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quirkless-and-embarrassed · 4 years

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Regarding the character ask meme: I'd love to see your take on Tamaki!

HE IS ONE OF MY FAVES. As you can probably tell by my icon. I’m sorry this took me so long, but I couldn’t resist beginning the new season as I was working on this, aaand geeking out over the anime took up more time than I thought 😂

Answers under the cut because I could not resist including lots of images and because whoa this really got away from me. Spoilers for season 4 of the anime!

Favorite things about him:

tl;dr adorable+disaster+badass = instant KO

i. He’s never believed that the quirk makes the hero. Granted, it’s from his own insecurity that he believes that, but even when Mirio’s quirk was a liability, Amajiki looked up to him as a great hero. It’s especially refreshing to see because everyone else places so much emphasis on what their quirk can do.

ii. Also, his insecurity. Amajiki describes himself as a plain, boring person so terrified of failure that his brain goes blank when he even considers it. He’s not blush-y or stutter-y or those other tics associated with cutely shy characters—his face is kinda awkwardly inexpressive…he actually looks constipated when he attempts to address class 1-a during his debut…and I get a sense of stillness from him, like someone who freezes up instead of fidgeting. But he’s not fishing for encouragement. He’s likely to bluntly, unhappily shoot down any attempt to praise him because that makes the pressure even worse! No “thank you for believing in me, I’ll do my best,” no, “oh you’re too kind, that’s not true,” he’s like: “no, just…no. shit. what now? I’m not Mirio.”

iii. His relationship with Mirio. What he admires most about Mirio is how, when he goes down, Mirio always rises back up—like the sun—filled with warmth instead of with self-recrimination. He draws people in and fills them with energy. Amajiki painfully believes he isn’t capable of any of that, but he trusts Mirio, and Mirio tells him that there’s plenty of warmth to him even if Amajiki can’t sense it in himself, and even if Amajiki is filled by fear at the idea of failure, he, too, energizes Mirio when he faces his problems anyways. They talk, build each other up, and accept each others’ feelings. Amajiki still wants to be like Mirio (cue “imitation is the sincerest form of…”), but he’s learning that even though he’ll never be Mirio, he and Mirio are alike in the ways that matter most.

iv. it’s as gay as the day is long.

v. How steadfast he is. Given his anxiety, it’s not immediately obvious, but Amajiki’s doubts and insecurities center on his capabilities and self-worth—not on his principles or about what needs to be done. When he’s worried about something, he doesn’t even try to hide it, there’s something very forthright and grounded about the way he struggles to confront the current obstacle.

vi. He’s such a goofball when he’s alone with Mirio. Here he is pretending to sever his thumb. Look at that smile. And Mirio’s habit of pumping his arms when he’s excited is nearly as cute.

vii. His hero name is awesome. Suneater. Talk about names that represent your ideal self…

viii. Amajiki doesn’t win his battle against Overhaul’s thugs by discovering his confidence and whipping out a super move (which, incidentally, he attempts via flashback+miritama feels and it fails resoundingly). He wins with the power of friendship, but it’s not the typical Power of Friendship spiel.

He fights three side-characters whose names I never remember, so I call them the garbage trio: theft quirk guy (similar to how Amajiki “steals” the forms of what he eats), a guy who manifests crystals, and gluttony guy. Funnily enough, the three have terrible self-esteem issues! They’re fanatically loyal to Overhaul because he’s willing to use them as sacrificial pawns, and being a pawn is better than being rejected as garbage (which each has as his tragic past).

So the narrative presents Amajiki with two types of bonds. Will he identify with the trio’s loyalty to Overhaul, founded on their sense of worthlessness? Or will he identify with their loyalty to one another, founded on their empathy for each others’ tragic pasts? Essentially: what kind of relationship does he have with Mirio?

It’s not even a contest. Amajiki immediately and fully rejects the Overhaul-brand loyalty as brainwashing and focuses on the bond he understands, the “friends don’t eat friends” bond.

So Amajiki recognizes his opponents’ humanity when even they couldn’t. Even though they thought of themselves as nothing more than Overhaul’s tools, Amajiki intuited that the bonkers guy who shouts “eat! eat! eat!” wouldn’t bite his crystal friend when Amajiki used him as a shield. In doing this, Amajiki proved that their lives have more value to each other more than they ever will to Overhaul. He explicitly praises them for trusting each other—something they can take pride in because they forged it themselves—and ultimately removes their masks, symbolically freeing them from Overhaul’s ownership.

It was a cool idea because usually I see the protagonist summon up reserves of power he didn’t know he had in order to protect his comrades, but when Amajiki was inspired by remembering how Mirio believes in him, it doesn’t actually work because the garbage trio calls on their own bond to counter his power-up. Or usually it’s the antagonist who turns the protagonists’ love for each other against them, and here it was reversed. Except Amajiki used their friendship against them not out of contempt for their bond, “oh your love makes you so weak and predictable,” but out of respect for it, “love is what makes you strong, and I know that because it makes me strong, too.”

ix. His weird, pointy ears.

x. His dub voice acting: it’s stellar. Props to Aaron Dismuke, highly recommend watching his episodes in the dub.

Least favorite things about him:

His first name, Tamaki. It just never sticks in my mind—Amajiki is much more distinctive. (Apparently I have some sort of big three mental block, because I can rarely remember Mirio’s and Nejire’s last names, either.)

He didn’t really grow or learn anything from his fight against the garbage trio. He was already confident in his bond with Mirio, and the whole reason he volunteered to fight the trio was that he thought he could win, so it was basically a high-stakes training exercise in sticking to his guns. I think the purpose of the fight was to teach the audience that he and Mirio are a positive foil for bakudeku, providing another way Mirio is superior to Midoriya + amping Mirio up before his tragedy-slash-victory, so it’s a shame Amajiki’s most major scene wasn’t about himself.

I wish he had more screen time, I wish he had more development, I wish we got his reaction to Mirio losing his quirk, I wish had scenes with more characters than just Mirio, Kirishima, and Fat Gum, etc. The usual gripes about faves who are side characters.

Favorite lines:

Ch132 – I love how forthright he is lol. No attempt to put up a strong front.

Ch132 – When the thug Amajiki’s fighting shouts at him, his feelings are hurt 😂 also bonus for kiri trying to comfort him

Ch135 – cool as a cucumber

And two I won’t include the panels for…

His badass line in 141, “I might not understand your rage. Your grief. Everything that led you here…but I know all about solid bonds! And my friends don’t use each other! Because friends don’t eat friends.”

and when he collapses after beating the garbage trio:*THUD* Huh…why’s the floor so close to my face?doofus

BROTPs:

Kirishima!! His pep talks to Amajiki while they were on patrol were really cute. I can only imagine how he handles Kirishima and Tetsutetsu! He’s totally the third wheel, and normally he’s happy to be! But sometimes he watches the two hype each other up and gets depressed about it because he’s never that positive and encouraging. Sometimes Fat Gum leaves Amajiki in charge and it seriously stresses him out because Tetsutetsu occasionally charges off to do his own thing and it’s a whole ordeal to rein him in.

And oh shit, Nejire’s personality is just as cute as Amajiki’s, I’d love to see more of the two of them hanging out. (and just…more of Nejire in general, please. Her debut was so funny and then Horikoshi did nothing with her.)

In class-a, I’m curious to see how Amajiki and Yaoyorozu would get along. They’re both gifted students with confidence issues and quirks that depend on eating, so it would be nice to see them hit it off. I’d also be interested to see Amajiki and Bakugo interact, especially with Kirishima there.

Also, since Amajiki has such a preoccupation with exuberant, confident people, I’d love to see him somehow meet Inasa.

This isn’t a brotp, but I’ll bet Nighteye intimidated the shit out of Amajiki… Mirio told Amajiki endless anecdotes about Nighteye but it didn’t work, till the day he dies Amajiki will still get clammy any time he thinks of Nighteye’s glare or the purported tickle machine.

Again not a brotp, but I’d love to see Amajiki vs. Shigaraki. That sounds like an awesome fight. (…ideally before Shigaraki gets all OP and only Midoriya can beat him.)

OTP:

Mirio.

NOTP:

Nobody comes to mind.

Random headcanons:

Most of the food Amajiki eats goes into his quirk; he doesn’t properly extract its caloric and nutritional value, and if he’s not careful, he could accidentally become malnourished. (It also makes it difficult to put on muscle.) So he eats a ton, to make sure he has enough to fuel both his quirk and his body, and he’s self-conscious at how much more he eats than other people.

When Amajiki vomits, his quirk is weakened to the point it’s basically null. He has to take a break and chow down before he can use it again. …Re-ingesting the puke is…not an option.

Clothing is a big issue for his hero work. He could develop a really powerful fighting style, one that involves producing limbs from his back and torso, if he were willing to wear a little less…but that’s never going to happen. Mirio can run around naked, but Amajiki can’t!

I don’t know if this is a translation quirk or fanon or what, but I adore it when Nejire calls Amajiki “chicken-hearted” in fanfiction. It’s a short, cute joke about his quirk and I wholeheartedly hc it. I also think Amajiki is closer to Nejire than Mirio is.

Amajiki doesn’t deal with his self-esteem issues by minimizing his challenges. He doesn’t make cheap compromises like, “ok, I know I can do this because it’s so easy even someone like me can do it.” He goes for broke, for being the spectacular hero Suneater, because even if he can’t perceive his own positive qualities, he believes that they’re there.

One of the (many) reasons Amajiki admires Mirio is that Mirio admires him, and Amajiki wants to be able to like himself, too.

When it comes down to it, his self-worth is nowhere near as desperately poor as the garbage trio because he knows true friendship. Maybe if he’d never met Mirio, Amajiki would have been susceptible to their sort of devotion, but now he never will be because Mirio’s encouraged him to value himself. Amajiki won’t accept a bond that relies on degrading yourself—which is important to know, since Amajiki constantly compares himself to Mirio. But Amajiki’s sense of inferiority is chronic without being proportionately deep. He adopted the name Suneater to declare himself Mirio’s equal, and his climactic line of the garbage trio battle, “friends don’t eat friends,” is one that asserts equality and puts his quirky spin on it to show he’s made the principle his own. Amajiki may not like himself but he doesn’t let it get in the way of taking his place as Mirio’s peer.

Amajiki’s parents are also anxious people.

Mirio is his neighbor at the UA dorms. It’s perfect because Mirio can permeate their the shared wall and they can hang out after curfew. (Mirio keeps a pair of sweatpants in Amajiki’s room for those occasions lol.) Nejire is jealous and always talks about gate-crashing, but she never gets around to it. Even after Mirio loses his quirk, his sweatpants stay in Amajiki’s room because neither of them can quite bring themselves to give those times up.

I am a sucker for making characters’ quirks reflect something fundamental about their hearts, so here’s my take on manifest. Amajiki manifests what he eats, meaning he absorbs from his environment and re-creates it in his own style. It’s not imitation, since Amajiki with one cow hoof and one tentacle, kicking ass, resembles neither a cow or an octopus, but he takes the best from what’s around him and reinvents it. “Suneater”? Thanks to how his friendship with Mirio gave him a stable, nourishing environment, he’s absorbed his favorite of Mirio’s traits and manifests them in his own way, as his own strength, because as even name of his quirk implies—manifestation makes latent qualities visible.

Like Bakugo, Amajiki could have resented Mirio for his strengths; like the garbage trio, he could have let his failures convince him that he’s worthless; but Amajiki consistently makes the best of the cards he’s dealt, even though it involves plenty of doubt and self-flagellation that could lead him down a darker path…but don’t. He’s greater than his demons.

Unpopular opinion:

Amajiki’s shy, but…not that shy. He gets like stiffly shy.

Amajiki still has a ways to go before he’s ready to date Mirio. (Not sure what’s the popular opinion on this.)

I really wish class 1-a versus Mirio had been class 1-a versus Mirio and Amajiki. It would have been so cool to see what amazing teamwork they had and how their quirks were compatible.

Song I associate with him:

Titanium—absolutely. I like the versions by Sia, Boyce Avenue, and Kurt Schneider (I couldn’t choose). Circles by Veela reminds me of his spiraling anxiety. And, I can’t resist, so I’m adding Chasing the Sun by The Wanted on here.

Aaand my ship songs…Appreciated by Rixton, and All of Me by John Legend.

Favorite picture of him:

Ch141 – Ironclad certainty. I’m not even gonna apologize for the dimensions and the fact this is huge, just drink it in.

Ch132 – If this isn’t the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, I will never trust your judgment.

Ch152 – Unless it’s because this is the cutest.

Ch152 – When Mirio loses his quirk 💔

I’ve also answered these questions for Todoroki, Bakugo, Uraraka, Endeavor, Sir Nighteye, and Shinsou!

#amajiki #amajiki tamaki #miritama #bnha #shie hassaikai #bnha s4 spoilers #thanks for the ask!! this was a lot of fun even if it meant crying over the anime way too late at night #amamirio #nerd mumbling #text #ask meme #long post #asks #I had big feels okay?

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estherkonamaay-blog · 6 years

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Reaching Out With Birmingham

Sup y’all

Step 7: never ever never believe stereotypes

I spent two weeks on outreach in Muslim Birmingham in a convent.

Ok, so it was technically 13 days, in the predominantly Asian/Muslim/sikh/etc community of Alum Rock, East Birmingham, so not the whole of Birmingham is Muslim, and it’s an old convent so I haven’t been turned into a nun....yet.

Not sure how to write about a whole outreach, maybe I should have been writing this as I went through the weeks... nah! Sounds way too responsible.

Ummm, I suppose I should start with the prayers we had for the week. A big one that I particularly prayed for was rest and peace in God. I really wanted the weeks to feel relaxed and that I wouldn’t work myself up into a panic for no reason and wouldn’t suck up people’s stress and let that make me feel soggy and panicky.

Also praying for the actual outreach we kept getting the story of the Samaritan woman at the well who met Jesus. The leaders really sensed that for the whole trip, so we went into the trip with hope as our theme.

Another prayer was that God would be the centre of all our work and the focus would be about Him and not about church politics or about the art itself.

We got to Birmingham on Monday and met the people who lived there and were showed our rooms and blah blah blah. We especially met the two people who one of our staff members, Julia, works with and who came with us for most of our outreach activities. They were Amber and Helena and they were my favourite people of Birmingham(not taking into consideration our YWAM members).

The first week was predominantly focused on the work we were set to do with the cathedral in the centre of Birmingham. The cathedral and a lovely lady called Louisa gave us permission to put our artwork around the cathedral, initially on the walls but later they said we could only put them on the ground(which was better in the end because it looked weirder and made people look at it more than if they were just on the walls.

On the Tuesday we went out into Birmingham City in groups of 2 or 3 to take pictures of strangers and get a bit of their stories. This was for a project for Friday we were calling Beyond the Surface In the group I was in for the first wave before lunch there was Hannah and one of our leaders, Dave. We were sent off to a very abandoned area of the city as we found out after wandering around for half an hour or so. We spent half of the time punching each other when we saw yellow cars, but I don’t think Dave really got a hang of the ‘cars’ part and punched for dumpsters and a baby’s blanket in its pram.

When we moved further into the city centre, there were about 20 other people trying to stop people to sell them something and we soon found we started looking like them anytime we tried asking for a free picture from a very fast moving passerby.

People in Birmingham seemed even more unhappy about stopping than in Manchester and York combined. Funnily enough when our groups got together and compared how many photos we all got, some had like 8 and others had 2 so I’m not sure what happened.

On Wednesday was a day for getting all our photos and additional activities ready to be used on Friday. I was in a group supposed to do a response to the photos and quotes being exhibited. What had brainstormed a week before or something and come up with something. This initial idea was scrapped.

We decided to go for an instalment type thing where people could write their hopes and dreams on pieces of tracing paper, make them into paper aeroplanes which we could then string up to a giant cube frame that we would build. The idea is write your dreams and let them fly in away, but not really because they’d be in the cube frame.

The next part of the response was portraits. We decided to do 3 types of portraits. One would be literal portraits which I’d be doing, then there’d be poetry portraits which Jaima and a staff member called Garrett were to do, and last there’d be bracelets that Hannah would be doing. So once we had sorted the logistics and made a list of things to get we went on a road trip to shop, which was awesome. We went to a wood recycling company to get the wood for the massive cube and had to get it ordered for the next day. We then picked up some art stuff but not everything so we’d have to get some on the Friday.

The Thursday was different. We were going to a ladies group that takes place in a church and is mostly Muslim women so none of the male leaders could come. We joined in on their exercise activities while others did the crèche and others helped in the kitchen. It was awesome because after lunch which was a really nice soup, we got to do henna and stuff for the ladies. The other activities was a print making station where we’d ask the ladies to print things that meant treasure for them and we’d then exhibit them during a dinner the next Wednesday at the convent.

Let me be honest. Henna is hard. I mean difficult. Like really hard. Struggle type hard. Hurts your hand, always seems to co e out looking messy when I do it, just a stress. But I suppose it was fun...

The day that comes after Thursday is Friday. That day was the cathedral day. It started off super slow and I think it could have really stressed everyone out but I felt a weird calm over the stressful things of the day. Hannah, Julia and I went running around Birmingham for the first hour looking for alphabet beads, and tracing paper.

But once we had put down all the quotes, images and put up the cube, eaten lunch, and settle down to do the portraits, this went ok. It was a weird day because we got maybe 4-8 people to do the responses but it felt just the right amount. It was super calm even though one of the leaders threw pressure on me to start my portraits waaaaay before I was ready and 15 minutes before I was set to start. Not naming any names but (*garrett) was very mean to do that.

In the evenings of the Thursday and Friday that week we also got the opportunity to go on a night watch with some of the community members who had taken cleaning up the streets on themselves and so they sort of walk around and scare druggies and dealers off with a big torch and watch out for prostitutes so they aren’t abused or anything. The cool thing is they started in September when it was awful and now there’s literally no drug dealer or anyone anywhere. The park is clear when there’d been stoners everywhere and out of the 15 prostitutes, 3 or 2 have already gone to rehab or managed to get off the streets (the last two are going to rehab soon I think).

Anyway, the night watch was on Thursday and Friday at like 10-11 (they continued till 2/3 am but we had to go bedy bye).

Saturday we drove a lot to get to a pink church for something they call word by heart. This nice man basically gets us to act out Bible stories which meant we remembered them by the time we were done and they became relevant to us the closer we got to the characters.

Week 2

After a free Sunday we began the week going to ladies groups around Birmingham to get them to participate in the treasure project we had set up the previous Thursday with the printing. While some of us from Monday to Wednesday went in twos to these meetings, the others began individual art projects about the treasure we found in alum rock. It was back breaking trying to do our waaaaaay too elaborate projects in time for the Wednesday exhibition. I know me and Hannah stayed till 2 one night trying to get them done.

(You know when you’ve worked on a piece and sweated away and then you realise it doesn’t look very impressive to you and you just wish you could have made it 10 feet taller?)

On the Wednesday evening families from the community groups we had been to came to look at the exhibition of their art work and ours while enjoying some lovely food.

I hid with the kids.

Events are getting less and less detailed as this blog gets longer and longer.

Thursday was another date with the ladies’ day. Some more exercise which is always welcome. There was a play about Easter. There was lunch and I played with the kids again.

Then there was Good Friday! One of our staff, Julia had an exhibition she was doing for her church during an event called 12 hours where for each hour something was happening at their church. It was absolutely electric! We got there for 12(or was it 1?) and there were these dancers that used hoops hanging from the ceiling. All the way around the building were instalments and art pieces that were both visual and interactive and it was all so creating and touching and beautiful and it literally was one of the best things I have ever seen. Each piece was done by someone else but for some reason happened to work so perfectly with everything else.

Julia’s work was the Garden of Gethsemane and she did it by suspending sheets of translucent fabric from the ceiling of a darkened section of the church and using many projectors to project videos of trees and greenery. Then she had prayer sheets and cushions and you could go in about the strips of trees and meditate and pray. The overall effect was a gorgeous calming place. It was just so beautiful.

That day I got to see what art could really do in serving God’s people in not just a cheesy way it normally does.

To be very honest I’m really tired of this blog but I have now given a full if scanty account of all the happenings of Birmingham.

Tomorrow we are planning to have a special Easter meal at our base back in York. Just have to bare the bus ride back and tally-ho!

Note to all in case you cared: I for some reason don’t feel hungry anymore unless I’ve gone most of the day without food. Should I be worried?

Yours

Esther

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