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doumadono · 10 months

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Upper Moons & Muzan & blind s/o - headcanons

Warnings: blind fem!reader Requested by: anonymous

MASTERLIST

Muzan

Initially, he dismisses you as someone unworthy of his attention. He sees your disability as a weakness, something that only hinders your existence. This disdainful attitude stems from his belief in power and dominance, where strength is synonymous with worth. As Muzan observes you navigating the world with remarkable resilience and adaptability, a small flicker of curiosity sparks within him. Your ability to face adversity head-on, overcoming obstacles that would have left others paralyzed, commands his respect. He is fascinated by your sheer willpower and the strength you exhibit despite your visual impairment.

Kokushibo

At first, Kokushibo maintains his stoic demeanor, but as he observes you, a flicker of curiosity sparks within him. He is intrigued by the your ability to navigate the world without relying on sight. Secretly, he admires your resilience and resourcefulness, seeing it as a testament to the power of human adaptability. Kokushibo deeply admires the strength you possess, recognizing the immense challenges of living and navigating life without vision.

Akaza

Akaza, with his fierce and protective nature, feels a strong sense of responsibility towards you. He becomes your steadfast guardian, always ensuring your safety and offering unwavering support. Despite his own frustrations and inner turmoil, witnessing your unwavering determination inspires him to overcome his own obstacles. Driven by his deep respect for women, he wholeheartedly dedicates himself to providing you with unwavering care and assistance. He sees it as his personal mission to ensure your well-being, going above and beyond to support you in every possible way.

Douma

At first, Douma finds amusement in the fact that you are blind. He has never encountered someone like you before, whose heightened senses compensate for the lack of sight. Your unique perspective and abilities intrigue him, adding an element of novelty to your interactions. However, as he spends more time with you, he begins to unravel a newfound empathy within himself. He realizes that your lack of sight accentuates your other senses, making them acutely perceptive and sensitive. In a rare display of vulnerability, Douma becomes your confidant, offering solace and a listening ear, understanding that sometimes, the most profound connections are forged in darkness.

Sekido

Sekido, with his straightforward and practical nature, struggles to comprehend your blindness. Sekido's frustration simmers beneath the surface when you get lost easily or face moments of doubt due to your blindness. It's difficult for him to find the right words to console you, as his anger clouds his ability to express empathy. He approaches the situation with a mix of confusion and frustration, finding it difficult to relate to your experiences. However, as he witnesses your unwavering determination and unwavering spirit, he gains a newfound appreciation for your resilience. Slowly, he learns to adapt his straightforward ways to offer support in practical ways, becoming your dependable ally in a sightless world.

Urogi

Urogi, with his carefree and whimsical personality, takes an immediate liking to you. He sees your lack of sight as an opportunity to introduce you to a different perspective on life. Urogi becomes your guide, using vivid descriptions and tactile experiences to paint a vivid picture of the world around you. Urogi, in his playful nature, frequently explores the heightened sensitivity of your other senses, particularly touch. Sometimes, without any warning, he runs his talons gently up and down your back, causing you to let out an unexpected yelp of surprise.

Karaku

Karaku is initially uncertain how to approach you. He chooses to observe from the sidelines, quietly noting your interactions with others. Karaku, known for his mischievous nature, approaches the situation with a lighthearted demeanor. He teases you about being blind, using humor as a way to cope with the circumstances. While his jests may sometimes border on insensitivity, his intention is to bring levity and laughter into your life. He sees it as an opportunity to foster resilience and self-empowerment, encouraging you to rise above the limitations and find strength within yourself. Inspired by your perceptive nature, Karaku finds solace in your presence, learning that sometimes, silence speaks louder than any visual spectacle.

Aizetsu

Aizetsu, embodying the essence of sorrow, can't help but feel a deep sadness in witnessing your lack of vision. He understands the profound impact that sight has on one's perception of the world and the emotions that arise from not being able to experience it fully. Aizetsu feels an immediate sense of protectiveness towards you. He becomes your unwavering support, offering a steady arm and a calming presence. His gentle guidance allows you to navigate the world with confidence, providing reassurance in your moments of doubt. Aizetsu, the reflection of sorrow, feels a deep connection to you. He recognizes a kindred spirit in you, as you both carry a weight of darkness within.

Zohakuten

Zohakuten, with his brash and impulsive nature, struggles to comprehend your blindness. He often finds himself frustrated by your inability to appreciate the beauty he sees in the world. However, as he witnesses your unwavering determination and strength, he begins to question his own prejudices. Zohakuten begins to admire the profound strength that emanates from deep within you, independent of your senses. He's quick to defend you when his counterparts treat you in a manner he deems unacceptable. He engages in heated arguments with them, standing up for your well-being and demanding that you be treated with the respect and care he believes you deserve.

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transmasc-wizard · 11 months

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AFFECTIVE EMPATHY: feeling other people's emotions. like, if someone is crying, you get sad. If someone is angry, you get angry. if someone is really excited, your emotions match that energy. etc.

HYPEREMPATHY: you are very very sensitive to the emotions of others and even non-intense emotions will frequently greatly affect your emotions.

LOW/NO AFFECTIVE EMPATHY: you almost never take on other people's emotions just bc they're feeling them. low-but-not-No empathy may experience "exception" people or feel empathy for really intense emotions, or large groups of people all feeling the emotion.

NORMAL is somewhere in between but hard for me to describe. probably just like... people's feelings influence yours, but not to the point of frequent distress or impaired functioning? like they definitely have an impact on your emotions but not an Intense one unless their emotions are also quite intense.

if you are AUTISTIC and have comorbidities, feel free to say what those are. if you are ALLISTIC/NON-AUTISTIC, feel free to clarify if you are completely neurotypical (no mental disorders or disabilties) or if you have something else (ADHD, bipolar, ASPD, OCD, whatever).

#autism #empathy #hyperempathy #hypoempathy #actuallyautistic #low empathy

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woefulrest · 18 days

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Hi ! This is a callout post on @gloomylace also known as @clingyidol. Before I start , I hate doing these kind of things and it took me alot of effort (+ encouragement from friends ) to do this. Also please do not go and harass Lolita. Cher is a minor and I just overall do not condone harassment. I was originally going to stay quiet .

tw for , abuse , r//pe , violence suicide and more .

Before I start , “weren’t you two just friends ?” Yes but that is until this popped up in my feed. Lolita and another friend are the only two people that know about a situation that roughly happened 2 ~ ish days ago. I was insanely panicked and anxious being accused of stuff like this. I know this is Lolita on anon due to being my ONLY friend in the editblr community and the only one who knows this situation. (besides Avery, Avery isn’t on editblr or the same scenes as me) You know how deeply this affected me. So yeah kinda your fatal flaw assuming I tell my life story to more then 2 people 🤷 also STOP using fucking freyr on me. 🤍 massively appreciated. “An Ex friend” I have only one long term friend and that is Avery 🤍 I am not a fucking freak and copy people , even if I do have identity issues I know it’s weird to copy someone! This is really fucking low of you Lolita and I genuinely trusted you with information and my thoughts and feelings! But no you went behind my back for no reason. It seems like you wanted a reason to turn on me. 🤍

First of all , Lolita said this ! At the time , I did not know anything about oyasumi punpun . I don’t willfully consume media with the following topics

I am massively triggered by almost ALL of those topics . I felt like I was being essentially compared to an abuser , which overall made me feel very, very icky. When confronted about this - ( as seen in the images below )

Lolita ignored me . Cher has done this to another friend of cher’s , making an uncomfortable joke and then when confronted went on a dni and days later replied with something random . Lolita cannot take responsibility for cher’s actions. Che just ignores you essentially and then replies with something random! I am just sick of this behaviour and I will not be surprised if che or someone else will spread rumours about me JUST because I came out about this. I originally thought this wasn’t serious enough to be a call-out post and I felt like I was being overdramatic.

these two screenshots ^ .

multiple people (including me) have had their mental health DRAINED due to your actions. You have lied multiple times. It’s also such a coincidence that hate anons seem to follow you around and when asked you blame it on your exes ? In reality you probably sent them and you sent someone into a really bad episode! You make baseless claims off of little to no proof, broke SEVERAL boundaries of one of your ex partners. You also compared one of your bfs to someone who abused you which is just! plain! fucking wrong. You claim to have high empathy / sympathy and yet when someone who is also mentally ill did not react well over small things you went to shittalk them to their boyfriend.

also claiming your visually impaired like immediately after I was opening up to you with my experiences ! your ex friends have confirmed this to me. That fucking sucks !

@artistrydoll + @magnoliawriter please reblog if you see this . ^_^

#⠀ ⠀ ◜ ⠀ ℐ℘ ˙ ⠀⠀important.#if anyone else has any experiences with Lolita feel free to share/add onto this post. ^_^#🫂🫂

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heartbeatbookclub · 2 months

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I was looking at a few posts about autism (as one does) and it just suddenly clicked into place a fundamental thing about Yuri's character that I'd been grasping at, but hadn't really been able to adequately identify. I still have a much longer and more thorough analysis going through a whole lot of my thoughts on Yuri's character and her experience of autism that i'm working on (of which this will likely be a component), but I thought I'd share this separately just to emphasize.

Post I saw which made this click for me was making fun of the fact that most media depicting impaired empathy in autistic characters explicitly depicts them with this unflappable confidence of never having been rejected by people they love. The crux of this is that in actual reality, autistic people almost always have that experience at some point, for some behavior, for reasons they don't really understand. "There is an invisible line where people will get sick of you, and you have no warning of when you're about to cross it." So frequently, autistic people attempt to ride a razor thin edge, walking on constant eggshells to desperately attempt to avoid crossing that line.

Very often autistic people will attempt to avoid doing anything at all which could be considered weird, or off-putting, and will try their absolute hardest to do things in a way that is acceptable to other people, sometimes to the point of outright suppressing their emotions, because they are afraid that they'll say something just wrong enough that the people they care about will push them away, and they don't understand WHY it happened, but they know it's THEIR fault. Sometimes masking is fighting to appear aloof all the time because you can't regulate your emotions in a way that is acceptable to other people.

And holy fucking Jesus, that fits the exact mold of what I've been trying to talk about with the particular way Yuri's anxieties manifest.

It really feels to me like Yuri has this constant fear of breaking the "rules" of socializing, despite not really understanding what those rules even are. She's constantly afraid of saying something wrong, when she doesn't even know what wrong would be, she's just sure everyone ELSE will know it when they hear it. I think a huge part of her social anxiety comes from her own understanding of herself as a very weird person who doesn't really get a lot of how to socialize, and it seems to me like she's probably dealt with her fair share of social rejection and isolation based on those traits. She then felt she had to take responsibility for those traits, probably because it's the one thing she can change, and she is the one common denominator in all of these bad situations (This is something which is pretty common, actually! "Everyone else can socialize just fine, and I have so much difficulty with it! I must just be broken in some way. I have to try super hard to be normal to make friends!")

I think a big part of why it's so apparent in the Literature Club is because she really thinks she's found a place where she can make friends in spite of all of her issues, so when she starts...being herself, and receives even the smallest HINT of pushback, she overcorrects and tries to rein all of herself in to fix her "mistake", because she really wants to make friends here, and doesn't want them to reject her as well.

She's had this experience of others pushing her away for being weird so often that, coupled with her acknowledged trouble for reading situations, when anybody responds poorly to something and she recognizes it, she immediately overcorrects out of fear of being an annoying burden to everyone around her, and that "correction" consists of suppressing herself into being "normal" (or at least "less weird"), because she believes nobody could actually like her just for being who she is. There's something wrong with her fundamentally, and to make friends, for people to like her and want to be around her, she has to "fix" herself.

it's just, like...

it's really hard for me to interpret Yuri's character that doesn't involve her being somewhere on the spectrum, bros. she's written with such delicately constructed autistic coding, despite the appearance of just being a hackneyed weird girl visual novel trope. she deserves the world.......

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nansheonearth · 1 month

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Donate Here

I work for Women’s Lunch Place on the Direct Care team, where we build trusting relationships with women experiencing homelessness and poverty. We are the first to welcome new women into our community.

We meet them where they are, treat them with dignity and respect, and learn what we can without being pushy or requiring any information. We also gently introduce them to other programming at Women’s Lunch Place, like addiction recovery classes, mental and physical healthcare in our clinic, legal services, housing search and stabilization, and benefits applications.

I’ve found my footing at Women’s Lunch Place by befriending some of our most challenging and impaired guests. I enjoy having the tough conversations and it’s so rewarding when I can break through using patience, compassion, and empathy. I am confident in these moments when I’m creating new relationships. I know that by showing up consistently, with integrity and a non-judgmental approach, our team can provide life-changing support for the women we serve.

When I’m not working, I’m exercising, doing yoga, and dog sitting. I worked with dogs before coming to Women’s Lunch Place, as a handler providing training and socialization. I’m an experienced mid-distance runner, but I’ve never run a marathon. I’m feeling confident and excited to have begun the training process. I’m running in 2024 in honor of the guests of Women’s Lunch Place, and to prove to myself that I can complete this intense challenge. Thank you for supporting our mission!

Donate Here

#radfem #hunger #women's lunch place #boston marathon #donation #signal boost #please reblog #sisterhood #solidarity #cambridge #boston #massachusetts #new england #o #fundraiser #female centered #separatism

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five-thousand-loaves-of-bread · 1 year

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stop trying to explain different types of empathy to me as if i don’t know it, my autism affects both cognitive empathy & affective empathy. i do not feel what other people feel, i also don’t understand other people perspective. i do not understand other people have different perspectives & knowledge & feeling than me & vice versa. i say i have a theory of mind impairment due to autism for. a. goddamn. reason.

AGAIN. conclusions made from/by level 1 autistics only doesn’t always accurately describe me, someone with level 2/3 autism.

#🍞.txt #tired #low empathy

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kneelingshadowsalome · 10 months

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ok tbh…fellow readers don’t kill me but i feel like konig is still using readr for sex…or like actually doesnt love her yk…like anyone can fill that role and she is cause there’s no other woman around 😭 IDK i can’t put my finger on it

Ok, this is a tricky one and I'm glad you asked! Because... (and I also hope my readers won't kill me for this) like I said in my answer to this ask, I profiled König as a sociopath. And I can and I will put my finger on it 🫠

The following are my thoughts on the subject & antisocial pd (otherwise known as sociopathy). I hope you read about this m. disorder if it interests you, pls do not take my words as gospel! I also wish to remind that this is fiction and I'm practically ready to bend the laws of physics if I have to, to force even the most disputable, unstable and corrupt of characters give and receive love because that's just my cup of tea. 🩷

First of all, sociopaths are typically viewed to be incapable of love and empathy. They use manipulation to get what they want. Being in a relationship with a sociopath is described to feel incredible and passionate one moment, and confusing and scary the next. If you know what's good for you, you wouldn't even want to be special to a sociopath.

Sociopaths themselves often claim they do love those selected few they respect, just not in ways "normal" people regard as love. And this, I think, is where it gets interesting.

The definition of love as unconditional, sacrificial and selfless care for another person is not a sociopath's definition of love. They might care about a tiny amount of handpicked people, to some extent. For a sp, love is when they refrain from harming those few they care for. That's pretty cold, right?

Still, sociopaths are not devoid of emotion even if the most common emotion they feel is rage. They are not narcissists even if they are manipulative, emotionally cold, and act entitled at times. There seems to be dispute over whether sociopaths feel empathy or not (psychos don't, they simply can't because of an impaired mirror neuron system). Their defense mechanisms consist of manipulation, extreme detachment and extreme impulsivity; it's been their only way to survive in a disorganized, unloving and unstable environment.

König is someone who has been neglected and abused, who has never been shown what love even means. Everything has been conditional. He's lived in constant fear and anxiety; he has never had a loving or a stable father, his mother practically denied the abuse he had to suffer by not intervening, he has never had any friends (like he says himself in ch. 1), has only ever received attention through fear and disgust. The only dream he had in this life, the only possible redemption arc, so to say, went to shit.

It's not anyone's job to fix this kid, sure. But when, from where, or from who would he have learned to love?

When reader comes along, she shows kindness to him, forgives his trespassings over and over again, and chooses to trust in him even when afraid. If we only talk in terms of sociopaths/manipulators and their victims, then yes, this is a horrible setting, because it is the perfect setting for abuse.

And it's true: there is no one else around. All the yearning and thirst and starvation is immediately projected onto the first and only person who finally shows him some kindness, even after all his drastic shortcomings. So she isn't "special". But in a way, she's more than special: she's world shiftingly, groundbreakingly special 😐

What we know is this: König asks if he is harassing her and if she wants him to stop. He vows multiple times he would never hurt her. He assaults someone who, in his mind, mistreats her (and who reminds him of a person who mistreated him and his mother when he was a kid), leaves reader eventually alone when she shows signs of not forgiving him/wanting him in her life anymore.

These are all toxic breadcrumbs, and this whole setting is unhealthy and problematic. A sane and cynical person would say that this is manipulative and abusive. A sensitive, overly compassionate person might say this is a sociopath's only way to love.

Reader may not have been special when she first came into König's life. He saw her as a plaything first, but can you blame a touch-starved man for trying to get some intimacy? König doesn't trust anyone, doesn't know how to give or get comfort other than through sex, so of course he would opt for sex first. (Also, let's be real: who would suffer this kind of man if he wasn't so hot? No one, for goodness sakes)

The connection that blooms afterwards, I imagined and wrote as real, no matter what or who he is (because I'm a naive romantic at heart 🥰). He's not a green flag man by any means, but he's trying his best (which will never be enough). Had I wrote him a psychopath, the story would have been way more darker, and even the minimum amount of empathy and true love that is, at times, present in this fic, would not have been there at all.

König also sacrifices himself for reader at the end of the last chapter. A through-and-through sociopath would not perhaps deem it in their best interest to go that far, even if the "gains" were abundant (reader's deepening attachment and eternal gratitude). This is why this particular scene is important, because it poses the question: is he really a sociopath? Why would he do this? Because at this point, reader is indeed very goddamn special :D

I'd also like to entertain the question: how special is König to reader? I mean, don't we all just want to take these broken men like Ghost and König home and "cure" their sadness by giving them some— ahem, *gunshots*, this was a little off topic, but you get the idea. Savior complex is real, too!

If König is ever diagnosed with APD, reader would probably educate herself and find that sociopaths cannot love, and they cannot change because there is no cure: the damage is already done. These people will only use and abuse those who don't get out of the relationship. She would also find that there are sociopaths who are still in touch with their families, who have kids and partners and who have learned to "behave" for the sake of their loved ones. Either because they actually care or because it serves their interests (of being loved? Don't we all want to be loved?).

Again, this is fiction. I don't wish to justify this character's actions nor condone this kind of abusive behavior (should go without saying but perhaps it's best to state it at least sometimes to be clear ❤️). Nor do I want to condemn the reader for having feelings and empathy for this big, abused wreck. And the reason why I can't give you a clear answer on this is because there is none :')

If you people have thoughts on this, something you wish to share, I would love to hear and chat and just…*pls* this is such an interesting topic! Don't be shy 🩷🤗

(Also pls don't kill me)

#answered #yandere könig #könig headcanons #ramblings #i need to be gagged

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redux-iterum · 7 months

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man. i really do love the way you’ve handled tigerclaw— he’s still a bastard, but he’s a bastard who GENUINELY thinks he’s doing right by his clan, his family. the shift in motivation from “i want to conquer the whole forest as a tyrannical dictator” to “i want to isolate thunderclan from its neighbors so it can be restored to it’s former glory and flourish” is WAY more impactful, imo. i also think there’s something to be said about how he’s (maybe) willing to exempt fireheart— whose entire character has been about BUILDING bridges between thunderclan and the rest of the forest— from his hitlist and make a hypocrite of himself because he and goldenflower have a fondness for him. i choose to believe that tigerclaw is still proud of the way fireheart stands up for what he believes in, even if it is conflicting with his own goals.

tldr; loving the direction of this so far. thank you guys for all your hard work!! looking forward to my heart continually being broken in the future <3

Figured answering these two together would be ideal.

It’s excellent to hear the enthusiasm and kind words, thank you! I’ve been stowing away this discussion about Tigerclaw and Fireheart for a while, and now I get to blather!

People have brought up that Tigerclaw choosing not to hurt Fireheart is unusual, since Fireheart’s the one that’s soft to outsiders and has been on track to softening the entire Clan as well, and Tigerclaw is against that. The reason for this requires a bit of a tangent.

Tigerclaw initially was a bit emotionally distant with all his Clanmates, save Goldenflower (for the most part). Not in the sense of “I don’t care about any of you”, but more like “I care about you, but I’m not so attached that I can’t kill you to save everyone else”. He’s had the thought in his mind for years that he could be a better leader than the one everyone already loves, that these cats had impaired judgement and couldn’t do what needs to be done, that he didn’t want to commit to having a family because that could get in the way of his silent and righteous crusade. He cared for his Clanmates, but his heart was careful not to get too close to anyone, even, to a very small extent, Goldenflower. What if he needed to put her out of the way too?

And then Fireheart happened.

Initially, Tigerclaw didn’t care about him. It’s some kittypet who has a tiny bit of potential. Big whoop. He was under the category of “to be Handled if he gets too uppity and does the wrong thing”, and Tigerclaw expected he’d stay there forever. That was fine and easy, even if Goldenflower got attached to him. He could kill Lionface if he needed to, why would he be unable to take out a shrimpy outsider just because his mate likes him?

The thing is, Fireheart’s got this annoying little talent of drawing out people’s kindness and affection without even trying. We’ve seen his own gentle, broad love for everyone around him, even those he just met and knows nothing about beyond them needing help from a stranger. He is overflowing goodness and fondness and empathy in a somewhat compact ginger body, and you can’t break that or scare that out of him. And somehow, with that infallible bravery to keep being kind and polite, he manages to worm his way into the core of another cat and soothingly convince them, even unconsciously, to offer a nice word to someone they don’t like, or maybe ask a Clanmate if they’re doing okay when they think they don’t care, or even just blink trustingly to calm a frightened and starving outsider they should be chasing away. It’s difficult to catch him doing it, but as we’ll see in the rest of the series, it’s a gradual, unstoppable infection.

This talent is what made everyone (well, except for Darkstripe, but he doesn’t like anybody) so fond of him, even if they preemptively think he’s just a dumb kittypet who needs to toughen up. Frostfur is a good example: she went from apathy and disdain to offering him silent support when he brought Cloudkit home and actively partaking in conversation with him when he approached her, just over the course of this book. All he had to do was, like I said, be kind and polite, and he gradually broke down even her walls. Charred Legacy, the next book, will go more into this, so I’ll save the details for now, but my point is that Fireheart is really damn good at making his Clanmates and friends care about him and others.

How troubling (and mildly amusing) it was to Tigerclaw to find that he wasn’t exempt from this. And how amazed he was to find that coming to care for this little outsider his mate was eager to adopt opened up a whole new world for him. Maybe having kits wasn’t so bad. Maybe he could be a father and still do what he needed to do, and maybe his family didn’t need to get hurt in the process. Maybe Goldenflower was more precious to him than he realized, and maybe Fireheart was someone he could see as a son, and be proud to do so.

What Tigerclaw failed to account for is that attachment complicates things. You might have to kill someone – but no, now you come up with excuses not to. They’re just misguided, you can fix them with a couple conversations. You don’t have to take them out. They’re your family! And your family is important! Surely you can let them live, just these particular cats. You can change their minds. They’ll understand and appreciate your goal in time. It’ll be just fine, you know it.

And so it went, deeper and deeper, until his twisted mind was able to justify not hurting Fireheart ever, solely because he’s his son, and his son deserves to live no matter what. In the same way he thought of his more “dangerous” Clanmates as a liability even if they didn’t really do anything wrong, he thought of his mate and son as essential to ThunderClan, even if they went against his ideals.

He never did see the hypocrisy in that. And even to the end, he never even dreamed of hurting Fireheart.

That’s his son, you know?

#ask #readmore #spoilers #burning hearts ask #tigerclaw #fireheart #gravehund #seawoven #queue #i speak

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thv-jk97 · 3 months

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Sharing my thoughts about the negative take from that H*BE stylist about LWA because I need to put them somewhere, so forgive me for this post. For context, the stylist said that the MV is using disabilities and those who face discrimination as inspirational material and that they’re “romanticizing disabilities”, and while I can genuinely understand what they were trying to advocate for, their take also completely ignores massive elements of the MV as a whole, whilst also making grand assumptions about the artists (Tae and IU) that they cannot possibly know.

Listen, everyone has the right to interpret any piece of content how they see it and they’re also entitled to feel how they feel and share their opinions, but it becomes problematic when they start making baseless assumptions along with the point they’re trying to make. Claiming that IU and Tae are rich cishets with no disabilities(implying that they are privileged and not discriminated against) is such a WILD assumption to make (let’s not forget that IU does actually have a hearing impairment).

I do think that there should be conversations about who should be able to tell what stories or portray what character, especially in huge projects in mainstream media, but there has to be room for flexibility. Are we going to require people to reveal everything single thing about themselves in order to prove that they can represent a specific demographic fairly? That’s a completely unreasonable expectation, and in some circumstances, it could literally be unsafe. And their assumptions do not contribute to a constructive dialogue about this topic at all.

Not only that, but their critique sort of implies that the MV equates having disabilities to being a victim, but that isn’t what I personally got from the MV. Their characters literally fight until the very end, in their blind and deaf/mute states, and are never actually shown as weak. And it’s just another assumption that the “love filter” takes away their disabilities, when in reality, IU still uses sign language even when Tae is looking at her through the camcorder – what is shown is a world where they don’t have their injuries anymore (injuries that were sustained in this dystopian world) and their lives are more than just fear and running. The concept of “love wins all” is that they made it to the very end of the world together and are ultimately taken out by the shittiness of this world that they’re living in – not by their disabilities.

The stylist also goes on to imply that the ambiguity of the MV is an issue because they end up wearing traditional hetero outfits (since when is sexuality linked to pieces of clothing?), and if it were meant to mean something to the queer community, they wouldn’t have included that. Which makes no sense because that’s the beauty of art – it’s meant to be interpreted however the viewer sees it, and so many people in the queer community did actually take comfort in the symbolism they interpreted from the MV.

To be honest, I can’t help but question the motive of their rant, because from where I’m standing, this person works for a billion dollar company that literally capitalizes on using the queer community for good sales (fanservice, etc)(mind you, this is only one of H*BE’s many offenses) so their issues with this metaphorical MV seem to be a bit selective (aka taking issue with things that don’t affect their livelihood). Also gonna add that they literally have posts supporting Zionists (who raised money specifically for the IDF), so it really seems like selective activism atp.

Tae and IU have both consistently shown that they are massive advocates of inclusivity and equality, so to be accused of exploiting minorities and their struggles is actually so upsetting. People can label it whatever they want, but IU’s decision to change the title of the song was not about “saving face”, it was showing empathy for a minority when she learned that they were bothered by the original title. And for this person to insinuate that Tae and IU are tone deaf and clueless to the strife of those who have been discriminated against is just plain disrespectful and such a projection based on their own personal interpretation and assumptions.

Anyway, sorry for this long-winded post. There’s never a day of peace and I am siiiiick of it.

#rambling thoughts #love wins all #mv discourse

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crownmemes · 9 months

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Mean Sentences, Vol. 2

(Mean sentences from various sources. Adjust phrasing where needed)

"There is no place for mediocrity here."

"You should have done better."

"You are the benchmark for all my disappointments."

"Well, your memoirs will certainly be a depressing read."

"You should be ashamed really that it took someone like me to work out what was going on under your nose."

"I respected you. Maybe that was wrong of me."

"Don't judge me by your own degraded standards."

"I would make some kind of threat, but I'm sure your situation is quite clear to you."

"Since when have you had any kind of imagination?"

"We're just alike, you and I. Except you're boring."

"Funny doesn't suit you."

"When did you become such a cliché?"

"Please don't feel the need to make conversation, it's really not your area."

"I owe you nothing."

"You think me brutish? How do you imagine I view you?"

"There's something wrong with the way you make decisions."

"How hard do you find it, having to say 'I don't know'?"

"Don't try to bully me. I'm very familiar with the tactic and I react very violently to it."

"You think you understand, but you understand nothing. "

"I won't insult your intelligence by explaining it to you."

"Here's a fact; you're a loser."

"It's you that should have died, not her."

"You know, it is just possible that you won't be welcome."

"You and I have much in common, except I'm not a complete failure."

"You really are utterly contemptible, aren't you?"

"I expected better from you."

"You are but an inconvenience."

"You've got no empathy, have you?"

"You know, it's no secret that you suffer from certain problems. No wonder your judgement was impaired."

"That's the most idiotic story that I've ever heard."

#rp meme #rp memes #roleplay meme #roleplay memes #rp prompts #roleplay prompts #sentence starters #assorted;#mean;

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renspacesz · 5 days

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WARNING: EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, I do not condone.

Guys did you know there was a trans teen who planned to shoot up his school during the day of columbine's anniversary. The media said this person was columbine obsessed, and that got me thinking he would've had a tumblr account somewhere. I think all tcc followers have a tumblr account to find a place where they could talk to people about the crimes and the murderers. Also why wasn't this mentioned here, this news was everywhere and it came up on my youtube recommendation as well.

Other than that, there was also another school shooting happened just yesterday in Texas. Maybe eric and dylan was right about this.. the day of their attack carried a legacy, 25 years from now on. Gun violence without columbine involved is common, but columbine nearly doubled the effect of it leaving many dead just because the shooters wanted to be edgy. I know that's not the only case, people like them already had mental issues from the start, and the lean onto this case to find something to relate to, but sometimes things can get excessive quick and becomes a habit, so you get more desensitized and used to things like this. Then push them to the edge one more time, when they finally snaps, and write their manifesto. I'd say school shooters are a mix of suicidal-ness with some homicide urges. I don't think anyone would want to kill themselves or to face consequences if they only wanted to kill others. Suicide from the start and maybe their reasons came from hatred of humans (misanthropy), nihilism, detachment, depression, and it disturbs the mind.

People always say they don't know what happened to these guy and what makes them do such things. Well it's complicated and there's no simple answer, they all got their own reasons and motives. No simple answer also means no simple solution, it will take a while for people to get educated on such heavy and complex topic. It takes deep cognitive skills & empathy to understand the minds of others. No medication or therapy can truly fix homicidal problems, although they may reduce the urges.

I believe homicidal urges in human, is only nature. Some has better control over their anger and rage, which reduces the possibility of it turning into homicidal urges/thoughts. Depends on quality of life, when people are frustrated, have declining mental health, personality disorders, cognitive impairment, social-problems, etc, it can lead to troubles, and a small percentage accounts for killing people. You can't really stop them, sometimes they look normal on the outside, which is called masking. But if theres anything that tells you "there might be something wrong about this person", delving deeper into it could lead you to a useful conclusion.

#dylan columbine #eric and dylan #eric columbine #rebandvodka #tcc columbine #tcc fandom #tcc tumblr #columbine 1999 #tccblr #columbine massacre

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brujahinaskirt · 5 days

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I will never shut up about how Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the most tenderly written game served to the most loutish horde of jackasses. I think it is possibly one of the greatest pieces of popular fiction made about feudalism in recent history, even if it's not always the most historically accurate.

And that's because the whole damn thing is about the profound, authority-enforced inhumanity that self-propels feudal order... but this time, it's written from the perspective of, for lack of better word, "humanity undermines, and humanity wins."

Love wins, if you want to be cheeky.

This was originally meant to be a reply to @feelinungry's excellent post on the subject, but it outgrew itself and got super bloated, so I'm plopping it in its own post to not be obnoxious...

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

And the reason all this about humanity and love is so important to the core of the story, to the very backbone of the narrative (even beyond the plot), is that it exists in opposition and to the impairment of the feudal system. Kingdom Come: Deliverance means to teach us, by way of deeply dramatic plots following individuals, how feudalism works and why it worked the way it did. And why and how that system fails.

The vehicle by which the game does this is by showing us, over and over, how the stratification of feudal class is eroded and sometimes outright dissolved (either in general, as with Henry and Hans, or when it matters most, as with Radzig and Henry) by plain and simple love.

Feudalism, like most class-stratified systems, relies upon 1. dehumanization of those beneath one's appointed status; 2. fealty (mock-love) to those above one's status, their title-appointer class; and 3. the maintenance of a deep separation between these artificially bestowed statuses, as enforced by church (as in word of clergy, not word of god) & state (legal rules and law). Those words and laws existed to propel the system by divide-and-maintain (of the workforce populace, placing it firmly below the next class in line, etc.) in the service of unify-and-profit (for the ruling class).

Sigismund & his invading army are wholly separated and adherent to the feudal theory, even if they have flouted codes of warfare & inheritance; they are presented to us as the main dehumanizing force of the story world, a wave of Order that indiscriminately burns opposition flat rather than an individual leading a royal coup, a cyclical destruction that paves the way for the next flavor of rule to continue the feudal system ad infinitum. They're thoroughly separated from the story even when they are burning down a village in front of our eyes and generally move as one, with Markvart occasionally stepping out of that mass of Feudalism and its antihuman nature to give it a face. They're more a force of nature than an individual as far as the narrative goes.

And we are meant to understand that in sharp contrast to the "close" story, the cast we get to know and watch as they attempt to answer this force of nature. And the second we see these characters get close enough to each other, by raw proximity, to poke a pin into the wineskin of feudal order as dictated to them by authority, it bleeds--everywhere. Not in the sense of ruination but in the sense that a tiny wedge of empathy cracks open the dam and leads, yep, to rehumanization--and love, the most human driving force there is.

And that changes everything, for everyone. Not just internally, as with a character's personal development arc (i.e., Hans learning why his duties, which he resented and viewed as an impingement on his freedom when dictated to him by authority, are incredibly important for real people who experience pain) but externally as well (as @feelinungry so elegantly points out in the original post).

Over and over, at every stage of the story, it's the rehumanization of and by these decision-makers (at a family level, at a community level, at a regional level, at a national level) that cracks the feudal cycle, even if in very small ways. Hans really brings this back home in a petri dish in late game, after the siege, when he complains to Henry about the noble's code (letting Istvan go) potentially leading to pain and disaster for the common people Istvan's machinations are likely to harm in the future. He chafes--and we chafe, and so does Radzig, and so does Divish--against feudal stratification because he has learned a general empathy through loving an individual, and that has in turn reshaped the way he sees the world.

And that's exactly why and when feudalism begins to fail, and why it thrashed itself the way it did, from the enforcement of sexual mores (though this wasn't exactly like it is in movies) and gender law to terror upon its own populations.

And it's the crucial understanding I think we begin to forget after being exposed to so much Hollywoodification of history, where the oppression always exists for cruelty's sake alone rather than in active and deliberate service to a political construct.

And I think it's why we've "lost the plot" so horribly when it comes to understanding that people in history were still people, not monolithic one-mind entities (as the feudal system demanded they be). And why we somehow forgot that such people fall in love, in all kinds of love, in a way that has never given a damn about authority. And that this in turn undermines supposedly supreme authority, even divine authority, and will always continue to do so, as long as people are people.

This is what it always comes back to. Always. From Henry's parents and their mysterious bond with Radzig informing the protagonist's journey from "the past"--to Henry & Hans falling into stupidly fierce soulmatehood with each other in the present--from Istvan & Erik's destructive fuck-the-world romantic love on the "enemy" side--to Divish's humbling, humanizing realization that he loves Stephanie in some way, he really does, despite the chasm of age/gender enforced upon them by their adherence to feudal order that doomed their romantic love to failure.

People will always love each other, even when the world orders them not to, even when faced with death and worse. People will always, given proximity and shared experiences, learn to see each other as human again. KCD reminds us of that. It's why the "slow" storyline exists and why it works.

And that is why this game is so fucking fantastic, and why the genpop fandom has utterly failed it.

#kingdom come deliverance #kcd #kcd2 #henry of skalitz #hans capon #radzig kobyla #divish of talmberg #stephanie of talmberg #redmeta

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stillness-in-green · 2 months

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To Those Left Behind: Answering the anger of the survivors in My Hero Academia vs. Hosoda Mamoru’s Belle

Yes, it's another "What [X] Did Right That BNHA Is Doing Wrong" post. I'm not trying to make this a series, but what's a girl to do when everywhere she looks, she sees other stories that are handling elements of BNHA's endgame with far more grace and rigor? Hit the jump.

The Formula: The Hero vs. The Critic

A bugbear of mine in superhero fiction is when The Hero is presented with someone critiquing their heroism who immediately revokes their objections when The Hero saves them in turn. The basic shape of the story is as follows:

The Hero is confronted by The Critic in some situation that lacks immediate danger. The Critic has issues with The Hero’s day-saving activities. Perhaps in some earlier battle between The Hero and Some Villain, The Critic suffered property damage; they might also be an innocent bystander (or relative thereof) who was harmed in the fight. They might simply be a stickler for laws The Hero may or may not be acting in accordance with. Perhaps they even take issue with the suffering Heroes themselves endure, though in the case of this specific storyline, they’re more likely to be thinking of a different Hero in their lives than the one they’re actually confronting.[1]

The Critic presents an obstacle to the combat-focused method that is superhero fiction’s default mode of conflict resolution. They may endanger The Hero’s activities by threatening legal/institutional reprisal, or they may just be there to make The Hero feel bad about themselves. The Critic may be framed very sympathetically by the story, or they might simply be a buzzkill, but regardless of the degree of empathy the story chooses to afford them, they are a hurdle to be overcome.

The Hero is unable to cogently argue for their own position because superhero narratives are not about offering real life justifications for vigilantism. Rather, because the default mode of conflict resolution in a superhero story is being a superhero, the story circumvents The Critic’s objections by placing them in danger, offering The Hero a chance to save them.

Having thus been personally saved by The Hero (or, to put it more cynically, having personally benefitted from what The Hero does), The Critic promptly gets over all of their objections, even the ones that seemed to have been founded in well-considered ethical frameworks rather than traumatic experiences.

1: “Hero’s civilian loved one has a problem with their heroics” is a whole different story! Typically that story is used to mine for drama in The Hero’s personal life; if it’s not there to serve as an ongoing relationship stressor, it’s more likely that the civilian loved one will get over their objections as a result of seeing The Hero save an uninvolved innocent than because they are themselves directly saved by The Hero.

This, to me, is simple sophistry. “You say you don’t approve of what my saving people costs, but what if I saved you, huh? Then would you like me?” is a cheap gotcha that relies on The Critic being incapable of separating rational ethics from their direct experience. That’s not to say that ethics shouldn’t have a foundation in lived experience, of course, but one also can’t de facto rely on one’s emotional responses to dangerous, traumatic situations to guide e.g. public policy. Emotional responses are not inherently fair; they can be myopic or prejudicial. For the same reasons of impaired partiality that guide judicial recusal or juror screening, a single personal experience with being saved by a superhero cannot be assumed to write superheroes a blank check for everything they do while in costume.

And yeah, I realize that I’m being ungenerous here. I assume that the storyline above is meant to be read as The Critic lacking sufficient empathy for those The Hero saves and coming to a greater understanding of the terror and desperate need experienced by bystanders when Some Villain attacks. I can understand the general thrust of things!

Still, that story structure does not require The Hero to grow—all they have to do is endure and keep doing what they’ve been doing all along. All the growth is experienced by The Critic as they’re led to empathize, not with The Hero, but rather with the other underdeveloped side characters—or more likely bit characters!—The Hero saves. And even that empathy is usually less spotlighted than The Critic’s gratitude, which can feel especially distasteful when it feels like the story is emphasizing how noble The Hero is for saving this jackass Critic that’s been giving them so many problems, and isn’t The Critic just so thankful now that they’ve been humbled and shown the error of their ways?

It’s not a story that, to my eye, usefully challenges The Hero or The Critic, merely a self-serving narrative that assures both The Hero and the audience that The Hero Was Right All Along. I can see the appeal of the “No, you move,” flat arc as much as the next person, but that story just feels like, if you’ll forgive my crudity, setting The Hero up for easily-earned asspats.

Let’s look at some different permutations of the formula as it appears in My Hero Academia.

The Critics of My Hero Academia

Over the course of its 400+ chapters, My Hero Academia portrays a lot of criticism of the state-sponsored Pro Hero industry the story depicts. There are people who criticize the laws that form the basis of professional heroics, people who think Heroes work too hard, people who think Heroes don’t work hard enough, people who think Heroes are too commercial, people who think Heroes are a shiny façade over a corrupt and ugly reality, people whose way of life has been ruined by the rise of Heroes, and on and on.

Unfailingly (and often to its considerable detriment), the flawed but valiant Heroes of My Hero Academia continue to uphold their system and their activities as valuable, admirable, and—most crucially—the only reasonable solution to the problems created by the superpowers wielded by the setting’s inhabitants. Any Critics they face are destined to be proven wrong; neither the Heroes nor the author have any real desire to explore meaningful alternatives to the Hero System. Many of its Critics are thus presented as cynics operating in bad faith or outright Villains who only resent the Hero System because it makes their criminal activities harder!

However, there are Critics who are treated as more valid by the narrative: those whose objections to Heroism are rooted in the family bonds and/or love and care they hold for specific Heroes. It’s this type of Critic—and MHA’s response to them—that I want to look at in more detail.

> Case 1: Izumi Kouta

Kouta is the single most clear-cut example of the “The Hero saves and thus convinces The Critic” narrative the series has to offer, as well as foreshadowing much more extreme damage in other characters the audience will meet later on. An orphaned child whose parents died in combat with Some Villain, Kouta has grown resentful of Heroes and surly towards the society that worships them. He doesn’t understand why a bunch of strangers were so important that his parents would choose to prioritize those strangers over their lives with him. Deku The Hero has no idea how to address this, and therefore roundly fails in his first few attempts to verbally engage with Kouta.

It’s not until Some Villain[2] shows up to menace Kouta with the threat of gruesome murder that Deku’s able to connect with him. Note how this scenario puts Deku back in his comfortable heroic wheelhouse. Sure, he breaks a bunch of bones in the process of fighting Muscular, and it hurts a whole lot, but beating Muscular does not require Deku to triumph in an ideological battle; he simply has to be the best at Punching Really Hard. It’s quite straightforward and simple by comparison!

[2] As it happens, the same one who killed Kouta’s parents, but that’s an incidental detail; the narrative would have gone the same way with any Villain who was willing to threaten the life of an uninvolved child. My Hero Academia simply has a surprisingly low number of Villains who fit that criteria.

Does being the best at Punching Really Hard actually address Kouta’s ideological problem with his parents choosing Heroism over being with him? Well, no. Kouta simply pivots into idolizing Deku and never brings up his parents or his trauma surrounding their deaths again. Having come to understand how much it means to be Saved, Kouta gains a new appreciation for the value of Those Who Save, but this valuation is entirely focused on the Hero who saved him, without resolving the question of why said Hero is valuing the life of some stranger over his own familial bonds—and whether it’s correct for The Hero to do so!

My Hero Academia simply doesn’t care about Kouta as anything other than a vehicle for allowing Deku to feel confident and proud in his chosen career, and thus its portrayal of Kouta as Convinced Critic fails to escape the clang of intellectual dishonesty so frequently present in narratives of the type.

Sidebar—The Case of The Critic as Family: Midoriya Inko Inko’s opinions on Deku’s heroics present an obstacle twice, with the former instance being much more compelling. Her confrontation with All Might is much closer to the “Hero’s civilian loved one has a problem with their heroics” story I mentioned previously in a footnote, but with a major shift that pushes her closer to The Critic’s role: Deku’s age. If Deku were an adult, Inko’s objections would simply be fodder for relationship drama, but him being a minor means Inko has a degree of parental authority she’s capable of wielding in his life—over his objections, should she choose! This allows her to pose a very direct threat to his further ability to engage in heroics. In the end, however, the obstacle is resolved in mostly the standard way of the loved one objector. Deku’s prior rescue of Kouta—and the fan letter Kouta sent him as a result—is used to prove firstly the value to others of Deku’s Heroism and secondly the personal fulfillment Deku derives therefrom, leading Inko to back down after making both Deku and All Might promise to be more mindful of their lives when facing danger. Both will go on to disregard this promise almost entirely, of course, but by the time Inko’s objections resurface post-Jakku, their potential impact has been firmly diminished: Deku has gained resolution and power such that nothing Inko could say would stop him from leaving, and so her objections no longer pose a meaningful threat to his heroism. Indeed, her role is so diminished that said objections don’t even rise up to the level of a relationship stressor or something to make The Hero feel bad about himself—she’d have to actually interact with Deku or be present in his thoughts for either of those to be the case, and, post-hospital, the story allows her neither.

> Case 2: Shimura Kotarou

“Heroes hurt their own families just to help complete strangers.” Kotarou is a man who sees himself as having been abandoned by his mother in favor of Heroism. Even though she left him a letter about how he was in danger because of a “bad man” she had to go and fight, even though he almost certainly knows that battle took her life, he blames her for his horribly traumatic abandonment. His grudge likely goes even further, too: given both the woeful shortcomings of Japan’s alternative childcare system[3] and his own personality as an adult, I would be shocked if Kotarou’s subsequent upbringing wasmarked more often by joy and belonging than by pain and alienation.

3: Which, I note, has not been so improved in the rosy glow of the heroic future that a monster like Ujiko was unable to get a foothold in it.

In Kotarou’s eyes, even if Some Villain was endangering him, that was only happening because his mother was a Hero to begin with. If she hadn’t chosen that career, made that enemy, Kotarou would still have both parents, and he wouldn’t have grown up in an almost certainly overcrowded children’s home with the deep societal stigma of being an "orphan “unwanted child” knotted around his neck.

Unlike the other examples of this type of Critic in the story, Kotarou’s bitterness is never assuaged. Instead, down to their strikingly similar names,[4] he serves to illustrate a possible dark ending of how Kouta’s life might have gone if a Hero had never (oh-so-Heroically) gotten him through his wrongheaded (per the narrative) stint as a Critic. And though Kotarou’s life was ended as a direct result of that resentment, it also outlives him, winding itself into the deepest roots of his son’s equally venomous opinion on Heroes.

4: A disclaimer: Their names are less immediately similar in the Japanese, where Kou and Ko are given entirely different kanji (洸 and 弧 respectively). The ta parts of their names, while also using different kanji, do have a base radical in common: 汰 and 太 both include the 大 radical. That's certainly close enough for wordplay jokes to make sense, even if they're not as close as the official rendering of the names (Kotaro and Kota) makes them look.

> Case 3: Shigaraki Tomura

Shigaraki is MHA’s other key invocation of the Hero vs. Critic narrative, though his permutation is quite different from the norm by virtue of the fact that he is also a Villain. While his own critique of Hero Society is in the “shiny façade covering its true ugliness” camp, Shigaraki also adopts his father’s beliefs as his own, echoing Kotarou’s definition of a Hero at Jakku. Notably, this was part of a speech delivered to a bunch of Heroes who, seeing as they themselves were the danger he was facing at the time, were considerably less nobly determined than usual to Save The Critic!

At the time, Deku had neither an answer to Shigaraki’s accusation nor even the willingness to grapple with it. As of this writing, while he’s much more invested in understanding Shigaraki’s pain, but he still lacks an answer to the root causes of it. It remains to be seen what exactly he’ll come up with, but at current, he remains stoutly determined to treat Shigaraki as nothing more than a shell over the Crying Boy that Deku believes remains at Shigaraki’s core. This is none too promising in terms of doing anything to challenge the standard Hero vs Critic narrative! The premise that Deku will save Shigaraki functionally demands that that “saving” (whatever form it winds up taking) will in and of itself end the opposition Shigaraki currently poses.

The Critic obstructs The Hero. The Hero saves The Critic. The Critic no longer obstructs The Hero.

And then The Hero goes on being the main character, while The Critic passes without protest into the rearview mirror as The Hero’s story moves on.

Let’s take a look at a story that dares to try something different with that over-familiar narrative.

Hosoda Mamoru’s Belle

Naito Suzu is a girl who lost her mother to Heroism, and Suzu has never forgiven her for it.

Immediately, the change of focus electrifies. The main character of Belle is not a Hero who must prove herself to a Critic; she is The Critic!

Or is she…?

To get a bit more detailed, when Suzu was a child, no more than six years old, her mother strapped on a lifejacket and, over Suzu’s protestations and pleas, waded into floodwaters to save a stranded child. The child, put into that same lifejacket, was pulled out of the river by other bystanders. Suzu’s mother was not. In the young Suzu’s eyes, her mother gave up their life together to save some stranger.

Over a decade later, Suzu still hasn’t come to terms with that. She loves music—a pastime her mother encouraged—but now its association with her mother means that Suzu can’t sing without feeling a visceral nausea that leaves her retching and shaking with all that unprocessed fury, grief, and frustration. She’s introverted at school, with only two close friends, and her relationship with her father is distant and awkward.

This is the state of affairs when one of Suzu’s friends ropes her into trying U, a bonkers virtual reality playground/social media platform/fantastical internet-alike that’s taken the world by storm. In U, hiding behind a digital avatar with the face of a Disney princess,[5] Suzu finds that she can sing without being wracked with panic and distress. Before long, and with her savvy friend’s help, “Belle” is a full-on internet sensation, giving virtual concerts watched by millions. It’s when one of those concerts is crashed by a mysterious and much-maligned user called the Dragon that the real plot kicks in.

5: Literally; Suzu’s online avatar was designed by Jin Kim, a longtime Disney animator and character designer.

It’s from that point on that Suzu begins to shift. Recognizing in the Dragon a fellow wounded soul, she’s drawn to find out more about him. When a real-life crisis of the ugliest kind finds him, she risks everything she and her friend have built so that she can find and save the boy behind the Dragon—a boy she has never met. It’s only after Suzu has made that leap—when she is staring into the void, not yet knowing how she’ll land—that she has the epiphany: This is what her mother felt. This is why her mother acted as she did.

The movie still has some places to go in seeing Suzu’s gamble through—saving the Dragon is a major plot element!—but the other main plot element, the story of how Suzu reconciles and finds closure with her mother’s death, climaxes there in that moment of truth. Whatever else there is to say about the film’s perhaps overly faith-driven resolution of Dragon’s plot (and there is, to be sure, a lot to say), its resolution to Suzu’s positioning as The Critic in regards to the actions of her Hero mother is a perfectly elegant, sublime solution to the problem, convincing me of The Critic’s turn in a way no other story ever has.

In My Hero Academia, as in so many other traditional superhero properties, Critics are present as obstacles for the Heroes to overcome. The story does not care if those Critics understand the Heroes themselves; it merely wants them to accede that the Hero is right and they are wrong. It puts problems in their path that it insists only The Hero can solve and thus browbeats Critics into acceptance.[6] Far from presenting any alternate paths for The Critics and The Heroes to come to an accord, the story uses the specter of gruesome death—Kotarou’s death at the hands of the son his anti-Hero stance led him to abuse; Muscular’s gleefully murderous rampage—to leave Critics with no other choice: Validate Heroes or die. And the audience is, very clearly, intended to read this blatant false binary as intellectually honest and emotionally rewarding.

6: This pattern becomes even more egregious if you expand the lens from Critics who are grappling with the actions of Heroic family members out to the more traditional Critics whose issues resolve around collateral damage. Look at the scornful holdouts Shindo and Tatami encounter, for example, or the angry journalist woman whose mother was hurt in Gigantomachia’s rampage, both of whom recant their skepticism after witnessing the scale of the threats Heroes face. You see echoes of the pattern in the final arc as well, wherein Endeavor’s fanboy comes back around on Endeavor as a prelude for skeptics all around the globe being moved to prayer by All Might’s grotesque battle against All For One.

In Belle, on the other hand, The Critic is not overcome by being saved themselves. Indeed, while Suzu is saved at one point (some of Dragon’s AI creations help her escape from U’s peacekeeping force, a group as self-righteous as they are self-appointed), not for one instant does that experience cause her to mentally align herself with the feelings of the child her mother saved. Rather, the story puts Suzu in a situation where she must save another. Thus, she reconciles with The Hero not because the plot corners her into becoming a Victim in need of help, but because her own actions bring her to a place of true empathy. She validates The Hero’s past actions because, in her own moment of crisis, The Critic herself becomes The Hero.

Would that superhero stories like My Hero Academia could treat its Critics with even a fraction of Belle’s respect for Suzu’s interiority and agency.

#bnha #the dragon and the freckled princess #mamoru hosoda's belle #bnha critical #my writing #continuing my dubious drawing of parallels between vastly different genres of story #next time: why laios dungeon meshi is a better nerd main character than deku academia #(probably not really but I just want you all to know that if I wrote it I would be right about it)

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