#major my hero academia spoilers below

[mediaevalmusereads]

If We Were Villains. By M. L. Rio. Flatiron Books, 2017.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Genre: thriller

Series: N/A

Summary: Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.

As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.

***Full review below.***

Content Warnings: violence, misogyny, suicide, blood

Overview: I followed the author of this book on tumblr way back in the day while she was blogging about her writing journey. To be honest, I didn't have a strong opinion about her one way or the other, but I found the premise of her book intriguing. As a lover of premodern and early modern English literature, I figured I should give the finished product a whirl. Well, I finally was in the mood. Overall, my opinions on this book are a little mixed, but leaning towards positive. While I do think Rio does a good job creating a Dark Academia atmosphere and the emotional devastation of the last half of the book was well-executed, I think her characters and prose leave a little something to be desired. Still, for a debut novel, this was fairly memorable, so it gets 3.5 stars from me.

Writing: Rio's prose has its ups and downs, with some parts flowing quite well and others not so much. When the scenes were full of action (for example, the Macbeth performance and the Julius Caesar rehearsal afterwards), I was fairly engrossed in the story, so I think Rio does best when there are moments of tension inserted into performances or just after (like at various parties).

However, I also think Rio could have done more to show rather than tell. Because this book is told in first person, our narrator, Oliver, tends to be very straightforward about what he is feeling as well as side comments about background or context info. Personally, I felt like Rio could have held back a little more or been more abstract about how characters were feeling and acting.

Furthermore, I had some mixed feelings about using Shakespeare quotes as dialogue. Looking at the author's note in the back, it seems like Rio took this quirk from real-life grad students she knew at King's College. So while I don't doubt that some people do this, in a novel, it comes across less as realistic and more as pretentious. Maybe that's the point; after all, most of these characters aren't "good guys" and Oliver does say at one point that the school felt like a cult. But for me, I couldn't quite determine if Rio was deliberately creating a pretentious atmosphere to heighten the Dark Academic mood or if she was simply showing off her knowledge of Shakespeare's works. Either way, I felt the quotes a bit over-used and would have preferred if they were sprinkled in less liberally.

Overall, though, I did like the pace and the ease at which I could move through the novel. I was able to read this book fairly quickly, and things were straightforward enough that I never felt confused or lost.

Characters: There are a number of characters in this book, but I'm going to focus on the 7 protagonists, just to keep things brief (ish).

Plot: The plot of this book follows fourth-year theater student Oliver Marks as he and his classmates defend themselves from a bully while putting on Julius Caesar at their exclusive, elite arts school. (Obviously, it's a little more complicated than that, but I'm trying to avoid major spoilers).

This book is strongest in the second half when all the students grow more and more tormented by their actions and begin fracturing. Rio does a fairly good job of showing how characters began acting irrationally, and in a lot of ways, their descent mirrors some of Shakespeare's works.

I also thing the devastation of the end worked out well, and it was heightened by the emotional tension between Oliver and James. I do want to caution readers that if you're sensitive to the depiction of deaths of queer characters, you should skip this book. But personally, I found it somewhat fitting given the subject matter and the thematic connections to Shakespeare's works.

The main part of the plot that I didn't think flowed well was the beginning. The beginning was a little awkward in that Rio spoon feeds us a lot of information: characters narrate their family situations one after another, like Rio just wanted to get it out of the way. On top of that, there is a scene where one of the instructors interrogates a student until they disclose their greatest strength and greatest insecurity. To me, this seemed a lazy way to communicate characterization, and it almost soured me on the rest of the novel.

As a unit, I really did like the idea of these 7 characters essentially standing in for archetypes. I think it meshed with the themes of the book fairly well, and I liked the easy companionship that a lot of them had. I also liked that their relationships were often messy, especially during the second half of the book; it made them more interesting and when they began to break down, it felt all the more chaotic.

As individuals, however, I think things get a little murky.

Oliver, our narrator, is somewhat of a blank slate in that he doesn't seem to have a very defined personality, but maybe that's the point. He's stereotyped as the "support" or even the "nice guy," and there were times when I could see that shine through. He does seem to care about his friends and does admit to being naive, so I don't want to give the impression that he's entirely without merit. The main thing I didn't like about him was his attitude towards his sister, who has an eating disorder. He's not very considerate of her, and while I can understand being upset that his future at school is financially threatened by her, he snaps at her and says some pretty awful things. He also seems to characterize his family as awful, and while I understand the negativity there, compared to other characters, he has somewhat of a normal suburban middle class family. His whining about them, then, felt entitled.

James, Oliver's roommate and best friend, is stereotyped as a heroic figure, and I could see some of that come out in his actions. What I liked most about James, however, was his relationship with Oliver; the two are best friends, but there are times when their closeness tipped over into homoerotic and romantic intimacy. I enjoyed the tension there, and it did make for a more devastating ending.

Meredith, who is figured as the temptress, could have been written with a little more grace. While I think it's ok that Meredith exists as a sexual woman who is anxious about people overlooking her as a person, it also seems like the narrative does just that, at least until the midpoint of the novel. I very much did not appreciate the misogynistic comments thrown her way, even if they were partially in jest. Her character grew on me more in the second half, though, so she wasn't all bad.

Wren and Philippa are a little harder to define. Wren, I think, is supposed to be the ingenue, but it was hard to see that in the way she was written. Philippa is described as someone who is always overlooked, and I think parts of the narrative do a good job of showing moments when she has a great impact. As individual characters, however, I felt like there wasn't much to distinguish them.

Alexander is a character who is always typecast as (I think) a fool, and off stage, he seems to be mainly defined by his excessive smoking, drinking, and gay sexuality. I didn't quite know how to react to him, in part because his hedonism felt repetitive, but his drug use in the second half made some sense, given all that was going on.

Richard, the "bully," was interesting in that he was simultaneously loved and hated. I liked that the other characters had a complex relationship with him; they agreed he was a phenomenal actor but also loathed his ego. They see him as part of their group and as a friend, but also frequently argue with him. Having this complexity meant that I couldn't quite see him purely as an antagonist, and I like living in that delicious grey area.

TL;DR: If We Were Villains suffers from a few missteps (mainly prose and some characterization), but is rescued by the deft handling of a friend group's ultimate descent into madness. While I think Rio could have done some things to reduce the appearance of pretense and more solidly set up the exposition of the novel, this was a fairly solid debut that delivered an emotional punch towards the end.

[thesakuragarnet]

Hi! (First Post I guess) MASTER LIST LINKED BELOW KEEP READING!

Hello! I'm Sakura_Garnet and I am chronically obsessed with My Hero Academia, specifically the Keeping Up With The Todoroki's subplot. I exclusively write Dabi/Toya Todoroki-centered fanfiction, ranging from angst to fluff to smut and various combinations. I have a few finished fanfictions and a LOT of WIPs, as well as a plethora of "oneshots" for various AU's. The majority of my writing is done on AO3, but I double post a few of my big works on wattpad. I am constantly listening to music, and most of my fics have been inspired by songs and albums. I have so so SO many headcanons for MHA/BNHA, and feel very strongly about DabiHawks/TouKei as you will see from the majority of my writings. I have ADHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and try my best to relay my experiences with these neurodivergencies in a few of my works. My main fic that is my pride and joy is PHOENIX: A Pro Hero Toya Todoroki AU, which covers 14 years of Toya Todoroki's life in an alternate universe (ages 16 to 30 to be exact) . If you do choose to read it, please mind the tags and the AO3 author's notes as it does deal with some heavy content (I tend to max out the tags on the majority of my works bc a bitch is nothing if not thorough). I don't know how much I'll be active on here, but I'm excited!

As always

The Past Never Dies,

<3

Sakura_Garnet

Master List (and my universes) 1 8 + ONLY

(Disclaimer: I curse like a sailor in real life so pretty much all fics have some form of swearing in them in some form or fashion. I tag my fics extensively, please pay attention to the tags listed in each fic as I will not be listing them here. Summaries and taglists will be on the links for each fic <3 fics with a sole focus on sm*t will be labeled smvtfics, but that doesn't necessarily mean that unlabeled ones do not have sm*t in them. Some links will take you to tumblr, but not everything is posted on here, so some will go straight to the AO3 fic.)

DabiHawks

- PHOENIX AU

PHOENIX: A Pro Hero Toya Todoroki AU

Private Hero Training Academy : PHOENIX AU Spinoff

Fire in My Veins

I'm Not Okay, I Promise

Separate Ways

I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE (I WANNA BE YOUR MASTER) (smvtfic)

The Tape (smvtfic)

Perfectly Good At It (smvtfic)

HONEY (ARE U COMING?) (smvtfic)

-Fantasy AU

Flames of Fate

Your Body Is My Temple (smvtfic)

-Civilian Social Worker Toya X Pro Hero Hawks AU

It's Dangerous To Go Alone

Pillow Talk (smvtfic)

Grand Gestures

Light as a Feather (smvtfic)

Meet The Todoroki's

Home Late (smvtfic)

-Pro Hero Dabi X Villain Hawks (Talons)

And when he touched him he turned ruby red (smvtfic)

bad idea right (smvtfic)

When we're staring at the ceiling (smvtfic)

-Quirkless College TouKei AU

Pent-Up (smvtfic)

-The Mean Girls AU

On Wednesdays We Wear Black

-THE VOID (Not the canon timeline necessarily but something in between)

We Were Just Kids

Easier Than Lying

Distracted (smvtfic)

One Stupid Phrase (smvtfic)

Touch-Starved

I'd Rather Feel Pain Than Nothing At All (smvtfic)

My Eden (smvtfic)

What The Heart Wants

Conjugal Visit (short smvtfic with a LOT of plot)

that one Rihanna song

Flecks of Gold

Dabi X OC

-The FIREPROOF/ANARCHY saga (Dabi X Sakura)

A Mission

FIREPROOF

ANARCHY (apocalypse AU)

-Pro Hero Dabi X Pro Hero Sakura AU

Playing With Fire: A Pro Hero Dabi AU

The Limo Scandal (Pro Hero Dabi X Mirko X Hawks smvtfic prequel)

-Touya X Dusk AU

His Ocean Eyes

First (smvtfic draft)

MISA! MISA! (smvtfic draft)

On the Clock (smvtfic spoiler)

-Pro Hero Dabi X Villain Sakura

Secondary Location

DABI X FEM! READER

Random Villain Fem! Reader X Dabi

Only Stops A Sentence (smvtfic)

Good Graces

Liquid Lust (smvtfic)

Left Behind

Support Course Graduate Fem! Reader X Dabi

Crimes Of Passion (smvtfic)

Carnal Addictions (smvtfic)

Deal With The Devil (smvtfic)

Spies AU

Say My F*cking Name (smvtfic)

The Band AU

Music Keeps Us Alive: College Band AU

Cravings (FTM DABI X TWICE SMVTFIC)

Random Dabi-centric (ish) Fics

The League Of Villain Go To Disney: A crackfic mini series for just good vibes (slight DabiHawks)

Birthday (LOV Found Family Vibes) (slight DabiHawks)

Savior Complex (Big Brother Dabi)

Here Be Dragons (Alt. Fantasy AU)

If I Had Been There (Dabi X Magne Angst)

Embers In The Dark (Dabi X Burnin' smvtfic)

#dabihawks #ao3 writer #ao3 #dabi #toukei #dabi x hawks #pro hero dabi #mirko #fanfic #my hero academia fanfiction #dabi fanfic #toya todoroki #touya todoroki #archive of our own

[mha-ship-of-the-day]

Welcome to My Hero Academia: Ship of the Day!

New ships post every two days!

General Rules

Not spoiler free for the anime, manga, or spinoffs

SFW, any suggestive reblogs will be tagged as such

Be respectful to ships you don't like, shippers you don't agree with, and artists that are reblogged to this blog

Filter tags as needed (tag list below)

Tagging this blog on your own or someone else's art for that days' ship is highly encouraged and we will reblog

Ships can be read platonically if you choose but this blog will not specify

Any hateposting in the comments, reblogs, or inbox will cause a similar ship to be bumped to the top of the queue (ex. "I hate dekumight" will result in shinzawa being posted)

Submission Rules

EVERY SHIP IS ALLOWED! Every ship means every ship. Every combination of characters is on the table to be submitted. Extreme, weird, and/or personal rarepairs are highly encouraged.

Polycules of any size are allowed and encouraged

Canon x OC and OC x OC will not be allowed

Canon x real life people (such as voice actors or Horikoshi) are not allowed

Crossover ships are allowed as long as you list the media the other character is from

Submit as much as you want in the inbox or DMs. Submission asks will not be posted publicly

Tag Categories

Every posted ship will be tagged with one of more category for organization and filtering purposes. Please read and blacklist any tags you are uncomfortable with for the best experience.

Student Ship - used for ships where all characters involved are under the age of 19 (ex. IzuOcha)

Adult Ship - used for ships where all characters involved are 19 or above in age (ex. DaveMight)

Age Gap - used for ships where one character is under 19 and another is 19+ (ex. TogaTwice) this tag will not be used for ships between two adults with a notable gap in age.

Incest - used for ships where two characters are confirmed to be biologically related (ex. DabiGeten)

Love/Hate - used for ships that are confirmed or can be reasonably assumed to be hostile to each other in the narrative. (ex. Shigahaul) The majority of ships involving Himiko Toga or Katsuki Bakugou will not be approved for this tag.

[darkstaranthology]

'binary eclipse' was the fifth fic posted for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, gender dysphoria and the discussion of the trans experience, date rape, past rape/non-con, mortal/immortal relationships, vampire and werewolf sex, including bloodsucking, torture, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~40,000 words

5 chapters

E rated (explicit sexual content, mortal/immortal relationships, rape/non-con, torture, blood and gore, horror elements)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con

Urban Fantasy AU (No Quirks/Heroes University, with fantastical elements)

'binary eclipse' is a multichapter fic concerning a modern university AU where trans girl Izumi 'Deku' Midoriya is date raped at a party after already living a tough life to get as far as she is. Struggling with university life already, she spirals after her experience, only to meet 'Yuu Takeyama,' an odd-looking young woman who seems awfully familiar, spinning Izumi's world upside down.

So, it's funny really. Before BNHA, my special interests were generally superheroes (I was really into the MCU, I just wasn't into fandom in the formal sense before the pandemic) and horror films. If someone was at all familiar with my more 'traditional work,' I think this would be very obvious, truth be told. Horror themes appear sporadically in my work, mostly subdued as I try to write for a mostly teen-rated audience in a lot of it, and obviously, I love superheroes. You probably wouldn't think that I do, given how critical I am of superhuman society in BNHA in my work, but that's more just taking the themes to their logical conclusions.

'binary eclipse,' accordingly, was primarily inspired by a few horror-themed fics I read. I got to thinking about izch Little Red Riding Hood, actually, partly because one of the official Halloween costumes Ochako has been assigned in Hori's bonus sketches is as Little Red Riding Hood. Traditionally, Little Red Riding Hood can be interpreted as a rather heteronormative story concerning a predatory, broadly masculine wolf and a defenseless, often very young girl he preys on. Yet famously, in the original story, the Big Bad Wolf crossdresses to try and 'fool' Little Red Riding Hood, to varying degrees of success based on the particular retelling. This in turn got me thinking about gender roles, reinterpretations of themes, and the idea of 'fem!Deku' as a trope.

Now, conceptually, I have no problem with genderbending. I do think it's normally tacky to genderbend gay ships into straight ships. Fandom will crow on and on that 'M/F ships aren't inherently straight,' and that's true, but narrative framing is an important literary idea for a reason. However, I think genderbending a straight ship into a gay ship, as long as you take what that premise implies seriously, is an interesting writing exercise. Hence, 'sapphic izch' is my favorite version of the ship, and I think a lot about the thought experiment of 'what if BNHA was the same, except Deku was a girl?'

Of course, if it was as such, BNHA would've been cancelled after two volumes, and no one would ship izch no matter how bluntly obvious Hori made the romantic undertones, but I digress.

There were a variety of influences on 'binary eclipse.' One big one is an iconic horror film, 'Ginger Snaps,' a Canadian film from 2000. Another was SevenRenny (@sevenrenny) and their fic 'The Root of All the Poison,' which really stuck with me. Really, I'm not here to write a book about horror influences, there was a lot, 'cause I love horror films. Point was, I wanted to make Deku a girl, and I wanted to make her a werewolf. However, as easy as it would've been to make her a cis girl, I think making her trans was the more obvious choice; what are werewolves if not one of the classic pieces of trans iconography, after all?

I think this distinction is important when discussing genderbending. I think there's something fundamentally different and important between a character being trans and a character just now being 'a girl.' I think it's okay to just want to do that second thing, and not all fic has to be 'good representation.' That's fine! But how this topic is handled will greatly affect if a fic is good, at least to me, so I went into this one wanting it to write about the trans experience, especially as it pertains to my own life.

This fic is semi-autobiographical, albeit very blown out of proportion, of course. That's all I'll say about that.

For Ochako, making her a vampire was also an easy choice. It let me riff off of now-classic 'vampires vs. werewolves' iconography, it let me talk about the interesting subtext of Ochako and Toga as a relationship, and it let me make her 'magical' in a distinctly different way. Ochako/Toga is a ship that I used to really adore, and I still like them, but as the manga has progressed the fandom has become quite insufferable about how it postures about Ochako/Toga as another totem for migratory slash fandom to conveniently get female characters out of the way of their ships. I ship Deku/Bakugou, for the record! The fandom all around is merely aggravating, and as both the third act of the manga has descended into absolutely abysmal writing and the fandom has become acutely annoying, I now tend to avoid Ochako/Toga content, unfortunately.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy writing them, though. It's one of those things where I only really like them if I'm writing them now. There's going to be sort of a gradient of portrayals of Ochako and Toga in 'dark star,' from the antagonistic, abusive relationships they have in 'bound' or 'binary eclipse,' to being friendly and supportive in 'dragon's breath,' to close, complicated friends in some planned upcoming fics, such as 'paths forward' or 'finite incantatem.' There's even one planned fic for 'dark star' that will involve the famous Deku/Ochako/Toga OT3, which will be set in one of the various planned fantasy AUs.

For 'binary eclipse' specifically, I was riffing off of a fairly direct transliteration of canon, except where Toga isn't 'saved.' It's meant to be tragic, where she is an abused person who has in turn embraced the abusive system that hurt her. A common theme in BNHA fandom is the notion that the villains are quasi-revolutionary, but really they just want to watch the world burn in canon. Toga in this fic is a very small-scale version of this, choosing to lash out because of how she was treated, while Ochako bears the brunt of that ire. It's not going to make the world a better place, but it's also sad and miserable, not uplifting, when she dies.

Her backstory is also a homage to 'Bloodborne,' the 2015 video game by FromSoftware, which was another influence on this fic.

There's a lot of complex themes in this fic, largely dealing with both Izumi and Ochako going through a rape recovery narrative together. For Izumi, her experience is raw and fresh, trying to grapple with being a trans girl and now experiencing what is unfortunately one of the more common 'girl' experiences: being date raped at a party. Meanwhile, Ochako is recovering from long-term partner abuse, walking away from her position as Himiko's 'pet' vampire underling, trying to grapple with what she was made to do while effectively in captivity. A lot of the queer themes intermingle with these fantastical elements, which I had fun with.

One sort of incidental element to this fic is that 'soulmates' are real, in the sort of blunt 'fanfic' manner. That is, two people are soulmates, they have specific soulmate 'markings,' etc. In this case, only 'special' people have them, people deemed important by 'Fate.' 'Fate' in the specific 'named character' sense will be a recurring element in these fics, also appearing in 'dragon's breath.' In the case of 'binary eclipse,' soulmates have been no promise of a happy ending, another queer theme in practice.

Bakugou is implicitly dating Kirishima in this fic. It's not made super clear, mostly because from Izumi's limited POV she is unsure what their relationship status is, she just knows the two are sexually engaged in some fashion. I imagined they are somewhere between 'dating' and 'friends with benefits,' although the specifics aren't important. What is important is that Bakugou's soulmate isn't Kirishima, it's Todoroki, a commentary on how certain characters revolve narratively around Deku, and how changes in Deku's narrative would send them all careening out of orbit.

(There's something to be said here, as an aside, about the prevalence of Bakugou/Todoroki in this series. I do sincerely ship Bakugou with both Deku and Todoroki. One of these fics will actually concern Bakugou/Deku/Ochako as a threesome, too, in fact! But Bakugou/Todoroki has progressively become my main ship for Bakugou, both because I like it a lot and because I think it narratively foils izch in really fucking fascinating ways. It makes writing fic about them a breeze. I used to like Bakugou/Kirishima a lot, and I'm ambivalent to them as a background ship now, but I have soured on the relationship largely because the fandom for that ship is... shall we say, intense. Many of them are not very kind to Deku or Ochako as characters, which is the quickest way to make me not like you in BNHA fandom.)

Meanwhile, Izumi and Ochako are soulmates, but Ochako was taken by Toga when Ochako was only fifteen. They were 'meant' to live out a fairy tale high school sweethearts romance, only for Izumi to come out to Ochako as trans later in life, putting them on track for something new. Izumi would have been afraid that Ochako wouldn't accept her, only for Ochako to embrace the change, always steadfastly supportive of her best friend.

Instead, Ochako was taken, Izumi collapsed into a deep depression and came out in high school, and everything is all wrong. Indeed, now it's Ochako who comes to Izumi afraid that Izumi won't accept how she's changed, only for Izumi to be thrilled to have her constant back. In the same vein, Izumi and Bakugou have something on the edge of a queerplatonic relationship in this fic; they're not merely 'friends,' but they aren't romantically inclined, either. They love each other, they're just not in love, and I thought this was beautiful, too.

'binary eclipse' is a very queer fic, or at least, that was my intent. I'm queer, personally, but I've come out as being queer relatively late in life. Some people think this makes my experience invalid, which is a shame. I try very hard to learn the ins and outs of queer culture as I go, and to write about it authentically. Sometimes I worry I don't portray things well, or as others might experience them. I only can speak for myself, of course. But I wanted 'binary eclipse' to be a very queer story, even if it's a bit of a shame that it means that relatively few people have read it.

Then again, it has absolutely terrifying tags, so that's understandable. It's also the first story in 'dark star' concerning transgender experiences, though it certainly won't be the last. There are (as of writing this post) two more fics regarding Deku as a trans girl, two regarding Deku as a trans boy, and one regarding Ochako as a trans girl. Each will approach these ideas in slightly different ways or contexts, but the broad points will rhyme, as you'd probably expect. There will also be at least one fic which concerns cis fem!Deku, though it'll be awhile before that comes back up. Sapphic izch remains my favorite version of the ship as long as it's written well, and I wish more people would write/draw for the concept.

Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of fandom for izch trends younger and trends very cishet male. I feel like this shouldn't be a controversial statement to anyone who's even vaguely familiar with the fandom. Most of the relevant content is made by women, as with all fandom, but most of the constant crowing on Reddit and Twitter about how 'Deku is straight' comes from bland cishet men who contribute nothing and really don't even 'ship' izch, it's just a rhetorical tool for them. Personally, I mentioned earlier the notion that 'M/F ships aren't inherently straight.' That's true, but I think some people hold up sexuality head canons as a totem to avoid criticism, or to separate themselves from cishet men in fandom.

To be blunt, there's nothing wrong with just thinking that your ship involves two straight people. Fandom has become increasingly and exceedingly cringe about policing sexuality head canons, to its detriment. But if you don't think they're straight, then I think how they're framed is important. I generally have come to enjoy framing izch in broadly queer ways, trying to show versions of them that aren't merely 'a teenage boy and a teenage girl who are high school sweethearts.' There's nothing wrong with enjoying that - obviously, I do, since I fell in love with them - but I like to broaden my horizons, too.

So a lot of 'dark star' will contain heavy queer themes. Some will be set in 'the canon setting,' as it were, such as 'stardust,' 'at liberty,' or 'swallow the sun.' Others will be set in AUs, such as 'back contamination' or 'finite incantatem.' Not all of them will focus on transgender experiences; I would like to do at least a few involving cis fem!Deku, eventaully. I also took a crack at cis male!Ochako, but I feel that trope works much better in art than prose. I may eventually do something that is trans male Ochako, however. We shall see!

In this context, 'binary eclipse' served as an important test fic for me to see how I felt about writing dark queer themes, complicated morality dynamics, and horror elements for a story that I still broadly want to have 'a happy ending.' I'm pretty proud of it. I think the scene of Izumi transforming to fight the Nomu and Toga is one of the better action pieces I've ever written, even.

My overall thoughts are a little more muddled on 'binary eclipse,' not because I'm not proud of it, but rather merely because I just don't remember much of the concept phase of writing it. I wrote it very quickly, over the course of a few days, and most of that stuff has been lost to the ether. I'm happy to answer questions about it, though. It's a fic I wish was more popular, given its queer themes, but alas, what can you do?

If you have thoughts about horror stories, queer themes, or sapphic izch, I'd love to hear about it! So if you enjoyed 'binary eclipse,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #binary eclipse #fanfic #cw: noncon #cw: gore #cw: vampires #cw: werewolves #cw: dysphoria #cw: teratophilia #cw: dubcon #cw: drug use #cw: torture

[talenlee]

Story Pile: My Hero Academia, Season 4

Story Pile: My Hero Academia, Season 4

Alright, now we’ve hit our stride, we’ve done most of the set-up stuff required to have stories and character information all out there. The major characters are all laid out, we have a villain on the horizon waiting to happen to people, and we just had an introduction of some new boundary characters, so it’s time to immediately do something with all of those. This is a series that has got a handle on the basic ideas of what it’s going to do, and each season can be snapped apart into a few short story arcs you can consider on their own.

There’s something to the experience of enjoying My Hero Academia, season to season. It’s got all the joy of a catchy pop song, popcorn playful and full of classic shonen anime battle feelings, but this pop song also includes a few slurs? And probably says something condescending about women. Basically, I’m enjoying it but I’m sure as hell not going to defend it.

What we get in this season is some high drama with a big battle, one of those stories that focus on the characters in the setting dicking around with the infrastructure that exists to deal with the commonality of superpowers, and then an absolute top-tier banger of a story arc about excellent nearly-zero-stakes hero bullshit.

I’m going to talk more about it and that’s going to involve spoilers, so, below the fold!

The first arc (the Shie Hassaikai arc) is a real solid rendition of something the genre does well. It’s a villain that gets attention and then the heroes who can be mustered quickly engage with it. It’s got a good personal connection to the inciting incident, with Mirio and Midoriya meeting Eri and needing to get involved. It’s got an escalation of the threat, and the enemy organisation is presented as exactly that — an organisation of people, with limited communication and means to take advantage of one another.

This was a mix of good and bad parts. There’s a bunch of questions of like ‘hey, why are you here?’ characters – like Bubble and Nighteyes – and a bunch of ‘hey, they’re here, this rules,’ – like Twice and Toga and Mirio and Ryuuki. The final villain fight even ended earlier than I thought it would, and put some real serious pathos into how it handled Mirio losing his powers. Like it’s very ‘boo hoo, I don’t get to be a superhero any more’ in a setting like that, but it’s still showing something of a serious loss of a character.

The second arc (the Remedial License Arc) continues the way this universe seems to think you don’t get to be taught things before you’re tested on them. The way Bakugo and Todoroki react to being asked to do things in a class environment makes it seem like it’s the first time they’ve heard the idea mentioned, and that either makes them poor students (and they’re not, Todoroki scores very well) or it means their class is failing them in a big, fundamental way. The idea here is great — show you can command trust and respect. I like that!

The biggest concern here is the focus on Endeavour and his inner life, because Endeavour sucks.

The third arc (the Gentle Villain Arc) is about an ancient, withered husk of a man who starts his youtube career in the silvery fragility of his eldest days, ie, in his thirties, and speaking as someone who did that, yeah, it feels really pointless. But this arc is about a single self-styled gentleman villain who wants to try and breach the UA campus because he believes that villains are the ones who change the world and heroes react to improve the world because of them — he’s charming as hell. Meanwhile, Deku wants to make sure this doesn’t become an incident because if it does then the whole school fair that’s about to happen gets shut down, and that means Eri doesn’t get to have a normal school day and candy apples and learning to smile.

The Gentle Hero arc represents two things this series has direly lacked: Something where the stakes are vitally important to our protagonists, and something where the stakes for the world are not dire. It shows a story where being a superhero means your solutions to problems get to be big, high scale things like rubberised buildings bouncing people off the walls and love-powered sandwiches of air, but the core of what they’re addressing are still things like saving one little girl’s smile. Good! Stuff!

By the way, if you’re curious, La Brava is 21, and Gentle is 32. It’s a gap but it’s also not nearly as bad as it looks considering La Brava looks like you asked a porn artist to design a lawn gnome.

The idea of having to break a hero’s spirit resulting in explaining things in combat is a good one. Fatgum explains it to Red Riot at one point, that the reason heroes talk about their powers, the reason they explain to enemies what won’t work is to cut off their options and to bring fights to a close quicker. It can demoralise an enemy, it can make sure they know what won’t work, and force them to confront what they can’t get away with. It’s good! It’s good because it also fulfills an important thing in the context of a story that’s about how and why interesting combat abilities interact, by letting you, the viewer, find out what is going on, what those combat abilities are and what they do without pulling the story to a halt and presenting an essay on combat stuff.

Oh, while we’re heaping praise for how it depicts and explains powers? Mirio’s powers are dope as shit, he doesn’t need One For All! He just needs to keep doing good! Oh wait, hang on, that didn’t work out so well. But still, the loss of his powers is the loss of something meaningful: His powers were cool, he worked hard on them, and they let him do something he wanted to do that we can look at as a fundamental good!

Twice and Toga showed up in the first arc here, and they’re still great, but not only are they great, but they did two things I really liked. One, they got super mad at Overhaul for misgendering Magne after her death, and two, the second they weren’t having fun dealing with the yakuza, they bounced. It was really nice because it plays with the idea of these characters having their own inner lives, and I think the fact we see those is why I think those two characters are amongst the best villains. We know what they think, and why they think it. We have an idea of their values, that’s cool.

Finally, and this isn’t really a thing the series is doing, just something I personally find funny, Nighteyes sucks and dies, and the last thing he learns as he dies, is that he was totally wrong about how his powers worked for his entire life. Like, how many plans and positions and projects did he dissuade people from trying because he was so sure that his power was right and there was only one way the future could work out, only to find that it turns out, nope! The future is yet unwritten and his powers didn’t work the way he thought they did.

Wait, though, hang on, it can’t just be an unalloyed good, right? Well, of course not, no as the fact I was delighting in the death of All Might’s former sidekick with a vibe of ‘eat shit and die.’ There’s a bunch of stuff in this season that builds on previous bad decisions, and the introduction of some new, equally bad decisions. Mineta is still here, for example, and he’s not changing — the closest you can claim to some kind of redemption or adjustment to the character is how he said something, just one thing in this whole season, which wasn’t revolting. It’s still a series where Bakugo, Todoroki and Midoriya are central, important characters who act on the world and who we’re meant to be invested in, and their powers all boil down to a form of punch a guy.

The story still features almost nothing for women to do on their own, even women with amazing and cool powers, because they are simply not chosen by the story to do the important things, and it’s just a coincidence that women do not have powers that can be simplified to punching a guy. There’s sexual harrassment (you do not get to put your coworkers in bondage equipment when they are explicitly asking not to) which is framed as a quirky thing for a particular ideological position and not, y’know, a crime.

This season is still fundamentally just My Hero Academia, and it’s just not going to do anything to change that.

There are still however two special things in this season that really ticked me off and I wanted to highlight them. First of all, this season spent more time focusing on Endeavour. I can’t say for sure but I’m pretty confident that this is the first time we’ve been seeing things from Endeavour’s perspective, with his inner life presented to us as a relatable position, and that’s a thing that suggests that this story thinks that this guy is a guy we should be able to empathise with. Sure, whatever, of course, this series seems to think that whatever it was he did wasn’t that bad and therefore the whole physical and emotional abuse of his wife and children is a thing that you can be redeemed from.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this, particularly in that there’s a lot of effort being put into making Endeavour relatable, to make his pain and the complexity it represents important to the audience, and none of that effort is being put into, say, giving Creati or Froppy a second thing to do. It’s a demonstration of what the story thinks of as engaging, what it thinks is worth using its setting and its superheroics to highlight.

It thinks Endeavour is interesting and it thinks say, Ryuuki isn’t.

There was another special boo tomatoes tomatoes I am throwing tomatoes moment, which was the fight between Rappa Kendo and Fatgum. Fatgum is already a character hovering on the edge of being a problem right there (I mean his title is ‘the BMI hero’, come on), but I appreciated the way the story treated the goofy character as if he had some room to be a cool hero. What I wasn’t wild about was the way that his framing was that to be powerful, he had to stop being fat, and that’s rotten. Like commit to it, don’t go ‘boom, surprise, he’s actually conventionally hot when he’s being powerful!’

I was real close to liking how they handled Fatgum and then I found myself incredibly disappointed.

This isn’t a story about school or superheroes. We don’t generally see the students talking about subjects in class, listening to or discussing complex topics of morality and ethics or public responsibility. We already know that they have to learn ideas like ‘protect people’ from the exams themselves, without seemingly any education about it ahead of time.

It really is the anime version of a superhero comic; superhero comics are famously sprawling, with many different characters in many different stories having a variety of different starts and finishes that can make tuning in at any given point a challenge, My Hero Academia is a lot more linear. The end of the last season introduced you to Mirio and Nighteyes; this season features Mirio and Nighteyes. There’s not a lot of distance between plant and payoff in this series, which can mean that the story is a bit easier to handle, but it also can make it feel a bit obvious; at the end of the season, there’s a focus on Endeavour and Hawks, and I’m going to take a wild swing that those two characters are going to be focal in the next season.

You can consider this as a good thing or a bad thing: I don’t particularly like the way that it follows the simple pattern of introducing a thing, then telling a story about that thing, because it does tend towards making narratives a little predictable and does make the world feel smaller. A character is introduced, and then we immediately learn about them because there’s nothing to focus on about them until after we already know. This runs the risk of being a real deflating move if they try and do an arc about (say) traitors or hidden instigators, which I think they’re going to want to do, since there are at least two characters introduced who can impersonate other people.

On the other hand, who cares? This is a series about feeling very big and hitting things very hard, it’s not really a series about smart superheroes outwitting people or standing on principle. I wish it was, but I can wish all I want and it’ll never be the thing I wish for.

See, superhero fiction doesn’t make sense unless you force it to.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #StoryPile #Anime #MyHeroAcademia

#Anime #My Hero Academia #Media #Story Pile

[aroexhaustionintensifies]

Aizawa, after several years of masterminding Iida's, Shirakumo's, Yamada's and Nemuri's bullshittery and 2 days of teaching one (1) Midoriya Izuku: this is karma isn't it-

#boku no academia #major my hero academia spoilers below #aizawa shouta #hizashi yamada #shirakumo oboro #nemuri kayama #midoriya izuku #tensei iida #i refuse to believe midnight is dead fuck you #she deserves so much more #shigaraki is why we cant have nice things #*slaps myself* this bitch ass can fit so much denial #someone give this man a cup of coffee #yeah thats probaly karma #also loud cloud? hmu #nemuri? more like nemuQUEEN #maybe i deserve this #if you saw me crying no you did not #canon: thats why yo shoes raggedy me: thats why yo mama dead- dead as hell- what shoe size she got on-

[deleteddewewted]

Hi! About that post of aizawa having toxic traits, can you explain please? Im an anime only but i absolutely don't mind spoilers. I couldnt find any explenation online either :((

Hello! This took way to long to post, so i'm really sorry for that Anon. But hopefully this explains why Aizawa is who he is and why I emphasized him having toxic traits.

I wanted to write it all out properly and hopefully make sense to my previous post. There is a lot going on here and because of the image limit i couldn't post more manga panels showing important moments, but this should explain some of the basic points.

I will be using the Vigilantes manga, My Hero Academia manga, and the My Hero Academia anime as evidence/support since these are the ones that canon.

Aizawas Toxic Traits

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

Lets start off by determining a few things:

Just because you have trauma, doesn't make you immune to the consequences of your own actions.

Just because you have a mental illness doesn't mean you can't be a shit human being to others.

Just because you're a victim doesn't mean you can't be an abuser.

You can't project onto others. It's not a healthy way of coping and you're harming other people.

You're expectations can be to high.

Anyone, no matter what, can be a bad person.

Now that we have those things out of the way, lots move onto the supporting evidence.

In Vigilantes, Aizawa suffered from the tragic loss of his best friend Shirakumo Oboro. This caused him to become very focused on his training while neglecting himself and the relationships he had around him. But let's first address why Aizawa is so attached and affected by Shirakumo's death.

Aizawa in his younger years lacked the confidence he thought he should have when it came to his quirk. His quirk wasn't a physical one so he felt like he wasn't deserving of even pursuing the hero career. He couldn't commit to helping someone without overthinking or seeing himself as lesser then. He hesitated instead of acting. He still cared about how he was being perceived.

This is where Shirakumo would come in. He was everything that Aizawa wasn't. He was loud and likable, people had high hopes for him, and worst of all his quirk was physical. He had people in his life that he would cherish and wouldn't hesitate helping anyone out.

This is why the incident with the cat, which is the first time we see young Aizawa and his then mindset, is important.

Aizawa hesitated to help the kitten while Shirakumo just picked it up and took it to school with him. Another difference was on the actions they took with the kitten. Aizawa gave his umbrella to the kitten so it wouldn't get wet. This resulted in him getting drenched and showing up to class looking upset with himself. Shirakumo showed up wet as well, but he also had Aizawa's umbrella in tow. He saw Aizawa hesitate and give the kitten his umbrella yet he didn't confront him nor did he mention it. He knows Aizawa even when Aizawa didn't pay him any attention. Shirakumo gave Aizawa his umbrella back and presented the class with the kitten which lead to everyone praising him while Aizawa silently watched him do something he couldn't do. Aizawa did, and very literally, do the bear minimum. Shirakumo did more then that by not only providing comfort, but also safety and other basic necessities.

Shirakumo would also stop Yamada from teasing Aizawa when he was being self deprecating. He prevented others from teasing him and overall, he acted as some sort of guardian for Aizawa even when the teasing came from his own "friends". He provided Aizawa with safety when there was no real need for it. Aizawa wasn't looking for comfort nor a closer relationship, yet he went back for more because Shirakumo gave more.

I think this is where we see why Shirakumo was more likable in Aizawa's mind and memory. All of these scenes are from Vigilantes and are from Aizawa's perspective. Meaning that all of these scenes were Shirakumo is basked in light and looking so...i guess for a lack of a better word, beautiful, is Aizawa seeing him as more then just his classmate and friend. He doesn't do this with Yamada or Kayama, only with Shirakumo. I'm not saying that Aizawa had a crush on him (i'm keeping this as far way from ships to just look at the points but it has been hinted at that Aizawa may have had stronger feelings for Shirakumo.) Aizawa loved Shirakumo, thats why he was so attached.

Love isn't something that can come only from wanting to spend the rest of forever with someone. It's not something you have to feel romantically, it could also be platonic (AnD tHeY WeRe RoOmAtEs.) In this case i take it more as Aizawa had Shirakumo be his anchor, to act as a stopper for all of his negative thoughts. He became close to him and opened up to him more than he ever could with Yamada because he was not only charming but forward with him. Let's keep in mind that Aizawa, Yamada, and Shirakumo have been "friends" since the start of their first year.

Aizawa held no real liking to Yamada or Kayama, even though he did spend time with them (he's a tsundere so he acts like he has no real friends.) The only times we ever see him truly smile or seem happy is when its with Shirakumo. (I can sense the ship war incoming.)

He consistently compared himself to others, rejected the notion of being friends with people who showed him genuine affection. Everything after a certain point began to revolve around Shirakumo and Aizawa's dependency on him to make things better in his life, to help him find himself. Many would think that being close to someone isn't bad, which it isn't, but to the extent Aizawa found himself being close to Shirakumo and the neglect he showed to the others didn't help improve his independency either.

(Take note that in almost every shot of Aizawa, Shirakumo and Yamada hanging out with each other, Shirakumo is always in the middle. Again, Yamada teases Aizawa a lot and Aizawa clearly takes no joy from it.) Even here, Shirakumo is always depicted as being by his side. Yamada eventually replaces him but prior to that Aizawa kept Yamada at a distance. Again, i don't think Aizawa hated Yamada or Kayama, but what i'm trying to explain is that he didn't want the same closeness he had with Shirakumo with them. He was already close to Shirakumo and to him, that was enough.

Let's also look at this scene. Aizawa and Shirakumo are having a casual conversation about how Aizawa feels like a failure and doesn't understand why he has to be something he's not. Shirakumo doesn't invalidate him, he instead agrees with him and asked him to try it out at least. Key word is "try".

The thing that we can also point out in this scene is that Kayama perfectly knows how Aizawa is feeling and knows that pictures of Sushi (the cat that Aizawa and Shirakumo saved) would make him happy. She could have taken him to see Sushi or even followed/waited for the both of them to speak after the failed mission. Instead, Kayama gave Shirakumo the oppurtunity to help ease Aizawa's emotions down. Kayama is fully aware that Aizawa wouldn't listen to her, wouldn't bother to take what she had to say about the mission into considerations so she left that job to Shirakumo.

So How Would This Translate to Any Toxic Traits?

If you go and read Vigilantes and also the MHA/BNHA manga and anime with this new context of Aizawa's character, you'll be able to pick out why he's so harsh on his students off the bat.

Aizawa once was dependent on someone to keep him on track. When he lost that person he isolated himself from his own friends. Neglected his own wellbeing and proceeded to treat his students the same way. He didn't see children figuring out what they want to do with their lives, he saw adults and treated them like adults. Just like he was treated after Shirakumo's death. The damning thing here is in the relationship he holds with everyone from his past. Not only does he not address his "friends" by their first name while they address him by his, he also has this distance to him and Yamada.

Aizawa does care about Yamada and Kayama, i'm not undermining that. What i do want to point out is that he treats them like work colleagues. You'd think after knowing someone for over a decade, spending extensive amounts of time with them, seeing them grow with you, improve themselves, move forward after suffering a tragic loss of a loved one, you would speak to them like the were family or just someone close to you. You would call them by their name. Not in this case.

Aizawa is not only a great manipulator, which we can see in the way he consistently deceives them into thinking a certain way/thing, he's also great at lying to himself. Toxic traits are seen as things that are harmful and damaging to the individual or individuals around someone. In Aizawa's case we have self deprecation, a constant impulse to place themselves in danger (yes he's a hero, but he sometimes doesn't stop to think that others can take care of themselves), and we also see him project a lot onto other people. Such as his students and most importantly Shinsou.

(Don't get me started on the fact that Yamada is forcing himself to process his friends death via humor while Kayama is crying and trying to stop.) His students are the greatest examples of Aizawa being reminded of Shirakumo, specifically Midoriya. Aizawa is always on his ass about him being self sacrificing, ironic since Aizawa himself is also self sacrificing but in a different more degrading way. Aizawa would tell Midoriya to "tone it down" and "think before he acts". Shirakumo was also all action with the main priority being to help others instead of himself. He was able to befriend nearly everyone with no problem. His students are eager to learn and as we soon learn (couldn't add the manga panel) Aizawa purposefully suspends or outright kicks out his own students from UA. He calls it "A Death". Just like he himself had to suffer threw when Shirakumo died. But there's a difference, he didn't get the emotional, mental, and physical preparation to cope with his best friends death. He felt like it was ridiculous not to teach the concept of being "heroic vs suicidal". In his eyes, Shirakumo was "suicidal" because he gave up his own life for his instead. We also learn later on that Aizawa suffers from intense 'Survivors Guilt' and feels that getting the chance to live a long life in comparison to Shirakumo was unfair. In the War Arc he ends up screaming that he couldn't allow himself to die because of the sacrifices that those around him, Shirakumo and another pro hero, made for him. So he isn't living because he wants to, he's living because he feels like he has to.

He consistently projecting onto others and attempts to justify his cold demeanor towards his own friends and students with the lenses of "preparing" them or "guiding" them. Yamada clearly knows why Aizawa is the way he is and so does Kayama, they all suffered Shirakumo's death. But while Kayama copes by taking care of Shirakumo's cat, Yamada is left to pick Aizawa up while being discarded by him. Aizawa clearly cares for others but he prefers the idea of holding "light bonds" so that when he dies or the other person dies it won't hurt as much.

(Erasermic shippers you can join the chat for this.) Yamada neglects his own emotional health to support Aizawa and in return he suffers for it. He can read him like a book and knows that the relationship that they both have with each other isn't healthy, but he stays. Part of it is because he cares and the other being that Aizawa is as dependent of him as he is of Aizawa. Yamada reminds Aizawa of Shirakumo because of there demeanor but he isn't fully him so Aizawa doesn't relax around him and still keeps his walls up to create that disconnection. We can also see how Aizawa sees All Might as Shirakumo. Remember that Aizawa not only "hates" people who are loud and obnoxious but also holds a great disinterest on quirks that are physical and the attention they catch. This isn't a Shinsou case were the guy hates physical quirks because it prevented him from being who he want to be, this is about how Shirakumo who held a physical quirk would always use it to make a grim situation bright just like All Might who would juggling pillows and throwing people around like nothing to entertain (Look at Vigilantes to understand this). Both All Might, Yamada, and Shirakumo share these traits and since Aizawa didn't want to take the time and wasn't given the time to grief properly, he essentially closed himself off and never fully processed everything.

Am i saying that EraserMic is a toxic ship?

No....not necessarily. I'm not saying any of this to shame anyone for there ships, i personally don't have a preference and just support them all (as long as it's adult/adult and minor/minor.) Aizawa and Yamada in MHA aren't the perfect example of a couple and we only truly see them be on the same page during the War Arc since they both discovered a bunch of truths regarding Shirakumo and his fate.

Yamada personally holds a lot of guilt because he contributed to Shirakumo's death (again look at Vigilantes for the entire context as well as the main manga.) The most damning thing is when he finds out where Shirakumo is now. Kurogiri is made from Shirakumo's body as well as the dna of other people, essentially making him a Nomu. Aizawa and Yamada find out during their interrogation with Kurogiri after Grand Torino tells them. Yamada during the big battle has a scene with one of the villains (trying not to spoil more then necessary) and is told that the whole reason for the villain attack that ended in Shirakumo's death was actually intended to kill Aizawa and take his quirk to than use his body for Kurogiri's.

The reason why this relationship is toxic could be based on the fact that it's co-dependent. Yamada relies on Aizawa and is practically attached to him because he has abandonment issues, while Aizawa only stays around him because he reminds him of his best friend who had the same personality type. Yamada is Aizawa's enabler because he doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't want Aizawa to leave him because the guilt of his "wrong doings" would eat at him. With Shirakumo, he would have had Aizawa focus on the right track again while still being nice to him and Aizawa would have taken that advice and followed threw with it. Yamada is offering a lack lustered replacement while Aizawa only gives back the bear minimum because he's emotionally incapable of giving more.

#mha #bnha #shota aizawa #bnha aizawa #eraserhead #yamada hizashi #mha hizashi #present mic #midnight #mha kayama #mha nemuri #bnha hizashi #oboro shirakumo #shirakumo #kurogiri #mha spoilers #major spoilers #angst #mha anime #mha manga #vigilantes manga #mha theory #mha analysis #mha character analysis #ask #erasermic #allmight #aizawa x hizashi

[princeasimdiya12]

Hey everyone! For those that don’t know or remember, there is an incredibly well written crossover fic between Mob Psycho 100 and My Hero Academia called 100 Percent Hero by CiscoTheSoto. It’s currently ongoing and I loved it so much that I decided to make some memes based on scenes and characters from the story. 

Just like before, there are some extra memes below that feature major spoilers from the story.

#100 percent hero #mob psycho 100 #my hero academia #mp100 #mha #boku no hero academia #shigeo kageyama #mob #izuku midoriya #katsuki bakugou #kirishima eijirou #momo yaoyorozu #endeavor #recovery girl #memes #eddy's edits

[stillness-in-green]

Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Introduction and Part One)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

INTRODUCTION

The title states my premise here: the breezy way My Hero Academia presents and resolves the mass arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front is ludicrous. If taken as presented and allowed to stand without being further addressed, it serves as a breaking point from which the series will be incredibly hard-pressed to recover. Why, you ask?

From a logistical standpoint, it strains credulity. From an ethical standpoint, it suggests deeply troubling problems with the state of Hero Society. From a thematic standpoint, it unravels whole portions of the narrative’s spine. I’ll be looking at each of these facets in turn to discuss the questions they raise which My Hero Academia has not yet seen fit to answer. Many in fandom don’t seem to be thinking about it too hard, so I’d like to lay out—in exhaustive detail—all the reasons I find this plot element so wildly out of touch with causal reality.

Please note that while they are discussed when relevant, this essay is not principally about the named characters in the League of Villains or the erstwhile high command of the Metahuman Liberation Army. The sorts of consequences Shigaraki Tomura or Re-Destro would and should be facing in a courtroom are orders of magnitude beyond what Random Liberation Warrior X would be, but it’s the mass numbers of Random Liberation Warrior Xs that this essay is most concerned with, as they are the ones most in danger of being swept under a rug and forgotten by the series in its current state.

Further, be advised that this essay in its full form is both very long (about 21K words excluding Sources and Further Reading) and will contain extensive discussion of real-life Japan—comparisons to historical events, minutiae of its legal and carceral systems, and general cultural views on criminality. This will include references to imprisonment, government oppression, and incidents of terrorism both real and in the context of My Hero Academia.

Being as it is about quite a recent event in the series, it will also contain heavy spoilers all the way up through the most recent chapter as of this writing, Chapter 310. It likewise contains spoilers for the spin-off series My Hero Academia: Vigilantes up through Chapter 95.

The essay will be posted in parts on tumblr and in full on AO3. For the tumblr posting, I will provide links to other tumblr posts as I reference them; however, as I would like this to actually show up in the tags, outside links containing my sources and further reading will be provided in a separate post following the conclusion of the essay.

Lastly, I spent an entire month writing this as a fan who is sympathetic to the villains in general and the MLA in particular. If your response to the very concept of this essay is anything to the tune of, “Who cares what happens to a bunch of disgusting quirk eugenicists?” know that you and I have radically different views on the MLA, and the role of the justice system in general. You are, of course, welcome to read the essay anyway, but, having said my piece about the MLA and their relationship with quirk supremacy elsewhere, I will not be engaging with arguments or gotchas on that subject here.

PART ONE: The Facts at Hand

Before we get too deep into things, let’s lay out the basic facts: how many people are actually involved in the arrest, as well as some comparisons to real-life events to contextualize that number and provide some referents for the issues the arrest raises.

Re-Destro gives the numbers of the Metahuman Liberation Army as 116,516. A lot of people go on to die in Deika, though we’re never given a solid count. The biggest batch we see killed in a single go are the press of sixty or so people Shigaraki decays, then the sixteen-ish Toga drops, though some of those might possibly have had quirks that allowed them to survive. Any number of people certainly died as well simply in the moments we didn’t see, and who even knows how many were caught in the radius of Shigaraki’s last attack.

Further, there may well have been a measure of organization bleed when the MLA became the PLF (though I imagine trying to leave was a very dangerous proposition, giving an additional reason to stick it out on top of the general cult-like mindset the MLA displays); likewise, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t have been some deaths at the Gunga Villa, be it from Gigantomachia’s departure, Geten cutting loose, or combatants—be they hero or comrade—overcompensating somewhat in the middle of a chaotic melee.

I suspect it’s overestimating the depletion, but for the purposes of simplicity, let us call it 115,000 remaining members at the time of the raid.[1]

We are told that, in all, 16,929 people were captured at the villa—just about 17,000. 132 escaped in the confusion; this is a fairly negligible number, save for the fact that it includes high-ranking advisors, but not Machia and those of the Front that were with him.

We are further told, and I quote, “Their bases scattered around the country were hit too, and the sympathizers rounded up.” Horikoshi did not provide any solid numbers for this,[2] but if we’re to assume that it is just the rest of the group (more on the logistics of that bit of spycraft later), “the sympathizers” would be 98,000 additional people.

However, 98,000 may be a significant underestimation. It’s based, after all, on a number Re-Destro cites to describe “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action.” This begs the question: is Re-Destro quoting the entire membership of the group, or only those who actually are ready to take action? In other words, does his number account for non-combatants? Is he counting young children? I tend to assume the MLA doesn't have a retirement age as such,[3] but if they do, does his number account for the elderly?

How many more people might be “sympathizers” to the PLF insomuch as they are e.g. the six-month-old infant daughter of an MLA couple? What about the ninety-year-old man in the retirement home whose only real act of war these days is tying up the phone line at City Hall to complain about repressive quirk use laws? How about the fired-up fifteen-year-old that was going to get their official code name next month, just in time to join the first wave of attacks? If he’s being literal in his usage of “warrior,” the actual count of the MLA could easily be twice as high as the number he actually gives.

But okay, maybe Re-Destro’s number does include absolutely everyone. Maybe he’s just being rhetorical—maybe, in his mind, even the six-month-old is waiting to rise to action; she’s just going to have to wait a bit longer than the rest, is all. For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with the numbers we have: a low-end of 17,000, a high-end of 115,000, captured not merely in a single day, but allegedly in the span of a few hours.

I’m sure I don’t need to stress that that is a lot of people. But how many people is it, practically speaking? Is there a precedent? Anything we can look to for guidance on how this kind of thing would go in real life?

Comparative Analogues

The PLF is tricky to categorize for the purposes of real-life comparison, especially compared to how they’re treated in-universe. In some lights, they resemble a protest movement; in others, a terrorist group. Just looking at the way the government reacts to them—and certainly in terms of their combat capabilities—they might as well be an all-out insurrectionist uprising! Below, I’ll examine a handful of historical incidents that cover that spectrum; they will continue to provide useful reference points throughout the rest of this essay.

The March 15 Incident

In the first half of the 20th century, Japan saw a huge uptick in socialist and communist activity, much to the general dismay of the ruling powers. In response, they passed a series of laws commonly referred to as the Peace Preservation Laws, designed to better enable authorities to suppress political dissent and freedom of speech, particularly that of leftists and labor movements.

The Japanese Communist Party was founded in 1922, but outlawed in 1925. This merely drove members underground, however, from which position they pointed supporters towards the numerous other parties with more legally tolerated leftist policies that had cropped up in the wake of the JCP’s dissolution. Following the February 1928 General Election (the first in Japan held with universal male suffrage), those parties supported by the JCP saw enormous gains in representation in Japan’s National Diet. Alarmed, the Prime Minister declared the mass arrest of known communists and suspected communist sympathizers. Accordingly, on March 15, 1,600 people were arrested throughout Japan.

Over the course of twenty years, some 70,000 people would be arrested under the auspices of the Peace Preservation Laws, the majority of them in 1925 through 1936. The laws would eventually be repealed by American occupation forces after WWII, and the JCP allowed to operate openly once again.

The Rice Riots

In 1918, an inflation spiral had driven the price of rice out of control, exacerbating economic insecurity and hardship. Farmers were being paid a pittance of the market value of their crop by rice buyers and government agents, while urban consumers were being charged an exorbitant price for the staple food, as well as a great many other consumer goods, and their own rents. In response, a series of riots ripped across Japan in late July through September. Beginning with peaceful protesting in a small fishing town in Toyama Prefecture, the unrest escalated to involve riots, strikes, looting, even bombing in demonstrations that reached major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. The scope was and remains unprecedented in modern Japanese history, seeing some 25,000 people arrested.

The Sarin Gas Attacks

If you’ve heard of any of them, it’s probably this one. On March 20, 1995, members of the cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on five different Tokyo Metro trains in the middle of morning rush hour. Thirteen people were killed and over 5500 injured, about a fifth of them moderately to severely so. If not for small errors in the production of the gas and the rudimentary distribution method thereof, loss of life might easily have been catastrophically higher.

Aum Shinrikyo was a doomsday cult, but the motives for that particular attack were much baser than bringing about the Apocalypse: at the time, the organization was under police investigation for its involvement in the kidnapping of a public official. Its leader, Asahara Shoukou, hoped that the attack would divert police’s attention from a planned raid.

It did not do so; police executed raids on numerous of the cult’s compounds, arresting many of its senior members both immediately and over the course of the following months as the investigation unfolded. In all, over 200 members were arrested of an organization that counted its membership prior to the attack as numbering 11,000 people in Japan.[4]

The February 26 Incident

There have been a significant number of uprisings and violent protests in Japan’s modern history; when looking for a representative example, I focused my attention on the military coups of the 1930s and 40s, largely because they took place in what was closest to the modern Japanese legal context.[5] Of that subset, I chose the February 26 Incident for the severity of the government response. The others disintegrated before they could be properly carried out or were met with sympathy for the dissidents despite the obvious illegality of their actions. The February 26 Incident, however, was when they finally became too troublesome to dismiss, and the Emperor himself ran out of patience.

In this period, the Japanese military had become drastically factionalized into two main groups—an ultra-nationalist group, largely powered by a group of young officers, which supported the Emperor and wanted to purge Japan of Western influences, and a more moderate group mainly defined by their opposition to the above faction.[6] Occurring in 1936, the February 26 Incident involved the young officers, believing that they had tacit approval from higher-ranked officers of their own faction, launching assassination attempts against the nationalists’ most prominent enemies in the government (six assorted Ministers and former Ministers in the Emperor’s Privy Council and the Diet) and a bid to seize control of the administrative center of the capital and the Imperial Palace, after which they planned to demand the dismissal of more officers and the selection of a new Cabinet.

The seven ringleaders had convinced eighteen other officers to lend their forces to the attempted coup, a total of around 1,500 men, calling themselves the Righteous Army. Several of their assassination attempts failed, however, and while they succeeded at taking the Prime Minister’s residence and the Ministry of War, they did not manage to secure the Palace. The outraged Cabinet demanded the Emperor take a hard line with the rebels, and by the 29th, the Righteous Army was surrounded by 20,000 government troops and 22 tanks. In this hopeless situation, the officers dismissed their troops; two committed suicide (a third attempted it unsuccessfully) and the remainder were arrested by military police.

International Examples

For obvious reasons, I prefer to limit my examples to events that happened in Japan. However, I will also be briefly referring to a few international incidents of mass arrest, taking place in India, the U.S., and Egypt, respectively.

In the following parts, I'll use these facts and comparative analogues to take a closer look at what readers were told became of the Paranormal Liberation Front.

Part Two

-----------------------------------------------------

Footnotes (Part One)—

[1] Over three months’ time, they likely gained some new blood also, simply in the course of their usual recruitment tactics. You don’t get an underground organization that size by sitting back and waiting for people to come to you, after all. I don’t know a practical way to calculate that, though, so just bear it in mind for when I talk about new members later.

[2] Possibly because he was aware that 17,000 people captured in one fell swoop was difficult enough to swallow without adding on more than five times that number.

[3] We do, after all, see some very aged people fighting in the streets of Deika.

[4] They were considerably more international than you may have heard. They had 50,000 members at the time, some 30,000 of them based in Russia.

[5] The Meiji Constitution was ratified in 1889; universal suffrage (for men) was granted in 1925. The modern constitution was enacted in 1947.

[6] More moderate, mind, in the context of the Imperial Japanese military. Neither of these factions had any time whatsoever for leftist movements, hence all those suppressive crackdowns.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

[cyancherub]

tag directory

this is a multifandom blog. these are the tags i use to make it easy to filter out content you don’t want to see. i talk, shitpost, and reblog a lot, so if that isn’t for you, i wouldn’t recommend following!!

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#(fandom) spoilers (see below for how i tag specific fandoms)

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this blog is multifandom (and a bit of a mess). i reblog writing, edits, fanart, memes, etc. for the following fandoms. i try to tag each rb accordingly.

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fanart reblogs

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[heroes-in-the-dark]

Assuming you've read the latest chapter of My Hero Academia (Chapter 335!); What do you think of the potentially major game changing reveal? Will you incorporate it into HitD? And if so, how? 🤔

P.S. You don't need to answer this, I'm just a curious reader 😅

So this ask is from last week, and I'm glad I waited till now to answer because the potentially major game changing reveal has been updated as of 336!

Spoilers for manga below!

So when everyone thought that Hagakure was the traitor, I honestly didn't have a very good way of tying it together other than it making sense as an issue on the hero side. But now that we know for sure that it's actually Aoyama, it's become personal! On both sides! I've avoided doing Aoyama's pov despite his guilt in Tokoyami's capture, so now I know I can have that in the future.

I know this response is different now than it would've been last week, but the reveal is going to be pretty important post-war arc.

#ask response #bnha #boku no hero academia #aoyama yuuga #bnha 335 #bnha 336 #bnha manga spoilers #heroes in the dark

[maneslion2]

I'm combining my current fixations so hear me out, BNHA Characters as Avatars of the Fears or Entities from the Magnus Archives. Most of these have actual thought put into it and some are not all that deep here we go!

⚠️ Trigger Warning/Content Warning: Mentions of body horror, insects, violence, scopophobia, death, typical Magnus Pod type themes of horror ⚠️

🛑 Spoiler Warnings for both Boku No Hero Academia (Minor/Major Spoilers) and Magnus Archives (Minor Spoilers) 🛑

The Buried (The Centre, Choke, Too Close I Cannot Breathe, Forever Deep Below Creation)

Yaoyorozo Momo

I'm thinking about the matryoshka dolls and feeling suffocated by expectations. She fears disappointing others and puts a lot of pressure on herself to be better. I also like the imagery of her trapping her victims within increasingly smaller dolls inside dolls and burying them further down with that which she creates. Creating layers on top of layers over them to suffocate those underneath. She struggles so hard to not bury herself in her own fear of being passed over and pressed down for others to tread over.

The Corruption (Filth, The Crawling Rot, Flesh Hive)

Kouda Koji

Canonically he is terrified of insects even though he can command them the same as other animals. He is scared of their crawling and wiggling, too many legs, strange eyes, unusual patterns of behavior and strict heirarchy. But he can hear their song and their cries and their wants. He can hear them everywhere and anywhere he goes. He can't escape them and slowly je becomes part of the hive and provides sanctuary for their masses and finds victims to feed his new family. He fears what they may do if he fails to provide. Also I'm thinking mold growing over his rocky skin and that's scary af.

The Dark (Mr. Pitch, The Forever Blind)

Tokoyami Fumikage

This one is obvious. Tokoyami is scared of the dark and how it affects Dark Shadow to lash out violently and without mercy. But the dark is what makes him so powerful. He cannot live without the dark despite fearing it. Eventually that fear of the dark transforms and begins to pull others into his darkness with him. Need I say more?

The Desolation (The Lightless Flame, The Torturing Flame, The Devastation, The Blackened Earth, The Ravening Burn)

Ashido Mina

Her acid has so much destructive power. Like she could easily topple entire buildings by ruining their foundations if she was inclined to. She might not be capable of the same large scale destruction others can cause, but she can so very easily create a weakness of stability, ruin the literal or metaphorical supporting pillars to bring everything crashing down around you. I think she would fear that power but also embrace it. She could use her acid to melt her victims into unrecognizable puddles of goop. Bring those who would stand in her way to their knees by ruining all they hold dear around them, feed on their fear of her potential destruction.

Todoroki Shouto

He clearly is scared of becoming like his father, who psychologically desolated his family, emotionally damaging his wife and children. He was born to create a perfect mix of fire and ice to raise his father’s image up over the remains of his rivals. The powers of fire and ice can be devastating in their strength, opposing in their forces but burning in equal rights. Destroying his own self in his struggle against his father’s will and expectations he would seek to destroy others the same as he's been laid to ruin, leaving only a terrifying path of ash and frost.

The End (Death, Terminus, The Coming End That Waits For All And Cannot Be Ignored)

Asui Tsuyu

Everyone fears the unknown of death and what remains after. She's a very practical person who would see the inevitably of death and accept the end despite fearing it. She's had to face the literal hand of death (Shigiraki @ USJ) and understands intimately that sudden understanding terror that your death is about to happen and there is nothing you can do to stop it. She does not seek out to feast upon others fear of death, at least not consciously. But she is able to taste it, the constant reminder of death wherever she goes, able to detect the oncoming death of those around her in the slightest change of scent on her sensitive tongue.

The Eye (Beholding, The Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You)

Aoyama Yuuga

He is desperate to be seen and he's always watching others. He fears being seen as he truly is, hurt by his own power, hindered by his own weak stomach, but still he wants everyone's attention. A constant struggle of wishing to connect and understand those around him while not allowing them to understand him in the same way. He's always knowing unexpected things and looking back when you thought for sure he wasn't, always looking back into the camera, always watching you through the lenses. You can feel him watching you, see him out of the corner of your eye.

Jirou Kyoka

She's also scared to be seen for what she is, afraid of what other people will see when they look at her, afraid to be found lacking. So instead she looks first, distracts others from seeing her by directing their gaze elsewhere. And she listens, always listens with her sensitive ears. She knows secrets and truths that others don't want known, don’t know that she knows. She has seen you, she has heard your fears, she can feel your racing heart.

The Flesh (Viscera)

Shoji Mezuo

This is pretty obvious I think. He is scared of others fear of him and his large strange body. Able to manipulate and regenerate his flesh and limbs and bones and organs. It’s unsettling to watch, the long fleshy limbs changing on a whim. He doesn't seek to take your flesh and meat and bone, but he will feed on your fear of his. A shifting morphing mass of flesh, rearranging limbs and ears and eyes and teeth.

The Hunt

Ojiro Mashirao

I'll be honest. I just want to see Ojiro with claws and fangs and slowly closing in on prey that underestimated him for his simple unassuming appearance. He’s an entirely physical fighter and his athleticism and stamina would make for an excellent predator. He's earned his right to be a little feral. The right to give into the animalistic urges to stalk and bite and tear. The right to turn the spotlight on his peers deadly, as they become aware of the hunter circling just outside the edges.

The Lonely (Forsaken, The One Alone)

Midoriya Izuku

He's been an outcast his whole life, shut out from society for lacking a quirk. He’s intimately familiar with the pain of exclusion. The fear that no one will even notice if he’s gone. The despair that comes with being shut out. Then he takes on the power of One for All and is suddenly placed in a position of defeating a powerful century old villain with a secret he can't share. He isn’t alone anymore, but still he is lonely in this secret. He's placed on the path of being a savior, a sole protector against an impossible foe. In the end it’s easier, taking the path of the martyr, a vigilant working outside of the system that tried to trap him, outside a system that were it not for OFA would have seen him die anonymous and without a second thought. At least this time he choose his isolation. And he can make others feel that same fear of being forsaken, terrified of the knowledge that no one will come to save them as he picks them off, one by one.

The Slaughter (War)

Bakugou Katsuki

Could also fit in with The Desolation. He's never allowed himself to think on it, but he's scared of his explosive anger and his sudden outbursts of violence towards others. He has so much potential to hurt and maim and has done so many many times before, both with his sharp words designed to tear and his hands built for ruin. He ruthlessly harnesses that fear of his own rage and pushes it even further outwards as more senseless violence and anger and aggression, cutting down all who dare stand in his path to glory.

Iida Tenya

Okay let me explain! The Slaughter is about senseless violence, and although it was later revealed as premeditated, Tensei being attacked by Stain would seem senseless at the time of the attack. And Iida's willingness to exact violent revenge at the cost of his hero career? He would take his fear of pain and violence towards his loved ones and redirect it into a righteous crusade of murder towards perceived threats before they had the chance to strike first. It would lead him done a path of violence to stop violence, and would only cause more suffering. Driven further and further by his own fear and the perceived guilt of his enemies.

The Spiral (Es Mentiras (It Is Lies), The Twisting Deceit, It Is Not What It Is)

Kaminari Denki

There are a few angles (pun intended) that I could take this. One: lightning and fractals. Very solid and fun to imagine the bolt marking crossing his whole face in a distracting and unnerving way. Disorienting along forever branching lines of lightning. Two: deceit and the Traitor!Kaminari theory. Kami as the traitor hiding amongst his peers, feeding lies about who he is and what he knows and how things are, playing the fool to get what he wants and sow chaos and mistrust. Three: the fear of his own senses deceiving him. He's scared of what his power does to him and how it leaves him vulnerable. All that power and it hurts him, unable to trust his own senses when short circuited. He'd want others to doubt their own senses like he experiences, scared of their own dulled state of mind and what others might do to them. Afraid they can’t trust themselves.

The Stranger (I Do Not Know You)

Hagakure Toru

Fear of being unrecognized for who she is. Feeling like a stranger among others because of her non-existent appearance. The uncanny reality of being seen only by how she affects what is around her. Turning that fear of the strange around onto those who do not understand her presence. You will see her and fear what you can't perceive.

Shinsou Hitoshi

Could also fall into The Spiral or The Web but I think The Stranger might be the most fitting if I had to choose one entity. Afraid of the constant doubt of other peoples intentions, of what they think he might do, afraid of what he might do with his own power. Turning that fear into action, turning his victims into puppets, parroting those they thought they could trust, using those familiar voices in the throat of a stranger. Hiding his own fear behind the mask of a outsider’s terror.

The Vast (The Falling Titan)

Uraraka Ochako

The fear of letting go of gravity and falling up into the empty sky and the void of space beyond. The fear of floating amongst the crowd, only an insignificant point in a group of more flashy powerful potential heroes, getting lost in their brilliance. Turning her insecurity and fear into her strength, pushing others out into the void to distance them from her, to highlight her own shining point among the vastness. She wouldn't even have to do much, just send her victims floating weightless into nothingness and consume their fear as they slowly fall into space and out of her orbit into endless sky.

The Web (The Spider, The Great Spider, Mother of Puppets, The Mother, The Spinner of Schemes, The Hidden Machination)

Sero Hanta

The spiderman/spider/web weaving parallels? Absolutely delicious. He fears being insignificant or trapped behind his peers and turns that into social control through emotional manipulation. The way he pushes and tricks Bakugou through teasing, a playful act to get what he wants. Hiding away his true personality behind that reassuring smile always two centimeters away from threatening. Putting up a curtain of charming teeth to hide the true intentions lying in wait, words hiding like a spider ready to strike out at any willing to step into his web. Trapping victims in his tape like the sticky silk of an arachnid, wrapping them up in trust to achieve his own goals.

Undecided/Uncertain

Kirishima Ejiro

He could fit under a couple different Entities but doesn't really stand out with just one in my opinion. He could fall in line with The Buried, crushed under expectations, weight/crushing others, rock imagery. He could also fit The Lonely, being lost in the crowd or cut off from others, maybe cutting others out by replacing them (replacing Midoriya as Bakugou's closest friend?). Or the Hunt, fear of being chased by his own doubts or just being feral, a relentless predator that is unwavering in it's chase, always right behind. Idk dude just not sure where to take any of that.

Satou Rikido

Honestly he has so very little character development and is quite frankly so forgettable I don't know what to do with him that doesn't just turn him into an OC. Like the Hunt could work maybe but I’m not feeling anything specific? He just doesn't have any real defining traits beyond strong, kind but a little dumb, and generally large features. Like what do I do with that? Come on Horikoshi give this boy some personality or a backstory or something.

Please share your thoughts I want to talk about this!!!

#bnha #tma #the magpod #magnus archives #boku no hero academia #mha #now to tag everyone #momo yaoyaruzo #shinsou hitoshi #midoriya izuku #tma podcast #sero hanta #hagakure tooru #bakugou katsuki #kirishima ejirou #aoyama yuuga #iida tenya #uraraka ochako #tsuyu asui #kouda kouji #satou rikidou #jirou kyouka #mina ashido #todoroki shouto #kaminari denki #tokoyami fukimage #shoji mezo #ojiro mashirao #crossover #au

[victimhood]

As predicted, dear old predictable me is procrastinating again, but I’m fixated on the fact that @itsrottenvibes proposed that within my football!AU Yooker shippers call Yusuf/Nicky “Yucky” WHICH IS THE MOST AMAZING THING AND 100% ACCURATE

This is three Inception levels deep nonsense (The Old Guard > football alternate universe > “RPF” within this football universe) but I’m OBSESSED with thinking what the in-universe fandom is like. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out The Beautiful Game before you @ me.

Yusuf/Booker: MAJOR FANDOM SHIP. This ship attracts fans from rival clubs. Even AC Milan fans hate-follow Yooker on IG just to view their stories. There are wonderful, moderate Yooker fans, and then there are some SERIOUS DELULUS who comment on every IG post that Yusuf and Booker make with 4th wall breaking bad shit like “THIS REMINDS ME OF CHAPTER 14 OF [YOOKER FIC WITH 1000 KUDOS ON AO3]

Booker’s fanon characterization: major yt boi woobie, he is somehow the main character in 75% of Yooker fics, reflecting the unconscious racial biases of the fandom. He is granted all sorts of magical powers and leading roles in the most egregious AUs. Top or Bottom Booker discourse is something you never want to touch with a 10 foot pole. Top!Booker fans basically never interact with Bottom!Booker fans since the Great Fanwars of bad discourse.

Yusuf’s fanon characterization: depends on which part of fandom you look at, Yusuf is either the Gary Stu of Gary Stus, or some sort of Manic Pixie Dream Boy who fixes Broken White Boy Booker and helps him achieve his dreams. The most popular Yusuf POV fic is one in which he is a quasi-James Bond type character, and Booker is some sexy villain that seduces him on a mission. Fans with a Yusuf bias tend to be...the coolest part of fandom, and they have an incredible skillset in producing gifs/edits/media from clips of Yusuf floating on the internet (that Armani ad has been milked to death 28937428934 ways)

Yusuf/Nichi, aka “Yucky”: only Fandom Olds ship this, and even so it’s kinda a rarepair since so many left the fandom. It was a bit of a thing back in 2021, but like, there was this post about how problematic the Yucky BNFs were and everyone did a hate-pile on and since then Yucky’s kinda...an icky ship no one wants to touch.

The Yucky fans are disturbingly literate, and write incredibly prescient fics, but also kinda weirdly elitist about it. A group of Yucky fans, who apparently attend Ivy League-level colleges, made an exclusive community of fanfic writers where they write fics for each other. It’s this elitist group that attracted the hate. A lot of the good Yucky fics have either been deleted or orphaned on AO3, because their authors work in governmental-level positions now. The best Yucky fanfic is a space academia AU written by an actual PhD candidate and the quality of that fic is like...Margaret Atwood style prose.

Nicky’s fanon characterization: The Yucky writers write Nicky as a thoughtful, intelligent human being (despite...the misspelled tattoo and Eurotrash haircuts), which the Yooker shippers think is extremely OOC. These days (in the year of our lord 2027), Nicky is often the stock villain in Yooker fics. In Yooker fics, he is always some sort of weird possessive ex-boyfriend (of Booker, surprise twist), bc Booker is the woobie that needs to be saved from the evil captain by Yusuf.

Booker/Lykon: the cute happy corner of the most sensible fans. They know they’re not a big ship, but they love each other, and they write the cutest fics and they’ve offended no one.

Rachida/Booker: this pairing surged in popularity during the Women’s World Cup, for that enemies to lovers dynamic. However, as a het ship, just doesn’t reach the heights of Yooker, and is kinda seen as a crack thing.

Nile/Booker: someone wrote this fic after Nile 1 Booker 0 (it’s super porny and basically consists of Nile domming the heck out of Booker), and everyone went crazy over it like OMG THIS IS THE BEST CRACK...two months later WAT THE HECK THIS SHIP IS REAL??? 

Yooker fans pretty much have a total meltdown at the reveal that Nile/Booker is canon. Most go into delulu mode, and write compensatory fanfics in which Booker is somehow so deeply closeted he marries Nile to prove he is very het, but then he goes back to training at Inter and he can’t resist Yusuf anymore. The worst Yooker fans make Nile a total bitch, but they are just a vocal minority (like 10% of the fandom). Most Yooker fans continue because they are still being fed new content on an extremely regular basis, like when Booker posts photos of shakshuka captioned “brunch with the bestie”. Another 10-15% of the Yooker fandom start writing Nile/Booker/Yusuf threesome fics.

Andy/Booker: ...why. But they exist. They often get hate for the age gap in their ship.

Unfortunately, no one really knows that Quynh/Booker are a thing, although it is known Andy and Quynh are married (I think the...Olympic ski fandom is like...minuscule). But Andy + Quynh/doing kinky things to Booker fics exist on the internet.

[TOG FC SPOILERS BELOW]

On the eve of Yusuf’s wedding to Nichi, Booker gets invited to spa day with Yusuf. Of course he posts about this on his IG “spa day with the bestie”, which sparks 283291321932 Yooker angst fics. The predominant plotstrains are: (1a) Booker has been secretly in love with his best friend the whole time, and finally confessions to his friend at the spa. Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (1b) Yusuf and Booker have been on and off the whole time, and Yusuf confesses to Booker that he has doubts on his compatibility with Nichi. Booker makes a grand romantic gesture, and Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (3) Nichi is forcing Yusuf to marry him for [flimsy reason]. Booker, the hero of the day, swings in to saves Yusuf from abusive big bad Nichi. (4) Blatant pwp hammam porn fic

#this is deranged #it feels unhealthy to be this invested #tog fc #but omg ok there is one part of this headcanon that is stolen from real events #back in the day there WAS an elitist fanfic writer group in football RPF #some of those fics were insanely good #but the elitism of it was also...hummm...very uncool by 2020 standards #one of my all time favorite fics is a football rarepair by someone from that group #young and impressionable me adored the sheer wodehousian literary wit of that fic

[ghostjellyfishheart]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Characters: Hagakure Tooru, Sero Hanta, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead Additional Tags: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Manga Spoilers, Paranormal Liberation War Arc Spoilers (My Hero Academia), Hurt No Comfort, no happy ending, I was struck by the thought of what would happen if Hagakure died and this is the result, Hagakure deserves better Summary:

Hagakure is fatally injured by Gigantomachia. Being invisible does not help the situation.

So the other day I posted about how horrible it would be if Hagakure died.  Then I wrote a fic with that exact premise.

Tagging all the people who helped make this happen below the cut

@flowergrownwritesrandomly for suffering with me

@chitziburn​ for letting me know Hagakure is actually okay

@plantsdontusuallyhavefaces for reminding me that she wears gloves and inspiring the Sero section

you all rock!

#hagakure tooru #bnha manga spoilers #bnha manga #bnha spoilers #bnha 296 #bnha 297 #fanfic

[lost-writers-world]

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio: Book Review

Rating: 4/5 stars

Summary: "ENTER THE PLAYERS. There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide and precious futures ahead of us. Until that year, we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces.

On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there in waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.

A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearan actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: Hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extra.

But in their fourth year and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students' world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent."

Review Below (Spoilers)

Review: I am only currently getting through college because I am pretending that I am living out my Dark Academia dream, so I loved a lot of this book. It was nearly perfect. It was dark, it had a lot of great description, and you feel connected to the characters. I, honestly, loved the majority of the book. There was one thing that prevented it from being a full 5 out of 5 stars; It was obvious who did it. I mean, it doesn't change that the reveal was lovely, but it is still easy to tell that James did it. The drowning incident was the first in book example, but there is the fact that James' type cast was that of the Hero. The whole point of the majority of the book was that they were both like, and not like, their roles. James being the hero makes it obvious that he is the killer, as he is the most and least likely to do it. While I have a gripe with the way the "mystery" elements play out, that was my only real dislike of the book. I was touched by Oliver and James' relationship, and sobbed at the end. Each character got the ending that was realistic to them, which was extremely satisfying. I also enjoyed the framing of the story, cutting between Oliver, Fillippa, and Detective Colborne. It was wonderful experience.

#if we were villains #oliver marks #dark academia #book reccs #book review #bookshelves #bookish

[rhetorical-ink]

Rhetorical Ink Reviews  “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba” Season 1 - Episodes 9 - 14

** DEMONIC SPOILERS BELOW ** 

My brother and I continue our marathon of Demon Slayer, and I have to say that these last six episodes have been my favorites so far! Jumping right in, here are:

My Top Ten Thoughts on Demon Slayer: KNY Season 1, Episodes 9 -14:

10. I have really liked Yushiro’s character from his introduction, and while learning he shares the same voice actor as Izuku Midoriya from My Hero Academia has been the cherry on top, I especially loved his interactions with Tanjiro, Nezuko, and Tamayo in Episodes 9 and 10 -- I hope we see more of him in the future. Also, his head getting lobbed off shocked me! Glad he lived!

9. The animation continues to be absolutely STUNNING in this show and deserves a shout out -- episodes 9 and 13 with the fights with the demons specifically were just gorgeous. I continue to love the animation on Tanjiro’s water breathing and the mansion boss fights were just breathtaking to look at!

8. There are a LOT of questions surrounding Yushiro and Tamayo that still have me intrigued -- for one thing, why is Tamayo considered a “fugitive?” She clearly has a grudge against Muzan, but we’ve not heard the full story yet. Her blood magic is insane, especially in killing the Temari demon, so she’s clearly not someone to be messed with, either. But, she also seems to have good intentions and a kind heart -- I feel there’s a major backstory coming down the road with her...

...also, I find it interesting that demons, specifically Yushiro, can pass on his powers to others, even humans. I loved that Yushiro helped Tanjiro, but it opens up a can of questions that I hope get answered as we go on!

7. Okay, so....originally, I did NOT like Zenitsu. At all. I found it refreshing at the start for Tanjiro to have to deal with his over-dramatic antics, but then I was mad in the mansion in episodes 11 and 12 that he was SO loud and clearly putting Soichi, one of the kids they are trying to help, in danger. 

I did appreciate that we learn he’s not USELESS -- he has amazing hearing to rival Tanjiro’s smelling skill, and when he’s...asleep?...he sleep-walks and is SUPER powerful -- again, I hope we get that explained -- but I was still annoyed with him.

But then, BUT THEN, we got the end of Episode 13, and Zenitsu was basically risking his life to protect Nezuko in the box, despite knowing there was a demon inside, just because it was important to his friend. And THAT made me completely change my mind on his character. I hope that he tones down the antics a little, though after the end of Episode 14, I’m not sure that will happen, but I still respect him SO much more, now!

6. One character I’m NOT sold on, yet, though is Inosuke AKA Boar Boy AKA Man Bear Pig. From the start, he has positioned himself as a very one-track-minded character, only wanting to slay demons and fight. However, he doesn’t have any regard for others, like Tanjiro or Zenitsu -- and I’m worried he’s going to cause one of our protagonists to get seriously hurt for no reason. I’m sure there’s a point to his story, and we still know very little about him, but I’m just not sold on his character in the series yet. Boy does have a very feminine face, though!

5. I have to say, the comedy in these string of episodes, though, was GREAT. Besides Zenitsu and Inosuke’s over-the-top antics -- the facial expressions of Tanjiro reacting to Zenitsu, and Yushiro having a literal panic attack at the prospect of Nezuko joining him and Tamayo had me rolling. I love how this series that can be SUPER dark and grim can also be hopeful, light-hearted, and hilarious at times. It’s what really has sold me on it, so far!

4. I also appreciate that the wounds in this anime are at least ACKNOWLEDGED. True, Tanjiro still being able to move like he does with a broken leg and ribs is a stretch from reality, but I appreciate that he keeps the audience aware that pain is a thing in this story, and it does have consequences, which makes their later stop at the mansion seem all that much more rewarding and required. Also, Tanjiro smashing Inosuke’s ribs? Just -- OW!

3. I want to point out that we are half-way through season one of the show, and we’ve been introduced to the concepts of the “Twelve Moons” of Muzan....but so far, we haven’t met ONE of them. We’ve had two posing as the moons, and one that was the former #6 Moon, but no actual ones yet...which is...interesting to me. I feel like it’s a homage to the Arrancar in Bleach and the “holiday” agents in One Piece (Ms. Sunday, etc.), but it has me hopeful that there is a lot more to the story that we still have to go, and that this show isn’t going to be one season, only...which I really hope it’s not, because I’m really enjoying it so far!

2.  Anyone else think the Wisteria pit stop is....creepy? From the old couple to the lonely, quiet atmosphere, it just has a foreboding vibe -- like things are going to get...darker from here on in? Is that possible? I just got an ominous vibe of this being the checkpoint in Episode 14 -- halfway through the season, it seemed like the calm before the storm; the save area before a big, bad boss...

1. These episodes flowed really well, had stakes, extended the world-building, and left me with both questions and answers moving forward...and we have two very....unique characters thrown into the mix now, that I’m curious how Tanjiro will handle, especially in a legit battle! We’re halfway through the season, and it’s great so far! Here’s to seeing what surprises are in store!

Review of Episodes 1 - 5

Review of Episodes 6 - 8

Review of Episodes 15 - 20 

Review of Episodes 21 - 26

#Demon Slayer #KNY #Demon Slayer Season 1 #Demon Slayer Episode 9 #Demon Slayer Episode 10 #Demon Slayer Episode 11 #Demon Slayer Episode 12 #Demon Slayer Episode 13 #Yushiro #Nezuko #Tanjiro #zenitsu agatsuma #Kimetsu no yaiba #Rhetorical Ink Reviews #Demon Slayer review #MHA #Bleach #One Piece #Inosuke #KNY Inosuke #Temari #demon slayer tamayo #muzan kibutsuji