll cut your *beep* off and shove it up your—

*screen displays message that says: please stand by*

*screen returns and shows me sitting with my cup of tea cool as a cucmber*

Me: *clears throat* Sorry about that. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately and as a result I’ve been *says through gritted teeth while glaring at Craig* very irritable.*relaxes* I realize I haven’t aired any shows since Chapter 17, but if you haven’t read the new chapter of Fairy Tail’s 100 Year Quest then that is your fault and I’m not bothering to put a spoiler warning right now. Despite my doubts to having a guest on today’s tea time, production—I mean I thought it would be best to have one anyway. Today we’ve got someone who is on Team Natsu and has had a front row seat to all the exciting *beep* that’s been happening in chapters 18-20.

Me: *gesutres to side of stage* Please audience give a warm welcome to the little braveheart Wendy Marvell!

Wendy: *walks in waving with her cute smile* Hi everyone it’s good to see you all!

Me: *admiring her adorable innocence and then remembers I have a show to shoot * Thank you so much for coming on the show Wendy it means the world to me.

Wendy: Well I heard from Panther Lily and Carla that you’re really...*hesitates to find right word* passionate.

Me: Awe that is a very accurate word to describe me, especially considering I’m a Pisces but sometimes I’m an Aquarius. It depends which website you read but for the most part I identify myself as a Pisces more than an Aquarius.

Wendy: *confused* you don’t look like two fish to me or like the terrifying Aquarius I know.

Me: *laughs at her innocence* actually Wendy here in my world our zodiac signs are given to us based on the month and day we are born in. Each zodiac is given a season in the year.

Wendy: then what happens?

Me: absolutely nothing. zodiacs are basically there just to make excuses for ourselves and how we act.

Wendy: so it’s like...alcohol?

Me: *considers this and shrugs* I mean you’re not wrong. Anyway we’re getting way off topic. Let’s focus back on what’s been happening in your world or at least in chapters 18-20. Most of these chapters were pretty *beep* short so there’s that but I’ll take whatever dose of Fairy Tail I can get.

*production tells me in my ear piece I need to stop cursing due to Tumblr restrictions and reminds me I could get flagged for being inappropriate again*

Me: *states outloud* that’s what the beeps are for you mother *beeps*

*production slaps forehead*

Me: Sorry for that interruption Wendy. My producers are being a bunch of *beep*

Wendy: *stunned at language*

Me: *continues casually* I’m not going to focus too much on Chapter 18 because I’ve already briefly talked about it in my last show. I want to give a simple summary of it. For starters I want to talk about you Wendy and what a bad *beep* you were for being able to find a spell that allowed the non-dragon slayers of Team Natsu to actually do some harm to the dragons y’all will be fighting. Naturally, I’m curious about how obtained this spell but I’m assuming you nor the creators will be willing to share that information with me.

Wendy: *genuine tone* I’m really sorry but I can’t share that.

Me: Coming from you, I’m okay with it. So Team Natsu is officially in the battle with the Water God Dragon and boy are y’all struggling. He’s just really letting y’all have it with his magic and this is still only the first dragon y’all have to defeat for this quest.

Wendy: This Quest will definitely be the hardest one I’ve ever had to do.

Me: You guys have been through so much you barely got a breather.

Wendy: I like the adventures with my friends though. It makes my life more full.

Me: Awe

Audience: Awe

Readers: Awe

Me: You are so precious Wendy and you need to be protected at all times. I’m getting off topic again. Chapter 18. Team Natsu. Battle with Water God Dragon. *stops short statements* I mean, that’s basically it. *remmebers* oh yeah Touka defeated all of your guild mates back in Magnolia.

Wendy: I know I was worried about them too. I still am since you guys haven’t figured out what happens.

Me: *waves and says nonchalantly* I’m sure by the next chapter we will. *wonders internally have I been spelling Touka’s name wrong this whole time?*

Wendy: What makes your so sure?

Me: We’ve been focused a lot on Team Natsu these last few chapters, so I’m going to assume with the screaming-into-pillow ending the creators gave us. The scenery will most likely change come next chapter. Anyway, now it’s Chapter 19 and we are still worried about the favorite team in the world, Team Natsu. Y’all are putting up a good fight but it’s not doing much good. In fact, Natsu tries very hard with all kinds of new and secret spells he’s been holding back from us to defeat the Water God Dragon. However, it nearly becomes too much for our favorite pink haired weirdo hero and he begins to be sucked up into a deadly looking whirlpool created by the Water God Dragon.

Wendy: *nods at the memory* I remember. We were all worried about what was going to happen to Natsu.

Me: *sideglances* even Lucy?

Wendy: *doesnt get what I’m hinting at* yes of course she’s always worried about Natsu on missions and if he might get hurt. Natsu too. They both want to protect each other.

Me: *grinning* most interesting *sips tea* Natsu nearly gets sucked into the whirlpool when ta-dah! *makes spirit fingers* a scaley hand snatched Natsu from it. I had a strong feeling from that ending that the hand was extremely reminiscent of a certain dragon we all love...loved.

Wendy: *nods solemnly* Natsu’s father Igneel. All of us lost our parents that day too unfortunately but not in the same way Natsu lost his tragically.

Me: *trying not to cry* I hear that *sniffles* so that’s how we are left in Chapter 19 those bastard creators. *pauses* hey why wasn’t that bleeped?

*production informs me that bastard isn’t that bad of a word compared to the ones I had been using and reminds audience that this show is for mature audiences only despite the bleeped out words because beeping everything is a struggle for the editing team*

Me: okay now it’s on to the most recent update, Chapter 20. We find out that scaley hand that rescued Natsu is indeed a dragon! We, being the readers, also notice how incredibly and unmistakingly similar this dragon and Igneel look.

Wendy: We were all honestly terrified when this dragon revealed himself. We didn’t know whether he was there to help or hurt us.

Me: Understandable I mean look at that thing. However we find out he’s mostly there to motivate Natsu to defeat the Water God Dragon and ultimately decides the best way to help Natsu is to set the fish city on fire using its own fire. While this seemed discouraging the dragon wants Natsu to consume the fire so it will help him defeat the Water God Dragon. The dragon also says he wants to fight Natsu at his best himself. So why does this mysterious Igneel-looking dragon want to help Natsu and also fight and defeat Natsu? Well that’s what the big reveal of this chapter was.

Me: *takes dramatic pause*

Wendy: *smiles knowingly*

Audience: *holds breath*

Readers: *yawns*

Me: *SHOUTS* ITS IGNEEL’S MOTHER *BEEP* SON YALL. *STANDS UP CAUSING TEA TO SPILL* HIS “TRUE” SON. AND BOIIIIII I’D BE LYIN IF I SAID THAT BOI AINT FINE BECAUSE HE IS ONE GOOD LOOKIN DUDE. I MEAN DO YALL SEE THOSE TATTOOS?!? ALSO WHAT THE *BEEP* DOES THIS MEAN? HES A FIRE GOD DRAGON! HO-LY HELL

Wendy: *nervously sips her tea and realizes why Panther Lily and Carla called Me intense*

Me: *still raging* I JUST CANT BELIEVE IT! I CANT WAIT TO SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING AND IVE GOT A FEELING ITS GONNA BE GOOD *relaxes and sits back down* Just wow Wendy I cant wait for what this Quest has in store for us because we are only 20 chapters in and it’s been ridiculous.

Wendy: *still smiling* I know it’s an exciting quest and adventure that truly tests the feelings, will, and strength of our team.

Me: *tearing up* I can only imagine. I can’t wait to get to the end of this long and winding road but I also want it to last forever because I don’t want Fairy Tail to end.

Wendy: *stunned* what do you mean, end?

Me: *saddened* we originally weren’t going to find out what happened to y’all on the 100 Year’s Quest but then, thanks to this super cool and awesome fandom, we were able to push the creators to continue the manga.

Wendy: Wow we really owe a lot to our fandom then

Me: *nods respectingly* yes yes we do. I know I owe a lot to my followers here on the blog, er, show.

Wendy: Why’s that?

Me: Apparently 500 people like my blog, I mean show, enough to follow me for every time I post something new. *begins meaningful speech* I couldn’t be more happy or thankful for every single one of them. I never imagined I would have this many followers because I started with 0 followers and had no connections or friends on here who already had followers and give shout outs to me, right away of course, but now people seem to like what I post and I literally couldn’t be more thankful for them. I post for them.

Wendy: *tearful* that was a really lovely speech.

Me: thanks Wendy. I suppose I should make an edit dedicated to all of them.

Wendy: that’s a nice gift and very kind of you.

Me: no *shakes head and looks off into the distance* how kind of them.

To be continued...

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mysticalibra1994 · 2 years

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My BNHA fanfic / OC's story (part 1)

Okay, so I know that I'm late for the hype train on this (according to the manga readers) and I also know that certain politics should stay away from entertainment media, but I've figured that this must be said, due to how I feel.

This takes place in the same universe/timeline of BNHA, only the difference is who's telling the story.

My OC's name is Kubo Etsuko. Her mother's name is Kubo Chou. Her father's name is Blake Colemann. Blake was a cop born and raised in the States, but due to how reckless he is on duty, the entire population (or the majority of the population) has voted to boot him out and ship him to a location where they have STRICT gun laws. Let's just say that the culture clash has nearly ripped him a new one!

For starters, he nearly attacked one of the members of the Purple Yokai (a rival Yakuza of the Shie Hassaikai due to standards) and his interpreter interrupted the arrest while apologizing to the member.

"I'm truly and sincerely sorry about this embarrassment. Please, forgive the new guy, he's the gaijin from the States." "It's alright. Due to my looks and personality, I get it from my old hometown."

After about four years living in Japan, he has earned his Japanese name "Koreman Bureeku" and he still hasn't learned anything from his current training; would rather use his gun instead of hand-to-hand combat. So, his boss has decided to replace his gun with a water gun (how long do you think he had until he emptied it?) Eventually, he came across a "social butterfly" in his life as he tries to enjoy his drink at a local izakaya. Her name was Kubo Chou. The best way to describe her is an open-minded rebellion with a heart of gold.

When they first met, they didn't really get along; according to him, she was too rebellious and she should be in school. According to her, he needs to realize that he's in Japan so he should respect their customs.

"Plus, I've already graduated from high school. But, I don't see myself going to college. Instead, I'd rather be a hostess." "Now, you see? That's the problem with people like you!" "Wow... Already showing your true colors, huh?"

As they parted their ways, Chou ended up in a district of Ginza and she fell in love with the atmosphere. While she looks around for any hostess clubs, she couldn't help but notice a small group of people wearing Tyrian purple trench coats with golden trim. Due to them standing near a building with a banner that shares the same color as the trench coats, Chou assumed that that's the dress code and rented a long cocktail dress from a nearby boutique that also shares the same colors as the banner and the trench coats.

The same group pretty much treated her like she was a lost puppy and took/invited her in. The young, yet mature-looking woman with tired eyes offered her some non-alcoholic drinks and some complimentary snacks.

"Okay, here's your ginger ale and some vegetarian gyoza. Don't worry about the payment, the first ones are on the house and the drinks are complimentary for women." "Really? Aw, how nice!" "'Nice'? Heh, wow. Aside from the Purple Yokai, nobody's ever called us 'nice' before... Hey, you should meet our leader. He goes by the name 'Papa' because he's like a father figure for anyone who needs one."

As Chou and the same woman from before waited for Papa's arrival, they slowly got to know each other; the woman who offered her ginger ale and some gyoza is Kiken Hana, and her Quirk is "Flower Danger"; she can detect the poisonous and toxic plants to extract the poison and/or toxin so it could resemble a vegetarian of fugu. She was born and raised in the small town of Saga, so the population labeled her as a villain instead of giving her a second chance to understand why.

A few minutes go by and the hostess club is informed of Papa's arrival. Chou, at first, was a little intimidated by his height and "club bouncer stature". But, after getting to know him, it turns out that Kiken was right; he is like a father figure.

"So, what brings you here, princess?" "Well, most of it is curiosity and some of it is a job offer," "You want to be a hostess?" "Well, I was voted to be a class rep due to my 'social butterfly' nature."

Papa was reluctant at first; Chou seems a bit too nice like she still has hope in her eyes. But, he didn't refuse her offer. Instead, he asked Kiken to show her the ropes. While that was happening, Papa was given a glass of his favorite drink. As he enjoys it, something was off... Suddenly, Papa begins coughing violently as he grips his throat and stomach. The members of the Purple Yokai didn't know what to do since this has never happened before. Who would want to poison Papa?

Chou sprung into action as she requests Kiken for a glass of milk. Of course, she didn't hesitate as Chou stays by Papa's side. Kiken hands a glass of milk to her and she holds it to Papa's lips. As he took his time drinking it, he slowly feels a little better. The rest of the Purple Yokai stood in awe.

"H-how did you know?" "What did you do?" "Are you gonna be alright, Papa?"

Chou has decided to come clean. Despite being Quirkless, it never stopped her from having a keen eye for detail. In fact, it's one of the reasons why she was nominated to be the class rep from her high school.

Suddenly, as he recovers, Papa remembers the first time he was told that he was Quirkless. Back in his days, you were only a "somebody" when you have a Quirk. His parents didn't even hesitate when they abandoned him. Ever since then, he made a decision to never be like his parents.

"Hey, princess? How would you like to work as a hostess for the Purple Yokai?" "Uh... Does that mean I can only serve to the Purple Yokai?" "No, it means that you're one of us. You're a part of Papa's family. So, any questions, comments, or concerns?" "Just one; would I be fired for getting a tattoo?" "As long as you wear something that can easily cover it, I don't mind." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, that's only the first part of the backstory of Etsuko's parents. In the next one, you'll get to know more about Chou's home life and how she views the society of "Heroes vs Villains". Maybe her daughter (at some point) would feel the same way. Maybe she'll gain her dad's personality. Please, stand by until further notice.

#BNHA #OC #maybe political #maybe not #something has to be said

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man-i-dont-know · 6 years

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BNHA Chapter 167: Thoughts and Spoilers (emphasis on spoilers)

Well, I am on time for once, mainly cause I really want to talk about this chapter. So, let’s get into it. ((Fair warning, this one is long. Half way down is about where the important thing is discussed, it starts with a “...”))

Bakugou is clean up crew for the ice slide, he’s pissed but he likes to blow things up. The kids also help with the clean up and the tear is so thankful and promises to teach them well. Todoroki is there making sure kids are a safe distance from Bakugou while he is on demolition duty. The kids and high schoolers part on a positive note, promising to be friends, apologizing for taking stuff, and possibly agreeing to take up a hero role in the future (that kid who Todoroki said had a good quirk for rescue purposes). All the high schoolers leave the building some time later, which i was disappointed by, apparently this was just a lecture before the make up exam? I was under the impression that this was the actual exam... oops. Anyway they leave and run into a group of people outside.

All Might, Present Mic, Endeavor, Meat Grinder and Meat Grinder’s teacher are all talking. It seems that the two schools wish to work together more closely due to the League of Villains sudden advances on both schools. Endeavor tries to act like a father to Todoroki, and Todoroki dodges a head pat (I know it sounds like he is a toddler, but in this situation it hardly seems immature). Endeavor says that he is proud of Todoroki, which provokes a look of shock, or at least that is what it seems like. Anger is probably a better word. Here is what I think though, since the emotion is hard to pin down immediately, it is probably meant to be confusing, or a mix of emotions. Which makes sense, Todoroki has never once seen his father be supportive in a way that hasn’t been fulled by ambition or hate. Endeavor then goes farther and says that he will be a hero that will make Todoroki proud of him. It is a step. I believe that there should have been other things that he should have talked about or apologized for first, but if Endeavor went straight to the heart-felt apology right off the bat, then that would have been terrible and unconvincing character development. I don’t know how I want his character to develop, but I am looking forward to whatever it is.

Todoroki doesn’t seem impressed by what his father said, which makes sense. Then possibly my favorite reaction panels came up: Inasa watched all of this, punched himself, hard, and went straight back to his straight-face, all this has Camie in the background looking on with concern. I like this little add in cause right after, Inasa goes up to Endeavor, the only hero he has ever hated and says that he will root for him to improve himself. I love this cause it shows both Endeavor and Inasa are going to grow as individuals (which is weird to say an adult will grow as an individual, but people never really stop growing, maturing, or gaining wisdom). This is definitely a reoccurring theme throughout the series, growth. Learning from mistakes and making the best of the opportunities that are given to you. I really love that theme.

While I did just say I like that theme a lot, when everyone parted ways, Todoroki looked away from Endeavor smiling, and that doesn’t sit too well with me. I suppose the main reason is that Todoroki’s trauma probably relates to a lot of different readers, and I don’t particularly want to see Endeavor become nice and Todoroki forgive him while all those readers either lose sympathy/empathy or someone they can relate to. I also don’t like it because I would think it would take much longer for Todoroki to come to terms with everything, but instead he is showing signs of accepting already (that one smile). However, personally, I want to see them both grow, and to back up my argument I say this, it would have to be a whole family thing to do it. Todoroki was the one singled out by his father, his siblings were mostly ignored, which is painful in its own way (if the father was a good guy), so in the end, forgiveness would rely on Todoroki and his mother. The mother seems even less likely to forgive, but we don’t know her personality at all beyond her... mental break... I suppose you could call it, and that sure as heck is not her whole personality. I will be able to better judge where everyone’s relationship in that family if I got to see some conversation between Todoroki and his mother, along with the siblings (ignoring the Dabi = Todoroki theory, cause Dabi might not be an abusive family member but he is a mass murderer/arsonist and in a family full of heroes, that is probably frowned upon by all members of the family).

We then see some repercussion of the last arc, Sir Nighteye had his funeral, Nighteye’s office was taken over by Centipede, the internship was suspended and Centipede and the other sidekicks are awaiting Mirio’s return. Eri has also woken up and her fever has gone down, her horn that seems to be the center of her quirk has shrunk and is little more than an adorable little thing that makes Eri that much more endearing. Unfortunately her mental state is still considered unstable, so Deku and the others haven’t had a chance to see her again, which suuuuucks big time. I want them to all meet and be happy. Is that too much to ask? Probably. But I will await that day to eventually come. And finally, we see them in an actually class setting (which is something that has always thrown me, lots of anime and manga take place in class rooms but I have never seen anyone actually doing classwork, with the exception of Light from Death Note in episode 1). Well they are learning Calculus it looks like, Kaminari is straight up dead (understandable), Jirou and Tokoyami seem lost but have good poker faces for the teacher, Momo is diligently working and Deku is feverishly working, even though he eventually gets it wrong (relatable). And even though Mineta is a little gremlin, his interaction with Deku after he got the question wrong was strangely close and seemed totally normal, like “hey man don’t worry about it.” Doesn’t change the fact that he is a gremlin though...

... Then the beginning of the true reason I wanted to write this one out. Aoyama appears out of nowhere during the break and starts feeding Deku cheese. The sheer effort put into the two panels where Aoyama feeds Deku is astonishing, as well as the closeness of these two dudes was... tense. The whole act felt intimate and Deku was blind-sided by this. Aoyama’s comedic timing is fantastic too. He has a whole panel to himself where he is just chewing on cheese, another panel of him trying to offer more cheese and a third whole panel of him just swallowing cheese, never once did he blink. Truly perfect timing and spacing. Then, just to be extra, he sets up his lunch, first with a tablecloth over his desk, then a wine glass, plate, knife and fork (does he carry those in his school bag?), and his wine glass is filled with juice more likely than not. So, ultimately, he is 110% extra.I’m not done there though. The narrator (future Deku) comes in and says that he never could understand Aoyama, and that his true colors would soon show. “True colors? What could that mean?” Well I am glad you asked! It means that in the last couple panels of the chapter, Aoyama is literally standing outside Deku’s window at night (since before 1 am) watching him do homework and watching him sleep. There are a couple things that are absolutely horrifying with this picture: Aoyama’s posture is so that he is leaned up against the window, palm flat against the glass, he is staring down at Deku while he is in bed, his facial expression is the same as always (meaning a tight smile), and he has some wacky bootcut type pants that flare way out at the bottom below the knee. So.... what the hell? Where did this come from? Where is the explanation? Do I want an explanation?

Here is how I see it, there could be three things happening here, I will list them in from most understandable to least understandable. 1.) That is actually Toga, which would explain why she feed him earlier and is watching him so closely, she wants to as close to him as humanly possible since she “fell in love” with him, and it also makes sense that the League of Villains wants to keep a close eye on him. 2.) Aoyama is the traitor, so he is watching Deku for the purpose getting information for the League. 3.) He is... just... “deviant.” Somehow got into U.A. so that he could do the same thing Mineta is doing, to get close the attractive people. The problem with why this is so shocking is that the feeding and the watching at night are intimate and stalkerish actions respectively, which hasn’t really been talked about so far. Abuse, extreme violence, careless violence, and even arousal/excitement from violence (Toga/Muscular) have all been discussed, but crimes of a seemingly sexual nature is particularly uncomfortable to consider especially when most of the cast are great, pure-hearted high schoolers. Heck, Deku has nearly fainted from dealing with Mei, how would he react knowing that someone is watching him while he sleeps with possibly indecent intentions? All of what I just said was about option 3, I won’t go into option one because that one is the most understandable of the three, so I will just discuss option 2.

He is the traitor. If this is the case, then it was/is brilliantly executed. Aoyama’s personality is so over the top all the time that it would probably be easier to describe it as someone role playing as a stereotypical French person. Since his whole persona seems to be a character, it is so abstract that it is hard to understand even if you spent a lot of time with him, which he hasn’t with anyone. Plus his natural dramatics would make it easy to lie, since dramatic lying would look the same as dramatic truth telling. If that is confusing imagine this: “hey did you do the homework?” “!!!! Oh Non!!!! I started to do so!!!! Until I saw a stain my suit or armor!!!! I simply had to polish the suit!!! It would not be nearly SpArKlY enough had I left it!!! My ImAgE!!!!” “... ok dude.” Obviously an exaggeration, but that is the gist, if he is normally like that than how could anyone tell if he was lying? Then there is the fact about his quirk.

A while ago (I forget which post), I talked about who the traitor could be based on the usefulness of their quirks, but Aoyama has such a straight forward quirk, how could it possibly help? After this chapter I started to wonder something, how come we only ever see Aoyama using his quirk with his belt on? Sure it could be a safety measure (like X-Men Cyclops’ shades), but what if the belt was just a tool? And we don’t actually know what Aoyama’s quirk is? Truthfully, that would have been hard to get by the design company, but I like the theory so I an gonna bypass that fact for a moment. If Aoyama’s “quirk” is simply the belt, imagine the potential of him having a hidden quirk, or worse yet, he could give the belt to someone like Toga and boom, suddenly the shape-shifter also has the original’s “quirk.” Toga would be indistinguishable from Aoyama, and since his personality is so wacked, have small/major changes in personality probably would be overlooked, the same way that Toga was able to replace Camie so well. ((this could also mean that Aoyama isn’t the traitor but simply had his place switched based on the recommendation of the real traitor. Basically the Six Braves situation where “oh you are the traitor, now the number is good. Oh wait there’s another? Then there is another traitor?”))

Ok. I’ve tired myself out. I’m done, tapping out. Thank you for reading, sorry it was a long post, but I feel that it was needed to get my thoughts out there. So thank you again for reading, I hope you all have a great day.

#bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha thoughts #bnha theories #katsuki bakugou #todoroki shouto #Yoarashi Inasa #camie bnha #endeavor #deku midoriya #aoyama yuuga #toga himiko

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eyedelater · 7 years

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chapter 100.11 translation notes and other notes

i’ll mark translation notes with a * at the start of the note so you can read just those if you want. also these notes are pretty rambling jsyk

*i was torn as to whether to continue the "translate 'nii-san' as 'brother'" tradition set forth by the prior scanlator or to continue my own habit of littering the text with "nii-san"s left and right to reflect the fact that ritsu doesn't really ever use actual second-person pronouns when addressing his brother, but rather sticks to referring to him as "nii-san" even to his face. because of course the "brother" option would make for a more immersive english language reading experience, you know. but i guess as just an editorial choice, i've decided to stick with the somewhat incongruous combination of having ritsu call mob "nii-san" and keeping honorifics attached to names but translating "shishou" as "master." except for that one omake where i needed it for the joke. well, if i were going for an archival-quality translation, i would probably change some things, but this is fine for now

so it's only the wrapping of the bouquet that's been damaged over the course of this whole ordeal... he's been keeping a perfect barrier on the flowers themselves... ;_;

ritsu is killing me here, and yet in retrospect his actions are the option that makes the most narrative sense. like, if he had instead straight-up tried to challenge ???% and aggressively attempt to stop it, that might move the plot along quickly, but it would neglect all the character building we see here. if he had addressed ???% as Not his brother, with a colder and less self-endangering attitude, mob wouldn't be so emotionally affected by ritsu's speech (and it's clear that mob being emotionally affected is going to make a big difference in whatever happens next, since we're shown his percentage meter seven (7) times in this chapter). but this sweet, understanding, brotherly speech that strongly echoes mob's anipeko speech... accepting ???% as one more nii-san in his life, erroneously or not... and showing that ritsu has been paying this much attention to his brother's well-being, and that he noticed how much mob's been holding himself back... this pure-hearted desire to just Help mob with his inner torment, completely lacking the fear of his brother that plagued him for years.... ritsu's so good TToTT

*when ritsu says "the truth is... i wanted you to talk it out with me," i wasn't entirely sure whether that meant something like "i was the one who wanted to come to you for advice," or if it was like "i really did just want you to open up to me so i could help." i've settled on the latter, given the context of the lines that follow it, but yeah, the grammar of the sentence still confuses me just a little. (the raw sentence is like "hontou ha... nii-san ni soudan ni notte hoshikatta" [can't be bothered to go type that in kanji and kana] and the "soudan ni noru" part translates more literally to, like, "to counsel" or "to take part in a consultation" and i spent a long time puzzling over whether that meant ritsu wanted his brother to consult with him [i.e. mob is still the one whose problems will be discussed and solved during their consultation] or whether ritsu was the one who wanted to consult with his brother [i.e. talk to his brother about his own problems]. like, i was having a hard time grasping whether the verb was transitive or intransitive or what.) either way i left the translation intentionally somewhat vague (in that "talking it out" doesn't indicate whether "it" refers to mob's worries or ritsu's worries) to account for this slight uncertainty... i hope that doesn't make it more confusing to read...

also i don’t quite understand the difference in connotation between “hontou ha” and “jitsu ha” so i translated the former in the same way i’ve translated the latter in the past... which bristles me a little.

also i can’t decide whether to transliterate the syllable pronounced as “wa” but written as “ha” as “wa” or “ha”

two things i think i can say concretely:

mob's emotional percentage meter operates separately from ???% (despite the nomenclature i've decided to use for that latter entity)

[hunter x hunter warning] ritsu's interpretation of the relationship between mob and ???% is like, an alluka/nanika thing. like, killua had to recognize that nanika is his sister too, a bonus sister within his usual sister, and that's pretty much what ritsu has recognized here, seeing ???% as a bonus brother within his usual brother... erroneous as that conclusion may or may not be.

*the lid analogy is translated pretty much literally even though i think it sounds kinda lame. there’s just nothing badass about lids. however, when ritsu says that This nii-san is "lifting the lid and rearing his head," what he literally says is "opening the lid and coming out," which as a literal translation struck me as sounding criminally lame... so i gave it the old razzle dazzle... just giving y’all full transparency here.

*i was conflicted about possibly putting a sound effect footnote below the last panel of the chapter, because before i learned any japanese i remember being very upset about a certain sound effect in a certain chapter of a certain manga that i couldn't read to interpret what exactly was happening in that scene, which was a cliffhanger and thus especially wanting my desperate interpretation. so now i try especially to annotate any sound effects that might be instrumental in helping the reader understand cliffhanger-type scenes. but in this case, idk, it wasn't too much of a cliffhanger, plus it's a syllable that's hard for me to transliterate hyper-accurately like i like to... but anyway i Am making a translation note of it, if not a marginal footnote in the chapter itself, to note that the sound effect in the last panel of chapter 100.11 is "pi;!" like, the "pi" in "pizza" but shortened and staccato as though interrupted by a glottal stop. yeah. hard to transliterate. so that "pi" sound effect is probably shortened from "pika" which is the sound effect for a flash, which makes sense because there's a flash in that panel. that brings us to the other reason i didn't annotate that sound effect in the chapter, which is that this sound effect isn't especially easy to interpret. it doesn't really give us any good hints as to what is happening to make that sound. really it seems to just be the sound ("sound") of an abrupt flash, in a panel that shows an abrupt flash. so it doesn't give us much new information, but i wanted to clarify what information it does give us, i guess. (the sound effects in the penultimate panel are just “gi gi” which are jaw-clenched struggle noises as mob... struggles. such non-instrumental sound effects are the ones i don’t feel bad not annotating.)

i say [sound (”sound”) of an abrupt flash] because "pika” is not the kind of sound effect that’s meant to illustrate a literal sound. like, you and i know that a flash of light doesn’t sound like “pika.” it doesn’t sound like anything. it’s just light. but there’s just some japanese sound effects that are like that, describing a phenomenon or mood that doesn’t actually make a sound. i find such onomatopoeia/ideophones to be useful and intriguing. here. also, note that i could be mistaken in my interpretation and the “pi” in that panel could be representing an actual sound (like a beep or something) that just happens to coincide with a flash.

NOW, as for the accuracy of ritsu’s interpretation of mob’s situation with ???%... i’ll address that in more detail in a separate post. but i do think that it makes sense to put more stock in mob’s declaration that “this isn’t me” than in ritsu’s interpretation from the outside looking in. i’ll also note that ritsu’s interpretation doesn’t align perfectly with my main ???% hypothesis (since my main hypothesis doesn’t really describe an alluka/nanika situation). but that doesn’t mean i’m discounting ritsu’s interpretation right off the bat, nor do i plan to stick with my hypothesis irrespective of canon developments.

BUT WHETHER OR NOT I AGREE WITH HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE MOB + ???% SITUATION, I CAN FIRMLY DISAGREE WITH HIS DECISION TO TRY TO CONFISCATE THE BOUQUET

#mob psycho 100 spoilers #mp100 spoilers #MOB BLOG MOB LOG

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chris-tea-n · 7 years

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non-yaoi review #1: Shimanami Tasogare

Status: on-going

My avatar is from this manga, whoop whoop! This is a slice of life manga with a pretty realistic art style that is often more impressionistic so there aren’t much screentones (I don’t like screentones, please don’t sue me). It features realistic queer representation rather than the mainstream fetishisation that is all too common in mangas. There are really interesting imageries like this one below, and coupled with realistic art, the manga is filled with poetic and expressive art.

Story:

A mysterious character called Anonymous commissioned a lounge to be built, which came to be a safe space for queer characters to gather at and be open about their identities, around people queer or not. It has a very progressive take, as the main character, Tasuku Kaname, calls out his crush for making homophobic jokes, defying the usual apathy that greets homophobia in manga. The manga also tackle heavy subjects like prejudice within the queer community, pitching the homosexual MC against a transgender character.

The story starts off with the MC being exposed for having gay pornographic websites in his search history and therefore comes under scrutinity of his peers for being gay. As it was the last day of school, the MC is filled with anxiety for when school reopens. Suddenly he comes across a mysterious woman who jumped off the side of a the mountain he was ascending upon. Intrigued, he went to her place of origin and found a cozy, rustic lounge with people seemingly unfazed by the dive that mysterious woman took, and said that she was out to take a stroll which she had always done.

Characters:

Tasuku Kaname is the gay MC of the story, a teen troubled by his sexuality, in an environment where his sexuality will only bring him taunts and harm. He spent his holiday at the lounge and doing revitalisation projects with his friends from the lounge, of whom help him to understand and come in term with his sexuality.

The person who started all this is Anonymous, a rather disputed character in the perspective of other characters. The MC seems to think of her favourably because she provided a safe haven for him to confront his sexuality without judgements. However, when asked about identity issues, Anonymous evaded MC’s questions with vague answers, which just makes the MC even more confused about the abstract idea of identity. In response to this, the manga’s adult lesbian character Haruko Daichi adviced the MC to not take Anonymous’ words to heart because he may just end up more confused than before regarding his identity.

Anonymous is an elusive character but nevertheless important as she symbolises freedom of identity and thus she doesn’t identify with anything. Since she is rather elusive and has little dialogue, the reader does not know her well, and will not be able to describe her (since her dialougues are neutral and pass no judgement, no one really knows what she thinks of anything).

Haruko had also said that “she isn’t anything at all but she can live like that”, which further emphasises her anonymity. Her lack of identification is an antithesis of the MC who feels that his sexuality is ever more apparent, rather than non-existent in Anonymous’s case. He also struggles with identifying himself with homosexuality, as he risk repressive treatment by his classmates if they found out that he is gay. In essence, he cannot live without acknowledging his identity, yet any actions resulting from his sexuality can jeopardise his social standing. This inner conflict successfully portray the turmoil that closeted queers may experience.

In a way, Anonymous’ lack of identity is an attractive state of being from the MC’s point of view, which explains why he constantly wants Anonymous to answer questions regarding his identity. The keyword here is ‘can’, because she can live without an identity, but the MC can’t. When he saw Haruko kissing her wife, he was so overwhelmed by fantasies of being linked with his crush romantically, that shards of glass-like material burst out of his chest. The MC is emotionally and sexually tied to his identity and therefore cannot escape it. And if he does, they may come pouring out of his heart like he is losing a part of himself.

Queer identification is a sensitive topic to thread on as different fields of studies have a different take on it. (e.g a psychological research paper may use a different definition of homosexuality compared to a sociological research paper.) Furthermore, in today’s age, it is a politicised identity and that can cause even more confusion for homosexuals even if they are ‘certain’ and have came out. This excerpt is by a gay man called Benoit Denizet-Lewis who took part in a research where they measured that there were sexual arousal present when he watched pornographic film featuring women:

This shows that anything a queer person says has the chance of being used against them due to the nature of their identities being politicised, and as a result may lead to an existential crisis regarding their sexuality. In this case, there are hints of internalised biphobia as bisexuality can read as a ‘catnip to the Christian Right’, due to bisexuals’ opposite-sex attractions.

For MC, it is at a sociological stage where he could risk ostracism from his social groups, rather than a political one. The reason why he is so attracted to interacting with Anonymous is because he wants to emulate her and be identity-less. On top of not having any affiliation, Anonymous is shown to ‘take a stroll’ by jumping off a hillside and floating around, further emphasising her association with invincibility and freedom, both of which the MC desire.

Conclusion:

The manga has a relatively progressive take on homosexuality and a firm grasp on homophobia and being closeted. Coupled with breath-taking illustrations, and through imageries, powerful metaphors; it is a recommended read of a gay teen struggling with his identity, while trying to balance his social life with his schoolmates and queer community - the latter of which impart wisdom and lessons on tact that teens from conservative societies could possibly want to hear.

Anyway, here’s a bonus page with botanical illustration, just because plants are lovely:

#review #shimanami tasogare #analysis #sorta?#queer identity #gay identity #homosexuality #politicised identity

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ahis2013-blog · 7 years

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yashiro dissection

This is gonna be long so it’s also gonna be under the cut

Hi. I read very deeply into things. The nice thing, though, is the author of BokuMachi seems to write very, very much to read into.

I want to start with a disclaimer: while I draw heavily from canon, many topics I will discuss will also have a heavy basis in headcanon and personal interpretation. Since peoples’ interpretations can vary, you may not agree with everything I put down. Still, my main goal is to give food for thought; Yashiro is a fascinating character no matter how you decide to interpret him.

I will be sticking to the manga’s canon strictly, and I also want to make a note that I’m going to be more or less regarding Another Record as non-canon, as some of its claims simply don’t line up with the canon of BokuMachi and BokuMachi Gaiden (namely, that Yashiro in Another Record claimed he targeted girls who “knew that life was hell,” when it was made clear in the manga that Nakanishi Aya actually had a fine home life, and Hiromi was killed out of convenience. The first girl he targeted, Atko-chan, he targeted because he became interested since she also had a hamster).

So, without further ado: Mikohara Gaku, aka Yashiro Gaku, aka Nishizono Manabu.

The Canon:

It’s important to have a starting point, and so, let’s start from all the things we concretely know about Yashiro Gaku.

He is roughly 18 years older than Satoru biologically, as Satoru is 29 when he travels back in time, and in 1988, Yashiro is 28 years old. This makes him born in roughly 1960, and puts his fifth year - ages 10-11 - at 1970. His brother’s death occurred in the year 1972, during Yashiro’s seventh year, and presumably, he moved out shortly after with his mother, when his parents divorced. He left for college at age 18 in the year 1978; in his third year, he returned to Mikoto Elementary for a two-week teaching practice. His third year would be about 1980. It’s at this time that he attempts his first serial murder, though it’s thwarted by Satoru (who is, at most, three years old at the time). Three years later - 1983 - he becomes engaged to an unnamed child psychologist, whom he later kills. It is at that point he begins to see the spider’s thread on his own head. And finally, in 1987, he becomes the teacher for Satoru’s fifth-year class, setting the scene for the events in 1988.

In the final timeline, the serial murders of children end after Satoru’s “accident,” though the way Kenya phrases it, Yashiro did not stop murdering altogether (as he did in the anime). During the 18 years of Satoru’s coma, Yashiro marries into the Nishizono family, changes his last name and his first name’s reading (same kanji, but apparently “Manabu” is the more common pronunciation), and inherits his father-in-law’s position on the city council. He becomes the budget planner. His wife is never seen, so it is most often presumed that he killed her, as well.

Using an event planned for the hospital, Nishizono intends to reawaken Satoru’s memories and kill Satoru (and, less importantly, Kumi). However, Satoru catches him while he’s in the middle of his preparations, confronts him, and tackles him off the bridge he set alight to try to kill them both, where law enforcement is waiting. At this point, Yashiro’s own spider’s thread snaps, and he gives a full confession to law enforcement with “a smile on his face,” and is practically set to earn the death penalty for his crimes.

Yashiro’s murders have a very clear modus operandi - at least, the ones before Satoru’s “accident.” Yashiro will kill a target - most often a young girl, ages 8-12, sometimes multiple, and pin the blame on an unwitting patsy. This MO is so particular that the lack of a scapegoat in Satoru’s case is evidence enough for Sawada and Kenya to believe that Satoru somehow managed to throw the killer off his game - however, because of the patsy’s existence, official police never look further than a convicted suspect, thus allowing Yashiro to get away cleanly after each “murderer” is caught and start again somewhere new. It can be thus assumed that any murders he commits without a patsy are significant in some way. The murders have no sign of sexual violence, though Yashiro will definitely use sexual attraction to cast suspicion on his scapegoats, and the murders themselves are often dispassionate. Of our known murder methods, only one was outright violent - smashing Hiromi’s head open (more on this later) - while the other three are very tame - smothering a drugged girl with CO2 fumes, freezing someone to death quickly, setting a drugged girl afloat on a lake with a leaky boat. He also authored two “suicides,” which are only appropriately violent.

Yashiro also mentions that he targets people on whose heads he can see a spider’s thread - though the exact nature of these threads - supernatural, like Revival, or a product of Yashiro’s own delusions - is unknown. I am inclined to believe they are a product of Yashiro’s own delusions, for reasons I will elaborate on further; this essay as a whole will assume they are merely the result of Yashiro’s mind, and not some supernatural external force.

Satoru has never had a thread.

The entire conceit of Yashiro’s spider threads stems from a short story of particular interest to him, “The Spider’s Thread” by Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. The story itself is interesting, but not as important as Yashiro’s interpretation - and he helpfully provides a summary for us in his backstory chapter. There will be more on this later.

Finally, Yashiro once owned a pet hamster named Spice. He owned Spice some time after his brother’s rapes began and Spice died about two years later, some time after Yashiro’s brother died. Spice was the only hamster of a litter Yashiro attempted to drown that survived, and the sight was “so thrilling” that Yashiro decided to raise Spice.

That about does it for the hard canon that we are using as our framework. All sections after this will feature a heavy dose of theorizing.

Analysis: Childhood (1960-1973)

Yashiro Gaku was born Mikohara Gaku to a wealthy father in Ishikari. He attended Mikoto Elementary School, same as Satoru.

Now, the main problem we encounter when analyzing Yashiro’s backstory is that he is something of an unreliable narrator, but not in the traditional sense. I have no doubt that he is truthful about his account of the backstory - I would even call him candid - but Yashiro fundamentally lacks the emotional lens necessary for the reader to fully grasp the situations he describes without reading between the lines. That is what I hope to provide.

Now, the way Yashiro describes his life before his brother’s rapes begin is this: he is showered with blind love for his outstanding grades, he is adored by his classmates despite not being very close to them, his brother has always been violent and foul-tempered, and, upon becoming the unfavorite of their parents, began to take out his frustration about it on Yashiro through physical violence.

Yashiro’s tone remains dispassionate and practically apathetic throughout, even going so far as to say he was “indifferent” to his brother’s “daily” beatings.

Yashiro is a ten-year-old or younger when the beatings begin. There is no possible way for a child - human being, even - to actually be indifferent about receiving daily beatings so severe that they leave you bruised and bleeding.

Just ask Kayo.

The people who WERE indifferent were his parents. Yashiro’s beatings - an everyday occurrence that left him with bruises and bloody noses - happened in their own home (in Yashiro’s own room, even)! His mother is depicted as a housewife, who has the leisure time to hang out with friends after school, so it’s very easy to assume that at least one of the parents are present in the house while this violence is happening. And yet, for all the “blind love” they rain down on Yashiro, not a single mention is made of any attempt to stop his brother from committing brutal violence on him every single day.

There is also the specific language Yashiro uses to depict his parents’ relationship with his brother - that they “gave up” on him, that they “didn’t know how to cope” with him, and - most damning of all - that his brother became “useless” to them.

The point at which one child would describe his brother as being “useless” to his parents is the point at which those parents are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, failing in their duties as parents.

So when you extract from his indifferent tone the actual circumstances of Yashiro’s “oppressive” childhood, you get a horrific picture of daily violence, parents who refuse to do so much as chastise the one doing the beatings, teachers that don’t do anything despite how well-known the older brother’s problems are (it can be easily explained away as that the father is using his wealth to keep the school quiet to avoid scandal), classmates he can’t sympathize with, and pressure to continue to succeed to receive what little scraps of parental affection are actually up for offer.

Yashiro is not “indifferent” to his situation out of choice, but out of necessity. He understands that there is no one who will come to his aid, that there is no way to escape or relieve his suffering. His parents will not help him, the teachers will not help him, his classmates cannot help him, and furthermore, cannot even understand his position.

Here we can draw another parallel to Kayo - where Kayo reached out for help, sent an SOS in the form of her essay for the class anthology, Yashiro instead turned inwards, blunting his own emotions to the point that he could say that he was “indifferent” to the senseless violence that had become merely a fact of life. In order to rationalize his situation, he sympathized with his brother. No one would say “it’s fine that he beats me, it’s necessary for him” while in their right minds, but that’s exactly what Yashiro does: “He needed a target, now that he was useless to our parents.” Yashiro’s parents have taught him that his suffering - his very identity - are practically non-entities. All his parents can see is his apparent success at school; they intentionally turn a blind eye to his pain.

By the time his brother begins to force Yashiro to help him rape girls, Yashiro is already emotionally blunted and in a heavy state of learned helplessness.

In this section of his backstory, it is once again important to remember that Yashiro’s recollections may be factually accurate, but lack an emotional lens to process the information with, as a result of the emotional blunting he carried with him all through his life. He describes himself as participating “earnestly” as his brother’s assistant, but more often than that, he actually mentions how much of an unwilling accomplice he is.

Because of his apathetic tone, it’s easy to assume it wasn’t a big deal to him, but we have to remember his emotional state by this point, even if Yashiro himself fails to acknowledge it. Yashiro has been taught through what has likely been years of experience by this point that there is no one on his side. That he doesn’t have any avenues to go to for help: his parents obviously don’t care, the school likely has its hands tied with regards to the wealthy Mikoharas, and obviously, Yashiro’s 11-year-old classmates aren’t of any use.

For Yashiro, he only has two options available: either he refuses to help his brother (and this is assuming that the first time his brother asked for help, 11-year-old Mikohara Gaku even knew what sex and rape were) and gets “severely punished,” or he gets his brother what he wants and doesn’t get beaten like he has every day for the past few years of his life.

His brother would rape a girl “every month or so,” and in exchange, Yashiro stopped being beaten. Now, I won’t say Yashiro was born an angel - I think, even in the most idyllic of childhoods, he still would have grown up somewhat cold and aloof - but let’s be honest: this is a practically impossible choice to make for anyone. Daily, painful beatings, knowing no one will ever come to your aid, or tricking a girl every month or so into getting raped?

Yashiro is the type of idiot that goes all-or-nothing in whatever he chooses to do, so once he made his choice, he went whole-hog on it.

Again, Yashiro is incredibly candid and forthcoming with his backstory in this chapter, and it never at any point seems like he’s trying to excuse his actions - only give a factual account of the events that occurred. Therefore, as much as we should trust that he performed his job “earnestly,” we should also trust just as much that he was an “unwilling accomplice.”

Since, again, Yashiro was only 10 or 11 at the time, it’s also easy to interpret this as his first try being not only unwilling but unwitting, that he didn’t actually know what his brother was going to do, and, once he DID know, that it was already too late to back out.

In any case, there’s a line he says in this part that’s very interesting:

“I was not convinced of the ‘me who was forced by my big brother.’“

Now, it’s important to note that around this age is where children start to really develop their own identities. Yashiro is beginning to wonder exactly who he is, and he isn’t “convinced” of the “accomplice” role he’s being forced into - and, by extension, the “golden child” roles his parents and teachers expect of him. The Spider’s Thread comes into play at this point of his life. The exact way that Yashiro interprets it, too, is also rather interesting.

In the original tale, after the thread snaps, the Buddha watches with sadness; though in his eyes, a corrupt heart wishing only for his own salvation falling back into hell is just. Then he continues on.

Yashiro’s version makes the Buddha seem much colder in comparison, having the Buddha simply wander away while quipping “what a merciless man.”

Even more interesting are the questions Yashiro asks about the story. “What if the thread had broken under Kandata’s legs? ...Didn’t the Buddha predict what Kandata would do? Then, was it just his whim to send the spider’s thread down?”

These questions are easy to gloss over, but I think they’re vital to understanding the self-identity Yashiro begins to build during this critical point in his development. He is incriminating the Buddha for being frivolous.

If the Buddha had already predicted that Kandata would do as he did - if he already knew what the outcome would be before he sent the thread down - then, walking away while shaking his head, it’s as if all of Kandata’s suffering was merely entertainment for the Buddha to prove himself right.

This lends more meaning to Yashiro’s follow-up questions: “I wonder if Kandata kept staring up at the ceiling with longing every day? Or if he became nicer to the other sinners even though he’s stuck in Hell?”

There’s an obvious answer to the second question, and it’s no - why would Kandata become nicer, knowing there’s no second chance? What could Buddha have been trying to achieve, by basically proving to Kandata that Kandata deserved everything he had coming to him?

“What would Buddha do?”

The Buddha in Yashiro’s story is not a nice one at all.

It’s also important to notice his act of “vicarious gratification” with a younger Shiratori Jun here: he gives him a pair of shoes (because Yashiro has another pair at home, it’s not a loss to him at all) and then spouts some “mature-sounding lines” about courage. He later muses that those words were meant for himself. What are those words, exactly?

“No matter how strong a man is, he has his fair share of problems. Courage is all about your determination not to give up in times of trouble.”

These are words meant not for Jun, but for Yashiro himself. Obviously, Yashiro’s “times of trouble” are his current predicament of continuing to be his brother’s unwilling accomplice, or being severely beaten. So what does giving up mean?

For Yashiro, “giving up” already means “dying.” He has no other options available to him, after all - his brother is already strong enough to simply smother a girl to death; the next beating Yashiro takes from him could be his last. (Again, obvious solutions of reaching out to CPS and the like are nonexistent in Yashiro’s mind.)

It is also directly after this that Yashiro meets Spice.

Now, Yashiro’s drowning of the hamsters is about as far from the standard “sociopath tortures animals for fun” bit as you can get. Yashiro just needs to “take care” of them. Easiest, most efficient way to do that is just to kill them (death is already on his mind, after all). He doesn’t even stick around to watch them struggle; he leaves for dinner and the comes back to find the hamster that will become Spice standing on the corpses of his siblings.

Why the name “Spice”?

This is a manga in which names are meaningful - and, in most cases, almost painfully on-the-nose. “Satoru” means “to understand” (and, according to jisho, “to achieve enlightement”). Sawada’s first name, Makoto, means “truth.” “Kenya” means “to be wise,” Kayo means “addition,” Airi means “love,” Hiromi means “beautiful,” and Mirai, of course, means “future.” It just sort of continues on like that.

So what’s the meaning behind the name “Spice”?

Well, here’s where things really get interesting, since I think my theory diverges a bit from popular conceptions on this point.

“Spice” is named after the “spider” in the story of the Spider’s Thread.

First of all, phrases like “spice of my life” don’t really exist in Japanese, and while we can argue that the author knows a fair bit of English, it still seems out of place in a story with so many names so laser-guided to be on-the-nose. The theory becomes more plausible when we look at the katakana for both the words -

スパイス vs. スパイダー

Now, the more common way to say spider in Japan is “kumo,” but if we’re willing to assume the author decided on the name “Spice” because they knew some English, then why not assume as well that they knew enough English to know how “spider” sounds in it?

As we’ve seen with Yashiro’s interaction with Shiratori Jun, he’s desperately trying to convince himself to stay alive despite his suffering. And then, coincidentally, here comes a hamster who is succeeding in doing just that: fighting for his life and his right to live, Spice is practically a miracle.

What does “vicarious gratification” mean? It means gratification through the feelings or actions of another. Spice is the “spider” that Yashiro is saving, and the “spider” that will save Yashiro - because Yashiro can live vicariously through Spice. Spice, who has so much fire to live that he’s willing to step over the corpses of his siblings. Spice, who - if Spice can continue on, then Yashiro can, to.

Yashiro is not a sociopath. For his own safety, he’s simply blunted his emotions to the point where he’s unable to directly experience them. His emotional life consists only of the “void” left behind when he obliterates his own negative emotions, and the “thrill” that comes of things that make him feel as though he has worth in being alive, through “vicarious gratification.”

So - then Yashiro’s brother accidentally kills a girl.

Now, let’s remember that Yashiro actually sympathizes with his brother to an extent. He understands why his brother is lashing out, and even feels a little responsibility for it. So for Yashiro, when his brother attempts to frame Yashiro for the crime, is betrayed.

The spider’s threads are Yashiro’s own delusions, born of his own intentions. The moment he sees the spider’s thread on his brother is the moment, unconsciously, that he has decided to kill him.

If Spice can live standing atop the corpses of his siblings, well - so can Yashiro.

It is at the moment Yashiro kills his brother that Yashiro asserts himself as his own entity. The murder of his brother is Yashiro’s defining moment as his own identity. It is when Yashiro stops being the “me forced by my big brother.”

Too bad he can’t let anyone know about it.

In any case, to add more proof to the unhappy household fire, the parents divorce over a scandal, when a loving family should be banding together even tighter. For all Yashiro’s posturing, this was not a happy family by any measure of the word.

Analysis: Teenage and College Years (1973-1987)

“You often hear that someone is ‘as good as dead.’ What does that mean? It means they’re not fulfilled, either mentally or physically. Right, in other words... “...I’m dead, at this very moment, as I’m living a peaceful life without risk.”

Of all the few scenes we have of Yashiro as a high schooler, one of them was a pointed shot of him on the outside of the fence on a building’s roof, in the exact panels we have where he talks about how little attachment he has to life - his, or anyone else’s.

Now, Yashiro never explicitly mentions a wish to die. It’s likely he’s not even aware of it himself, considering how blunted his emotions have become by this point. However, he DOES mention that what kept him alive was Spice, and, well...he’s gone now.

There’s some other stuff in this chapter that I will be covering later when I get to analyzing his murder methods, so let’s just move on to the juicier topic:

His fiancee.

Now, Yashiro’s opinion of her is rather high. She’s smart, she’s pretty, and having her fail to recognize him was enough of a disappointment that Yashiro began to see the spider’s thread on himself.

This, again, has the same problem of being told in a completely apathetic tone, so let’s review the actual situation, and try to find the emotional lens that Yashiro was experiencing the events with, even if he’s not consciously aware of it.

The fiancee is a child psychologist Yashiro met when she did a talk at one of the schools he was teaching at. This being three years after his third year of college (read: he’s only had maybe two years of teaching under his belt, period), it probably means they were dating for perhaps a year prior to the engagement.

Because of Yashiro’s apathetic tone, it’s easy to write her off. However, there are four reasons why she’s actually a very pivotal character in Yashiro’s backstory:

1. She’s brought up in his backstory at all. In fact, several pages are dedicated to her, where a one-off text-bubble about once having a fiancee who got too close to the truth and then having to dispose of her would do. In fact, she’s more important than Spice’s death and all of Yashiro’s high school years combined, just going by page count.

2. Yashiro actually references her earlier in the story, when Satoru asks him out of the blue why he isn’t married yet. She’s the “painful mistake.” Now, this may just be her use to him as a “factor to project my normalcy,” but the wording is rather specific (and I checked the japanese raws to make sure) - he calls her a painful mistake. (”So I’ve been too careful, I guess...”) That’s an odd word to use when the official ruling was a suicide - if your former fiancee committed suicide before the wedding, wouldn’t you call it more of a painful “experience”?

Yashiro is, in that panel, telling the full truth - which he actually likes to do quite often. He views her as a “mistake,” not an experience. There was something that went wrong there that was significant enough to warrant referencing her as early as chapter 27.

3. Her murder is one without a false culprit. Again, there not being a false culprit for Satoru’s accident is enough for Sawada and Kenya to assume that Satoru managed to throw the killer off his game. The same can be said of the fiancee’s death.

4. It’s after her murder that Yashiro sees the spider’s thread on himself. This is a fact that can’t really be ignored: why her? Why then? The spider’s thread, after all, has a single meaning given to us: Yashiro kills people that has the spider’s thread on them (or, rather, once he has decided who to kill, he sees the spider’s thread on them). And yet, he’s unwilling to kill himself. And yet, the spider’s thread becomes present after he murders his fiancee and gets away with it. Why?

Well...Yashiro wants to get caught.

Someone as brilliant as he is can easily cook up lies that don’t rely so heavily on the truth. If he really never wanted to get caught, he could do it easily - he evaded Sawada and Kenya for eighteen years, after all. And yet, when he interacts with Satoru in 1988, he’s constantly dropping hints and half-jokes as to his true identity - “so only kidnappers like you visit a place like that,” “Kayo is now safe,” the entirety of his speech on how to get close to a girl and, as mentioned above, his calling his fiancee a “mistake.”

Remember all that discussion on the building of his identity? Here’s the culmination of it: Yashiro’s identity has been cemented as that of a murderer, and he can’t tell anyone about it.

He is completely alone, just like he was when he was a child. Not a single thing has changed. And Yashiro’s emotions are so deadened and disconnected from his conscious processing that he’s unable to realize that not being alone is what he truly wants, but on some level, it’s all he wants.

This woman, his fiancee, was brilliant. And she was a psychologist. AND she was his fiancee. If ANYONE would be able to piece it together and figure it out, it would be her.

Now, here’s the thing about suicides - the jumping-from-a-building kind is relatively hard to fake. If there’s signs of a struggle, it points to foul play; if there’s drugs in their system, it points to foul play; if the person in question obviously has lots of plans and an active social life, it points to foul play. The margin for error for making sure that it looks like a suicide is very low. And, what’s more...

...Her death probably took place quite a while after she asked the “forbidden question” as a result. Meaning that Yashiro was able to whip out an alibi he probably had prepared in advance, and assuaged his fiancee’s fears enough that he was able to maneuver her into a position where he could kill her and make it look like she jumped due to stress from her job.

The “mistake” Yashiro made was the hope that she would see him for what he truly was, because, by all accounts, she should have. When she died, so, too, did Yashiro’s hope that someone would be able to see him. That he would no longer be alone.

(In other words, that was when Yashiro realized he was in hell.)

But who would be the one to cut his thread, then, if no one could even prove he existed at all?

Analysis: Murder MO

Yashiro kills a young girl or girls and then frames someone. Then he skips towns, rinse and repeat.

Why?

We know he’s not sexually attracted to young girls - the lack of sexual violence and the dispassionate murder methods are proof enough of that. We know he doesn’t have grudges against young girls. So...why?

I’ve seen lots of interpretations, and I think mine is...quite a bit different.

Yashiro is recreating his brother’s murder.

“My big brother was living inside of me.”

Yashiro kills a young girl, just like his brother did. Then, like his brother tried to frame him, Yashiro frames an innocent person. And then he sticks around to watch them be apprehended. (Why else would he stick around to watch Satoru get apprehended by police, and risk Airi or Satoru recognizing him?)

“I needed ‘something else’ that could take Spice’s role. I was quick to find the answer. Someone's death on my behalf. And the sight of someone else who resists death, or their tragic fate...they made ‘life’ feel real to me.”

We’ve already established that Spice’s “role” to Yashiro was basically that of a surrogate life. If Spice could live, then Yashiro could live. And with Spice gone, Yashiro was faced with his loneliness, emptiness, and death once more.

The most crucial aspect to his crime is not the murder itself, but the false culprit that he sets up. The murder itself is just an aspect of the “scenario” he keeps repeating: the moment that he asserted his own identity, his own right to live. What he really gets out of murdering is that same feeling - the feeling of being alive - by watching his scapegoats struggle for their own lives.

What’s up with the spider’s thread imagery, then?

Well, let’s go back to one of Yashiro’s more pressing questions about that story: “What would Buddha do?”

Buddha, as Yashiro sees him, is not a benevolent figure. Yashiro’s Buddha is frivolous, toying with Kandata on a whim for “vicarious gratification.” In a way, Yashiro is emulating him, but let me be clear - Yashiro’s role in the story is not that of the Buddha. Yashiro sees himself as the sinner, which is why Spice - the “spider” - is so important to him.

If the Buddha sends down a spider’s thread of salvation on a whim, then on that same whim, Yashiro will cut it. What would Buddha do? Yashiro is only following by example.

Yashiro is interesting to me because of his tragic self-destructing nature. What he really wants is, in a sense, to be validated. For someone to see him as he truly is, for someone to acknowledge his true identity and existence. However, he’s too smart and too clever to get caught, and he’s too dissociated from his own emotions to realize what he actually wants.

He’s someone who’s been alone for all his life that desperately craves some nature of interaction with another person on a level deeper than superficial, but because of what he’s decided to do (that is, serial kill), he’s unable to share that with anyone. On one hand, he felt like he had no choice - he had to keep living, he’d do whatever it took to keep living - but on the other hand, he’s practically destroyed his own hope with his own hands, and on some level, he recognizes that, hence why he has a spider’s thread on his own head.

Analysis: Post-Satoru (1988- )

“You’re the man that is supposed to bring life’s happiness to me.”

Yashiro’s fixation on Satoru is also very interesting, since it’s basically the culmination of all his repressed feelings focused on a single point.

When Satoru was able to predict Yashiro’s movements and circumvent them, to Yashiro, it was like everything his fiancee was supposed to be.

Again, Yashiro’s only capability of experiencing emotions has become a “void” of blunted emotions and the “thrill” of anything even remotely resembling a positive emotion. (Yashiro’s life is full of misery, self-imposed or not, so his “void” is rather large). So Satoru represents to Yashiro a great many things:

Satoru is, first of all, an equal. Someone who sees Yashiro’s presence, someone who can validate Yashiro’s existence. On that count alone, Satoru fills Yashiro with thrill - because Yashiro is not alone anymore. However, after miraculously surviving the murder attempt, Satoru also takes the place of Spice in Yashiro’s mind - the “spider” that is to save him.

What is the decision Yashiro ultimately makes?

“I choose...to move towards the ‘end’ using my own hands. And so, Satoru, the things you risked your life for...take the form of ‘death,’ and be my ‘end’...”

In other words,

“The spider’s thread is mine alone!”

And, just like Kandata, the thread snaps, and Yashiro is sent back to hell - Satoru wants nothing to do with him, everyone glares at him with contempt in their eyes, and he has nothing left but the memories of the spider’s threads and all of his regrets.

Well, this scene can also be interpreted as Yashiro making it to “Paradise,” since, after all, he’s fished out of a lotus-filled pond - and make no mistake, BokuMachi is a work without coincidences. I’m still puzzling this one out, in any case. Thoughts are welcome, haha.

Though, since Yashiro is poised to get the death sentence...maybe it’s Paradise after all?

(In the end, Yashiro isn’t someone who holds grudges or hard feelings. I think the reason he admits to all of his crimes at court, rather than just accept the rulings on the few that Kenya and Sawada managed to actually nail him with, is just his final act of “vicarious gratification” - when the hero wins, they should win absolutely, don’t you think, Satoru?)

#Boku Dake ga Inai Machi #erased #erased spoilers #yashisato #yashiro gaku

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