#this got way too long

[oneatlatime]

Hiii!!! I’ve been binging through your blog for the past few weeks and I noticed how you talk about how Kataang(Katara x Aang) is portrayed in the show. Honestly yeah, I will admit I didn’t like it at first but now I just don’t really care for it. But I’d be interested hearing an in-depth opinion on the ship(unless you already did and I just never noticed or forgot 😭).

Another question, do you think you’re going to read the comics that came out the series? If you’re asking my opinion I’d say they’re a uuuh 7-8 out of 10 IG?

I do have thoughts on Kataang which I haven't shared yet. Part of me thinks I should wait to answer your ask until I've finished the series; it's obvious to me that these two are being set up to be the big finale couple, which means if I talk about them now I'm probably missing the pieces I need to have a full, well-rounded opinion. But you know what? I feel like talking about them now. So here goes.

Short answer: It peeves me that Aang comes from a culture that seemingly doesn't even have parents, yet he still manages to date his mother.

Long answer: they're both way too young. I'm a huge fan of letting the kids be kids for as long as possible. Especially with these kids, who have been prevented from being kids by the war. As Katara points out in the opening scene of the very first episode, she's been the mother since her own died (or at least she feels like she has had to be the mother). Call me crazy, but I'd rather Katara spend a few years after the war doing dumb childish stuff to recapture that lost childhood than jump straight into a relationship. Isn't the safety and space to do dumb childish stuff one of the things those who are trying to end the war are fighting for? Shouldn't she get to enjoy that? And Aang is just way too young no matter what way you look at it. He's 12 right? I think that would make him a grade 6 student. Back in my day (yells at cloud) Grade 6 students collected yugioh cards and feuded over who had the snazzier lunch box. I could picture a 12 year old having a crush on a slightly older girl that goes to the same school, but it would be short lived and unactionable. I guess Katara would be around 14? So, a grade 8 student. A grade 8 girl would not date a grade 6 boy. It would just never happen.

They've both got bigger fish to fry. Aang is the last Air Nomad AND the current Avatar. When he fully takes on both of those positions, what time will he have for a girlfriend? Katara is the only Southern Waterbender. Whether or not she wants the responsibility, it will be her duty to single-handedly reconstruct a huge portion of her nation's culture from the ground up once she returns south. Does she have the time to ping pong around the globe mothering her boyfriend as he rides giant animals or does Avatar stuff? Say she wants to: what will her family and the rest of her tribe think of the only person who can access such a huge part of their culture riding off into the sunset?

Their current relationship dynamic is still too mother/son. This is more obvious in season 1 than in season 2 (maybe that's growth?) but you can't depict a male/female pair as pieta and then expect me to ship. I think this could change somewhat, but I've already been disappointed in that. I thought that once Katara had mastered waterbending and therefore felt she had something other than mothering to contribute to the group, she would back off with the mothering. And she did, a little, but not enough for my tastes. Maybe as Aang fully steps into the Avatar role and the last Air Nomad role (sidenote: no idea what the latter would look like) he'll move on to a more equal relationship with Katara.

I think Katara is meant for better things than rebirthing a nation. Bending seems to be at least somewhat genetic. So if Aang wants Airbending in any form to survive after his death, he's going to need a billion kids. While I could definitely see Katara wanting children, I don't see her as the barefoot pregnant type.

I'm not convinced that Aang has a clear picture of Katara. She has flaws, which is good! Does Aang see them?

I get the feeling that, while they are helping each others' skills grow as they travel the globe, they are also preventing each others' personalities from growing. As long as Aang is around, Katara has someone to mother. As long as Katara is around, Aang has someone who prevents him from feeling the full weight of his responsibilities. Again, this is worse in season 1, but how often did Katara deny that Aang was to blame for something that was at least somewhat his fault? Aang will never become a fully rounded person until he can look at his flaws and mistakes dead on and say "my bad" without a Katara in the background going "no you're perfect!" Katara deserves to find out what kind of person she is outside of a nurturing role. Quick thought experiment: what if you pair Katara with someone who needs no nurturing, or better yet, nurtures her? And what if you pair Aang with someone as bluntly truthful as Toph? Katara and Aang might find both of those situations uncomfortable at first, but I think it would contribute to their growth.

Aang having a crush on an oblivious Katara would be a great single season arc. I think it would fit both of their characters well, and I think Aang growing past latching on to the first person he saw after the iceberg would be a good way to show that he's rooting himself in his time-displaced present, and fully committing to ending the war. And don't get me wrong, I love Aang and Katara both as a fighting team and as friends.

These kids are all fighting a war, and all kids. I don't mind the supporting characters having romances, because it's not like Sokka or Suki can end the war, no matter how hard they try/might want to. But I'm a big believer in doing one thing at a time, and I think if you're the only person in the whole world who can end a war, then ending the war should take precedence over dating. I'm aware that that's an unrealistic expectation and out of step with the show's theme of balance. In the real world, birth rates skyrocket during war time because people live for the moment and grab happiness (read boinking) wherever they see it. But both these kids are pre-boinking age so I'm going to be a cranky old fart about it.

Being the wife of the Avatar is a position that will often come with being relegated to second place, especially with the amount of work that undoing a century of war will take. Although she works well in a team, Katara is a naturally dominant personality. Katara did enough of putting herself in second place before the series started. I think Katara could very easily fall into the pattern of subjugating her own needs and desires and putting her husband's first, but I don't want that to happen. And one way to prevent that from happening is to prevent her from dating the single most politically important person in the universe. (To be clear, Aang would never deliberately squish a wife like that, I just think the workload of being Avatar and last air nomad would cause that to happen)

A lot of my objections to this pairing are very adult objections. I don't know what I would have thought about this pairing when I was the age of the show's target audience. It undoubtedly would have bothered me less, although I probably would have been put off by how twee it is. As an adult, all I can see are babies playing house.

As for the comics, I hadn't made any concrete plans to read them. I don't know where I'd get access to them. I'm not sure how canonical they are. I guess I should probably decide whether or not I want to read them after I've finished the whole series. I've been told that my girl Jin appears in one of them, so I definitely have some interest. I have also had the Avatar Kyoshi novels strenuously recommended to me. But so much of Avatar's charm, to me, is in the medium. And while comics are closer to animation than books are, they're still static. Avatar does movement so well.

#ask #this got way too long #short short answer: they're too young #not much incompatible about their personalities #plenty incompatible about their responsibilities

[airas-story]

Consider It a Gift

The Ancient One paused at the sight in front of her as the door to the Sanctum shut behind her—when one could travel to anywhere in the world for lunch, she didn’t see why one would not; she certainly never preached asceticism, and pizza in New York truly was divine. That and she’d felt time’s pull moving her forward.

There were two men standing on the sidewalk just outside the door. Or rather, there was one man standing and one man kneeling.

That in and of itself was odd. That it was happening right outside the sanctum—which had subtle protections that normally ensured that passerby walked right past and didn’t linger—was even odder.

That it was none other than a man she recognized as Stephen Strange on his knees—a man she knew from all her dreams and glimpses into the future was a proud, stubborn man—well, to say it was strange was more than just a poorly thought out pun.

It would be more polite to step away…

No one would ever accuse her of prying, but that was more because most seemed to think she was incapable of such a ‘plebeian’ behavior, and less because of an analysis of her true nature. Of course, there were none who truly knew her, now.

It was the fault of Stephen and his friend that they’d decided to have this conversation in the middle of the sidewalk. They could hardly expect complete privacy.

And in truth, well, in truth, if this was what she thought it was, than the Ancient One wanted to see it. She had seen so much of Stephen’s grief, just once she wanted to see his happiness.

“Tony,” Stephen started. “You are the most infuriating, frustrating, irritating, ridiculous—“

The man—Tony—rolled his eyes. “I get the point, Stephen.”

“—impossible,” Stephen added, undeterred, “man I know.” She saw Stephen take a deep breath. “And I am hopelessly in love with you.”

Tony softened perceptibly. ”Stephen—“

“Marry me,” Stephen finished.

Tony ran a hand through his hair, laughing a little as he looked down at Stephen. The Ancient One could read the love in his eyes. She knew, just from the look in his eyes, that this man, Tony, adored Stephen, foibles and all. It lightened her heart to see it. “You know, that’s supposed to be a question. Not a demand, right?”

Stephen didn’t respond, just staring up at Tony, a glint of determination in his eyes that underlined just how important this moment was to him.

The Ancient One could feel time’s magic shifting around her, whispering in her ears of laughter and happiness and hope in the darkest of times.

He will still come, Time whispered, but he will not be broken and alone in the world.

Tony laughed, and there was a brightness to it that carried through the air and seemed to settle warmly in her own chest in a subtle joy. Yes, watching this moment had been a good choice. “Yes, Stephen. I’ll marry you.”

Stephen stood up, brushing at his knees absently. “I want a courthouse wedding. As soon as possible.”

Tony blinked in genuine surprise and then raised an eyebrow. “I won’t back out if we take our time, you know.”

Stephen took a step forward, cupping Tony’s cheek. “I want every day I can have with you, Tony.”

Tony shook his head, but it wasn’t in negation, more amusement. “You already have that. I’m yours, Stephen. Irrevocably so. A license and certificate doesn’t change anything.”

Stephen’s lip twitched up into a small, teasing smile. “Maybe it doesn’t. But I’ve always liked putting my name on things. You know that.”

Tony laughed again. “Is that your way of asking me to take your name?”

“I don’t really think I was asking,” Stephen admitted. “But Tony Strange,” Stephen said and the teasing tone was so different from the hopelessness and frustration she’d always seen in the ripples of time. “You have to admit it sounds good.”

Tony snorted. “You’re lucky I agree with that.”

“No, I’m lucky that you think taking my name is hilarious. That’s why DUM-E is DUM-E and U is U—“ and the Ancient One supposed that sentence made sense to someone, but it made no sense to her, ”—and why you once tried to name an element badassium.”

“You caught me,” Tony said, grin twitching at his lips. “I do name things in part for the amusement factor. Including, apparently, myself.”

“You know you want to be ‘the Strange couple’.”

Tony’s eyes brightened. “I hadn’t even thought about that yet, but you are absolutely right. I want that so much it’s not even funny. God, the introductions. We need to marry ASAP, because every moment we’re not married is a moment where we’re not the Strange couple.”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Well, if that’s what it takes to get you on board with marrying me as soon as physically possible, I’ll take it.”

Tony pressed forward and kissed Stephen, and for a moment the two seemed to meld into each other. The Ancient One took a step back, she had certainly seen everything that she could have hoped to see. Happiness. True, unfettered happiness. 

Time seemed to laugh in her ears. Consider it a gift.

#ironstrange #tony stark #stephen strange #the ancient one #fic #this got WAY too long #Tony would absolutely take Stephen's name #and no one can change my mind on that

[justatalkingface]

Let's talk about the Bakugou Problem

Yes, everyone, it's finally time, what is probably my most requested rant: The Bakugou Problem. Or rather, the Bakugou problems, because there's two:

The first is the fact that he's an unrepentant asshole who is only now, at the end of the manga, truly starting to realize basic shit like 'apologizing'. The second is that, for all intents and purposes, the Bakugou the characters seem to interact with is a different person than what we're being shown.

There's been plenty of deep dives on his issues, so I doubt I'll propose anything new, but this should fun anyways, right? Let's start here:

I think, at the core, Bakugou's problem is he just never grew up.

Way, way back early on, we see some flashbacks to Earlygou, and in summary? Earlygou is an ass. Fun fact: for all that it's commonly held that Bakugou grew worse over time after getting his Quirk? He called Izuku Deku before that. He was just a bit ahead of the class, looked at Izuku's name, and saw 'Deku'. Boom, he starts saying it, and it's only further entrenched in his mind as he outperforms his peers physically, while Izuku lags behind.

Then he gets his Quirk. Let's quote what he's told: 'Ooh, another impressive Quirk! You could be a hero with a Quirk like that, Katsuki!'

I know we all think he got coddled for his Quirk, and later on he was, but that? That was just a teacher giving him the verbal equivalent of a gold star. Meanwhile, Bakugou?

'Makes sense. I'm awesome. I'm better than everyone else!', he thinks, while having this look on this face like he's being enlightened to a Fundamental Truth. He took some generic praise and ran off with it.

So yeah, Earlygou was an ass. Here's the thing: a lot of kids are assholes. It can be hard to remember sometimes, but kids, really young kids who don't get how the world works at all, do and think a lot of impulsive, assholish shit, not because they think the world revolves around them, but because they can't comprehend a world that isn't all about them.

Here's another thing: kids grow out of that. They realize, eventually, that other people matter, that their actions have consequences, and all that other stuff that makes people into functioning adults.

I don't blame Earlygou for being an assholish child. I blame Bakugou for never growing beyond that. And it's interesting to think about that, because his parents seem legit. His dad is quiet, sure, but he's solid and down to earth, and while Bakugou clearly takes after his mother, she also seems to have gotten the 'morals' message he didn't, and has concerns that he didn't do the same. They're not poor, and are working in fashion, and implied to be doing well enough that, if they're not rich, they're at the very least well off.

So... school, I guess? Here's one of the times where the setting suffers for its lack of lower level development, because I would love to see what non-Aldera schools were like. Everyone else in 1A seems like they wouldn't have a major problem with Izuku being Quirkless, or at least be mild enough in their prejudices to not spend their free time torturing him. Is Aldera different? Is it an age thing? Are they just the good eggs and would have had assholish classmates who would act like Aldera did? Would other teachers be OK with how Izuku was treated (my limited understanding of the depressing Japanese view on bullying says, 'yes', but fuck if I know, and honestly, two hundred years in the future, shouldn't they be better than modern Japan)? More than that, the public view on Quirklessness is, for understandable reasons (cough cough Bakugou), highly underdeveloped, so we don't know how much Izuku was treated was the normal, but I think part of the reason Bakugou got so bad is that he had Izuku near him, as this convenient target. By pushing down on the 'acceptable' target, all his peers approved him, cheered him on, which both fed his ego and his popularity, and combined with his high-status Quirk, this cycle continued swelling his head until we reached canon Bakugou, king of all he surveys. The kids follow him, the teachers suck up to him, his potential, his future, all are limitless!!!!

...Sigh. Before I keep going, let me touch on one other thing: Izuku trying to save Bakugou after he fell when they were children.

On the first take, it seems utterly unreasonable, how badly he responded to that, right? And the second, and third, it still seems the same.

Someone, somewhere, said this take in a comment in a fic I read and I've never been able to forget it: think about it from the view of a heroic saturated society.

Think about it from the lenses of MHA, where All Might is a few steps short of a god in the eyes of the public. Everyone knows him, everyone loves him, especially the kids, and especially Bakugou and Izuku.

Look at that scene again, how Izuku reaches down for him. Overlay him with All Might.

That is what Bakugou saw: Izuku making himself unto All Might. While Izuku just wanted to save him, of course, somewhere deep in his unconcious Bakugou took that symbolism and ran with it, and reached a completely (ir)rational conclusion: Izuku was looking down on him. It went, I imagine, a little something like this:

All Might is the strongest. All Might looks like that when saves other people, who are weaker than him. Izuku is channeling All Might, therefore he is saying that he is stronger than me.

Bakugou, in his child mind, saw Izuku, not as helping him, but T-posing at him. To him, that was Izuku trying to assert dominance.

And he never got over that. Never grew beyond that impression. Do you want to know the worst part about it, though, when you look at it that way?

Think about Bakugou again, and his motivations, with your Bakugou Logic goggles on: All Might is strong. Bakugou wants to be strong like All Might. All Might asserts his power over others by saving them. Therefore?

Bakugou wants to save people like All Might.

Can you imagine if Bakugou was built of that dynamic? Like, with Shirou in Fate, if that scene was etched in his mind forever, and he was obsessed with remaking it over and over, but on his terms, with him as the savior? Him as the one looking down on the weak?

Still canon-style Bakugou, still an asshole, still lusting for power... but when asked what he wanted to do with it, or why, he would answer: so I can save everyone.

And even if it was for the crudest, most self serving of reasons, even if it was only so he could feel good about himself and lord it over everyone else that he was the one who saved them; it would have been so much better than canon. There's so much fascinating complexity to explore in a character like that, as well as a clear path to redeem him: under that logic, Bakugou would, over time, learn to save people, not for his own satisfaction, but just because it's the right thing to do. Hell, even the way people treat him would make more sense, because even if he was an asshole, if his motivation, which he cheerfully shouts about at any given moment, was to save people, then suddenly his acceptance feels more realistic, doesn't it? Him being compared to Izuku as a rival makes more sense when both of them are in it to save everyone, that core of heroism, but each represent a different part of how modern heroism is expressed, with Bakugou as the corrupt, media saturated part of it, while Izuku channels the original, pure spirit of heroics.

Can you imagine that with me? What could have been in another life? It could have been beautiful.

But, sadly, that's nothing more than a dream, and we should return back to reality (though I might want to expand on that at some point, it really does sound interesting to me).

Change and Improvement. These are words that some hold in the air whenever Bakugou is judged harshly, and they wave them like talismans to try and banish others objections.

Let me tell you a truth: change and improvement are hollow words without context. They are a statement that something has happened, not a measure of how much it has happening. In many ways, this is similar to a unit of measurement, like inches, and a number of inches. If you're talking about something, and you say, 'it can be measured in inches'.... that is generally unhelpful. Saying that it is, say, eight inches long is far more useful information.

Still, these aren't exactly moral statements, and change in particular is distinctly amoral. If something has 'improved a little bit' it, you know that it's better, and generally how much. But is it good now? Was it good then?

Let me put it another way: say that, once a day, every day, I appear to you out of the shadows and force you to eat a cup of shit. Exactly a cup, every day, at 2:30 PM, without fail; nothing you do to protect yourself from me makes any difference, nowhere you go is safe. You can't run. You can't hide. I am inevitable. The shit is inevitable. You will eat that shit, no matter what you think about it.

Then, one day, I come with only a half cup, and from then on you are only forced to eat a half cup of shit a day instead of a full one.

Isn't that both a change and an improvement? It's literally half as bad; doesn't that sound like a lot better? Yet, while that may be true, is the situation actually better in a meaningful way, or it as firmly negative as it was before? Should you be mewling gratefully to me that I'm being less horrible to you, or can you still hold a grudge against me for everything I've done to you and continue to do?

What if I apologized, one day, after forcing yet another half cup down your throat? What if I told you that I shouldn't have done it, but the way you looked, the way you acted, that vapid, cow-like look of joy on your face... it was just so shitty that I had to, that you made me do it? Then I say this changes nothing, and that we're still on for tomorrow for your daily dose at the normal time.

Tell me something: do you feel better? Has my generous apology moved your heart? Are we friends now?

This is Izuku's situation in a nutshell. Bakugou's treatment has changed, has improved even. It's reached a point where there are actual differences in Izuku's daily life. That doesn't mean it's still not shit treatment, and it doesn't matter if it's served in a cup or a tablespoon, shit is still shit. And the thing is Bakugou treated him like shit, and he still treats him like shit.

Context matters. So let's talk about the context. Let's talk about what Bakugou did.

Well, first off, there's the Deku thing, but I feel a lot people don't get how bad that is, so let's spell it out in detail. Once upon a time, as I've said, Bakugou was a little better at reading than everyone else. He looked at Izuku's name and saw 'Deku' in this, and thought it was hilarious, and so he started talking about it.

Bakugou looked at his name, and saw Useless in it. He didn't just call Izuku that, he said, this is in your name, it always has been there, to the point that, all these years later, he physically struggles to use Izuku's actual name.

For Izuku's entire childhood, the one person truly on his side, who truly loved him, was his mother.... who gave him that name.

In other words, every time Bakugou called him that name, with that history behind it? Bakugou was telling him that, when Izuku was born, Inko looked at the child she held in her arms, turned to the nurse, and said, "I'll call him... Useless."

He called him this, every day, every time they talked, for over a decade. Saying that the real meaning of the name his mother gave him was useless.

But it's not just that, even. He led the school, his neighbors, effectively everyone Izuku knew in anywhere near his age group, to call him that. There were probably people in Aldera who didn't know Izuku by any other name. There were probably times Izuku thought of himself by that name, that his name was Useless. It's not that big a reach from responding to it as his name, after all, and by the time the story start's he was well trained in responding to it.

Then, there's the more 'basic' bullying; insults, taking his stuff, breaking his stuff, using his Quirk on him. Again, for years and years, until Izuku is beaten down into terrified compliance, where Bakugou blowing up his stuff, his desk, and him* in front of a teacher isn't something anyone even really notices anymore. And why does he do it? Because it's fun. Because he feels strong breaking things, hurting people, being the big man on campus. Because he wants attention, respect, glory.

Because he can. Because it's fun.

(*And isn't that weird, when you think about it? Bakugou has been hands free with his Quirk on Izuku since they were, what, four? Why doesn't Izuku have burns?

Bakugou uses explosions. His hands can burn hot enough (probably as part of the lighting process) to burn clothes, and that's when he's clearly holding back with it. There's no way he's been careful enough, kind enough to not hit skin with that his entire life. So why doesn't Izuku have burns from all that?

Answer? There is no good reason. You can mention how MHA humans are, well, inhumanly strong, but we see heat resistant Shoto being burned with boiling water; it's not like they're immune to it. More than that, though, Izuku is explicitly Quirkless. He is a mortal in a world of magic. He wouldn't have that same kind of resiliency.

So Izuku isn't burned because, A, Hori didn't want his main character to be scarred over, both for aesthetic reasons, and probably for ease of drawing, and B, because that would make Bakugou look worse. Because even then, back when Bakugou had consequences, that would be too much consequences for him, that he permanently scarred Izuku, since the Heroes Rising was the original ending, and Bakugou was always supposed to be redeemed. Hori probably figured, if he thought about it, that that was too far for the readers to forgive him for, and finally, C, he just didn't think about the consequences of Bakugou's actions.

But let's be honest: Izuku would be burned. The fact he isn't is just the prettying up of the situation.)

This is where Bakugou starts from: abusing Izuku to the point where he doesn't dare protest out of years of deeply ingrained terror, doing his best to systematically destroy Izuku's life, while being careful to avoid going too far and damage his chances for UA, which judging by his comment on smoking, may be the only real internal check he has on his behavior.

Because that's the thing; he's cruel, but calculatingly so. He's not a wild animal. It motivates him, but he can think about his actions, think about the possible consequences of them, how they'll react... and as long as they won't harm him, he's all for it.

Then we go to UA, and when he realizes that 'Deku' has a Quirk? Much less such a strong one? He attacks. Viciously, instinctively he goes into attack. He's stopped, but no consequences are given (more on that later), so he doesn't stop. Why would he? All he's learned is this teacher won't let him attack Izuku without a motive.

And then he gets one. Bakugou walks into the Battle Trial planning what he'll do to Izuku. His first words in there are don't dodge... which is especially bad considering what he'll say in a little bit.

His plan? To beat the living shit out of Izuku, to vent all his frustration on him, but stopping just short of it being bad enough for the Trial to be stopped. And as Izuku defies him (by dint of not letting himself be beaten up), he gets angrier and angrier at him for the gall of it, for the audacity to not lay down and let Bakugou beat him up until he feels better, until it reaches the point where Bakugou brings out those gauntlets of him.

'Dammit, Deku, don't dodge me!' 'He won't die if he dodges!'

Yeah. He says both of these things in the space of the same fight. When Bakugou fires that damn gauntlet of his, he's finally reached the point where, for the first time we've seen, he's no longer thinking of the consequences even a little. He wants to kill Izuku, if only to prove that his Quirk, that he, is better (note this too; we'll talk more later about this) than Izuku and his Quirk.

Well, for obvious reasons, that doesn't work out for him, since Izuku's Quirk is the strongest in existence, and small fraction of it, badly used, is still enough to clap Bakugou's attack, enhanced by support equipment (who the hell approved that, by the way? It literally destroys buildings. It seemingly exists for no other reason than to cause massive collateral damage). Then he's forced into an existential crisis when Deku 'wins'. His arm is broken, he's beat up, but by the rules of the game he won anyways and because of that, Bakugou's world collapses.

This, more than anything, I think is Bakugou's true catalyst for change: not being saved by 'Deku', but losing to him. Granted, being saved is enough to force him to avoid him, but it probably helped that Izuku only bought him moments of air. He may have saved him, but All Might did the work, All Might the strongest, the greatest, his idol.

This though? This was Izuku surpassing him, and all on his own.

And I want to pause to consider something here: something that was stressed since the beginning of the story, and still is, besides the terrible mixed messaging at times, is that being heroic is more important to being a hero than sheer ability. Izuku was heroic with his complete lack of ability at the start, after all, while All For One is one of the strongest beings in the setting, and is the farthest thing from heroic. And when you look at Bakugou, as we're introduced to him? There's not a speck of that in him. There's no kindness, no mercy, no sympathy; Bakugou has no positive aspects to him. He has talent, talent for days, but talent isn't a person, a personality. He is a creature of pure ability, and nothing more, and that makes him a singularly unheroic creature.

But the story continues, and Bakugou is forced to confront his own weakness compared to his classmates... except, you know, he doesn't. Even as he does everything wrong, as picks fight with classmates, teachers, villains he should be avoiding... he faces no real consequences for it.

Because, as I've said? Bakugou used lethal force on Izuku. Knowingly. As a teacher tells him not to. That... that sounds like something that even a normal school would be concerned about, much less this elite school that is focused around being a hero, and whose student body is largely comprised of very lethal people, who they intent to unleash upon the world with minimal restrictions on their behavior.

I mean, forget the school; why is All Might fine with this? Aizawa? Nezu? Any of these teachers? How about all of their fellow students, all of who are heroic, and watched this happen live, and All Might's response, no less?

This is the second problem of Bakugou: what they see, talk to, and interact with, doesn't seem to match with the reality that we see, and these two problems are so intertwined that is hard to talk about them separately.

Because on Day One of school, Bakugou attempts to murder his fellow student, and no one cares. The worst he gets is a waggled finger. The fact that he isn't expelled is mind boggling beyond belief, when you pause for a second and consider that fact.

Aizawa talks like he just rough housed too hard or something, and the worse thing All Might mentions is failing the exercise.

This is something that many people have talked about, and at times have named many different ways. For this, I've decided to call it, 'Bakugou's Tsundere Field', because it makes other people act like Bakugou is tsundere, acting tough but with a kind heart, instead of just... acting like a shit person. You know, like he does.

Like I said, it's hard to realistically seperate that from Bakugou's general behavior, so I'm just going to keep going and point it out as I go along.

Next, let's talk about... the Sports Festival. The Sports Festival is where, if you need the reminder, Bakugou starts things off by insulting everyone else and making them hate his class. Twice.

First, by insulting the, admittedly vulture like crowd gawking over 1A's near death experience (I still don't like that), and the second as the valedictorian, where his 'speech' is his two sentence statement that he's going to be first... and yet, for some reason, Izuku watches this and marvels over how he's changed. Because normally, he'd do this but he'd be gloating. Izuku. Izuku. This isn't some mind boggling big thing to be in awe of.

Actually, let's chat about that a bit, because that's honestly such a big problem it's almost a third concern on it's own right: Izuku is our major narrator, right? So we get a lot of our views on Bakugou from his perspective, and... well, he's very much an unreliable narrator, whenever it comes to Bakugou. Every time he talks, there's this sense of awe in it that's been there ever since he was a child; it taints his narrative every time he talks about Bakugou, makes it always more positive than it should be.

Because, wow, Bakugou, that's different from before, an improvement, right? Well guess what? That shit is still shit, even if there's less of it. Izuku is just so biased, so traumatized, such... an abuse victim, that he he takes what Bakugou gives him and doesn't think there's anything wrong with it, because he, Deku, has no self respect, and Bakugou is the biggest and the baddest, the most beloved of their childhood, and it's something he never seems to get past. Even when he stands up to Bakugou, fights him, he still can't get past staring at him in awe, and barely ever complains about how he's being treated.

And because Izuku is our main viewpoint? This view on Bakugou taints our view on him, and it's easy to look at him with Izuku's admiring eyes.

But I digress. In the cavalry battle, Bakugou basiclly breaks the rules by flying off the horse, but gets away with it because of a technicality, which, you know, is great impulse to nurture: it's fine as long as it's technically legal! Sounds really heroic, right? Like something you want your law enforcement to live by?

Meanwhile, during this same fight, both Aizawa and All Might praises him for his ambition, and I just. Do you know what Bakugou says right before they think about that?

'I'm going to be Number One and leave piles of bodies in my wake!', he screams, while literally throwing a tantrum on national television and hitting the top of Kirishima's head like it's a desk.

...Wow. You know what? Maybe you two are mixing tenacity with bloodlust. That's one of the least heroic things I've ever heard in my life, and yet everyone just falls over themselves to praise him for it just because he's not content to settle for second place.

It's times like that I have to wonder: are they... are they seeing something different than what we do? Are all of Bakugou's most violent phrases and actions edited out for them? Did Hori add them for his fans? Or is it just The Tsundere Field(TM)?

Not even mentioning third stage where: he's praised for taking a woman 'seriously' for no apparent reason, and dragging it out when he would normally, just like he always does, just leap in mindlessly to attack, and this one time he really thinks it through it backfires when Ochaco turns it back around on him, only for him to just... over power it, with no ill effects. This comes with the double plus stupid on his part of him doing that because he's... what, afraid of her touching him?

Seriously? This entire post exists for me to call Bakugou out, but even I can't call him a coward. Every time he fights a villain, all of which want to kill him, and one who has Ochaco's power but lethal, he still charges in. Moreover, all it does it make you weightless; Bakugou's power explicitly gives him a way around that; if she tosses him, he can just fly back to the stage.

So... why is this a thing? This is a thing so, when the heroes, who at this point are symbolizing the audience's discontent with Bakugou, start complaining, Aizawa can step in, verbally slap them, us, and then explain how great Bakugou is, which get magnified by how casually he shoots down her plan at the end.

And here's the super special bonus problem with all of this: a hero's job isn't to protect themselves. A hero's job is to protect everyone else. Even if they, personally, are hurt, a hero is expected to risk their health, and lives, so that the general public is safe. You want to know what the problem is when protecting yourself and allowing the villain time to do things in the process? It means they get to do things. Like, say, set up a giant meteor shower that could cause mass casualties? You know, like what Ochaco actually did as Bakugou held back?

This is that plan that, need I remind you, Eraserhead was defending.

Then there's the fight with Shoto where, under the actual logic of the setting, according to Hori's very notes on how their Quirks work, Shoto should have froze him and thusly stopped him in his tracks, no fire needed, since it would stop Bakugou from sweating. But, instead, Bakugou powers through, somehow, and clinches a win anyways. And then, and this is after he eavesdrops on Shoto's conversation, BTW, which means he knows exactly why Shoto doesn't use his fire, he throws a fit that Shoto didn't use his fire on him anyways (which, considering he sweats nitroglycerin, means he would have exploded).

Now let's look at the Intern Arc, and I'll be honest: no matter how much a non-character Best Jeanist, I'll always be a fan of him for one simple reason:

When everyone else looked at Bakugou, and says, 'This kid is awesome', this is the one person in the entire setting who saw a problem. And as a bonus, he acts to do something about it.

In the same vein, I'll never forgive Hori for making him seem like such a pretentious twit, much less how hard he ends up cheering for Bakugou's every word later in the series. I'm relooking at these manga chapters, and his big attempt seems to be... jelling up Bakugou's hair, and... something like focusing the body and mind via the power of... tight jeans.

Wow. I mean, wow. The one time we get someone honestly, actually trying to change Bakugou for the better, to call him for what he is, and his big plan to do this is apparently giving him a new look.

Really? Like, beyond how much of a failure of an opportunity this is, beyond how it makes Best Jeanist look useless, it can give the reader that the impression that the reason why Bakugou is so wild and untamed is that those who want to reign him in are elitists who are wildly disconnected to reality, that he is right to be this way, because people following the rules are just holding him back.

And we come to... sigh. The Final Exam test. The fact that anyone who has spent five minutes with Izuku and Bakugou thinks that this clustefuck needs to happen is more proof of the terrifying powers of the TF. I mean, I just... when one person is constantly yelling, constantly aggressive, constantly swearing, constantly throwing fits, and this same person is constantly picking fights with another student, who, at worst, defends himself, and and more often just seems to take it..... what do you think they need?

Is it to be thrown together into a teamwork based, sink or swim test with seemingly enormous penalties for failure? Or is it to make one of them get therapy? And also detention?

Well, according to All Might, Aizawa, Nezu, and who knows who else....

*shrugs helplessly*

If only we could use Bakugou's powers for good, rather than making Izuku suffer.

But we can't. So the school locks an abuser and his victim together in a pseudo-deathmatch where teamwork is required to survive, as a form of therapy to treat the lack of cooperation that comes entirely from one party. Wonderful.

And, as anyone could predict, this promptly goes terribly. Bakugou attacks his teammate for the crime of... *checks notes* trying to work together with him against All Might, the strongest being in the setting. This is such a terrible crime because *checks notes again* ...Bakugou can totally take him.

Bakugou Katsuki, everybody. A 'genius' with the brain of a yipping chihuahua trying to fight a mastiff.

Recovery Girl watches this happen live and just goes, 'They're just absolutely the worst team, those two."

And oh, and I'm going to be honest, when you look at Recovery Girl she's kind of a piece of shit. She barely gets any scenes and any time they involve Izuku (a lot of that small amount) they are pure ass. But this? This just takes the cake.

Wow. They're such bad teammates, sure. Such heroic insight. Why, that's like saying putting Muscular on the same team with Kouta would be a bad team! That would have some truly terrible teamwork as well, right? It's something that is technically correct, but is just.... so heinously missing the core of the problem that you honestly have to wonder what in the actual fuck she's thinking. All Might and Aizawa, at least, have the excuse that they don't see that, at least as far as we know, but she deadass watches it happen, what the fuck.

And, as it has often been pointed out, Bakugou passes, after attacking his teammate and being carried out afterwards while Sero, who heroically sacrifices himself for the win and never once attacks his teammate, loses for exactly the same thing.

Simply marvelous.

Now let's move Training Camp Arc... where, when Bakugou is informed in the middle of an attack by villains that he is the target (and oh, we'll get to that in a moment). What is his first response to this? What does he do?

Le-fucking-roy right at them. Here's something that bothers me about how the story talks about Bakugou: he's so intelligent, he's analytical, all this stuff... but every time he gets into a fight? Or near a fight? His response is always, always to jump in. Needless to say, a heedless charge at the problem backfires, and he's captured. Surprise!

And back to Bakugou as target: the League of Villains watch him on TV and the first thing they thought about him is, I like the cut of his jib.

The worst people look at Bakugou and say he's clearly one of them.

This... this is something that's never really discussed. There's a press conference, Aizawa basiclly says he's too heroic to ever join them (ironically, since Bakugou's argument isn't about heroism or villainy, but that they're losers), and this just... never comes up again. There's no doubt in anyone's mind about anything after Eraserhead gives him that support

No one is concerned that, hey, maybe he did actully join them. Or the man with ten-thousand Quirks did something to him, brainwashed him, and honestly? That's not even a reach. That is actually what AFO was planning to do to him. This is a setting, need I remind you, where actual brainwashing Quirks exist, much less whatever the fuck happens to the Nomu and no one is concerned, after they all agree that there is already a mole, that Bakugou could become another mole, or maybe even was that original mole in the first place. No one goes, 'Hmm, well, the scum of Japan think he's one of them, maybe this is something we should be concerned about?'

I mean, fuck, no one just sits Bakugou down and tells him to pull his shit together, your image is ass and the media is probably going to be watching you until you die, ready to stain you with the accusation of villainy, and they can make your life hell if you slip up, and so far you don't seem even seem to care. Also, your heroic career, that you're oh so concerned about, is never going to get off the ground if everyone thinks your a villain, and a villain will never be Number One.

There's just... nothing. Bakugou is made out of warning signs, one the entire fucking setting ignores at times, but this is just... fuck.

Alright. Bakugou vs Izuku Two; Wank Bakugou Harder!

Actually, no. Before that... let's talk about one of the major lead ups to that: Bakugou finding out about OFA. Why? In part to force him into the plot, sure, but a large part of it is Izuku feeling... guilty. He feels guilty for lying to him, guilty for seeming to have a Quirk of his own; I'm not really going anywhere with this, I just want to talk about how fucked up that mentality is, that he felt he owed Bakugou that. He owes Bakugou nothing. Bakugou isn't his friend, isn't even his acquaintance, he's his abuser. Bakugou doesn't treat him in a way that deserves such sympathy, much less information on one of the greatest secrets in the setting. If Bakugou wants to assume that Izuku somehow hid that he had a Quirk for his entire life? Allowed himself to be constantly beat down, insulted, and mistreated, and for what? For this one gotcha moment of surprising Bakugou? Let him. If he's too stuck in his own idiocies to think of anything else, let him wallow in his own ignorance.

Anyways, BvI2: also known as that time Bakugou pulled his frequent victim aside to attack him and both of them got in trouble for it.

And this is billed as this big thing for Izuku, but he fights against Bakugou, metaphorically, all the time, and he's already had this big moment of physical defiance in BvI1. This fight isn't about Izuku, on any level. This fight exists solely for Bakugou. It starts because he starts it, he starts it because he feels upset and violence is apparently how he sorts through his emotions, and he wins it because he needs to.

But not just because he needs to win, oh no, there's more to that. Thematically, you see, this is important for Bakugou's growth. Or rather, the idea of his growth that never seems to persist between his growth moments. You see, thematically, Bakugou stands for victory via force, but him winning this fight doesn't make him right, doesn't give him All Might's approval, and to him, that's almost a paradox; that paradox is needed to move beyond who he is.

But that's the thing though. Bakugou needs it. Bakugou needs to win for Bakugou's growth. This growth is, both literally and thematically, at the expense of Izuku, because Izuku? If he won this, just... out matched Bakugou in a fight, no tricks, no technicalities, no crippling injuries, none of the things from their first fight? That would have been huge for him, for his confidence. It would have been Izuku, heroic Izuku, finally and truly eclipsing his old bully in every possible way, and that would have been great for him, for his confidence, for his self respect. Moreover, though, that still would have been good for Bakugou, because even when he loses, he never loses, and he could use an actual, humbling defeat to help screw his head on straight.

But Bakugou loses all the time, I hear people say? He lost in their first fight, true, but that's a technicality; anyone looking at them would know who won combat wise. He won the Sports Festival, even though he bitches about how it wasn't 'right'. He loses against All Might, sure, but All Might is the strongest man on the planet; that loss means nothing. Moreover, he wins against him through the goal of the exam at the end anyways. He loses to the villains, sure, but it was a bunch of them against him; it wasn't a fair fight, which is the whole reason him picking it was stupid in the first place. And now, here, he could have finally had a real loss to give him some perspective... but he doesn't.

Moreover, Hori just... hypes up Explosion as a Quirk more than it really deserves. Is it a good Quirk? Strong? Sure. But let's be honest here: he sweats nitroglycerin. Literally, his Quirk is his two parents mashed together into the best possible option, and it's basiclly lazy ass chemistry via genetics. There is, by the very definition of the substance that he explicitly makes, a cap to how much it can do with a certain volume; that's why new, more explosive explosives were made to replace it

One For All, all the heroic thematics aside, is literally just pure power. All Might changes the weather with a punch on accident; I'm convinced if he punched the ground and meant it, he could actually fuck up Japan as a island. The cap with OFA is yes. There is no way, under the logic of the setting, that Bakugou can ever contest that.

Like, look at Endeavour: when he wants more fire, he makes more fire. It's bigger. What the fuck is Bakugou going to do, rain his sweat on people? What happens when he dehydrates, because again, this is his sweat, which comes from his body? Cluster doesn't even make sense, really, that he somehow super concentrates it to make it more powerful, and AP Shot is literally him making a circle with his fingers before blowing up a bomb in it, yet somehow it makes, like, a laser?

The thing is that more loose Quirks, like Endeavour's, again, aren't as limited to science as the more 'realistic' Quirks like Bakugou's, so there's nothing really saying he can't just... make more flames. He could damage himself, sure, but since he already pulls that shit out of nothing, Endeavour increasing the volume of his magic ass firebending isn't hard to accept. Hori wrote himself into a hole here because if Bakugou just made explosions by magic? If he just... conceptually made explosions? A lot of this stuff would make sense (except AP Shot; fuck AP Shot), and it feels like that's how he treats it sometimes. But that's not what he did: it was his Dad's Acid Sweat with his Mom's Glycerin which means he sweats explosive sweat. And then, when it's convenient, he has shit like the Gauntlets, and basiclly all the rest of his support gear, that are explicitly filled with his sweat.

Bakugou's powers are basiclly whatever the fuck Hori wants at any given moment, and it's honestly frustrating when he tried to play so much of this setting's powers so seriously at first, and Bakugou's Quirk in particular is explained more than almost anyone else, and yet he tosses it the moment he thinks of something that sounds cool.

...But I've gotten off topic. The point is, OFA is OP and Izuku should have just won that on pure ability alone.

Anyways, after all this, the teachers finally come, once it's settled in Bakugou's favor, and they're both in trouble. For a fight that was 100% Bakugou's fault.

So, throughout all of this, Bakugou has changed, yes, but beyond the first couple of days, the changes have been grudging and glacial, and the reasons why are best exemplified in the License Exam where we find out that, for all intents and purposes, Bakugou is incapable of showing basic empathy. I mean, fuck, he fails to show that when, with any amount of logic, much less that of the genius Bakugou, would say that now is the time to fake it. An actual, factual sociopath would do better than him, purely because they would know to act for their own betterment.

(And the fact that his teachers look at this, explicit proof that he is seemingly incapable of actually trying to save a person, but do nothing with this information speaks volumes.... mostly about how bad Hori is at writing Bakugou and the implications of what he does constantly. Surely there's no way that, without the Author hyping him up, they'd just let that slide, right? ...Right?)

But, then, hope on the horizon! He has a make up exam, and it's apparently centered around pounding basic morals/how to deal with civilians into his thick skull! Surely, this is the time Bakugou will finally, finally, get the point, right?

And that's the thing: he does. There's this, probably to other people, touching moment where he sees himself in this asshole kid and talks about how you can't just look down on people. And it's like... finally. Finally! The switch has finally been flicked! He gets it! Change, improvement, development, fina-

Then the second he gets out of it he promptly goes back to calling everyone extras.

That dynamic in many ways is the perfect embodiment of Bakugou's development, and it's... It's like watching someone fighting off a disease. There's an infection, right and symptoms increase. Sometimes the symptoms appear out of nowhere, sometimes they increase over the span of several days. They peak, finally, then they fall back down, again either dramatically, or over the span of several days, and then you are back to normal.

Bakugou makes changes. He makes realizations. He gets 'humbled'. He has a single moment of heroism that the narrative hypes up, sometimes with a bit of build up before hand for a few chapters, and with people sometimes reacting to it for a few chapters afterwords.

And then it passes, like he's just finished fighting off a case of Morals.

You see, Bakugou is well liked. And, honestly, I get it. The asshole can be therapeutic to root for, at times. The problem is that he's too popular, and that this story is too about people being good. So Bakugou, to keep the fan base, to keep the sales, has to stay Bakugou, stay the unrepentant asshole constantly telling people to die.

But, at the same time, Bakugou is an anti-hero, basiclly, and this is a setting that just... can't handle the complexity of an anti-hero, in how people react to them, what they do and the morality of it, how it would affect society and so on, and so Bakugou can't stay as Bakugou, has to grow and be better and become a hero proper.

So... Hori goes, 'Why not both?' Thus, Bakugou gets his moments of 'development', and a slow, slow, slow trend to the better, and the fans get to see him do his thing, even though he's 'changed'. And it's easy, when you just sit back and accept the narrative, to believe that. But if you don't....

All of that? It makes his character empty because after a certain point, it's clear that Bakugou won't change, in so many fundamental levels, even if everyone around him acts like he does. Like attacking his teammates, like blindly charging the enemy , like constantly insulting everyone around him is just different because he's The New Bakugou now, like it's just fun and games, even when this was a dead serious problem early on. He didn't stop, he didn't change, or dial it back; everyone else just started acting differently when he does it. The same way in day one he attacks Izuku for having a Quirk, far later on he throws his metal... hair thing at him for daring to talk about his Quirk. And it, like, impales him, but haha! It's just funny now, it's so funny, that we can apparently see Izuku's brain! It's funny that, when Izuku is seriously thinking about his predecessors, Bakugou just instantly insults them for not being famous! Look at how patient Izuku is dealing with him as he acts like a bratty five year old child throwing a fit, look how fond All Might is as he insults his beloved teacher that he probably has deep seated trauma about regarding her untimely death!

In the War Arc, where Bakugou 'Rises'? Maybe ten minutes before his 'Rise', he was threatening to attack Izuku for daring to ask why he's following him. In a war zone.

The entire story, Bakugou has been described as a creature of instinct, a natural born warrior with a talent for battle. All of that is to contrast him with Izuku: where Izuku, instinctively, has the urge to save, Bakugou has the instinctive urge to fight. This is fundamental to him, a core characteristic, one of the (many) ways it's explained about how good he is at fighting.

And yet, suddenly, when Izuku is in danger, he moves without thinking (aka instinctively), but it's not attack Shigaraki, which, you know, he was shouting about doing not too long ago, it's to save Izuku.

And. And am I supposed to believe that?

I mean, fuck. In the FInal Arc, he has a Big Speech in response to SFO: about being 'way over fear and rejection since long ago', which SFO was talking in the context of how they create inequality in society, and how he wants to fix it... which, doesn't that mean Bakugou just doesn't care about them? Because being over them doesn't actually solve them, genius, it just means you, personally, are beyond them, and even now, he still treats everyone like they're unequal to him. Bakugou has always been the one to profit from inequality in society, between his Quirk, his talent, his well off family, so honestly all of that rings hollow.

He talks about how he has friends now, who are willing to move beyond them, and OK, that works a bit better, except when he still doesn't treat them like friends, in fact not too long ago he yelled at Momo for getting his stupid ass chuunibyou name wrong.

Or, maybe a minute later, when Bakugou gets a power up and/or realization about how SFO moves or something, and you know what he does? He instantly charges in blindly, alone, and is killed over it. Right after this speech about teamwork, while everyone was just... cheering his determination, and prissy Best Jeanist says, with a straight face and actual awe, 'Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight'.

And then when he sees Bakugou get smacked around, Eraserhead's first thought is to scream, desperately, 'Save him! Save him so he can try and become the Number One Hero!' in the middle of all this shit that is happening.

All of this is presented to us as this... thrilling thing, with music that is going to be swelling in the background when its animated, and everyone cheering him on, right before he's tragically struck down for being too stupid to live (no, seriously, SFO actually lampshades this. Before this big 'dramatic' moment, he says that getting up close to him is pure idiocy, and all that it will do is allow you to get get smashed by an All Might like power. Then, you know, Bakugou closes in, again, because he had bitchslapped Bakugou before, and then a second time during that boast, and it goes exactly as SFO said) and we're supposed to mourn him. Again, actually, even though this is a blatant set up for him powering up, since this is literally the same set up as the War Arc.

All of this work, all of this emotion, and all of it rings hollow because, well, it's Bakugou, and no amount of trying to hype up teamwork battle is going to make it work for me when the second the Big Moment is over he reverts to his normal asshole routine.

That Tsundere Field, guys. Too strong, too broken.

While I'm at it, let's talk about Bakugou being Quirkist, because, well, he is. It's a big part of his early character: the reason he rags on Izuku so hard, so successfully, the reason he's so big and important as a child, is about Quirks. When they get introduced the past users? His first comment is that they have weak Quirks.

Izuku saves him and he still doesn't think much about him; it's only later when he starts actually acknowledging Izuku.

When he has a Quirk.

And it's not just a Quirk, it's more than that: it's a strong Quirk, powerful. Enough for him to defeat Bakugou. All the respect Bakugou builds for Izuku? And while it stagnates for awhile, I do have to admit he does respect Izuku more than he did originally... and it's not because Izuku is kind, or heroic; he still hates that. No, he starts respecting Izuku because he is strong. His respect isn't about Izuku as a person, it's about Izuku's Quirk. All his respect, slowly built up throughout the series, comes from the corrupt foundation that Izuku is worth respecting only because he has a Quirk. Later, this gets worse because he learns about OFA and starts valuing Izuku as important, but it's only because his Quirk is important. It's All Might's Quirk. His second fight with Izuku is because of it's All Might's Quirk. He starts training him (that one time, and apparently never gain) because it's All Might's Quirk. When Izuku goes 'rogue'? And when he heroically goes to hunt him down? One of the first thing he does is talk about how he's so great because he has One For All, and then calls him an All Might wannabie*.

And you know what? I just talked about Class A hunting down Izuku recently, but let's talk about that more, because I hate it so much.

I really, honestly wonder if Hori is blind to the parallel he set up here, or if he invoked it on purpose, to try and show how Bakugou has 'improved'.

Look back at the first chapter, where we first see Bakugou. Think about that dynamic: Izuku, beaten down, on one side, while on the other, Bakugou. Strong, proud, with minions at his back, all of them ready to throw down at his command.

The thing is? The first time is shown as clearly villainous in nature, a cruel bully against someone who is weak but heroic. The second time, everything is the same, but it's shown differently. Bakugou is being shown as heroic for doing this, heroic for leading Izuku's friends to hunt him down, heroic for attacking him.

*And ah, Bakugou the Hypocrite. Let's finish this up by talking about Bakugou's name. When we first talk about hero names, Bakugou's naming sense is much like it is for his final name, and Midnight promptly shoots down every one of them because, well, they aren't heroic, and the story pokes fun at him a little because he clearly doesn't get it.

Then it's the War Arc. Bakugou has 'grown', there's all this hype for his big heroics moments, and he announces his new name... Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight. And I'm just wondering... am I getting punked? This is the the same shit as before! No, actually it's worse than that, it's bigger, longer, and more ridiculous.

The universal response is that it's tacky. Nejire thinks it's disgusting. Mirio literally thinks it's a joke.

But the story itself treats it seriously, and over time? People start accepting it, taking it seriously as well, treating that stupid name with respect. What the fuck kind of hero name has the word murder in it? What kind of hero calls himself a god?

And finally, it's Dynamight. Which resembles All Might, the Greatest, Most Beloved Hero, the one Bakugou has always considered the best and viewed as his goal to surpass.

And yet he says that Izuku, who is calling himself Deku, is the one viewing himself as an All Might wannabie.

#this got way too long #basically an ask at this point #bnha critical #mha critical #bakugou critical #anti bakugo #izuku deserves better #izuku is basiclly an abuse victim #why doesn't izuku have burn scars? #the power dynamics of saving #'change and improvement' are hollow words without context #bakugou's SCP Worthy Tsundere Field #Izuku is an unreliable narrator #AP Shot makes no sense #Bakugou's development is like watching someone get over an infection of Morals

[m1d-45]

Let it be known that I love writing fluff, and I listen to character audios sometimes. SO! I came up with a cute idea for sagau imposter au. I heard somewhere that Xiao's adeptus form is a bird, so I wonder, what kind of bird? And that got me thinking. Xiao being a little song bird, or perhaps even a cardinal.

Now imagine: while looking for the imposter, Xiao stumbles upon them sitting beneath a tree, just feeding some birds. Said birds are absolutely loving the attention since the creator of Teyvat is giving them food and love!

Xiao watches, rather curious. The creator he knows hates birds, because they always dive and cause problems for them. But now... these little birds have completely abandoned any fear they may hold for human beings, happily landing on the hands and shoulders of this supposed imposter.

So he decides to test something.

Xiao turns into a small bird and approaches cautiously. In his smaller form, he's vulnerable to attack. But the person before him doesn't try to hurt him. Rather, they smile and call him "little friend" as they offer food to him. In his distrust, he bites them with his sharp beak.

His heart shatters when he sees divine blood spilling from the wound.

He's about to fly away, get as far away from here as he can. He found the true creator, and instead of worshipping them, he bit them! He caused them to bleed, he shouldn't even be near them-!

His mind stills when they pet his feathered head.

They murmur kind words to him, apologizing to him. They believed that they had startled him, that he bit to protect himself. They forgave him, they felt no hatred towards him, no anger or disappointment. Instead, they offered some chopped almonds, hoping he'd prefer that over bird seed.

He sang for them as he perched on their shoulder.

After that, he did his best to secretly protect the creator he'd harmed. He would adopt his smaller form and sing for them when they felt sad, and he'd use his human form to guard them from a distance. Yes, it made his chest ache whenever they looked at him with fear when they saw his more human form, but the yaksha only shook it off. It only made sense that you'd be scared. He was a frightening person, one that had tried to harm you before. He refused to try and change your feelings towards him. He didn't have the right.

He would be content to sing for you as a harmless bird.

-sibling anon (sorry if this is out of character for him I just like the idea)

oh….. he’s so soft…..

xiao hovering near the edge of the crowd, at first, drawing your attention since he doesn’t seem to be eating any of the seed you’d passed out.

when he finally hops within arms reach, you reach to nudge some of the food next to him closer, only to quickly whip your hand back. the birds around (on) you all flutter at the sudden movement, but you inspect your finger, the blue blood of teyvat welling up. your instinct is to stick it in your mouth, but that doesn’t seem safe considering a bird bit it, so you dab at it with a napkin.

the bird cries and flaps his wings, distraught, and your heart hurts. poor guy, you probably scared him, moving so quickly.

you pull out some chopped almonds from your pocket. the plan was to have them as a snack, but now… you put a few in your palm and close your hand around it, reaching forward to gently run two fingers over the birds back.

the other birds in the area seemed receptive to that, and this one does too, calming down considerably.

you take your hand back, opening your palm to drop the almonds on the floor, nudging them close before backing off.

“there you go,” you murmur, as the bird dips down to inspect the food. “i won’t hurt you.”

you allow yourself a silent cheer when it eats one of the almond pieces.

you see the small bird fluttering around you often, always on the edge of your vision. it’s easy to identify, the purple patch of feathers on its forehead easily standing out, and you’re always certain to push some food over to it. almonds, not birdseed.

the bird is a dark blue-teal, the underside of its wings a softer blue. it’s like no other bird you’ve seen in liyue, something that quickly catches your attention.

you brush some dirt off you as you stand, noting the way the bird immediately looks up from its food, unlike the others, to flap up into the tree you were sitting under.

you crack a smile, carefully reaching a finger for it. you’re slower this time, cautious of its skittish nature, but it lets you approach. when you carefully pet over its head, the birds eyes close.

your smile grows, and you try not to laugh at how confused the bird seems when you pull your hand away.

“i have to go,” you explain. “the millelith… they’re getting too close again. i won’t be able to see you again, little friend.”

the bird chirps, nearly indignant, and you do laugh this time. putting a small piece of almond on the branch in front of it, you wave goodbye to the other birds, seeing the blue one hadn’t touched the almond.

you frown. hopefully it’ll be alright….

xiao watches you until you’re out of sight, and even then, he stays on the branch.

you…. he’d forgotten you were being hunted by the millelith. he’d forgotten the order to look out for you. he’d forgotten the qixing called you a criminal.

who could blame him? it was easy to forget everything at your side, when you carefully ran your fingers over his feathers, scratching at his jaw with the edge of your nail. yes, he was vulnerable as a bird, but it was easy to be vulnerable with you. it was easy to be open, to sing as best he could in this form, to allow himself close enough to see the way your eyes lit up whenever another bird landed on your outstretched finger.

xiao dropped to the ground, morphing back into his human form. predictably, the birds cawed and flew away quickly. he watched them go, his mind contrasting it with how readily they flocked to you.

you…

he turned to the branch he was on, to the small almond piece left behind. the small symbol of your care, of how you recognized that he didn’t touch the birdseed and instead offered him your own food to eat. normally he wouldn’t lower himself to eating off the ground at all, let along bird food, but almonds weren’t awful and you seemed so happy when he ate..

xiao looked back to where you’d gone, to the sandbearer trees swaying in a soft wind.

he allowed his form to fall away and spread his wings, taking flight on the same breeze that urged you along.

perhaps he’d forget his orders for a little while longer, if it meant he could spend that time with you.

perhaps he’d forget his orders for a little longer, if it meant he’d get to spend that time with you.

#m1d : [chats] #m1d : [secrets] #sibling anon #bird!xiao shenanigans #btw he’s pretty in character #you can add a dash of a ‘mysterious calm in the air’ if you wanna be certain but he’s oretty pretty good as is #also! let it be known that i too like fluff!! #< been meaning to write a piece based on hugs ppl would give for a while now #dilucs near the top of the list which is kinda funny considering the shit i’m (hopefully) gonna pot tonight #post* whoop #post-valentines day sadness #this got WAY too long #forgive the old format i wasn’t gonna try n find more photos of liyue than i already have #writing this was hell. thanks tumblr. i really appreciate you glitching out my drafts. #i’m trying to save my writer energy to wrap up dilucs piece COME ON I DONT NEED THIS #had to write this on the website version of tumblr ugh. dislike. #anyway debating adding this to the masterlist bc it’s… so nice… #the vibes….. immaculate…. #TUMBLR DELETED HALF MY FUCKING WRITING WHEN IT HIT POST WHAT THE FUCK #THIS IS WHY I WRITE ELSEWHERE THEN COPY PASTE TO THIS HELL #FUCK. IT WAS SO GOOD. WHY. #the last half of xiao’s part at the end is the bad shittier version of what i had written originally #i am bitter. but i guess i’ll have to die mad abt it. #ugh. #it cut off the last paragraph AGAIN WHY #hate. >:( #also mushroom anon send help one of my mutuals is doing a letter event in celebration of his 1k what do i do #ok it’s his 800 celebration but STILL HELP #whatever fuck it i’m done trying to get this to work #fuck it we ball

[vialae]

really feel like gortash and ascended astarion wouldn’t get along to comical amounts. like especially with how i write everything where durge accepts bhaal and succeeds in his plans w gortash.

gortash and kaidos planning every awful expansion of their empire out to the minute details. theyve been working at this for years, and finally they see the fruits of their labour and they so deserve these seats they’ve muscled their way into.

and then here comes ascended astarion waltzing into their halls as if he owns them. as if everyone should be kneeling and be so grateful they get to be in his presence. gortash isn’t at all intimidated by it; he’s seen every act and trick there is to play amongst aristocracy. sure a vampire ascendant is physically very strong, but where are his connections? the wealth he earned all on his own? a well established reputation? appearances are everything in the upper-city, after all.

and then to hear this vampire talk to his dearest assassin in that tone. talking down to his equal as if he was somehow better than him. gortash wouldn’t stop it in the moment because he doesn’t want to make kaidos seem like someone who can’t fight his own battles, but he does ask about it when they’re alone. why do you let him talk to you that way? he has no right to. gortash is also a very petty man, and so whenever astarion addresses him personally, he will use the same condescending tone in response. nobody is undermining gortash in his own halls.

for a vampire ascendant who has only had this rush of power for a matter of months to act this way in front of a man who has spent the last 40ish years dragging himself to the spot he is in now. nobody ever gifted gortash any power - there was no ritual he could ever override. no, he had to fight, scheme and crawl his way up. he deserves to be sat in these halls. gortash is only tolerating his presence because kaidos insists he can be useful. there is information a vampire can get a lot easier than a group of banite soldiers can. the looks gortash gives this ascendant vampire let him know that he is only staying his hand because his beloved wants him to.

#this got WAY too long #and yes I am very aware of how non canon and self indulgent this all is #I am also not tagging this properly because I enjoy everything I do staying in the little delusional gortash girly corner #it’s also important to know that the durge runs i use as a base for my fics had everything pick their ‘get worse’ options #because Kaidos isn’t going down alone #I am also not excusing any of these fucks #they are all evil and delusional and I find it easier to write stuff out from their awful deluded POVs #just in case the last paragraph sounds like I’m an apologist No Enver is awful!!!

[sleepyperefix]

The barbie movie isnt perfect but I am kinda confused as to how many people think it's anti-men. It is a feminist movie and as such among other things, it holds a mirror up showing how we as men do ourselves a disservice by relying our self worth (and by proxy form our identities) on manhood and capabilities, instead of just who we are as individuals who exist. The movie is incredibly on the nose, which at first I thought was a flaw, but then I remembered that I have seen discussions where it was obvious that those sentiments actually need to be said out loud as they not obvious to everyone. On the other side apparently it should have been more clear with how it is not anti-men but also a commentary for all genders about growing and building an identity and self worth outside your designated role and question your world.

This ended up way too long but I hope it is understandable nonetheless. I am going to generalize a lot. Obviously people are not card boards and most men who are secure in themselves have an identity beyond manhood. I am broadly comparing toxic masculinity and gender hierarchies in reality to Barbies and Kens in Barbieland. Also spoilers.

The movie touches on how men, in order to hide their insecurities, lean into their role as man and acquire/max out object-focused (esp. male connotated objects and topics as cars, STEM and technology) knowledge and skills. This is to conform to the capability and providing standards for men, to find an identity within good role fullfilment and also a place in the united/uniform male experience (perfectly seen in 'push' and in men vs. women memes) since diverging from it devalues the own claim to manhood. The good ol' toxic masculinity spiel. Men in the patriarchy cope with the responsibility of power with misogyny, highlighting the perceived gender-dichotomy and how they are just biologically more [insert positively connotated attribute, men have claimed as part of their biology]. Then they assert the claim by 'proving' to be more capable than women. They decide the rules of the game and what a worthy skill is (and for whom), which they then get trained on as early as they are toddlers through toys. It is a lose-lose cycle.

And the Barbies do something similar at the beginning. They celebrate and are named after their professions/capabilities, believed they saved girls in the real world (legacy), and let the Kens worship them. They have more natural self worth and security as Barbies by virtue of being Barbies (just like men build their individual self worth on being man and their object-focused capabilites) but are somewhat empty because they are captives of their own system and habits, never really questioning it. They deserve power and to be worshipped, because they are Barbies. However Kens, at the beginning, are supposed to be empty on the inside and focused solely outwards on Barbies. It is not even that the Barbies want them, but this is how it is supposed to be. They are accessories. Their role inherently doesnt offer worth outside of Barbie, not even in capabilities (just as the women's role often is described as worthy only in relation to men and family). When the positions switched you then see how the Kens still not having the same natural self worth the Barbies had. It is socialized and fundamental, a casualness of design in Barbie society and the Kens are just copying the structure without understanding it and still having their old socialization internalized. Leading to Ken still being unhappy, chasing the same dream, and still insecure as a prestige role needs to be nurtured into natural self worth and with that a belief of deservingness and worthy capabilities to provide and be desired.

The movie then shows how men hold themselves captive in patriarchy, in the real world this is leading to sentiments such as: "Only women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally. A man is only loved under the condition that he provide something" (Chris Rock), which was discussed as if feminism was to blame for the transactional nature of love and not the patriarchy. But then the movie also shows them that they are enough and how to escape the cycle. Accept yourself and fill yourself with self-worth by virtue of existing as an individual. It is an extremely timely message for men in a time when hustling, grinding and becoming a "high value man" is taught to young boys by influencers.

And most importantly it shows that we as humans can all be equal offenders if we have power but are emptily reproducing, insecure, and not reflecting. Ken is not an evil character. At first he is suffering from being oppressed. Not because Barbie doesnt want him, but because he isn't allowed and able yet to be anything other than the unloved and eternally competing and unsure accessory. His fault lies in going 'eye for eye' instead of for equality. Barbieland is said to be perfect but subtextually we are supposed to see that it is not. However, the Barbies are not evil either, they just don't know differently, they reproduce instead of question. This inherent human flaw is seen in them not establishing equality immediately but wanting to ease into it over time. They also are brainwashed in "seconds", because - an this is just my interpretation - they were just reproducing a (more prestige) role and an identity build on profession + role. Our main Barbie did not want to question anything either. In the real world then, men are also not inherently evil, but complicit in evil by naivety or ignorance, and with festering insecurity and lack of self-identity we have the very real potential to become toxic and alt-right. That's how they get you. They pick insecure men and give them a manual: (1) support the patriarchy and right-winged/conservative parties, (2) become capable and able to provide (dont worry, the path has been eased for you), (3) base your self worth on that, you will apear confident. Then women, who in this system have limited options, will want them and they will be powerful and worthy individuals. All in all, this message is as pro-man as feminism usually gets and supported in the movie by the men in the real world. They don't have an evil scheme to hurt someone, they even try to save Barbieland but ultimately cannot let go of their habits (almost like the Barbies) as they are ignorant and reluctant to lose power.

So no, Barbie (2023) is not anti-men. In fact, I felt more understood by this movie than by any other that sugar coats the lose-lose cycle of patriarchy. Barbie leaves at the end and that makes perfect sense. Like Frodo she has been irreversibly changed too much and and Barbieland has not. The Barbies might be capable and secure, but they are also just learning to question their world and changing it and themselves only slowly. The Kens are just starting to become secure and to find themselves outside of Barbies. The stereotypical Barbie on the other side has to go to a place where life might be worse but in the end as complex and full as she now is.

#barbie the movie #barbie movie #barbie 2023 #barbie spoilers #barbie #ken #barbie and ken #feminism #gender roles #identity #toxic masculinity #this got way too long #i am sorry #also about spelling mistakes i just wrote this in one go #anyways i enjoyed the movie #good music too #my rambling

[bagofcheetodust]

I've just realized that I posted Hatred with his new bf with zero context to who he is-

So here's that in excruciating detail + why he looks like the undead

Hatred is the younger brother of one the first spouse's, Fear. He was asked for a rescue from Darkwood if I remember correctly from such and he has stayed in the cult ever since. Both he and Fear are part of the few original cultists from the start of my first save.

Hatred, apart from having pretty good traits for the cult, gets along with anyone fairly easily, his first days in the cult was spent chatting with other members and was already making friends, including with the few mini bosses that I had gathered. There seemed to be no negative interaction when coming to Hatred, even newcomers couldn't resist his bright attitude, flocking to them once he got the chance and only taking a few days before the notification popped up to tell that he was successful in his endeavor.

He's not immortal, and the good tend to die young unfortunately, he was given a grave and layed to rest, surrounded by flowers and candles for stories to tell those who did not get a chance to meet the brightest light in the old faith.

Or at least- that was the plan.

With the revival ritual and plenty of Skull necklaces, Hatred was given the chance to still be an absolute treat for other cultists, he was even Narinders first friend, who didn't even seem to be interested with any of the other members except for the yellow tabby.

Now- here comes my own shit to fuck him up

Revival rituals are not meant to be abused.

It should only be used at least once or twice before leaving the soul to rest for good, three is already pushing it, making members grow tired and weary, almost not paying attention to their surroundings or as if seemingly lost in their own thoughts. Hatred has been revived far too many times and is way passed his due date. What was once a normal healthy tabby is now decaying at the seems due to so much of bringing him back when he should be layed to rest, his eyes are glazed over, making it hard for him to see or give him migrains in bright areas. He reeks of moss and earth, as if he has been buried under wet dirt for decades. Small wounds don't bother to heal anymore and instead peel off, even his fur has become dull and colorless.

He's still such a sweetheart however, he hasn't stopped befriending any of the newcomers, he even maneged to befriend Baal and Aym before they were given back ^^

#this got way too long #im so sorry #i just love my baby boy #hes such a silly little guy #cult of the lamb #digital art #cotl art #art #cotl #cotl relics of the old faith #character art #cotl oc #doodle art #traditional doodle #digital doodle #cult of the lamb oc #oc artwork #oc character #headcanon

[curlyhairedprince]

10 shows and 1 1/2 months of traveling around Europe with my best friend to support our best friend.  

I am having a hard ass time putting into words how much this meant to me. After tour getting delayed and delayed again and seriously thinking that they would just call it off, it finally happened and I can confidently say that nothing has ever been this beautiful and meant more to me ever before. The absolute lack of sleep and driving a ridiculous amount of hours were all so so worth it, every night spend with this wonderful human was just so fucking healing. To just get to see him be himself on stage, to see how much fun he has and how much all of this, the fans, mean to him is so overwhelming. I cannot tell you how much I love him, it’s simply impossible and I can’t thank him enough for being this wonderful person. 

Can’t thank him enough for just knowing how much this means, cause he really really does, for acknowledging and for giving soso much support back to us. This doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else but the mutual understanding we got with him through this tour is all I need. This is the safest and most appreciated I have ever ever ever felt. So thank you for him just being himself, it will always be enough. Also to everyone else that attended some shows with us, the ones we got the know and the ones we just had the times of our lives with in the pits without even knowing their names, this would not have been even half as special without this absolute wonderful and joyous atmosphere at every single one of the concerts. As Harry said, there are no other people I would rather have shared these stadiums and arenas with.

The biggest thank you to my best friend for doing this insane thing with me, for not even questioning one thing, being the most supportive person ever and for loving H just as much as I do. I know they don’t wanna hear it, but I gotta be emo about it for one second ajsdhjksahf.

And last but not least, thanks to Live Nation for being stupid fucks and thus giving us the best end of the tour show, amongst other things, couldn’t have done it without your lack of critical thinking xx 

#this has been brought to you by me listening to loml on repeat #and the last sentence isnt irony their stupidity rlly made 3/10 shows even better sjddhsjkh #this got way too long #way way way too long i am sorry #nobody will care but i just wanted it on my blog so #my postthings

[petitelepus]

Minimus x performer bot reader ?? Plz n ty

Swerve's bar wasn't exactly the fanciest place to go if you wanted to enjoy some refined culture. The minibot played mainly human music, and sure, it was different from old Cybertronian songs passed down from generation to generation, but even those songs started to sound the same.

So when a superstar like you asked if you could perform in the famous Lost Light, all the places in Swerve's bar were sold out quicker than the minibot could ever think.

The Bots, they've all heard of you and most of them have seen your show in their datapads.

You were famous for your singing; besides Cybertron, you performed on alien planets and even Earth. What made you so special was your ability to adapt.

That's how you claimed to have survived the long war and what made you so famous. Not to mention, you were quite a looker. Bots and Cons would and could try to court you, but you elegantly and kindly turned them down so they didn't even get angry for being rejected. All they could think was that they got to talk to you and how pretty your smile had been.

So now that you were singing in Swerve's bar, you had every mech and femme looking at you on the quickly build-together stage as you sang from the bottom of your Spark.

As you sang, no one paid attention when Minimus Ambus sat on the bar stool and started to listen, but you noticed him in the crowd.

You smiled as you sang and winked, and the Bots left and right thought you were winking at them, but your wink was meant for the small green Bot. Not that he knew.

No one knew it, but Minimus Ambus was perhaps your biggest fan. Your take on old Cybertronian hymns and even human songs were too beautiful for him to pass.

And little did he know, you were perhaps his biggest fan.

After you had been singing for an hour or two, you called a break. Bots whined after you, but you just giggled and winked again.

"At ease Autobots, I'll just rest my intake a second, and after the show, I'll sign some autographs and take photos with you guys!" You laughed heartily and the whole bar cheered as you disappeared to your makeshift room.

Minimus sighed dreamily as he turned to order from Swerve, but the bartender instead slipped him a little folded note.

"What's this?" Minimus asked and the red and white mech shrugged, "No clue, the star wanted you to have it."

Minimus was confused, but before he could ask all the Bots with dry intakes came to the bar to order now that you were resting, as no one wanted to do so in the middle of your singing, and they wanted Swerve's attention.

There were so many Bots bigger than Minimus so he quickly got out and walked to the more open area of the bar and unfolded the folded note.

'Meet me on timeout in my room' It read and on the bottom of the note was a clear lip mark made with lipstick and a kiss.

The small Bot blinked and looked around if anyone saw his note, but all the bots were too busy getting a drink for themselves to pay attention to him.

So Minimus left the bar and walked to the room that Rodimus had generously given to you as your own to use during your stay in Lost Light.

He knocked on the door carefully and you called him in with that sweet voice of yours. The green minibot entered and saw you reapplying your lipstick in front of a huge mirror. Once the door closed behind him, you put the makeup down and turned to address him.

"Minimus Ambus!" You called out as if you two were old friends and you quickly closed the distance between you two so you could hug the shorter Bot.

"I can't even begin to describe how happy I am to finally meet you!" You cheered happily and Minimus blinked.

"I'm sorry, but how do you know me?" He asked and you let go of him so you could properly look at him.

"I know things. That's what happens when you travel and entertain people and creatures of all kinds." You smiled, "And I heard stories about this load bearer that held the legend of Ultra Magnus alive and I knew I must meet you!"

"I'm flattered..." Minimus nodded, "But why? Many don't really appreciate Ultra Magnus, or me, correcting them nonstop."

"I was once in a bad place, both body, and mind, and on verge of going to Relinquishment Clinic to end it all... That's when I saw Ultra Magnus, all high and mighty, mister Perfect, standing tall and proud and I fell for him, hard."

You chuckled lightly, "I know it makes no sense, but when I saw you standing there I was filled with admiration. I wanted to become a Bot that would be able to charm even Ultra Magnus himself."

"I- I see." Minimus coughed, trying to hide his stutter.

"Tell me, Ultra Magnus- No, Minimus Ambus..." You placed his hands over your spark chamber and leaned so close to him that your lips graced his audials and whispered, "Did I make your Spark flutter like you made mine?"

Minimus swallowed nervously and he tried to answer, he really did, but he couldn't do anything more than stutter. You had rendered him speechless. You pulled back and smiled, "I'll take that as a yes."

"I'm... I'm flattered by your confession." He said and you smiled, "I'm happy. When I'm singing there with all eyes on me, I truly feel alive and I feel like I owe all that to you."

You took Minimus' hands to yours and held them like he was made of glass, "If I may be bold... I would like to join Lost Light!"

"What?!" The green minibot gasped and you smiled, "That way I could always sing and be close to you! I would like to- No, love to spend more time with you and get to know the mech who once saved my life and gave it a meaning."

"I..." Minimus cleared his intake, "I'll work out a meeting with Rodimus and Megatron. You are welcome to join the meeting so you can pitch in your side of the story."

"I would love that Minimus." You said happily and before he knew what happened, you kissed his cheek. The small bot blushed as you pulled back and grinned, "Let's head back. I still have to sing for my new crew!"

Minimus nodded, stunned to silence. He walked you back to the bar where you took your place on the stage and started singing again and just like magic, Bots took their places so they could admire you better.

Minimus took his earlier place by the bar and ordered some engex from Swerve, who delivered the drink quickly. The green bot nodded thanks and took a sip as he looked up at you.

You were singing about new adventures and lovers, and everyone listened, unaware of the conversation you and Minimus just had a moment ago.

He wasn't sure if the conversation you had was real himself. All he knew, he might have imagined the whole thing. Not until Swerve looked at him.

"Is that... Is that lipstick on your cheek?" The red and white mech asked and Minimus flinched, his hand going to the cheek you kissed earlier.

You saw him touch the spot on his cheek that you marked with your lips and grinned wider and sang louder, letting the whole bar hear the love and admiration you held for him in your spark.

#cybertronianviking #mtmte #transformers #transformers mtmte #minimus ambus #ultra magnus #swerve #reader #reader insert #writing #my writing #This got WAY TOO LONG #But enjoy it! #Enjoy!

[delladuck]

this is old news but i am so glad paget brewster accidentally exposed the lies of the ducktales crew (mostly frank angones and matt whateverberg). they lied so much about the finale being “planned from the start” and that they “”knew”” that season 3 was their last season. continuinally said it wasn’t cancelled to everyone on twitter, but i always knew better. it basically was cancelled bc they weren’t renewed for a season 4, idk why they are so butt-hurt to admit it. i love my ducks, but ducktales genuinely left me so bitter because of everything (rushed ending, so many loose ends, bloated cast, events happening off-screen having to rely on word of god for way too many important events, and so much more). i don’t trust those men and i hope their egos were bruised from this news being released. ducktales was so great, but they fumbled the bag so much that i don’t even want to rewatch it anymore. thank god duck fans have comics and 86 years worth of donald duck content to enjoy.

#i would love to tag this #but meh #i don’t want die hard fans of dt17 to read and get mad at me #i hate frank angones there i said it #i will say that dt17 did a great job at integrating a lot of references to barks and rosa #and can be a great start for beginning duck fans to help them get familiar to what is in store #the only problem is ppl will watch it and not stray outside of duck content outside of dt17 #i know that no della is a struggle but i luv luv love donald n the nephews they r so silly and epic! #ugh the female characters rlly are super good in dt17 #ok i rambled a lot #i have a love/hate relationship w this show #it is awesome it written bad it made donald my one of my favorite character and they shelved him for everything #that’s a different thing to attack entirely #this got way too long

[scarletlarvesta]

A fun Pyro for you

And a closeup of the profile picture cause I think it's cute

#scarletlarvesta art #my art #team fortress 2 #tf2 #pyro team fortress 2 #pyro #pyro tf2 #tf2 pyro #fanart #where are all the other gas cans you ask? #shhhhh dont worry about it #(i got lazy) #idk whos taking the picture #demo or soldier maybe #also i need to learn how to draw faster this took way too long

[wardingshout]

Zelda goes mushroom girl

#tloz #a link to the past #zelda #link #my art #I was happy with that first one but for some reason decided it still needed a companion piece so I spent way too long on that second one... #I don't think there was any time during the progress where I was happy with it but hfduhdfu at least I got to Attempt drawing moss hell yea #I also at some point sat in Pyu's art stream and said I enjoy drawing legs As I was being murdered by the infamously impossibe (imo) squat. #it's ok I had fun !! but I need to learn how to let doodles be doodles or I'll never finish stuff at this rate dfsuhfd #if everything in my tloz tag looks like it was drawn by different people uuuh 2023 was art crisis year ngl...... #I'm falling back into my old ways rn though #anyway I think about these two a lot I think they're both stone faced and awkward ppl in different ways but they try rly hard to be friends #like I like to think it starts out so incredibly awkward and a bit sad bc they keep stepping over each other's toes accidentally the harder #they try but idk they find comfy middle ground idk in my brain they have a very interesting friendship I wanna get around to drawing it #in a proper way that might make sense.... #if I don't write 200 tags I will die maybe it's bc I grew up on dA or smth #and yes I know how to find 1 (one) type of mushroom /I/ am not mushroom girl unfortunately smh

[nonasbirthday]

Clear as mud! But I expect nothing less from a Homestuck 🫡

#this is a fine and perfectly reasonable way to have ordered groups of nine relate to each other :) #this took me way too long to make and i know people are gonna come into my notes and tell me what i got wrong #which is fine lol there are many smart folks here #i am not budging on Anastasia being responsible for the 'reconstruction' step though. TWICE in GTN the Ninth is linked to reconstruction #and i think the fifth preserves the spirit (step 1). #perfunctory image id in alt text #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #the locked tomb spoilers #nonasbirthday #enumeration in the locked tomb

[ryanthel0ser]

Alright so I'll never play gacha games, I actively dislike them.

But...lord have mercy in heaven above

#on top of the fact he's got multiple checkmarks for my type as a country girl myself this is appealing to me in ways i didnt think it would #robot aspects mixed in with some goth aspects mixed in with western LORDY #AND he's a gunslinger with long mostly white hair #in the chaps too...catch me at the saloon later #*loops She Keeps Me Up by Nickleback* #i need his voice lines like yesterday #they cooked him up just for me #honkai star rail #hsr #hsr boothill #boothill

[antirepurp]

revisited the old "they descended from ancients + shadow was made by them" concept and put more thought into the markings this time, that and i took cues from their concept arts as a treat for myself. no chaos forms this time bc if this has to sit on my hard drive any longer im going to start running up the walls hee hoo

(old art + original concept for the curious i suppose)

#sonic boom #sonic the hedgehog #tails the fox #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #sticks the badger #shadow the hedgehog #purp art #this took me way too long and i struggled with the poses way too much and it did not cure my art slump. oh well #at least i got to compare this to my old art and feel like i've improved #anyway i need a new tag for this shit so i can like. revamp it from the ground up #bygone ancients #<- that works actually i'll add it to my nav page at some point #sonic #sth

[dieselocelot]

yuhhh.... process pics below cut

#five nights at freddy's #fnaf #fnaf movie #william afton #steve raglan #springtrap #my art #this took way too long. I got lazy. whatever