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nasaty · 3 years

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Noctilucence

Student Aizawa x (she/her) student reader, so much angssssttt and grief and a bunch of fluff. (Do not bring any pedo shit into my presence or I will fucking destroy you)

This will be 9 chapters long. Ch. 2 here.

MANGA SPOILERS until episode 107 comes out. - also this requires context that I am not providing from MHA manga and the arc with Aizawa in Vigilantes. TW: death.

Lmk if you like it and I can post more!

Ch. 1 the Clouds

As someone who was uniquely talented and had a very useful quirk, the first few weeks of your first year at UA went by quickly. You were favorited by your new classmates because of your intelligence and your extremely powerful healing quirk, so everyone wanted you at their side. You decided to take the path of general studies, being that you wouldn’t be in combat much but more so in rescue services, you would be more well rounded that way. After the first few hectic weeks blew past, things seemed to settle and you realized you hadn’t made a lot of friends, just some colleagues and acquaintances, which was fine, networking is important, but didn’t make you feel like you fit in as much as you should. Everyone was friendly with you but usually just on the surface, so they can get you to you help them with something. You obliged, since the whole reason you went to UA was to learn to effectively help people in the first place. You drifted along in classes and were generally abject with your life, until you met Oboro.

You were asked to sit in on a few sparring matches by hero course 2-A’s home room teacher since recovery girl would be out for about a week. Since your quirk allowed you to heal from a distance, you stood with 2-A’s sensei and took in the abilities and personalities of your future colleagues. Being that they were in their second year and you in your first, you’d hardly seen them at all yet, but were mesmerized by their quick thinking and mastery they had obtained after such a short time. Though you meant to take notes, you were too distracted and hypnotized by each heros proficiency.

These sparring matches were essentially used as a practical midterm, so each pair had a designated time which meant you would probably be there all day, even though a few pairs went the day before. Each midterm took about a half an hour, sometimes more, and the heros seemed equally matched. Standing next to 2-A’s sensei, you felt small and cold because of the gyms air conditioning. One side of the gym was plain, almost like a basketball court. The other was a rocky, almost impossible looking terrain where the matches were taking place. You yawned as you looked at your watch, noticing it was well past lunch but neither of you had eaten yet.

The next pair came into the gym on opposite sides and shook hands, and the home room teacher blew the whistle signaling the start of the match. You instantly recognized their quirks; one had some sort of blast quirk that was very bright and dynamic, and the other had the ability of creating and manipulating clouds of some sort. It seemed clear to you soon after the whistle who would have the upper hand, but that flipped rapidly as the battle went on, immersing you in the adrenaline filled motions the boys made with precision. The larger boy with the sunglasses seemed to be somewhat irritated and yielded a bit, while the cloud boy with light blue hair was surprisingly agile and stealthy, even when his opponent’s blasts broke through his barrier. You hear him shout things a few times, almost teasingly at the larger kid, but it appeared to be light hearted.

Blast kid had connected one good hit on the cloud kid’s arm, and you heard it reverberate through the gym. You barely had the time to blink before thick clouds covered them both. Their home room teacher nudged you as if to signal to be prepared to heal either one of them since you had both lost sight. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, cloud kid bursts from the top of the mist and pulled out a quarter staff, (you could’ve swore it appeared out of thin air,) and in no time, disappears into the mist again.

The vapor slowly dissipated and you saw cloud kid with an adorably bright smile on his face, while his opponent was pinned to the ground, scowling.

“I wasn’t even trying that’s why you were able to beat me. I don’t even care about this midterm,” he barked.

“Sure man, either way it was a good match! Thanks!” The winner said as he held out his hand to help him up. The other scoffed at him, stood up on his own, and mumbled something to himself. He exited where he originally entered the gym.

The homeroom teacher called out to cloud kid, “Oboro! Come here, that hit sounded rough.”

He lightly jogged over to you both, having not even broken a sweat, and was entirely gleaming. Seemingly bursting with energy he proudly shook his sensei’s hand as a small congratulations on the victory, and turned to you.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” he pulled out a granola bar from his pocket and started eating it sloppily. He spoke again before you had a second to respond. “Are you new here? A transfer student maybe? I’m Shirakumo Oboro, but you can just call me Oboro, or Cloud, or whatever you want. I don’t mind!”

For a second you were wary that he was being friendly to get you to do something for him, but then realized he had no idea who you were, so he was actually just that nice naturally. He surprisingly just met you and allowed you to call him by a nickname.

2-A’s Sensei leaned in, “Hey you’re on lunch now by the way, sorry it’s late, you’ve got an hour and a half till you need to be back here for the rest of it.” You thanked him silently with a head nod and he sauntered away. You made eye contact with Oboro.

“Hi Oboro,” you grinned, “I’m Y/n, I’m a first year so that’s probably why we haven’t met, but I am subbing for recovery girl today.”

“SUBBING AS A FIRST YEAR you must be pretty freakin cool then” he downed some water and some of it got on his shirt. “What is your quirk then?”

“I can heal people from a distance if I know what the issue is. So like if someone has kidney failure I can’t see that, so I might not be able to figure that one out, but if someone has a broken bone or something I can see that and fix it. So I’m learning a little internal medicine on the side so I can diagnose properly to heal.”

“Dang dude that’s sweet I just make clouds,” he bursted out laughing, and then heard your stomach growl, it has been a few hours since you’ve had anything to eat.

“Hey Y/n I have lunch right now too, do you wanna come down to the LRC with me? (what some kids called the Lunch Rush Cafe,) I can introduce you to some of our classmates.” You liked how he said our classmates, he’s genuinely very sweet and made you feel warm and welcome.

You started walking towards the cafeteria and filed into the hallway, following the crowd.

“I’ll still go down there even though I’ve eaten half my lunch already” he said pulling a sandwich out of his other pocket.

You giggled, “You have your whole lunch in your pockets?”

“Yeah?!” he stated with a mouthful, “you never know when you’re gonna need more energy, like after that match! At least I don’t eat those weird energy pouches like Shouta!” He laughed boisterously. You wondered who the heck ‘Shouta’ was.

You each went through the line in the busy cafeteria, Lunch Rush quickly handed you your meal and Oboro stuffed too many energy bars in his pockets.

“My friends eat on the roof if you wanna come up there! It’s….not exactly allowed but it’s not *NOT* allowed”

You pondered the thought of doing something that risky as a first year, but shook it off, knowing that Oboro wouldn’t lead you astray. Even though you had just met him, you were as comfortable as if you had known him for years. You nodded and hummed, signaling for him to lead the way, (you didn’t know how to get to the roof anyway,) and followed close behind.

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collisiondiscourse · 3 years

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on the wonder duo (part 1)

(BNHA Analysis Post Ahead! This isn’t explicitly romantic, but it is an analysis of the relationship between the two most popular characters in BNHA--Katsuki Bakugou and Izuku Midoriya. Split into two posts because I realized that this was gonna be long as HELL)

yall ever think about the fact that the wonder duo is perfectly set up in so that bakugou and deku together are the better version of all might?

bc like. ive been thinking.

everyone knows the win to save and save to win parallel. How they are supposedly two halves of a whole perfect hero (which, previously, was defined as all might)

but ever since bakugou and deku started working as one—growing together to win AND save and continuously reminding each other that they shouldnt try to do things alone, ive realized that its BECAUSE theres two of them that they surpass all might. its not a case of deku and bakugou both being 50% of an ideal hero, but rather i think that they are 100% of what all might SHOULD HAVE BEEN from the very beginning.

as early as the AM v AFO battle in kamino, we see the effects of all mights flawed existence. the fact that he, the greatest and supposedly infallible symbol of peace, was destroyed—society had begun to collapse. there was suddenly no pillar to hold people together and the impacts were so severe that even in the latest chapters of mha it keeps on getting worse. the truth is, all mights biggest mistake was the burden he placed on his own shoulders

with bakugou and deku... its different.

its different for them because down to their attributions, they seem like two halves of a whole person.

i think that the wonder duo are going to surpass all might because of the fact that they work together.

@bakugoukatsuki-rising @svpercraigus @tybee @isaustraliaathing

(batshit crazy and conspiratorial essay under the cut !)

1. Complementary Colors

I’d like to first preface literally everything I say by the fact that I am not an expert analyzer or literary major in any way. I am literally just some random fan on the internet who has wayyy too much time and looks wayyy too deep into things, but here we go!

A common thing we see when we talk about bakugou and deku is the way they are... sort of an inverse of one another.

Down to the design of their features and the way they move, Deku is the obviously softer of the two. There’s an intentional contrast between the two of them, in the way that Deku’s drawn with round shapes and curvy hair and the way Bakugou is literally all spikes and half-mast eyes and rough muscles. Bakugou’s movements too are languid and showy, with the way he leans when he walks and splays his legs and kicks open doors. Katsuki, in a casual sense, is loud and dramatic.

Deku on the other hand s finicky. He jitters when he walks and he’s often fidgeting and mumbling. Comparatively, the aura he radiates is energetic and frenzied, even self-conscious to a point unlike Bakugou’s calm and confident movements.

the point is, there’s a clear difference in how either of them are designed and what exactly they are supposed to represent. They utterly complement each other down to the way they behave and even their main colors (red-orange and blue-green) being literal complementary colors.

Now, moving to my more ungrounded points, this is quite a bit of a stretch so I’ll try as much as possible to make sense of these with hyperlinked sources because. yeah.

Down to their names, I think Deku and Bakugou both symbolize something deeper. I think that the way Hori expresses characters and what they’re meant to do is something that we have to pay close attention to when we talk about the Wonder Duo’s rise to success.

Izuku Midoriya (緑谷出久), as some of us may know, does have an interesting meaning when broken up. According to a lovely fan translation of his name, ‘Izuku’--while not an actual name used commonly in real life--means to ‘Come out’ or ‘Long time’. ‘Midoriya’ on the other hand means (Midori) ‘Green’ and (ya) ‘valley’. The translator further pointed out that his first name ‘Izuku’ could be a reference to him being the first legendary hero to come out of the long-running All Might Era. (or, if you’ve been reading @/bakugoukatsuki-rising’s posts, the first significant anime protag in a long while to come out as queer, ppfft)

but that isn’t my focus right now.

We know that Hori LOVES telling stories with names, and more often than not in the BNHA universe, names alone tell us a lot of things about the characters. When referring to Izuku’s last name, Midoriya, it’s important I think to step back and realize that hey, maybe there’s something more to Green Valley than just the fact that his motif is all green.

After searching for a lil on the specifics of green valley, I’ve found out that across many cultures, the colour green and valleys in general tend to represent life. From dream analysts, to Christianity, and even old Taoist teachings, valleys are seen as areas of fertility and escape. They are seen as safe havens and often escapes for people to come to after running away from bad circumstances.

(Sound familiar?)

Deku, in essence represents life and peace. He represents being the “salvation” that the world in BNHA needed. To me, it sounds like Horikoshi is trying to say that he is the long-awaited hero in the sense. The one that people can feel will create a society that feels safe for everyone after years of All Might just saving people from themselves as a band-aid solution.

On the other hand, we have Katsuki Bakugou (爆豪勝己), who’s name we commonly know means (Katsuki) Winner and (Bakugou) Explosion Master. He is essentially, the champion. The power. His name means success and power and all the things that make up winning.

When putting them side by side, it then becomes increasingly... interesting to me how their names almost perfectly slot into All Might’s save to win and win to save mantra, and how they are both quintessential parts to what made All Might as a hero.

2. Hero Too!

Now, I’m not even gonna really TOUCH much of what happens in canon. If you want me to do a step by step breakdown of their arcs in regards to the plot of manga and anime, feel free to send me a gratuitous ko-fi tip so I can pay for the headache I get after trying to organize my thoughts into word vomit.

What I WILL talk about on the other hand, is the subtle shift both of them slowly have in regards to how they look. Bakugou and Deku, while growing up, seem to have MANY many parallels--but before I elaborate on all of that, I wanna talk about something else.

Detour: Deku’s Red Shoes

We all know the iconic symbol being Deku’s red shoes. For all his life, save for some outfits like his hero one, we see Deku more often than not wearing his signature red sneakers which have become a running joke in fandom.

But the funny thing is, in Japan, red shoes seem to have an interesting connotation.

In 1922, a popular Japanese nursery rhyme was written, called “Red Shoes”. The interesting part to me about this song was the symbolism that, in my tiny pea-sized brain, I could connect to the story of BNHA.

The story goes that there was a little girl with red shoes named ‘Kimi’. She was from Shizuoka prefecture (which, if you didn’t know, is most likely where Musutafu supposedly is) and was raised by a single mother. When she was young, her mother had to entrust her with a foreigner under the impression that they would give her a better life in America. The stranger is a man named Charles Hewitt (who was described to have blue eyes) and supposedly took her away.

The singer of the song (supposedly the mother, but some argue it was written from the perspective of a childhood friend) believes that Kimi is happy and living a better life away from them, when the reality of the situation was much worse. The young girl with red shoes in actuality had Tuberculosis, and thus the foreigner whom she was entrusted to had left her to fend for herself and eventually left her to go to America while she died alone and orphaned.

“When I see red shoes, I think of her.”

A very interesting story with very interesting implications indeed.

Anyway, moving on to the more... “nuanced” and connected parts of this section, I have every reason to believe that Bakugou and Deku were simply MEANT to be working together down to how they dress. Now, I’d like to discuss their hero costumes.

At the start of their series, using these godawful pics for reference, it’s clear to see that neither of them seem alike in any way--reflecting the dissonance in their relationship at that point in canon.

ough. deku why. (yes we know why its because you love your mom you stupid little bunny <3)

Anyway, we see an immediate gap in how the two of them are. Deku’s first costume is one that reflects how he treated his dream of being a hero. He was still in that childlike idolization phase, the one where his dreams and aspirations were hinged on pure feelings and inspiration from All Might. Katsuki on the other hand was a lot more tactical--professional to an extent. The gap between their respective development with their quirks is something that is clearly felt in every fashion decision they’d made.

(Notice how Deku’s green is a lot brighter and less like the green accents Katsuki has all over his costume.)

As time progressed however... their costumes changed. The colors, the silhouettes, the practical functions, most things.

(Deku’s Gamma Costume and Bakugou’s Winter Costume used respectively)

we begin to notice a few similarities.

As the show goes on and we see more evolutions of their costumes, it almost seems like they begin to look like a matching pair. Deku’s green grows darker and almost teal in nature, while Bakugou’s orange is veering towards red territory. This is important to note because red-orange and blue-green as I said earlier were complementary colors as compared to simply orange and green. The minute shift is something I really wasn’t quite sure was intentional, but something I find interesting to pick up nonetheless as the colors they used to accent their costumes begin to match up.

Secondly, I think and important thing to note is silhouettes. The way that both Bakugou and Deku’s costumes are designed follow a lot of parallels that typically we don’t see with the rest of 1-A. For one, they both have a combination of tight long-sleeved tops with a bulkier set of bottoms. They also share the use of utility belts and metal pieces typically worn around their necks. Deku has his bunny-eared hood that mimics All Might’s hair, while Bakugou has his orange and black explosion ear-pieces that mimic his own quirk.

i don’t think any other people in class 1-A match each other as subtly yet strongly as these two. Uraraka and Deku and Bakugou and Kirishima do come close however.

“But Codi, you fucking knob!” I hear you plea. “This is such a reach and tells us practically NOTHING!” And yes, I’m inclined to agree with you! You’d be sort of right in the idea that this is a reach. Maybe I am looking too much into this, and maybe it really isn’t that deep--but I do think that them subconsciously matching outfits means something quite brilliant.

In the way that their costumes are designed, each aspect of either outfits have a very logical explanation. The changes were strategic and made with their fighting styles vividly in mind, so what that tells me is that BECAUSE these costumes are so complementary or similar in nature (Bakugou’s reinforcing his arms while Deku reinforces his legs), these two are implicitly showing the audience that their combat styles are complementary as well.

The evolution of their design choices and similarities tell us that even unknowingly, their minds line up in strategy on the battlefield--a clear exhibit for why they would be INCREDIBLY POWERFUL as a Hero Duo to begin with.

When I look at their hero costumes side by side, I see a mirror. I see the way that these two are reflections of each other and are strong where the other isn’t. The point I see in BNHA repeatedly is that EVERYONE HAS A WEAKNESS. Nothing is infallible, regardless of how hard you train or how powerful your quirk is. Everyone will always have a weakness, but the significant difference I see when fandom discusses the future of Pro-Hero Society is that the new generation is finally raising itself to be RELIANT on each other.

Observing their fighting styles and the simple use of their quirks, its obvious that they are indeed two parts of a whole hero. Bakugou, who’s quirk emphasized his arms and hands and the power that comes from it, while Deku who’s quirk now emphasizes his legs and lower body and the way he’s always running to save people.

IN CONCLUSION:

As they become heroes, it is easy to assume that if nothing else, Bakugou and Deku will cover each other’s weak spots (especially when you consider the way Deku probably won’t be able to keep using his arms with the way both the anime and manga are going...) (also chapter 285, anyone?)

Part Two: Interactions, OfA

kofi || commission details

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not-me-simping-for-blasty · 3 years

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Silly Little Symphony - Bakugou Katsuki

Track 1: Paralyzer- Finger Eleven

—/—

Bakugou is not a fan of half-assing things.

He hates it, despises it actually. Bakugou feels like anything worth doing deserves 100% effort, and if you give it any less than that you might as well not even attempt it in the first place. That’s his motto and that’s what he sticks with and that’s what he’s doing right now, too. Obviously.

Except- why does it feel like he has to convince himself?

It’s like there’s this lingering feeling in his mind that he’s taking the easy way out. That he’s taking the cheater’s way out, but it’s- there’s just no other choice, alright?

Bakugou knows he’s a brave guy, knows that he could shred anything he set his sights on, but by that very same logic, he’s knows even more that he’s not a very soft guy. His feelings for you are his feelings, and yes he might acknowledge them, but that doesn’t mean he could ever communicate them delicately. Even when he runs fantasy scenarios in his head, the words still come out all wrong. They’re too loud and too brash and too forceful and you always end up offended.

Bakugou doesn’t want you to end up offended- at leasy more than you already have. So, he quickly decided on a different method of communication.

A playlist.

A playlist full of songs that convey what he’s been wanting to, but also sound angry and scary and tough- because he’s a tough guy who listens to nothing but rock and punk and metal, and has definitely has not searched up songs with your name in the title before, and has definitely not then added those songs to his library. Because that’s ridiculous and soft, and like determined before, Bakugou Katsuki is not soft.

What he actually is, is a guy with a playlist full of specially-curated songs. And a guy with absolutely no idea how to give them to you.

The thing is, he’s read manga and watched movies and read all sorts of articles about these types of confessions (not that he’d ever admit that), but none of those felt like him. He was not a smooth talker or a brazen flirt or even just a kind guy- no, Bakugou was mean and loud, and he knew full well that he’d much sooner be cast as the antagonist than the romantic lead.

So all of that was a problem, and then you also currently didn’t even like him. You made it very clear, though every sneer and comment and biting comeback, that only feeling you held for him was begrudging respect- and even that was only on the battlefield. Once he stepped out of the hero uniform than you were back to hating him, and he only made it worse with every childish insult he threw your way. Bakugou knew it was a stupid way to get your attention, but it was also the most efficient one; and he was a man of efficiency.

So that left him here- pining the same way he had been for weeks, staring down into a playlist full of songs he couldn’t figure out how to play for you.

He sneaks a look at you, red eyes just barely skimming over top of the bus seats. You’re sitting a few rows ahead, sharing a snack with Tsuyu.

Bakugou thinks you’re stupid. He thinks you’re stupid for eating junk food right before a day of training, and he thinks you’re stupid for choosing to sit all the way in front like a nerd, and most of all he thinks you’re stupid for sharing your snack with that damn frog face when he’s right there. And obviously much better in every comparable, concievable way. Obviously.

Bakugou presses his headphones more securely into ears, and slouches down deep into his seat. All he can see now is the back of the seat, and he thinks that’s a better alternative. At least it won’t piss him off- not like the sight of you, sitting up front and laughing where he can’t hear, will.

With a grunt, he hits shuffle on his playlist, turning the volume to max. He closes his eyes dropping his head against the window. Drum fills and a guitar riff flood his ears, and he’s relaxing a bit, sinking into the sound, and all is well and good until-

Well just look at that girl with the lights coming up in her eyes. She's got to be somebody's baby.

God dammit.

Fuck Phantom Planet. Bakugou thinks. Fuck them.

Then he’s growling as he hits the skip button, throwing his phone onto the seat next to him.

—/—

As it turns out, all Bakugou needed was to beat the ever-loving shit out of something.

Cracking his palms and shaking his limbs, Bakugou launches at another robot. He thinks the machines feel weak under his explosions, almost offensively feeble in their construction. Like all of U.A’s staff went braindead that morning- like they couldn’t even bother to cook him up a worthy opponent.

When Bakugou looks around, that’s clearly not a shared statement. There’s the usual standouts of course, stupid deku and stupid icyhot and even stupid dunce face is doing well for once, but the rest of them are average. Mediocre. Completely and utterly inferior to him- and then you enter.

Your quirk, blink, is a bit useless in this scenario, but you’re not letting that stop you. There’s purpose in your movements, quick and controlled actions as you strap your home-made bombs around the base of each robot’s leg. Machines don’t blink, so you’re shit out of luck for your main speed ability, but your training makes up the difference. With practiced ease you’ve darted out from beneath the robot’s feet, and then you’re hitting the detonate on your remote.

Bakugou thinks you look unreasonably fucking cool as you sprint away from the blast. So cool in fact, that he might even consider your tech explosions as cool as his quirk ones. Maybe.

Bakugou wipes his palms, muffling a yawn. He’d blown up all his assigned robots ages ago, and now was left kicking rocks and generally doing nothing.

This training was supposed to act as a benchmark test- the idea was to drop a similar opponent into the ring, one that emulated the entrance exam, to test how far everyone had come since the beginning of the semester. It could’ve been good in theory, but Bakugou thought it was just a waste of time. Robot’s were easy for him then and they sure as hell were easy for him now.

Still though, he was the first one to kill all his robots, so not all was lost. Bakugou still walked away a winner and that meant he was feeling much better than earlier.

Smirking with shameless pride, Bakugou saunted to the exit area. More students began to file in after him, and he kept mostly quiet, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut when you walked past him.

“Fuckin’ fifth? With your overpowered-ass quirk?” He sneers, voice loud. “Waste of talent.”

Bakugou watches spin on your heels, watches your face melt into something deadly. You’re storming towards him, and he can’t even think past hoping you’d get a little closer.

“Robot’s don’t fucking blink, you jackass.” You’re red in the face and glaring, hands curling into fists at your sides. “You try getting. anything done without your quirk. Asshole.”

Then you’re stomping away, hardly giving him a second look as you cheer on your friends.

Bakugou can’t even begin to decipher what possessed him, to say those words, but he’s also not surprised. His words always come out wrong and he can’t say anything nice without wanting to scratch away his skin.

What he really wanted to say was that you were impressive even without your quirk. That you were admirably smart and tactical and well-prepared with your own bombs, and he thought that you looked really hot sprinting away from the wreckage- but that’s not what he said. Of course that’s not what he said.

Well, there goes his good mood. No amount of previous wins could ever distract him from how much of a loss that interaction was.

Eventually the rest of the class finishes, and then they’re all gathering breathless and tired back to the bus. Unfortunately, Kaminari fried himself completely and Mineta managed to break an ankle and that meant that they needed their own seats. That also meant that two people who had their own seats on the ride there, would now be sharing on the way back.

As shitty luck would have it, the class chose drawing straws as the deciding factor, and even worse than that, Bakugou got the shortest straw. The day was already shaping up to be pretty frustrating, but when you pulled the second-shortest straw it got even worse.

“We can always share instead, L/n!” Tsuyu’s says, hand on your shoulder and voice mediating. “Really. I don’t mind.”

Bakugou watched you sigh for a moment, and then you’re turning your head towards him. Your eyes meet his and Bakugou can’t help the smirk that rolls across his face- you’re looking at him and paying attention to him and even if it’s just you making a point he still likes that attention. He watches you squint your eyes at him in response, voice hard and steely as you speak to Tsuyu.

“No. It’s alright. We picked staws, and fair is fair.” Your squint morphs into a glare. “And besides, I’m not gonna let that smug bastard throw a fit into getting out of this.”

The statement should piss him off, and if anyone else said it it would’ve, but Bakugou finds it does the opposite. It just reaffirms how brave you are and how you’re not scared of him like everyone else is and how much he likes you for it- not that he’d ever tell you any of those things.

To save face, Bakugou instead pretends to be pissed about your words, his palms popping and crackling as he glares right back. He hopes it looks like a genuine threat and not a panic reaction, because really he just thinks you look so cool talking back to him directly like that and he definitely doesn’t know what to do with that. So instead he does what always works; what always makes him feel better when he gets a feeling too big to handle- he preps to blow shit up.

“Calm down, man. It’s just a seat.” Kirishima comes up behind him, pressing a water bottle into Bakugou’s crackling palms. “Here, take this and please don’t blow up the bus. Or L/n. That’d be so totally not heroic of you.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“No I’m serious, dude. Chill out, okay? L/n’s actually pretty nice once you get to know her.”

“I said, shut the hell up, Shitty Hair!” Bakugou barks, gritting his teeth.

Then he’s shoving his palms into his pockets, leaving Kirishima and the water behind, and stalking towards the bus before anyone else does. Bakugou figures that if he’s got to share a seat, then at least he’s going to be the one sat next to the window. He’ll make sure of it.

Still, there’s something sitting heavy in his stomach though- how does Kirishima know you’re nice?

The comment made his blood boil. Bakugou thinks it’s strange because usually he’s pretty tolerant of his friend, and even finds himself enjoying his company sometimes, but those words pissed Bakugou off. Pissed him off a lot.

”Wow, don’t look so goddamn thrilled.” You say sardonically, and Bakugou watches you drop into the seat next to him. “Might accidentally think you tolerate me, blasty.”

“Don’t fuckin’ call me that. Useless extra.”

Bakugou wants to smash his head into a wall- because why the fuck did he just say that?

Oh yeah, because apparently his jealousy was plastered all over his face, clear enough for you to comment on it. And even if you didn’t know that’s what the expression was, he’d still rather bite your head clean off than admit it was there in the first place.

“Yeah, whatever. I don’t want to fight.” You say, clenching your jaw as you settle back into the seat. “Look, it’ll be easier for both of us if we don’t talk, so I’ll just sit here and not bother you, alright?”

“Fine. Shut the hell up then.”

Once again, Bakugou wants to obliterate himself.

He doesn’t know why he can’t just tell you- why he can’t just say that he wants you to keep talking to him and that he wants you to keep snarking back at him. Why he can’t just say that he thinks your voice is one of the least grating ones in the whole class.

He thinks all of those things, but says none. Instead he keeps a fist clenched as his sides, scowling as he pulls out his headphones. He makes an intentional effort not to play your playlist and instead hits shuffle on all his music. He’d hoped that the loud drums and guitars would settle his emotions, but they didn’t. Nearly 10 minutes have passed and Bakugou’s as riled up as ever, but he’s also now completely convinced you’re trying to kill him.

You’re shifting in your seat, your arms extending out as you slip on your jacket. There’s little room, and every time you shuffle the sleeves to adjust them, you’re knocking your shoulders into his.

Then you stop.

You just stop and you go still and his skin isn’t tingling anymore and Bakugou is all kinds of pissed all over again. Because of you he’s nervous and flustered and you have the audacity to just sit there, unaffected. He has to snarl just to keep himself from blushing when he speaks.

“Why the fuck were you touching me?”

“It’s a small seat and I was putting on a jacket.” You reply, short and clipped. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

“Tch. Just don’t do it again. And shut up the fuck up already.”

“You- you talked to me first!”

“And? Who the fuck cares?” Bakugou grunts, turning the volume of his music up. “Now shut up.”

Jesus christ. Bakugou thinks to himself. Maybe I should just blow myself up for once.

Another few minutes pass, and Bakugou swears he’s really is dying. You’re still so close to him and he’s feeling very, very flustered, and while he doesn’t love the idea that you’re mad at him, he can’t say he hates the look on your face right now either. You’ve got your jaw clenched and your eyebrows set low and your hands are balled into fists as you steadfastly ignore him. Bakugou thinks you look scary- fucking terrifying.

He likes terrifying.

“Hey.” You suddenly nudge him with your shoulder, pointing to his earbuds. “I can hear it- your music. Turn it down.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because that’s basic courtesy.”

“What the fuck makes you think I have that, hah?”

“Oh my god, you’re fucking impossible.” You rolls your eyes, heaving a frustrated sigh. “Listen, if you’re gonna keep it up that loud then at least skip that song. It’s shit.”

Bakugou glances down at his screen.

Fucking Nickleback.

Jesus, could his day get any worse?

“Shut the hell up.” He snaps, squinting his eyes. “What the fuck do you know about good music? You don’t know shit.”

“I know that song sucks, so skip it. If you’re gonna accost me with loud music at least make it good.” You bite back, and then Bakugou watches as your face melts into an easy smirk. “Unless... all your music is that terrible?”

“Sounds like you’re pickin’ a fuckin’ fight!”

“I am, you asshole!”

Bakugou doesn’t know when the two of you got so close, but now you’re only inches away. He’s got his palms up and you’ve got your lips pulled back into a snarl and suddenly the bus seat seems so much smaller. It’s so much smaller and all Bakugou can think about is the red in your cheeks and the fire in your eyes and how much he likes the sight of both.

“Just skip the song or turn it down.” You finally huff, falling back in your seat, and all Bakugou can think about is how that breathe would’ve been on his cheek if it was two seconds ago.

Bakugou is mad. He’s mad at you and your stupid witch powers that leave the air feeling cold and your stupid breaths that he can’t stop focusing on and your stupid comment. Your stupid comment that had his blood burning in his veins and irritation settling in his temple.

Bakugou listened to cool music, okay? Cool, loud music for cool, loud guys. You just insulted that, insulted him so this wasn’t just a means of confessing feelings anymore, it was a pride thing and that’s why he says what he said next. It’s definitely not because this was the golden chance he’d been waiting for.

“My music is fuckin’ good.” He growls, and then he’s yanking an earbud out and shoving it towards you. “I’ll fucking show you. Now shut up and listen.”

“So goddamn pushy, jesus.”

“You gonna fuckin’ take it or not?”

“Oh my god. Fine.”

Bakugou watches you fit the earbud into your ear, his mouth set into a determined line. He knew he’d fucked up every other part of this conversation, monumentally fucked them up even, but he wouldn’t mess this up. He was prepared and this was the chance he was waiting for. Only an absolute idiot could mess this up and Bakugou Katsuki was not an idiot.

So he plays the first song he’d added to your playlist. Paralyzer.

To his surprise, you start nodding your head almost immeadiately. You know this song. The drum fill starts and then you’re looking over at him, giving him the tiniest little smirk of approval.

“Not bad, blasty.”

“Fucking told ya.” He can’t help the pride that swells in him at your validation. It’s warm and heavy in his chest, nearly drawing a smile out of him- and then he remembers he’s supposed to be mad. “And I told you, don’t fucking call me that.”

“I’ll call you by your name when you call me by mine.”

“Wipe the smirk off your stupid fucking face,” Bakugou growls. “Or I’ll blast it off.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes! Fuckin’ try me, extra!”

“Okay.” You huff a laugh at him. “Don’t blink then. Champ.”

Then you’re raising your hand, shoving it in his face and snapping before he can stop you. Bakugou flinches out of reflex and by the time he’s opened his eyes, you’ve already used your super-speed ability.

You’re sitting back against the seat, calm and collected and smirking, with both of Bakugou’s earbuds in your ears. You’ve got his phone in your hand and he watches you twist the cord around your finger, cross your legs casually and he’s stunned. He’s pissed that you got the better of him, but he also just really thinks you’re hot when you’ve won. He watches in dazed silence as you turn up the volume on his phone to max.

Well I'm not paralyzed, but I seem to be struck by you. I want to make you move because you're standing still.

Bakugou decides two things in that moment: One, he fucking hates Finger Eleven. And two, he wants to blow the entire fucking bus to smithereens.

—/—

eee i hope u all enjoy, but especially u @bakugouswh0r3 and @definitelynottrin :))

#bnha bakugou #bakugou katsuki #bnha bakugo katsuki #mha bakugou #bnha fic #katsuki bakugou #bakugou x reader #bakugou x y/n #mha fic #bakugou x you #bakugou fic

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carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich · 3 years

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Diabolik Lovers Survey 2020 Results

This year I got 138 responses in total, which is close to double the number I got in 2019 (74 responses) so a big thank you to all of you for taking part and for those who helped to promote it! Now onto the results:

Question 1. Who is your favorite DL character?

1. Subaru Sakamaki (18 votes) (3rd in CL poll, joint 4th in 2019 survey) 2. Shu Sakamaki (16 votes) (1st in CL poll, 1st in 2019 survey) 3. Ruki Mukami (13 votes) (4th in CL poll, joint 6th in 2019 survey) 4. Laito Sakamaki (12 votes) (8th in CL poll, 10th in 2019 survey) 5. Ayato Sakamaki (11 votes) (2nd in CL poll, 3rd in 2019 survey) 6. Reiji Sakamaki (10 votes) (9th in CL poll, 2nd in 2019 survey) 6. Carla Tsukinami (10 votes) (11th in CL poll, 4th in 2019 survey) 6. Kanato Sakamaki (10 votes) (6th in CL poll, joint 6th in 2019 survey) 9. Azusa Mukami (8 votes) (12th in CL poll, 13th in 2019 survey) 9. Yui Komori (8 votes) (7th in CL poll, no votes in 2019 survey) 11. Yuma Mukami (7 votes) (10th in CL poll, joint 6th in 2019 survey) 12. Shin Tsukinami (6 votes) (14th in CL poll, joint 11th in 2019 survey) 13. Kino (3 votes) (13th in CL poll, joint 11th in 2019 survey) 14. Kou Mukami (1 vote) (5th in CL poll, joint 6th in 2019 survey) 14. Richter (1 votes) (did not feature in CL poll, no votes in 2019 survey)

Note: 3 people said they didn’t have a favorite character and 1 person skipped the question. Karlheinz, Beatrix, Cordelia, Christa and Yuri were all available options but they did not receive any votes. I’ve included where they came in the CL poll (the most recent official popularity poll) to show how the results compare. Below you can also see how the voting breaks down compared to the 2019 survey.

While I was a little surprised that Subaru managed to dethrone Shu as the fandom’s overall favorite, I was not surprised by him, Shu, Ruki and Ayato all featuring in the top 5 considering their rankings in the CL poll. Laito also managed to sneak his way in there but considering that he was the winner of the 2018 survey, that wasn’t much of a surprise to me either.

The thing that I really don’t understand is what on Earth happened with Kou. Up until 24 hours before the survey closed, he didn’t have a single vote (lone Kou fan, thank you for stepping up), despite doing pretty well in the CL poll and the 2019 survey. If anyone has any theories on where all the Kou fans have gone then let me know because I am baffled.

Anyway, onto the rest of the survey, because this post is extremely long, I’ve put the rest below the cut.

Question 2. Who is your least favorite diaboy?

1. Kanato Sakamaki (42 votes) (1st in 2019 survey) 2. No least favorite (15 votes) (2nd option in 2019 survey) 3. Kino (14 votes) (3rd in 2019 survey) 4. Ruki Mukami (12 votes) (joint 6th in 2019 survey) 5. Ayato Sakamaki (10 votes) (4th in 2019 survey) 6. Carla Tsukinami (9 votes) (no votes in 2019 survey) 7. Reiji Sakamaki (7 votes) (joint 6th in 2019 survey) 8. Shin Tsukinami (6 votes) (joint 6th in the 2019 survey) 8. Azusa Mukami (6 votes) (joint 10th in 2019 survey) 10. Shu Sakamaki (5 votes) (no votes in 2019 survey) 11. Kou Mukami (3 votes) (5th in 2019 survey) 11. Laito Sakamaki (3 votes) (9th in 2019 survey) 11. Yuma Mukami (3 votes) (joint 10th in 2019 survey) 14. Subaru Sakamaki (2 votes) (no votes in 2019 survey)

Note: I discounted one vote for Subaru on this question, as the participant had also voted for him as their favorite character so I assumed they misunderstood this question.

Every single year I’ve done this, Kanato has come first in this category by a massive margin and (while I will admit he’s my own least favorite) I am still no closer to understanding why he gets so many votes. If anyone does have any theories then do let me know.

Other than that, Kino’s placement certainly isn’t a surprise given his place in the 2019 survey and that he was the villain in all of the other characters LE routes, which I suspect has not endeared him to many. I do find it interesting that Ruki and Ayato (who did well in the popularity poll) were also in the top 5 for this question.

I also wasn’t expecting Shu, golden boy of the fandom, to actually rank higher than some of the other characters in this question and to only have one less vote than Shin (who is considerably less popular and did some fairly deplorable things in the other character’s DF routes).

Question 3. What is your favorite type of DL media?

1. The games 60 votes (1st in 2019 survey) 2. The drama CDs 46 votes (2nd in 2019 survey) 3. The character songs 9 votes (3rd in 2019 survey) 3. The merch (e.g. plushies, badges, straps etc) 9 votes (4th in 2019 survey) 5. The anime 8 votes (5th in 2019 survey) 5. The manga 6 votes (6th in 2019 survey)

I don’t really think there’s much to comment on with this one, the results are pretty similar to last year and given that the drama CDs and the games collectively provide most of the story content for DL, it’s not at all surprising that they’re the fan favorites.

Question 4. If you have played and/or read translations for the games, which is your favorite?

1. Dark Fate (39 votes) (1st in 2019 survey) 2. Haunted Dark Bridal (27 votes) (2nd in 2019 survey) 3. More Blood (13 votes) (3rd in 2019 survey) 4. Vandead Carnival (10 votes) (7th in 2019 survey) 5. Lost Eden 8 votes (5th in 2019 survey) 6. Chaos Lineage 8 votes (4th in 2019 survey) 7. Lunatic Parade 6 votes (6th in 2019 survey) Note: 20 people said they had not played the games or read translations of them.

DF, HDB and MB all remain as the top 3 games of franchise. I was a bit surprised to see VC jump up so much though, although I know some more translations for it have been posted recently, and a game being translated will always help to boost it’s popularity within the fandom.

Question 5. If you have listened to and/or read translations of the drama CDs, which set of CDs includes your favorite?

1. Bonus CDs (19 votes) (4th in 2019 survey) 2. Para-Selene (18 votes) (2nd in 2019 survey) 3. Bloody Bouquet (14 votes) (1st in 2019 survey) 4. Zero (13 votes) (joint 5th in 2019 survey) 5. The original do-s vampire CDs (11 votes) (3rd in 2019 survey) 6. More Blood do-s vampire (8 votes) (joint 5th in 2019 survey) 7. Verus II (7 votes) (joint 5th in 2019 survey) 8. More, More Blood (6 votes) (not an option in the 2019 survey) 9. Dark Fate (4 votes) (no votes in 2019 survey) 9. Born To Die (4 votes) (joint 9th in 2019 survey) 11. Verus I (3 votes) (joint 9th in 2019 survey) 12. Eternal Blood (2 votes) (no votes in 2019 survey) 13. Versus III (1 vote) (joint 8th in 2019 survey) 13. Versus IV (1 vote) (no votes in 2019 survey) 13. Chaos Lineage (1 vote) (joint 8th in 2019 survey) Note: the Lost Eden CDs (joint 8th in the 2019 survey) did not receive any votes and 26 people said they had not listened to or read translations of the drama CDs, 6 more than those who had not played or read translations of the games.

I was pretty surprised to see the Bloody Bouquet CDs bumped down to third place considering that they won far and away in the 2018 and 2019 surveys, especially with the Zero CDs coming so close behind them. Para-Selene (my own personal favorite set of drama CDs) is still a fan favorite, and while I know many people enjoy the bonus CDs, I certainly wasn’t expecting to see them take the top spot.

In terms of other things to note, I do find it interesting that the Eternal Blood CDs (which feature the Mukamis) are less popular than the Born To Die CDs (which feature the Tsukinamis and Kino), considering that in this survey, the Mukami brothers got more votes combined than the Tsukinamis + Kino, and I’m pretty sure all of the Eternal Blood CDs have been translated, while to my knowledge, no English translations exist for the BTD CDs (although you can find a summary of Shin’s on this blog), so I would have expected this to be the other way around.

Question 6. How long have you been interested in DL?

1. More than 4 years but less than 6 years (55 votes) 2. More than 2 years but less than 4 years (26 votes) 3. More than 6 years but less than 8 years (15 votes) 4. Up to six months (9 votes) 5. Over 8 years (7 votes) 6. More than 6 months but less than 1 year (6 votes) 7. Less than 1 month (2 votes) Note: 6 people said they couldn’t remember how long they’d been interested in DL for.

It seems the majority of us have been here for years (truly, there is no escaping diahell) but it was nice to see so many newcomers to the fandom take part this year, especially as we haven’t really had that much new content.

I mentioned this in the 2019 survey results post but I do wonder whether the release of the MB anime (a little over 5 years ago), may have some correlation with a large chunk of the fandom (or at least the portion that took part in this survey) being into the series for between 4-6 years.

Question 7. If you answered the survey I did last year, have any of your choices changed since then?

Note: Multiple options could be selected here.

My favorite character has changed: 21 votes

My least favorite diaboy has changed: 17 votes

My favorite DL game has changed: 9 votes

My favorite drama CD has changed: 18 votes

There were definitely more changes this year compared to last year (although given the much larger sample size, that’s to be expected), but it does seem most are fairly firm in their favorites.

Question 8. If you purchased one of the More, More Blood CDs, which version did you get?

Deluxe edition: 7 votes (5.22%)

Regular edition: 4 votes (2.99%)

Deluxe edition from Animate: 7 votes (5.22%)

Deluxe edition from Stellaworth: 2 votes (1.49%)

Deluxe edition of the same CD from Animate & Stellaworth: 3 votes (2.24%)

Multiple MMB CDs (some regular, some deluxe): 5 votes (3.73%)

Did not buy any of the MMB CDs: 106 votes (79.10%)

Note: 4 people skipped this question.

I mostly asked this question because I was curious as to how many people bought the deluxe edition versus the normal edition, especially as after listening to Shin’s (and from the comments I saw online) I feel like you really need the bonus CD you get with the deluxe edition to nicely wrap up the story.

I was sort of expecting most people to go for the deluxe edition, as I think if you’re ordering your favorite's CD, you’re going to want the maximum content with them possible, even if it does come with a bigger price tag.

As for why so many people went for the Animate bonus over the Stellaworth bonus, I imagine this was because Animate has an international online store (although I think whether you can actually get the bonus drama CDs from them is variable) while Stellaworth only ships in Japan, which means if you order from them, you have to use a proxy service which really hikes up the price.

Question 9. Out of the following things released within the last year, which has been your favorite?

1. 4-panel More, More Blood comics (28 votes) 1. Winter of Lovers merch (28 votes) 3. More, More Blood CDs (24 votes) 4. Masquerade Jewel merch (18 votes) 5. My Melody collaboration merch (15 votes) 6. Other (14 votes) 7. Merch from Rejet 2020 Fes (10 votes) Note: 1 person skipped this question.

I thought for sure the More, More Blood CDs would win this one but I seriously underestimated just how popular the More, More Blood comics and merch lines were. I suppose given that the bonus drama CDs came first in the Drama CD category and the MMB comics are much in the same vein (as in they both contain humorous content), it isn’t that much of a surprise, especially as the comics are posted online and are therefore much more accessible to international fans than the drama CDs.

As for the merch lines, Winter of Lovers is the most recently released set, so it may be possible that this is partially responsible for it’s popularity (i.e. it’s the merch line freshest in people’s minds).

Question 10. Which of the upcoming DL releases are you the most excited for?

1. Young Blood manga (64 votes) 2. Daylight CDs (25 votes) 3. Releases that have yet to be announced (20 votes) 4. Count Off (9th anniversary song) (7 votes) Note: 22 people went for the “Can’t choose/ Not excited for any of these” option.

The Young Blood manga won here by a massive margin, which is pretty interesting considering that the DL manga ranked lowest in question 3. That being said though I suspect this manga will be more popular than the others as it should give us more of the boys’ backstories.

I’ve seen several people hoping for the unannounced release (that we should find out more about April) to be a new game. Personally I’m not super convinced that’s going to be the case as new game announcements tend to be done at Otomate party (as was the case with CL in 2018), which is scheduled for July. However, I do admit that I think a new game would be a really good way to celebrate DL’s tenth anniversary (which is coming up December next year), so I don’t think it’s completely outside of the realms of possibility that we may get another game at some point.

Either way I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in April.

And that’s it for the 2020 survey. Again, thanks to everyone who took part, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the results, was there anything that surprised you?

#long post #dl survey 2020 #dl survey results #Diabolik Lovers #own post #Shu Sakamaki #Reiji Sakamaki #Ayato Sakamaki #Laito Sakamaki #Kanato Sakamaki #Subaru Sakamaki #Kino #Ruki Mukami #Kou Mukami #Yuma Mukami #Azusa Mukami #Shin Tsukinami #Carla Tsukinami #I have tried to proofread this but it's such a long post so please forgive any mistakes

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engekihaikyuu · 3 years

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View from the Top 2 - Review

Check out the Read More if you’d like to hear about this show! Askbox is open as well if you’d like me to elaborate on anything out of this.

Before I begin my review of the final show, I do want to start with some caveats:

So as I mentioned previously, the production once again went with PIA for their live streaming platform, which means that live streaming this show is very inaccessible for anyone living outside of Japan.

PIA is a ticketing platform that requires a working Japanese phone number in order to finish activating/registering a new account because you must call the number provided to finish account verification. So without a Japanese contact or a Japanese phone number, this platform is basically impossible.

I have a generous friend in Japan who was willing to share her account information with me, which is how I was able to pay for a show and use her log-in to watch the stream. I did not see this show in-person; I do not live in Japan and obviously travel is off-limits. Even if I did live in Japan, I would have qualms about going to the theater.

There are some logistical issues with this show because of the current pandemic, with the most visually obvious one being the small face shields the actors wear on-stage. They basically serve as protection against direct spittle, but obviously they do nothing to guard against aerosol spread; putting on the play is still an incredible risk to the performers and staff. Another difficulty they face is the fact that Tokyo is still continuing to maintain a nightly curfew. Every evening Tokyo performance needed to be bumped earlier so that spectators can leave the theater in time to make it home for that curfew. Keeping that in mind, the show is a surprisingly condensed 2.5 hours long, where I would have expected 3 hours given the amount of content it covered. This does affect the pacing in Act 2 noticeably, and I get the feeling that were it not for covid and the current curfew restrictions, it would feel a little less rushed at the end.

So, with all that said, here are my thoughts on Engeki Haikyuu’s final play, The View from the Top 2!!! This is absolutely not spoiler-free, for both the play’s content and everything that happened in the manga finale, so if you have not finished the series, this is your last chance to turn back.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t written a full review on a show since Fly High, so I’m a bit rusty at this, and I’ll probably leave out a lot so as always, my askbox is open for people’s additional questions!

The absolute main theme of this play (and really of the entire Haikyuu story) is the friendship and rivalry between Hinata and Kageyama, and the theme: I’m not alone. Engeki really did right by our dual protagonists by framing the final show as showing both of their journeys from beginning to end. Act 1 begins with that familiar sequence from the very first show: Hinata seeing the little giant on TV, being inspired to start playing volleyball, his struggle to find a team in middle school, losing to Kageyama in his one and only middle school tournament, and finding him again at Karasuno. They repeated the scene almost exactly as it was in the first show, and I think it was very smart of them to show us Daigo’s version of it, so to speak. That way we have a more cohesive vision of Hinata from the beginning of his journey to the end. Then they absolutely FLOOD the stage with a montage of projections with footage from all of the shows from the past five-and-a-half years. So already it’s pretty emotional for me, seeing how far the play had come as well as how far Hinata had come in the story.

To parallel this, the beginning of Act 2 actually begins with baby Kageyama. Yes, the baby Kageyama flashback with his sister and grandfather and how he started volleyball. We see Kageyama’s volleyball journey from childhood (for this they used a small doll similar to the dolls they used for young Kuroo and Kenma from Revival) to playing at Kitagawa Daiichi, to losing his grandfather, to being labeled the King of the Court, to defeating Hinata, and then having Hinata find him at Karasuno. And then they once again, they flood the stage with projections with past show footage, but this time they are more Kageyama-centric in the way that the previous ones were often Hinata-centric. And it just really highlights how much these two are meant to share the stage as the two main characters.

To see this framework and to know what’s going to come at the end, with the two of them reuniting in the pro-volleyball arena… just the beginning of Act 2 alone had me in tears. Another way they paralleled their respective journeys was to show us who have influenced them. In Act 1, there’s a dance with Hinata, Hoshiumi, and Udai (all little giants… well, Tsukishima’s in there too because he’s feeling a particular competitiveness with Hinata in this part of the match). In Act 2, there’s a dance with Kageyama, Atsumu, and Oikawa, because Atsumu and Oikawa are the setters who have had the most influence on Kageyama, and he’s drawing on what he’s learned from them for this match. They are not alone in their journeys, they have had people inspire them and be inspired by them in addition to having the support of their teammates.

The Karasuno vs Kamomedai match is interspersed with bits of action from the Fukurodani vs Mujinazaka match, so the stage was pretty busy for basically the entire time. The wires are back for some sequences so that both Hinata and Hoshiumi have a chance to fly, and there are plenty of acrobatics and lifts, and the same incredible soundtrack we love. Ryuu’s Hoshiumi is the obvious standout on Kamomedai for how many lifts he had, and they definitely tried to have him running around on the stage about as much as Hinata. It was notable how much they drew on past techniques and music for various parts of this match, since this is meant to be Karasuno at their peak. When Asahi was feeling particularly stuck/trapped against Kamomedai’s defense, they incorporated the tying-up visual they had previously used in Winners and Losers, with Kamomedai basically tying up and holding Asahi in place with ribbon. There was Summer of Evolution music when Karasuno does a great synchro attack, and the extras-wearing-Hinata-masks reappeared to show us Hinata’s “afterimage” as he flashes around the stage. If you’ve seen all the plays, you can’t miss these call-backs.

The flow of the match was fast. They hit the highlight plays and the highlight emotional moments, but we are clearly past the point where they need to narrate the actual volleyball to us. There was more dancing/acrobatics than attempting to place the two teams on either sides of a physical net with more overt volleyball moves. Everything was more intertwined and fluid than that. And actually now that I think about it, they have been sparse with their usage of a physical net in the past few shows, because everything has been a little more fast-paced overall.

They definitely wanted to highlight Karasuno’s rise throughout the game, to show that they were absolutely a formidable team, that they deserved to be at Nationals, and to show us all the ways that Hinata and Kageyama had grown. For most of Act 2 leading up to Hinata’s collapse, it really feels like they could win this. And I think it makes it that much harder for Hinata to accept being benched, because the team is riding this high and doing so well, and even Kageyama’s more visibly having fun. I think Takeda-sensei easily has a third of the best lines in the series. His speech to Hinata during the Kamomedai match is one that was really gut-wrenching to read when those chapters came out, and it was great to hear it said aloud.

And here is something I’ve never been able to point out because I didn’t do reviews for the past two tours, but I think Daigo’s voice is one of the strongest aspects of his Hinata. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the work he’s done as a voice actor, but when he cries or whimpers, it is genuinely the most pitiful noise. A lot of Kenta’s portrayal of Hinata’s frustrations throughout the story had an undercurrent of anger and frustration. He’s upset, but there’s always something behind it that says, “well next time, it’ll be different.” And I think Daigo replaces most of that with pure sadness, especially for this scene. After Takeda-sensei lectures him good and proper, and he accepts that he needs to leave, he just sounds so broken. It doesn’t have that anger and drive underneath, he’s just in despair. And why wouldn’t he be? A part of him understands this is the last match he’ll ever play with this team, his first real team.

We then see Hinata bundled up in a coat and scarf, watching the rest of the match from the tablet that Kenma gives him. Snow begins to fall on the stage as he slowly wanders through it, with Karasuno and Kamomedai finishing out the rest of the match around him. Engeki Haikyuu has always allowed for the losing team in a match to line up at the edge of the stage, say thank you to the audience, bow, and take their leave. It’s so symbolic, and it’s so emotional for the actors and for the audience who are in the theater. It’s a moment that just barely breaks the fourth wall, when they turn to us, the spectators, to say, “Thank you for your support.” And they mean it both in and out of character. And I was so so so sad when I realized that Karasuno would take their final bow as a team without Hinata in the lineup. He’s in the back of the stage, separated from his team, and he does take a bow, but it’s very lonely.

Now, I’m sure people are very curious about the timeskip material, and mostly I just have to preface with: it’s fast. It does not take up as much of Act 2 as you might think. It’s boom, boom, boom, cameo here, pre-recorded projections there, patissier Tendou interview, Kuroo in a suit doing a promotional commercial for the V-League, Kageyama’s curry commercial, a projected Osamu selling his rice balls, get the old team together, fateful encounters in front of the bathroom, GO! The only thing we see of the Brazil arc is Hinata having a brief flashback to tell Kageyama that he met Oikawa while he was in Brazil. It’s very short, and that’s all we get for his time in Brazil. Basically, the play is not the place to see Hinata’s journey and growth from those chapters because he goes through so much of it alone, and there’s just no time. The Brazil arc also brings back a lot of technical details about volleyball itself, especially as Hinata is learning the beach version, and that’s an area where the manga is the best medium to examine the finer details of the sport. I can see why a play version would gloss over the technical details to focus on the emotional arc, which is in this case, Hinata and Kageyama.

Because of how fast the ending is, it definitely feels made for the people who already read the manga; Previous Engeki Haikyuu shows have always presented the story in a way that was very friendly to those who may not have read the manga or watched the anime. You could watch just Engeki Haikyuu and not feel like you were missing out on references/jokes for the most part, but this ending would be way harder to follow for those not familiar with what’s already happened.

It’s difficult because I do feel like Act 2 was overly condensed to wrap up this story, but I also don’t think the timeskip material is enough for a whole play on its own. If we had stopped at the end of the Kamomedai match, and had a whole separate play to cover Brazil and the Jackals vs Adlers match… the pacing would’ve been slow and low energy especially in the first half, and it would be an odd choice for the final show of a series like this. My preference would have been for this play to have been three acts, three hours, so that we could linger on some of those timeskip moments a little more, slow it down, and let them land emotionally. But clearly the covid situation prevents that in this case. That being said, I don’t think any of those timeskip moments could really hit as hard as when I first read them in the manga. Narratively, that Haikyuu timeskip was so unexpected and so outside the normal sports anime formula, that the initial shock is extremely hard to top. It was fun to see how they presented everyone in the future (seeing Noya on that boat catching a giant swordfish, or seeing Ennoshita almost break a patient’s back) in stage form, but it’s unreasonable to expect them to give us the same feeling of ?!?!?!? when we first read that Noya was in Italy of all places after waiting weeks and weeks for him to show up.

I still cried in several places, it’s still a great ending to one of the best 2.5D franchises in existence, and it still feels like the culmination of their legacy. I don’t know how it would be possible for anyone to watch that ending sequence with all of the team flags and the chanting of their names, and NOT cry.

There are no more live streams until they complete the rest of their tour and then there will be a live-stream of the very last show, which I will be watching with a towel in hand for my tears. Feel free to send in any questions if you’d like, and if you would like some Strongest Challengers or Trash Heap merch, I have a sales post that I recently made.

#Haisute #Engeki Haikyuu #Hyper Projection Engeki Haikyuu #Final Show #View from the Top 2 #review #reviews #2300 word vomit for any who are interested

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xoxo-teddybear · 3 years

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Oh, The Lies You Tell - Bakugou Katsuki - pt.8

Bakugou x f!reader

Warnings: angst, trauma, abuse, betrayal, fluff, slice of life, smut, cursing, manipulation, possible spoilers, physical harm, 18+, MANGA SPOILERS

Ep. Warnings: ANGST, cursing, manga spoilers

Summary: it’s time for the battle competition! Or so the students of UA think. Just before the battle starts, a portal opens up and chaos is unleashed. Everything would’ve been fine if Dabi hadn’t exposed the truth.

BAKUGOU’S MASTERLIST

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3 Pt.4 Pt.5 Pt.6 Pt.7 Pt.8 Pt.9

After the long drive, a break, mind-blowing sex, and another long drive, UA has finally made it to the battle competition! The students all marveled in their seats as they looked out the bus windows. The buses for all the schools were parked atop a cliff. The area the students would be participating in was below in and it was nothing but forests, valleys, mountains, rivers, and meadows for miles. This was a race and only the best school and best students will win.

“And welcome to the competition UA,” Aizawa tiredly said. The students all cheered as they exited the bus and stepped foot onto the soft grass. They felt the breeze blowing and felt ready to go. “There’s a building down that path, you can change into your costumes there and wait for further instruction. And Y/N, you won’t be able to be with Rumor on this, so I’ll watch him for the time being. See you all soon.”

The students were excited as they quickly scrambled down the path as Rumor went with Aizawa to wherever.

“Man, after all that time we’re finally here!” Kirishima said. “We’re definitely gonna kick some ass the second we step foot in there,”

“No shit, Shitty Hair. These losers don’t stand a chance,” Bakugou said with a malicious grin. They Bakusquad continued to walk and talk as Bakugou kept his arm around you but he once again noticed your unusual silence.

“Hey..princess, tell me what’s up?” He whispered with a concerned voice. You looked up to him as you snapped out of your haze and stared at him with loving eyes.

“I’m fine Suki...just nervous.” You said with a slight laugh to appear okay. Bakugou took your word for it but still held some concern as he felt somewhere in his heart that there was more to the story.

“About what? You’re one of the best fighters here, you don’t gotta worry about anything. You’ll do great out there Princess. Promise.” He said before he kissed your forehead to reassure you. You gave a nervous laugh as you continued to stare off into space. You were scared.

The league would be coming after you sent the coordinates. Your palms were sweaty and your throat felt dry as you got closer and closer to the assembly building. You wanted to cry so bad for so many reasons. You were lost, you didn’t want anybody to be hurt, you didn’t want the truth exposed....you didn’t want to leave UA...and you didn’t want to leave Bakugou.

Time passed and the others spoke of whatever. You wouldn’t know. You were too busy stressing over the villains upcoming arrival. Class 1-A walked in and took notice of all the schools in the building. Infront of the crowd was a stage and a podium. You felt Bakugou’s grip on you tighten and you laughed as you saw he was looking at all the boys staring at you. You loved your jealous little pomeranian.

Students mumbled and talked amongst each other until a man came up to the podium and addressed everyone.

“Hello students! Welcome to the battle competition, Olympus! Today, all you hero trainees will battle against other schools as you all race to the top of the mountain on the other side of the valley. When you reach the top, there will be people awaiting your arrival to bestow upon you the chalice of victory!” The students cheered at the news and got all riled up. They piped down once the man began to speak again.

“Here’s how this will work. Each class from every school will be given a certain location somewhere out in the field. Don’t worry, it’ll all be at an equal difficulty and distance from the finish line so there’s no advantage for anybody. Once you hear the gun go off, you will all run through the wild to get to the top. Maps will be passed out to each of you right now and along with that, a badge that each of you will get that will tell everyone what team/class you’re apart of and it will connect you and your teammates to one team. Now, classes MUST stick together and everyone must arrive at the same time. Along with the obstacles of nature, some of you will fall into certain traps. There are markings placed at random in the field and once a member of the class steps into it, you will wait until another class gets trapped and you shall battle. Winners get to move on and continue the race. The competition will last for 3 days and if you haven’t made it to the finish line by the morning of the 4th, you must remain where you are so that we can find you and track you by your badge. Everybody clear?”

Students cheered once more as a way of agreement and got ready. “Good. All of you will be directed to the changing areas. There’s over 4,000 stalls, gender is separated, and each student will be able to get their own changing area. Put on your hero costumes and head to your class’s assigned location. Good luck to you all.”

Students got rowdy as they all began to leave the room. You and the Bakusquad stayed and talked for a bit before you kissed Bakugou and left to put on your costume.

You got to your own stall and quickly changed. As you finished you looked in the mirror. You, a villain, dressed as a hero. Comical. But yet, you smiled at the new look. You felt that it really suited you. You snapped out of your gaze and went to the earring hidden in your bag.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?” You whispered softly into the earring. A minute passed before Shigaraki answered.

“Tell me the coordinates.” You bit your lip in hesitation. Was this really what you wanted to do? You held a shaky breath as you spoke

“43.5647 to 12.8499.”

“See you soon.” And just like that, the call was over. You released a deep sigh in regret and anxiety as you gathered your things and walked to the given location. There you met with all your classmates and Bakugou. He welcomed you with open arms as he pulled you in for an embrace.

“Hey Princess. Everyone already discussed a plan so I’ll fill you in on the way,” He said after he pecked your forehead. Oh his sweet kisses. One of the things you’ll dearly miss when you have to go your separate ways.

“Hi....” Bakugou once again held a frown and concerned stare as your unusual behavior kicked back in. He held you tighter as he tilted your head up by your chin and gave you a loving kiss. He pressed his forehead against yours as your head was still tilted towards the sky.

“What’s wrong Y/N?...Please,” he begged. He knew something had been wrong for awhile and now he was desperate for an answer. You held your breath as you stared at him with sad eyes and a fallen jaw. You squeezed your E/C eyes shut as you shook your head to the ground and placed it against his chest.

“Katsuki, I have to tell you somethi-“

*BANG!*

That was it. The sound of the start of the race. Students began running to the forest and you sighed as you realized this was destiny trying to tell you to not go. You shook off your nerves as you looked towards Katsuki.

“It’s okay, you can tell me later. C’mon,” he said as he grabbed your hand and began to run but with the first step that you took, your eyes glowed and you didn’t see Katsuki or the competition anymore. It was bright and white and all you could see was Korra’s angry face as her eyes also glowed.

“TELL HIM THE TRUTH Y/N!” She yelled with the voices of all the other avatars. Your eyes filled with tears as they shut again and you shook your head.

“I can’t! I’m sorry!” You cried out.

“CHOOSE THE RIGHT PATH!”

“I-I can’t! I don’t know what to do anymore!”

“Y/N!”

...

“Y/N!......Y/N!” Bakugou said as he shook you. Out of nowhere your eyes glowed and you froze in your tracks. Bakugou stopped running when he didn’t feel you follow him and when he looked back he did everything he could to snap you out of your avatar state. After a minute you finally settled and your eyes returned back to normal. You fell into his arms as your groaned in exhaustion.

“Katsuki....?” You softly spoke out as he held you against his chest.

“Are you okay?! What’s wrong?!” He frantically asked. The competition completely left his mind as he shifted his everything to you.

“I’m...im fine. It was just..Korra. She..spoke to me.” You explained.

“Are you okay? Do you need to sit?” He offered as he attempted to walk you to a tree stump so you could rest but you stopped him.

“No, no it’s fine Katsuki....we have to do this competition..” you said with stern eyes.

“No Y/N, I think you shoul-“

“Katsuki.” He looked at you and noticed your serious tone and strong grip as you held onto his arms. “Please.”

“.....okay.” And so you both ran to catch up with your class. You strained and shook off your headache as you thought about your past choices. Fear bubbled up inside of you as you looked towards Katsuki. He seemed focused on the task at hand and so you followed. What you didn’t realize was that under his cool, composed cover, he was nervous. He wanted you to be okay, it was all he yearned for but he also wanted to give you whatever you desired so if going through with the stupid race was what you wanted, then your wish is his command.

You both finally caught up with the class and out of nowhere, a trap was sprung. Denki had stepped into a red zone and all of 1-A’s badges glowed as the ground crumbled beneath them and they all fell into some arena in a cavern. The students plopped onto the ground, some on top of each other, as they all coughed from the dust and examined the area.

“You okay Princess?” Bakugou asked.

“I’m fine Suki,” you reassured him.

“What the hell Dunce Face?! Why didn’t you watch where you were going?!” Bakugou screamed at the poor blonde.

“Cool it man,” Bakugou’s best friend had said as he hooked his arms under Bakugou’s to keep him from attacking the electric boy. “Kaminari didn’t know what the traps looked like. None of us did so it’s good that we can identify them now. All we have to do is wait for another class to fall into another trap so we can fight ‘em and win”

“We’re losing time! Now we have to wait for some dumbasses and if nobody shows up, we’re stuck here! Like losers!” Bakugou said as he huffed and plopped on his ass to the ground infront of Y/N as he placed his chin in his hand. Y/N placed her hands on his shoulders to calm him.

“Kirishima is right, there’s hundreds of kids here and nobody who hasn’t sprung a trap knows what they look like. Somebody is bound to fall down here soon,” you reassured your angry boyfriend. Some of the class settled until a few minutes later, a voice spoke up.

“That you are correct, little mouse. Your opponents are here, but it’s not who you’d be expecting.”

Your eyes shot forward as you recognized the voice.

“Oh no...” you whispered and took your hands off of Bakugou as you stood straight. Everyone turned towards you as they watched you tremble.

“Princess, are you okay?” Bakugou asked as he stood up and held your hands.

“She’s fine blondie. She just knows what’s coming like the smart little puppet she is,” Shigaraki said as he stepped out of the shadows. The class shook and stilled at his appearance and got into defensive positions. The rest of the league popped out of the shadows and the class looked in confusion as they spoke on their concerns.

“What they hell are they doing here?!”

“What’s going on?”

“Should we get help?” The class all asked aloud. You shook off your nerves as you took your hands out of Bakugou’s as he looked at you in worry. You clapped your hands as a gust of wind hit everyone to bring their attention onto you. It was silent as everyone watched you speak.

“..Where are the actual opponents? What did you do to the students?” You shakenly asked. Dabi smirked as he walked back into the shadows and then returned before tossing an unconscious body in front of the class. You quickly ran to him and used your water bending to check on his body and health. The water went all around the poor student until you stopped your movements. He’s dead.

“Heh..you should see the rest of the students, little mouse,” Dabi said as he walked to you and gripped your chin in his hands to make you face him. As he smirked at you, an explosion was sent his way but he jumped and dodged it.

“Get your hands off of her!” Bakugou screamed as he ran to you. He brought you back into his arms as you just stared at Dabi.

“It’s not her you should be protecting, hero,” Dabi hinted. You cringed at his words but Bakugou ignored them as he seethed out a question.

“What the hell do you bastards want?!” He asked and Shigaraki was the first to answer his question.

“Take a guess!” He said as he directed the league to attack. Toga was the first to move as she went towards the girls and attempted to sliced at them. Dabi followed as he sent flames to the ground, but Todoroki was quick and put them out with his ice. The two brothers stared at each other, one with a nonchalant determined face and the other with a cocky smirk.

It was here and now. The attack was happening and it was happening to your class right now. All the students sprung into action as they fought villains, multiple students vs single villains. Sadly, the class were the ones struggling. Bakugou fought at Dabi as he pushed Todoroki away.

“Pick someone else IcyHot! I want this Bastard to myself!” The blonde said before he pounced to the fiery villain. Todoroki shifted as he and Midoriya worked at Shigaraki and you stood in pain at all the violence. You heard screams of pain from your classmates and you felt your own heart breaking. Due to your out of zone state, you couldn’t sense the blue flames coming your way until Bakugou screamed your name.

“Y/N! This isn’t the time for your daydreams! Get your head in the game!” He said. Delivery was a little harsh, but necessary. You quickly snapped out of it as you bended Dabi’s flames away.

“Poor little Y/N. Always a burden, always a bother.” Those words rung in your ears as you advanced towards Dabi. As you jumped mid-air, it was like time slowed down as Dabi’s eyes had slanted as he stared you down. “You sure you wanna do that...little mouse?”

His tone, cold, and your eyes widen in fear. The name, the way he spoke. It was the same voice and degrading name he used when he would attack you as a punishment. You quickly stopped your attack and stared infront of him. You looked up at him in fear as he smirked down at you. You may have changed the slightest bit but you were still a submissive little punching bag to the league. As you both held a staring match, one in fear and one in power, Bakugou blasted Dabi away from you. The black haired man groaned in pain as he felt the burn of the explosion and watched from a distance as Bakugou ran to guard you.

“Are you okay, Princess?” He asked you while he still watched Dabi in caution. You nodded your head and gave a “mhm,” as a reply as you both watched Dabi get up. He and Bakugou jumped at each other as they fought. Bakugou threw punch after punch as Dabi dodged each one while he spoke.

“Princess, Huh? *dodge* Never knew you were into villains Katsuki,” Dabi said as he dodged again.

“Shut up! You don’t know shit! That was her past!” Bakugou screamed as he continued to attack.

“Past?! *dodge* HA! You think your little Princess is an ex-con?!” He laughed in Bakugou’s face.

“She did what she had to!” Bakugou screamed once more. He swung again but Dabi caught his fist this time.

“Really? I didn’t know robbing banks, murdering people, and joining the League of Villains counted as survival,” Dabi said in his face. Bakugou face sprouted a confused look as Dabi threw him back.

“What?” Bakugou seethed threw grinded teeth. Your heart began to race as Dabi continued to talk.

“You don’t know Y/N at all Katsuki.” Dabi said as he gave you the side eye and watched your fearful and angry gaze.

“Stop talking Dabi,” you quietly said, however Dabi still heard. Including Bakugou.

“Your precious little Princess is on our side, hero. She’s a villain. And not just any villain. She’s the best of the best when it comes to the girls.” Bakugou shook his head in anger as he ran back to Dabi and threw punch after punch and kick after kick.

“SHUT UP!” He screamed at the villain but Dabi just dodged and continued. Bakugou was so confused and so angered that his emotions took control. His fighting faultered and Dabi had the upper hand as he attacked Bakugou and threw him into a small boulder. Bakugou groaned as he sat exhausted against the rock. He breathed heavily as he watched Dabi walk to Y/N, take her hand, walk closer to Bakugou, and wrap his arm over her shoulder. “GET AWAY FROM HER YOU FUCKING BASTARD!”

“Heh...do you wanna tell him or should I, Princess?” Dabi asked as he mocked the nickname Bakugou gave you. Your eyes teared as your breath became jagged and you looked towards Bakugou. Katsuki noticed how you didn’t remove Dabi’s arm and just stayed silent.

“Y/N?” He whimpered out as he looked at you for some sort of answer. What the hell was Dabi talking about? Grand theft? Murder? Joining the league? He needs an answer. Bakugou watched you swallow down a nervous breath as you hesitantly spoke.

“Katsuki.....I’m Titania....and...I..I’m a part of the League.” You said with a quivering lip. Bakugou’s eyes went wide as he felt his entire world shatter. The girl he fell in love with and gave his entire being to was an undercover villain. He felt tears stinging his eyes as he spoke.

“W-what?” He questioned. Dabi groaned aloud in annoyance as he threw his head back dramatically and continued the talk.

“Your little girlfriend here is a villain. In fact..this whole attack was her plan,” Dabi smirked out. Bakugou watched you as you kept your head down with a shadow casting over your face. An obvious frown adorned your lips. The lips that Bakugou had kissed a thousand times over and they belonged to the most heinous female villain. Bakugou dropped his head down as his eyes stayed open in shock. He felt a panic attack coming onto him as his breaths got heavier and he freaked out.

‘This can’t be true....She loves me! She would never....she could never do this! It’s Y/N! She’s...She can’t be a villain! She would never lie to me like this...’ Bakugou’s thoughts became too much so he screamed as he got up and ran to attack the both of you. He jumped into the air and released an explosion to the both of you but you both had dodged. When Bakugou dropped back to the ground he quickly ran to you and tackled you to the ground. He pinned you down as he hovered over you trying to scan your face for some sort of reasonable answer or explanation.

“Y/N!” He screamed in your face as he shook with tears falling from his ruby eyes. He watched as your lips continued to whimper and the shadow over your face remained. Dabi used his fire to send an attack towards you both and instead of burning you both, it stung as it pushed you both away. The two of you fell down a tunnel. You both held onto each other as you guys tumbled down a tunnel. When you both hit the ground again, you realized you ended up in a cave away from the fighting. Ahead of you was an opening to the outside world. You continued to lay on the ground as Bakugou stayed atop of you as he cried and whimpered into your shoulder. You gently pushed him off of you as you stood and tried to walk to the exit, but before you’d could take a step, Bakugou quickly grabbed onto your wrist.

You looked down at him with sad eyes as you watched him keep his head down as fat tears dropped from his eyes. He stayed on the ground, seated on his knees as he cried.

“Please tell me it isn’t true, Princess..” he whispered. You felt tears invade your own eyes as you squeezed them shut. You both stayed like that for awhile as you released silent tears.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered as you tried to help Bakugou stand but once he got to his feet he gripped your shoulders.

“Tell me everything! ...NOW!” He screamed with his eyes open and full of tears. You stared at him with an apologetic face as you shook your head.

“We have to go Katsuki, we have to get help.” Bakugou shook his head ‘no’ but allowed you to drag him out of the cave and into the opening. It was getting late and the evening had already started as the blue sky darkened a bit. You stomped your foot into the ground to use your earth bending to figure out exactly where you both were. Once you felt the vibrations, you realized you were too far to even locate the others or even the competition grounds. You guys were lost.

“We’re too far away from everything Katsuki. We should look around a bit and see if we can find our way back.” Bakugou held onto your wrist before you walked again.

“You owe me an explanation when all of this is over, Y/N.” He quietly said with a sad tone.

“...I owe you a lot more than that Katsuki. But I will be giving you an explanation...and with how far we are away from everyone, I might have time to give it to you sooner than you think.” You explained. You and Bakugou walked on with heavy hearts but the both of you both had the exact same question ringing in your minds.

‘What are we now?’

—

You both walked for miles and yet you still got nowhere. Everytime you stopped and checked to see where you guys were, it felt like you guys just got farther away from everyone. You silently begged for Rumor to just find you and regretted not having him just shrink down to a mouse to carry around.

Bakugou trailed behind you. His crying had gone on for some time but eventually stopped, however when it did, his sadness was replaced with anger. He was pissed. He doesn’t know where he was, what he’s doing, what’s going on, and he doesn’t even know who he’s with right now. He’s basically with a stranger at the moment.

Eventually, it grew dark and the sun had set while the moon had began to rise. While you continued to look for a way back, Bakugou was aware of his surroundings and stopped you by grabbing onto your arm.

“Stop walking, moron. Can’t you see it’s dark?” He said as he looked at you with a bored expression. You turned back and scoffed at him in disbelief.

“We’re lost. We have no idea where we are and have no idea how to get back. If we stop now, we’ll lose time and it’ll take forever to get back. And who knows what’s happening now to our classmates?!” You exclaimed. Bakugou shook his head at you when you finished.

“They’re my classmates. Not yours,” truthfully, saying that broke him a bit, but he had to continue, “and if we keep going, we’ll die out here in the wild. We should find a safe place to sleep for the night and find some fire wood to keep warm. Maybe get some food to fight off hunger.”

“We’ll be fine if we keep going. I’ve survived the streets before, we’ll be okay.” You said and attempted to walk again but Bakugou held you back.

“Well this isn’t the streets Y/N. There isn’t a store full of food we can rob when we’re hungry and there isn’t an overhead tunnel at every turn that we can sleep in. This is a forest. So just shut up and listen to me.” He said, his grip on your arm slightly getting tighter. You winced the tiniest bit and Bakugou saw as he quickly took his hand off your arm. He cringed at his action but shook off the bad thoughts. “C’mon, let’s go. We gotta find some shelter.”

You thought about it for a bit and realized he was right. This wasn’t the city. You sighed and bit the inside of your cheek before answering. “Okay.”

As you silently trailed behind Bakugou, you realized you just followed him blindly. It was like he read your mind when he spoke again. “I saw a cave awhile back. We’ll camp out there. Along the way let’s just collect some firewood whenever we see some.”

You followed his orders and by the time you guys made it to the cave, you were all set to sleep. You collected wood for a fire and even leaf piles to sleep on. As you both entered the cave, Bakugou set up your sleeping area and you started the fire with your bending. Once you were done you took a seat infront of the fire and just stared at the bright flame. Here you were in a cave with your....well now you were back to where you started with him. You didn’t know what you two were anymore.

Bakugou finished with the leaves and when he turned around, he saw you sitting on the ground with a blank look. He looked at you with sad eyes and a broken heart before he sighed and sat in-front of you on the other side of the fire. You looked towards him in confusion as to why he sat but then it came to you.

“Talk.” He said as he looked towards you. You stared at him and saw he was working to build up his walls again as if he was preparing himself for disappointment. He was smart for doing so though because disappointment was exactly what he would be feeling. That and probably some severe heartache. You pressed your lips together with a sad look on your face as you came to the conclusion that there was no avoiding the truth now.

“....I’m not who you think I am.” You said and it was like the air thickened as you watched how his jaw clenched and his eyes teared behind his mask.

“My name is Y/N L/N, I’m 16....and I’m a member of the League of Villains,” Bakugou’s breath stilled as he heard the words leave your mouth. He already heard it once but hearing it now as confirmation hurt.

“The story I told you when we were in the kitchen that night was all true. I just left out some details and kind of switched the story around. The place I was born in was a hidden village. The people there had the abilities to control the 4 elements. My parents had me but were killed by the cult I mentioned before. They took my people in so they could use their abilities to create the weapons, but me being so young, I had no idea how to control them. Eventually, I discovered I was the one who could bend all 4 elements instead of just one....I discovered I was the avatar.” You breathed out.

“The avatar?” Bakugou scoffed, “the bridge between the spirit world and physical world? The person destined to bring peace to the world? That’s nothing but a legend.”

“Wellll then I guess I’m a legend so thank you for that compliment.” You said and Bakugou stared at you in shock. He was sitting with the actual avatar. “Blah blah blah, trained with a master, blah blah blah, and that’s when the league found me. They saw my abilities and took me in. But you don’t get to live in the league’s hideout once you join. You work your way up the food chain and so I had to live on the streets and do their dirty work to prove myself. I did it for survival, but in the end, being a villain was all I knew. So I stuck to it. I officially became a member and I eventually became Titania, the best female villain alive.”

“....Why did you come to UA?” He asked.

“I didn’t want to. I came for a job. Aizawa and I were fighting when he took me away while I was injured and offered to take me in and put me in school. Said he saw good in me....obviously he was wrong considering the only thing that triggered me to go was the fact that there was an opportunity to take down UA and prove myself to the league.” You explained. You noticed Bakugou kept quiet and bit his lip as he seemed to have shook a little before asking the next question.

“...What about me? What part did I play in this fucking game you got going on?” He asked. You didn’t look at him the entire time. You kept your eyes on the fire and held a nonchalant face the entire time.

“You were the only part of my UA life that was genuine. I didn’t come here looking for a relationship and I didn’t need a relationship to take down UA.....but then you came into my life. You showed up and something about you...just made sense to me. And it gave me a comforting feeling I never got to experience before. You gave me a break from my chaotic life and it was the refresher I needed.” Bakugou blushed at your confession but still felt sorrow. Your feelings for him were true but that doesn’t change the fact that you lied to him and never told him who you truly were. You were also a villain while he was a hero trainee. This relationship was wrong. He dropped his head as tears began to pool at his eyes.

“.....I still love you, Princess.” He confessed.

“I know...and I still love you Suki..”

“........WHY DID YOU HAVE TO LIE?!” He screamed as he stood up. “YOU LIED TO ME ABOUT WHO YOU WERE!”

“I did a lot of things but I have never lied to you about who I was or what I felt towards you,” you calmly said to his loud proclaims.

“BUT YOU DIDNT TELL ME THE TRUTH EITHER Y/N! ....You didn’t tell me anything. You left me in the dark. You made me fall in love with you...and now I don’t know what to do...” he sobbed out. “You’re a villain...my dream is to be the number one hero...but I love you...but it’s wrong for me to not put you behind bars.”

You just looked at him with a straight face but it was clear you were hurting as well. But you still continued to let him take his frustrations out on you.

“I’m sorry Katsuki..”

“SORRY ISNT GONNA FIX ME Y/N! SORRY ISNT GONNA MAKE ME STOP LOVING YOU! SORRY ISNT GONNA STOP ME FROM BEING ANY LESS CONFUSED!”

A silence fell over the two of you. Bakugou was so hurt and it was all your fault. He didn’t deserve this. None of them did. And yet you still followed through with this horrible plan. You knew what had to be done.

“Let’s just get some rest..we should start our search for home again in the morning,” you said as you got up and walked over to the sleeping area. But this only triggered Bakugou even more.

“Rest?! REST?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME Y/N?! YOU’RE JUST GONNA DROP THE CONVERSATION LIKE THIS ISNT FUCKING IMPORTANT?!,” he said with tears in his eyes as he stood and screamed at you.

“YES! THIS ISNT FUCKING IMPORTANT! IF IT ISNT OBVIOUS, WE’RE DONE. OVER. SO LETS JUST FORGET ABOUT THIS AND FOCUS ON FINDING OUR WAY HOME!” You screamed back. The cave grew empty as silence filled the air. Bakugou felt his heart die in his chest. He loved you, even though you were a villain he still loved you. He didn’t want this to be over..but you? You were really willing to drop this relationship? Just like that?

“So..that’s it? You’re not even gonna try for us anymore? You’re not even gonna fight for us to be together?” He asked with tears in his eyes.

“......there is no more ‘us’ anymore, Bakugou.”

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waezi2 · 3 years

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Re-reading Yu-Gi-Oh (part 1)

So... I bitch a lot about Yu-Gi-Oh. When I don’t complain about it online and accuse it of scamming kid me, I ridicule the story and the many holes in the game rules.

But I actually used to love this manga with a burning passion. I bought it because I was fixated with the cards, but instead I got traumatized. In an awesome way.

So I decided to re-read the manga about the possibly best known TCG game in the world and see how it started, how it evolved, and if the story still holds up.

So, I’m reading chapter 1, and we have to talk about the art.

The art style at the beginning was chunky and sometimes downright awkward. But it was still very enjoyable. The characters were very expressive and the tone of the style could swing quickly from wacky and rubberhose like to eerie and brooding depending on the situation. It makes you forgive odd-looking legs and hands that becomes massive. It is clear that it is someone’s first project.

So, this is Yugi. Possibly the cutest and meekest punk kid who ever lived. Yugi is not an outdoor person, so he spends most of his recesses inside the classroom. He brings a ton of games to school, hoping that someone might wanna play with him, but all of his classmates prefer to go outside and do stuff like basketball. And being a short teenager who practically looks like a little boy means he is not a desirable team mate in any ball game.

This is totally just a theory, but I think Yugi’s signature punk hairstyle is his way of trying to look a bit more edgy to try do something about his cute appearance.

... Yeah, it’s not working. He still looks like a fricking Gummibear.

As Yugi is minding his own business, we meet two familiar faces.

... their names are actually Jounouchi and and Honda, but most people know them by their American names, so I will just refer to them as Joey and Tristan.

It’s so odd to see their old designs. Especially Joey since his hair is not as big and square like as it is today. And what the fuck is up with Tristan’s face?!

Anyways, while Yugi decides to play with the most valuable game in his collection, Joey and Tristan decides to mess with him. They make an interesting bully duo where Tristan is more loud and is clearly having more fun bothering Yugi who is too short to put up a fight while Joey seems more stoic and is almost annoyed by Yugi for being a pushover. He even tells Yugi to be a man about it and at least try and take the game back from him by force. So while Tristian just enjoys picking on Yugi for the heck of it, Joey seems to sincerely dislike Yugi.

Luckily, Yugi doesn’t have trouble with bullies as such since he is friends with Tea who is so tough that she actually intimidate Joey and Tristan with sheer attitude. That’s actually impressive.

... A shame she is most of the time just the damsel in distress.

Tea is the only person in class who hangs out with Yugi since they have been friends since kindergarten. And she doesn’t mind staying inside at all since a ton of the guys are jerks who only wanna play basketball with the girls since it gives them an opportunity to look up their skirts.

Yeah, there is a lot of that in this manga. Most of the males in this series are kinda horny. the humor often relies on it, which downright creepy at times.

Even Yugi finds basketball more appealing now that he knows about the skirt-looking.

Lewd panty-shot aside, I think it is a nice detail that Yugi is as pathetic as the rest of the dudes in school, he probably just doesn’t have the courage to try get a look. It makes him less of a pure hero.

Altight, let’s stop talking about Yugi being a closet creep:/

Yugi shows Tea what his greatest treasure is: A LITTERAL treasure.

Yep, this is the famous Millennium Puzzle, practically the mascot of the series. It’s an ancient puzzle found in an pyramid that Yugi got from his grandfather who runs a game store. The puzzle is extremely valuable, both because it is from ancient Egypt and it is made of gold.

... And Yugi brings it to school where Tristan and Joey pushes him around...

Yugi has been struggling with the puzzle for eight years despite being a game nerd. Even though it is a blow to his not that big ego, he keeps trying to solve it since the box says that if he will be granted a wish if he manage to solve the puzzle.

Meanwhile, Joey and Tristan makes the fatal mistake of talking about picking on Yugi while Ushio is close enough to hear it. He is the school’s hall monitor and rumor has it that he is downright psychotic and is feared by most of the students. Heck, some of the teachers are uncomfortable being near him.

And this guy has decided to become Yugi’s bodyguard, something poor Yugi doesn’t take serious when Ushio tells him that.

Joey and Tristan are unaware how screwed they are as they keep having their fun bothering Yugi without our hero knowing it. Joey managed to steal a piece from the puzzle box before Tea interrupted, and Joey decides to throw the piece in the school’s swimming pool so that the puzzle becomes worthless as it can no longer be solved. I gotta say, that is pretty twisted and surprisingly sneaky of a teen bully. It’s downright creepy.

Speaking of creepy...

This is Yugi’s grandfather Sugoroku. He runs the game shop that Yugi lives in and is a living encyclopedia when it comes to games of all sorts.

And he can’t just tell Tea that she has grown. He HAS to mention her breasts as well. Da fuck is up with all the sex talk and panty shots in this series?! Does Kazuki Takahashi(the author) have some sort of issues?!

Yugi’s grandfather notices that Yugi is STILL trying to solve the ancient puzzle and warns Yugi that the puzzle is supposedly cursed. That the archeologist and his team died mysteriously shortly after finding the puzzle and the last one to kick the bucket said something about a “shadow game” with his dying breath.

That however makes Yugi even more determent to solve the puzzle. If it really is magical then chances are that he will be granted a wish by completing the puzzle.

Personally, I would call the nearest museum and sell the dang thing before it could kill me with it’s insane cursed magic.

Speaking of insane, Yugi realizes that he should have taken Ushio serious when he said he would be his bodyguard.

Yep, the SOB has dragged Joey and Tristan behind the school building and kicked their asses through and through. Tristan is in so much pain that he is barely conscious and Joey is so pummeled that all he can do is watch as Yugi shows how surprisingly brave he is as he demands that Ushio leaves them alone, even refer to them as his friends and that they were just trying to make him a man.

Yeah, picking on someone because they are too timid and demanding that they fight you despite knowing that they hat violence is the right way to make someone a man. Hip hooray for toxic masculinity!

Yugi defending Joey and Tristan results in him getting a beating as well.

One of the interesting things about early Yu-Gi-Oh is the raw and ugly violence. We talking dirty violence where people get kneed in the chest and kicked while they lie down. Not just off-screen, we witness our heroes be pummeled, making the series a bit more gritty and frightening. And this series is not for those with a weak stomach.

Joey is stunned, partly because Yugi defends him, but way more of the short spiky-haired kid’s courage. But Yugi is anything but afraid. After all, he refused to fight Joey, but he still tried to get the puzzle back(not successfully, but he made an effort instead of just squirming).

After Ushio finished kicking poor Yugi’s ass, he tells him to bring him money as “payment” for his “bodyguard service.” And we talking 200000 yen, that’s a lot of dough.

Ushio even pulls a god damn knife(!), just to show how fucking crazy he is!

Yugi goes home to see if he has money enough to pay Ushio, but he only has 1656 yen. In frustration, Yugi decides to solve his unsolvable puzzle, just to think of something else than the brute with a knife who is waiting for him at school.

But what do you know? Yugi finally get the hang of it. He sees that some of the pieces just needs to be rotated differently and he finish it in a couple of minutes.

... Or he WOULD have. He finally sees that one of the pieces are missing, breaking his heart and making his awful day even worse.

But Grandpa has the last piece. He tells Yugi that one of his friends from school had found it and asked him to give it to Yugi. And that he was soaked despite it not raining.

As Yugi is happy about being able to finish the puzzle and returns to his room, his grandpa thinks about that the boy was Joey and that he asked him not to tell Yugi it was him that came with the puzzle piece. Joey also told him about Ushio blackmailing Yugi, so Grandpa secretly puts money in Yugi’s schoolbag so he won’t get in trouble.

And this is where it get’s freaky.

Yep, here it is. the iconic moment Yugi gets blessed by the puzzle so that he can turn into the split personality we refer to as Yami which is Japanese for “Dark”.

Yugi then calls Ushio and tells him to meet him outside school at midnight.

Ushio is surprised as he sees that Yugi is wearing some sort of costume and that he looks way more cocky than before.

Yugi tells Ushio that he has the money he demands, but he has twice the amount. Fricking 400000 yen!

But Yugi only “owes” 200000 to Ushio, so he suggest that they play about them in a dark and twisted game.

Yugi and Ushio take turns stabbing the stack of money placed on their hand. They have to stab hard enough to take more than one single bill. The winner is the guy with most yen bills.

As they play, Ushio seems to be winning... but when it is his turn, he can feel that his hand is way too eager to stab.

This is not just a weird-ass game. This is a “shadow game”, a game that shows your true nature. Ushio’s greed is now collected in his hand, and he so desperately want to win the game that he can’t control it. He realizes that if he stabs, he won’t be able to control his strength and he will penetrate his own hand. Ushio has to either A) give up and keep his hand or B) win the game with one hand less.

Ushio picks C.

Ushio tries to kill Yugi, but that was a mistake. The puzzle has made him super human and he leaps from the ground, evading the knife.

And cheating in a shadow game is a big no-go as the host of the game has authority to punish you.

Yami Yugi curses Ushio with “Illusion of Greed”, meaning he will be doomed to live in an imaginary world where he sees nothing but money everywhere.

Next morning, he is still outside the schoolyard like a drooling idiot who yells about all of his imaginary money.

Yugi has no memory of what happened but is glad he no longer has to be worried of Ushio who is a harmless nutcase. Not only that, he has finally finished his puzzle... and Joey offers him his friendship.

And that was the start of the horror manga turned card game commercial. It has a lot of charm, is very eerie and I think I prefer Yami Yugi’s first look that is more child like. making him look downright creepy.

This retrospective will continue ASAP.

Till then, I’m Waezi2, and thanks for wasting time with me.

#Yu-Gi-Oh #yugioh #yugi moto #joey wheeler #katsuya jonouchi #honda hitomi #anzu mazaki #tea gardner #tristan taylor #yami yugi #atem #manga

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wesavegotham · 3 years

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(hi I'm sorry if this bothers you but I really need to vent)

I have completely given up on dc doing damian justice like he is my favorite character I want to see more of him but not like what's been happening teen titans and such he is such a complex character and has so much potential for good stories but his stories are only about shifting between his father's or mother's side again and again like maybe instead of sending him on another mission to "humble" him maybe dc could actually explore his character how he deals with what happened in the league with him , the vast skills he has at his disposal, his intelligence , his compassion and empathy maybe just going on a journey for himself to find what he wants to do instead of honoring one side of his family

(I'm sorry for this being so long I'm emotional and just want my baby to be really happy and get a win for once🥺)

Teen Titans destroyed so much, Damian's character developement, all his relationships, my goodwill, my trust in DC as a whole...

On some level I get it if Williamson thinks he needs to put Damian through all his previous character developement again because TT threw it all away, he said in an interview that he doesn't just want to "flip a switch", but Teen Titans didn't give a damn about making Damian's descent into darkness believable either and no other storyline deals with the fallout of what happened in TT, so why don't we just flip the freaking switch and give Damian all his developement back right now?

Of course so far we only have Robin #1 to analyse, so there is still some time to prove me wrong, but to me it seems like Williamson wants to focus more on Damian's weaknesses rather than his strengths. And no, I'm not just basing this on how Bruce introduces Damian to new readers on the first few pages.

What kind of character developement arcs does Williamson set up for Damian in Robin #1?

Who is Damian?

It's what the hallucination of Alfred asks Damian and the manga Damian reads before that moment is very on the nose with its "you have to find your own way and stop only following your mentors/parents" message.

That is probably also why Williamson thought it was necessary to have Damian arrogantly announce to all the fighters who he is related to and thus the best, and why Damian suffered a pretty embarrassing defeat at the hands of Flatline. More on that later.

Damian defining himself through his family and the question who he is on his own is a running theme with Damian, you had it in Batman and Robin 2009 and 2011 when Damian ended up rejecting Talia/the league of assassins and chose to be Robin and part of the batfamily, he even died in attempt to convince Bruce that he was a hero; you had it in Robin: Son of Batman when Damian said he was a Wayne first and an al Ghul second, but also realized that he had found a second family with Goliath and Maya and that being Robin was his redemption; you had it a bit in Super Sons when Jon told Damian that doing good is not just Bruce winning against Talia, it's Damian's choice and thus his win. You even had it in Teen Titans, just that now he was rejecting everything about Batman and leaned more on the side the league of assassins while yelling about how this was "his own way" for some reason.

Because it's a running theme with Damian I guess I can't really fault Williamson for trying to give us his own two cents on the topic, but I don't think one can fault me either for wishing we could finally see something new and different being explored that is not about what side he's on. It's hard to care about the answer, no matter what it is, because chances are the next writer is not going to care about the new answer and will try to answer this question again. I would rather see Damian have some fun as a hero and Robin in peace for once instead of constantly seeing him ask himself who he is and if he's a hero or not. Even a running theme of a character can get tiring if it's overdone.

The second arc this first issue set up for Damian is about him not understanding that losing is normal and necessary.

Bruce talks about how Damian doesn't understand how losing and facing challenges made Bruce what he is today and that topic comes back around in Damian's fight against Flatline.

Her whole thing is that she contrasts Damian because she learned from people that lost while he "only learned from people that never truly tasted defeat" and she proves her way of thinking superior by easily deafeating and killing Damian.

I personally feel like this is a very forced and stupid arc for Damian that doesn't fit what Damian has been going through these past few years. Damian knows quite well that Bruce loses, his whole tantrum in Teen Titans was about him feeling like Bruce's way of doing things was not achieving anything, like they were losing the war against crime. Damian was desillusioned with Bruce. And in my personal opinion Bruce doesn't exactly look like a winner right now, Bruce lost Wayne Enterprises, Wayne Manor and the family fortune, Alfred died, Damian left him, the citizens of Gotham turned against Batman too...I don't really know what Bruce is talking about here when he says "Damian only saw me today. The end results" as if Damian only sees how great Bruce is and doesn't know that Bruce did suffer a lot of defeats. Bruce sucks a lot right now, why are we acting like he's good at what he's doing? And even if Bruce wins eventually, he doesn't win every fight and I think Damian has been around him long enough to know that.

Plus, Damian has lost a ton these past few years, if Damian was capable of learning humility through losing I think he would have already got there at this point.

When I read Damian's and Flatline's fight I felt less like Flatline was a foil created to deal with a problem Damian's character actually has right now and more like Damian was forced into this position and into this arc to act as a foil to Williamson's concept for his own creation.

Connected to this idea that Damian needs to accept that losing is okay and necessary is the idea that Damian is going to be humbled in this book. Humility wasn't really talked about in Robin #1 so I understand why some people were confused as to why that word has been used a lot in discussions about this first issue.

My reason for connecting Damian's defeat with the fear that Williamson will try to humble Damian doesn't exactly come from the comic alone, but from what he has said in interviews:

"Williamson: Well, selfishly for me, I enjoy throwing Damian in different situations where he has to interact with people. And it might be situations where he isn't his normal situation, where he's such a competent person, but I think there are ways of throwing him into situations that might humble him or where he might clash with people."

After seeing Damian either get villainized or be the butt of the joke for several years hearing that Damian will be getting thrown into situations designed to highlight his weaknesses is not exactly making me feel excited. I know that other people find it funny when Damian gets humiliated and beaten down, but I don't. I've been seriously missing respect for Damian in DC's writing and the line where I stopped finding stuff like this funny has been crossed long ago. I have no idea what Williamson talks about when he says that we're usually seeing Damian in situations where he's competent. I would like to know what comics he's talking about because I would really love to read them.

Maybe Williamson will pull it off and make me like Damian's character arc later on but I'm not convinced by the seeds he has sown yet.

So far I'm seeing an arc I've already read through too many times, another one that feels like it's trying to solve a problem the character doesn't have (if anything the character suffers from having almost no wins in recent years) and one that will give me the opposite of what I want to see.

Someone put it quite well when they said to me that it feels like every writer thinks they need to put Damian down a notch because of his arrogance, but we've reached a point where he has been taken down so much that it makes him look stupid.

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gofancyninjaworld · 3 years

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I know you're not one for discussing power scaling that much, but what is your opinion on how reddit (general) constantly lowballs Genos, then consider weaker feats of other characters better than his own feats of strength? It just seems almost.... weird to me? It's like people hold a grudge against Genos for, existing, I guess? And when did this trend even start?

It's a long answer that is grounded in psychology. While the character himself is fictional and it's by no means a serious situation, nevertheless I've found the way people respond a surprisingly real-life object lesson.

As for the whole powerscaling thing that's become awfully popular, that's a purely fictional construct and is just froth. It's irritating as this is a story designed to frustrate attempts to make like-for-like comparisons and which tries to capture some of the complexity of actual conflict, but folk will have their fun. I think nothing of it. I think it's driven mostly by YouTubers who need to have something to engage their OPM viewers about day after day to stay monetised -- it's hard work. More power to them.

1. Anchoring Bias. One of the headaches of teaching people is that we don't actually learn that well from evidence. We need to check with our pre-existing impressions and beliefs before we'll accept it. All human beings do it, it gives us some degree of stability in our understanding of the world, but it easily goes too far. I don't know if you've ever watched Mythbusters, but in revisiting the episode of the lead balloon, Adam Savage said something I found extremely relevant: he said that there was no inertia in [Jamie's] ability to change his mind, praising the latter's quickness to change his mind in response to new information. [link to the whole segment]

As a group, Redditors have a very strong anchoring bias, a very high mental inertia if you will. You can see it in the way they get upset whenever something in the manga does not correspond to the webcomic, or doesn't happen in the way they thought it would. Oy vey. Characters too, impressions are anchored early and are very slow to shift. It's anchored in minds that Genos is a loser, and certainly when he started out he was pretty damn bad at what he did. Other characters are anchored as winners and their actions are read much more lightly. If mental gymnastics need to be taken to make new information 'fit' that anchor, they will be done. Like if Metal Bat were seen the same way that Genos is, the time he broke free of the chains Erimin and Destro had bound him in, you would have seen posts questioning the toughness of the chains and the quality of the binding. You know, 'just asking', the sort of thing that seems superficially critical in isolation... until you realise it's not asked of others.

2. Key Opinion Leaders. There may be half a million subscribers on Reddit, but functionally, there's only about 50 members who have a loud enough voice to sway the sub one way or the other. They're the Key Opinion Leaders. It's the case for *all* human groupings. Even scientific and medical fields have their KOLs and if you want something to be accepted, you need only persuade them and the rest fall largely in line.

3. The Halo Effect. A basic problem of human psychology is that if we have a positive impression of a person, we'll think everything they do is that bit better. And vice versa.

A character with a great halo is Bang. Who doesn't like a cool old dude with martial arts moves? And he's an awesome and likeable character. The positive light in which he's seen is all but independent of what can actually be observed about him, which is much less rosy. The fact that in a field where disciples are generally loyal and ex-masters are held in esteem for decades, he has few with any loyalty to him? He may be strong but so far, every time he's intervened to help Genos out of a situation the latter can't cope with, he hasn't so much gotten him out of the situation as joined him in the crap. You won't catch anyone calling him a jobber though (no hero should be called a jobber for the record).

If the halo changes, it's shocking how quickly a character's actions will be interpreted differently. Popular opinion was that Sweet Mask could do no right even if his critical stance on hero work being done right and seen to be done right was spot on. And now that he's a more sympathetic character, nothing he does can be wrong, even though he *is* a raging asshole at times, like a lot of the time. Both are bad takes.

The halo effect works against Genos. The whys don't matter, it's the fact of its existence that does. It means that no matter how well he is doing, his actions are always going to be seen more negatively than if other characters did the same thng. It's funny that since your post landed in my in box, we've had a manga chapter in which it's finally occurred to many that Genos is actually heroic. How long that will last and what effect if any it'll have in modulating folks' opinions of him we will just have to see.

Like I said, this is a fictional character and no harm is being done. It's just a fascinating object lesson in how you can have severe bias against someone without any explicit bigotry. Also the truth of 'give a dog a bad name and hang him.' It's also a salutatory reminder of why English (or other language of instruction) literature is such a valuable class. Because it encourages you to read and think about texts critically for both explicit and implicit meaning and once you learn to spot the patterns, you can see it better IRL.

#opm #asks #Genos #I suspect that this answer didn't go the way you thought it would #like I said some inertia is important -- the challenge is to understand what we need to see to change our minds and *why*#much of the time we don't actually understand why we're receptive or resistant to evidence and that's pretty useless

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party-of-rpg-muses · 3 years

Text

A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of: Seton Academy

Another day, another entry in this series. I’ve mentioned my love of mythology and biology, but I also had an interest in animals. In fact, I’ve loved animals ever since I was a kid. Today, we’ll be taking a look at... Seton Academy: Join the Pack!

Seton Academy: Join the Pack, usually just referred to as “Seton Academy” is a romantic comedy manga created by Bungo Yamashita and ran from May 2016 to May 2021. It later received an anime adaptation, being animated by Studio Gokumi.

The series follows a human high school student named Jin Mazama, who has just been enrolled in Seton Academy, a school populated completely by animals. However, Jin absolutely despises animals and wants nothing to do with them (and yet, he’s highly knowledgeable about various animals). But within his first day, he meets a Hokkaido Wolf girl named Ranka Ōkami, who essentially forces him to join her pack, wanting a pack full of multiple species. He also meets a human girl named Hitomi Hino (whom he becomes immediately infatuated with). Together, all three form a cooking club (partially because Jin and Hitomi like cooking, but also because they can’t eat what’s normally provided by the school cafeteria). Along the way, more animals join.

In this world, male animals look like anthropomorphic versions of their respective species while females are more human-like, but with the ears and/or tails (and hair) of their species. Also, the staff are comprised of dinosaurs, with the headmaster being an Anomalocaris, one of the first apex predators in history which dominated the Cambrian Era.

Other characters in the series include a koala named Yukari, who joins because she’s tired of always eating eucalyptus leaves and wants to find something she ate when she was little (baby koalas eat their mother’s poop to gain the bacteria needed to digest eucalyptus leaves). A three-toed sloth named Miyubi who wants to make friends (there’s also a recurring gag where just about anything causes her to die for a few moments). A celebrity panda named Mei Mei. And a housecat named Kurumi, who’s more of a ghost member, coming and going as she pleases.

And yet again, it’s time for the Final Recommendation: Never Let Go Of It||Get It||Hold Onto It||Try It||Consider It||Stay Away From It

Given the premise, many people compare this series to My Gym Partner’s a Monkey; both are about a human attending a school full of animals and just trying to deal with life with said animals. However, Jin isn’t there by accident and the series isn’t focused on jokes about butts. If anything, it may be more apt to compare this show to something like Cells at Work, as the series gives a lot of information about various animals, even making jokes about them.

For example, there’s an urban legend about koalas having a grip strength of 1 ton, so Yukari has an incredibly strong grip, capable of crushing a pumpkin with one hand with little effort. And as mentioned previously, Jin is highly intelligent about animals and in the first episode, he points out that zebras are more closely related to donkeys than horses, given their temperament towards humans, their size, and their tails. But there is some information that is incorrect, such as the existence of alpha and omega wolves. And in one episode, Miyubi is struggling with swimming, but real world sloths are actually really good swimmers and move faster in water than on land or in trees.

Such information even extends to character development and personalities; such as Yena, the female Spotted Hyena, who think she’s a male hyena because she’s so aggressive and has a penis. In truth, female spotted hyenas are far more aggressive than males due to having higher testosterone and they’re known for having a pseudo-penis, which looks like a real penis, but functions more like a vagina and hyenas can give birth through it.

I also want to mention that there are some ecchi moments within the series, but they’re very few and far between. One example being when Jin revealed that zebras are more closely related to donkeys by revealing a character’s tail. He did so by picking up the girl in question (she’s the one who claims zebras are horses) and lifting her skirt to show off her tail. And the Student Council President, Miki, is a Naked Mole Rat, who prefers to just wear her underwear and she (and her male Naked Mole Rat followers) are greatly uncomfortable when wearing clothes.

I stated at the beginning that I love animals and I absolutely adore this show, but the ecchi moments might not be for you, even if they’re so very few and far between.

I also couldn’t figure out where to put these, so I’ll just put them here.

There’s also a group of characters from Darwin Academy who form Team EX. They’re all comprised of animals that have gone extinct, mostly thanks to humans. Man Koorimoto the Wooly Mammoth (and the leader), Washima Komandorsk the Stellar Sea Cow, Babari Atlas the Barbary Lion (which actually aren’t extinct), Ando Andrew the Andrewsarchus (though it’s believed they went extinct because of tectonic changes affecting the layout of its habitat), Yangyang the Chinese River Dolphin, and Anne Anetani the Neanderthal (though she softens her stance on humans when learning modern humans have about 2% Neanderthal DNA). As an interesting note, all their eyes have dulled colors, showing that they’re extinct.

And finally, because this may cause some confusion, female hyenas prefer the company of other females, only meeting with males for mating purposes, which would most likely explain her interest in Hitomi. And near the end, a male giraffe has romantic interests in Jin (and also shown having a one-night stand with another male giraffe). In real life, while there is homosexual sex amongst male giraffes, it is actually a form of domination towards a weaker male, as after a fight, the winner will mount the loser. About 90% of the sex a giraffe has is homosexual.

Well, this got really long. Sorry about all that. But I’ll see you all next month. I got a few ideas for what to talk about then. See you then!

#Seton Academy #seton academy: join the pack!#A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of #outofexp

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scandeniall · 4 years

Text

good & the bad [11/12]

| song 11: the good & the bad | good & bad masterlist | prev | next

pairing: osamu x reader

summary/warnings: Hang on to the moments when you're flying, he moments when you're crying. Hang on to the ones that hold you down./ straight up manga spoilers lol

wc: 1868

“Samu,” his name comes out barely above a whisper as you enter the dimly lit room shutting the door behind you. “Atsumu let me in. He said you haven’t come out at all today.” You softly say as you make your way deeper into his room, until you're standing at the space next to his desk where he’d been hunched over for the majority of the day. He still hadn’t said anything as you eye the content covering the surface. Lots of numbers. You notice the way he relaxes just the tiniest bit as you rest your hand on his shoulder. “You ok?”

“No.” The shortness of the answer doesn’t come as a surprise given, what’d he’d most likely been working on. You only nod, noticing the way he slides his chair back enough so that you could seat yourself sideways on his lap. “More shop plans?” Your question is only met with a nod.

You remember when you met the twin. It had been during his second and your first year of university. The two of you crossing paths by mere chance. Essentially being in the right place at the right time. You met at an obscure cafe that you both tended to frequent, just never at the same time. It had been a place that had such few customers, that everyone wondered how it was still in business. However, it’d had the best damn yakitori you’d ever had. It had actually been one of the waitresses who introduced you two. Saying you were the only two people who ever ordered it from there, and that if it wasn’t for you two they’d considered taking it off the menu.

From there the friendship and eventual relationship blossomed. You found out he was in school for culinary arts, with a minor in business in hopes of opening his own food shop, eventually settling on Onigiri. That had been two years ago, and as a recent graduate he was ready to get it up and running. A process that proved to be a difficult one, causing his current stress.

“I’ve been running these numbers and looking for suppliers all day. Kita said he can help with rice, but there's still fillings, and seaweed, and packaging. And now theres a problem with my location and actually pay for workers if I’m struggling now—fuck. Maybe I should have gone pro with Tsumu.”

He let out more than he’d initially intended and he blames the feel of your fingers massaging his scalp for the word vomit. It feels much better than the tugging he’d done at his scalp as he eyed the dizzying numbers for the millionth time. “Hey. Don’t say that. You know you wouldn’t have been happy doing that.” His gaze shifts from you to the papers covering his desk as you continue talking. “Besides, who the hell said opening a business was easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it-”

“Well it's obviously not,” your hand goes to clamp around his mouth so he wouldn’t interrupt again. “As I was saying. It's not easy, but you’re doing it. And in 80 years when you end up as the happier twin it’ll all be worth it. I know it’s stressful now, but that’s where your superhero volleyball strength should kick in. The same mental strength I’m sure it takes to get through games, physically pushing yourself past your limits is what you need now. It’s The mental strength to see this through Samu. You’ve got it, so just hang in there through the good and the bad.” The quietest of sniffles causes you to let out a laugh. “Wait are you actually crying right now at my stupid speech.”

Your boyfriend’s hands go to try and fail to push you off as you continue laughing. “It’s the hunger. I haven't eaten in hours,” Osamu counters as you roll your eyes. “Yeah, Alright. Come on let’s go get something. My treat tonight.” Hands tighten around your waist as you lean down to press your lips to meet his. The kiss is soft, lips ghosting against one another as you fight yourself smiling. Before you could push it further he pulls away a lazy smile on his face. “You said you were gonna treat me to dinner.”

Your annoyed groan does nothing but amuse him, but as you go to get up you find that his hands don’t loosen. “For someone who wants food you don’t seem to be making the effort to let me go.” Osamu only shrugs. “Thank you. For having my back.”

“Just remember, hang through the good and the bad. And stop being afraid to ask for my help. I’m here, always.”

——

‘I’m outside,’ your eyes gloss over the text before you start packing your backpack. Bidding your friends goodbye you quickly make your way down the steps of your school’s library before slipping into Osamu’s passenger seat. You eagerly accept the quick kiss he offers in greeting.

“So you think this is the place?”

“Hopefully. I’m ready to sign a lease already.” You nod humming along to the radio. Right now he was going to take a last look at the potential shop location before hopefully signing for it. You’d offered to go with him since you didn’t have any late classes for the day. Ever since your conversation a month ago he’d been just the slightest bit more accepting of help from others.

“Oh, my friend gave me some of the logo drafts today. They look pretty good, you might have a winner there.” His hand goes to gently squeeze the skin of your thigh in appreciation. You had a friend majoring in graphic design who was more than willing to gain experience designing a logo for a business. Osamu was grateful for it. That was one last thing he had to worry about.

“When i decided to do this, I thought i'd be on my own. According to so many people I was letting my talent go to waste going into food instead of sports.” This time your hand goes to offer him a comforting squeeze. “But— I’m thankful. For you, shitty Tsumu, Kita and everyone else helping me. But don’t ever mention that to my brother.”

You can’t help but laugh, swearing to secrecy. You remember how Osamu half told you that him and his twin got into a nasty fight about him quitting sports back in high school. It ended in them betting who would end up the happiest at the end of their life. Thankfully the two got over it as they grew into men, and now Atsumu acted as his brothers ‘official and professional taste tester.’ He’d even gotten some of his teammates to do taste tests for more opinions.

—-

6 years later

“Thank you for all being here. I wanted to give a special thank you to the person who has held me down and kept me sane from the beginning. At least for the most part, sometimes they’re annoying.” Your jaw drops in a mix of amusement and shock at Osamu’s words. The mid size crowd around you laughs, even more as you go to push the man who doesn’t even falter.

“The first Onigiri Miya shop opened 6 years ago. And today we’re here to celebrate the grand opening of the largest branch yet here in Tokyo. Thank you for being here, and enjoy.” Osamu quickly bows before cutting the ribbon open to the new shop and allowing people inside.

As the last person trickles inside your left outside with your boyfriend and his twin, who was looking at you weirdly. He had a stupid smile in his face that seemed unusually genuine. “Would you stop looking at me like a weirdo. Let’s go inside” your walk is stopped by a hand grabbing yours. Your confusion is just marked by Osamu grabbing both of your hands. “Samu— what’s up?”

“This is weird. But not really,” You notice the twin starting to break his usual deadpan persona, even glancing at the blonde counterpart for a moment before taking a deep breath. A thought of what's about to go down briefly crosses your mind, but only for a point of a second, because there's no way.

“A few years ago you told me to hang on through the good and the bad. To this day, I don’t even think you knew what you were really saying. But you said it, and I did it. I stuck through the long nights where I wanted nothing more than to pull my hair out and give up. At the beginning when everything was going to shit. When I was spending more to run the shop than I was making. When my first shop caught fire and nearly burned to the ground-”

“All about you huh. Way to be self centered Samu,” both of you shot a glare at the blonde. Osamu for the interruption, and you for- well you didn’t even know. You only bit back that maybe he was learning from him, causing a smile to tug at Osamu’s face.

“Anyways- but I also stuck through with the good. From getting enough money saved to open a shop, getting approved for the starter loan, to finding the best vendors and having the chance to sell and grow at professional games. Then I opened up my second, and third and now fifth branch.” You can’t help but smile at the memory as you nod.

“I couldn’t have done it without you. Your love, kindness, and everything that makes you, you. You hung in there with me as you went through your own life. You graduated, started working at your dream company, and started working your way up. All this while supporting me endlessly. You even went as far as putting money down for me, and working at the shop for free. You were there through every step of the way.

You always told me to feel and don’t be afraid to ask for help, but the help you gave and continue to give is more than anyone could have ever asked for. During one of our midnight talks, you told me to hang on and love the ones who continue to keep me ground. You’re one of those people. The name of the shop. Onigiri Miya always had a nice ring to it.” Your eyes went through several emotions: confusion, realization, and now shock, as your boyfriend took a step back now getting onto 1 knee. You almost feel like you’re going to pass out as your mind runs blank.

“I love you a whole lot. So, (Y/N) will you make the name on the shop yours as well and marry me.” You don’t even remember the words yes coming out of your mouth or even nodding. Apparently you did because you're met with metal sliding on your finger and obnoxious hollering from a twin who you didn’t even notice was recording the entire time. Arms that circle around your waist and a failure figure hugging yours breaks you out of your state of shock.

“Here's to handling the future together. And sticking through the good and the bad.”

a/n: this series is NOT written in song order which is why the prev/next buttons dont work and wont until its applicable. This is the 3rd installment and my first time writing osamu so this shit seems mad OOC but i also dont know his character that well, but this song made me go to this idea so?????? Also reread and take a shot every time i reference the fucking title god i hate myself

#haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #hq imagines #osamu x reader #haikyuuwritersnet #osamu imagine #good and the bad #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines

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