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#<- writes things people dont usually look for. which. i get why nobody interacts but cmon. one comment maybe??? one??
pyrriax · 4 months
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gotta love concepting fics and debating whether i put it all as a single "chapter" / weirdly formatted oneshot or put it in four separate chapters. i have time to think about it but also this line is . fun
Lesson Zero: You are going to destroy the world, and you will do so with a smile on your face.
^ this is the piece that closes the fic. for context.
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icy-blue-rose · 3 years
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Okay I just HAVE TO get this off my chest right now.
I was watching the new episode of 2.43 seiin koukou danshi volley-bu, and well, I decided to check out the comment section because hey! I want to hear what other fans of the series have to say, liked, and so on.
Instead however-
I was met by the most horrid comment section it reminded me why I usually dont actually interact with the anime community (and usually just talk to myself or make posts like this one that nobody will read aha)
But shit, I like, felt so uncomfortable.
Now before I rant a bit, if anyone skimming this may get offended let me make something clear.
If you just arent into the series, or don't like the show/series, then that's fair.
I have literally no problem if you dont like the show, or are simply expressing that you just dont like it and list your own reasons, I completely respect people's opinions and right to openly criticize series, even if I dont agree with it.
However, the following, while I wont actually attack people for it, just made me so uncomfortable for liking the show that I had to talk about it.
So here we go.
2.43 seiin koukou danshi volley-bu is not a sports shonen and so you shouldnt expect it to be written and animated like one.
People are free to say they dont like the animation, artstyle, or way the series is written, we all have our personal tastes.
But, like, it felt like non of the people commenting had a single brain cell.
No I am not exaggerating.
This series is written is a very particular way, one that I'm ABSOLUTELY loving.
I'm not fond of most writing styles and usually have a hard time reading novels but this one I particularly enjoy.
However, it felt like everyone was bashing it for how it's being written, not understanding what the author is doing or setting up, not even understanding the basic structure or style the author has used for their series.
It honestly made alot of the people complaining sound really dumb, no offence, but you all sound stupid.
Then there were our typical HUGE swarm of "ewww gaaaay, omg he blushed, omg so cringe, ewwww"
Which I mean, every sports anime has so I'm used to the endless flood of these types of comments but I find them really annoying because dont get me wrong.
I'm Queer.
I like LGBT anime/manga but I also really enjoy Yaoi and Yuri in it's pure ridiculous form at times (not I'm not saying all BL or GL is the same, I dont think I need to get into this rn)
And of course I enjoy shamelessly shipping and headcanoning characters as well, whatever I want because it's fun and I am aloud to HEADCANON all I want.
So or course I like to jokingly ship sports anime characters for fun, even if I dont genuinly ship it , or sometimes do.
Because I like certain relationship dynamics they can have that are never explored in anime/manga.
However, being serious for a second, I dont genuinly go around saying characters are "Gay for sure 100% yeeee"
People blush at their friends. People and characters can have deep bonds and relationships that arent romantic whatsoever and can STILL feel more like a romance than a real romance, despite it not being intended in that way at all.
It's so stupid to bash a character for "ewww gaaaay shit" when they blush at, someone they genuinly care about and have a non romantic relationship with?
Idk it just makes them seem dumb, internet trolls suck and I usually ignore them, I just feel like complaining today.
In the end I must say, the most annoying group of people in the comments were, as any 2.43 seiin koukou danshi volley-bu fan has seen, the fucking haikyuu fandom.
I feel like I should note that I love haikyuu, I do, it's great, for a sports shonen I do enjoy it alot.
After all I do love me some sports shonens.
But haikyuu fans need to buy some brain cells or critical thinking abilities.
Listen, to all the normal haikyuu fans like myself, I salute you and this is in no way direct towards any of you.
It's for the....other ones.
Haikyuu and 2.43 seiin koukou danshi volley-bu have a couple things in common.
Volleyball
Their source material started getting serialized around the same times
Some character designs look similar.
And I'd say that's about it.
Neither one "copied" a premise from the other.
Okay? Haikyuu fans? For fuck sake? Can you stop "omg they really are running out of ideas huh"
"Omg this is a haikyuu rip off"
"Omg this is a watered down shitty haikyuu knockoff"
I'm going to shoot myself I swear to god shut up.
No.
No.
And fucking no.
It isnt. They started coming out in the same few years, and start completely different, a knock off? How?
I dont even see it one bit.
Now on the topic of some similar character designs.
To put it in a way haikyuu fans would understand, I've seen over 12 Kageyama "lookalikes" in anime, ones from LONG BEFORE haikyuu, and long after.
It's literally a common thing in any media platform, but we've all seen the same character design used before in diffrent shows.
It's not new, character designs were not stolen, please get a fucking brain cell.
Also he looks more like Saiki.K in most of the anime shots in my opinion.
Now, if you like haikyuu and you're looking for another sports shonen to
Live up to the hype, have the same premise kinda or just that awesome animation and typical sports shonen storyline you love to fill the void until another haikyuu season comes out.
Just feel like watching another sports shonen in general.
It isnt the show for you.
Now if you want to check out a volleyball show, check it out and form your own opinion on it and for the love of god dont compare it to haikyuu.
It's a sports drama.
If you like shes like Stars Align, Battery, or even Ahiru no Sora (which I feel has a nice balance of sports and drama, rather then focusing on either category, it balances both really well) then this is a show for you to check out.
I've watched I think 4 diffrent baseball anime? Maybe 5?
I never once compared them to each other while watching.
While comparisons are fun to do! I love reading about parallels, series that inspired other series and examples of how it was done and all that awesome jazz!
It's not the same as actively comparing a show to another one while you watch it.
Especially when they arent even in the same genre category.
Anyways this probably seems like a pointless rant but the comment section actually crushed my week long built up excitement for the new episode, cause I had the misfortune of opening it first to see who else was hyped and enjoyed the episode, only to find well, all of this crap.
And fans like me who tried to politely digress and explain how the writing style is different than the average sports series, or explain why it's written how it is, alot of them got met with SWARMS of more ignorant and just plain ride comments.
Also all my "you're fucking stupid" comments in this rant, are directed towards those people in particular.
Now if you are simply genuinly confused about why there are time skips, why it's written how it is, or any other things, this is not directed at you.
Not at all.
Not understanding a writing/directing style is a completely innocent thing and there are many fans who would be happy to explain it.
The hate is directly towards the arrogant, annoying, internet trolls and haikyuu fandom who has been getting annoying lately? Especially about this show.
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jubberry · 3 years
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oohkay let's go tua with those ship asks: fiveya, horrance and alluther.
thanks el i love you
Send me a ship and I'll answer three questions based on if I ship it or not.
fiveya obvs i ship this since this is 90% of my tua drawings lol
1. ill wait ill wait (to be the one) by georgiestauffenberg made me ship it cause holy fuck dude. I dont know if i ship them romantically when i saw them onscreen cause first of all, age difference is kinda weird lmao. Second, they dont rlly interact much outside literally the first couple of eps. But he was so soft for her, and i felt like they had so much unexplored history.
so i looked at fanfics cause i was wondering if ppl still ship it, then i liked the description of this one so i gave it a go.
Basically the premise is that vanya dates a much older man who seems to know a lot about her. And it was amazingly in character and just provided their characters some depth that u wouldnt find outside of a romantic relationship between them. (The implication of five pining while she doesnt know who he is, their missed chances when he time travelled, fives missed chances of living and having a 'normal' life bec of his own hubris, vanyas insecurity and being able to open up bec shes with someone whos known her since childhood). Its so sweet and thats how i was like, oh yep i can do so much more with these two, and what has kept me interested in drawing them etc.
2. My favourite things are the shippers cause i made some friends in the fandom who are super cool and supportive! I dont get super involved in fandoms and usually just watch from afar so finding people to talk to and muck around with in this tiny fandom is super cool 😭
Though thats not to say I havent come across some bad apples in this fandom and things that I dont like. I think thats the importance of carving out a place for yourself and ur friends in fandom tho.
Another thing I like about the ship itself, i just like the grumpy person whos soft for one person trope. Its so cute. I like all the little clues in canon on how their relationship as kids is quite warm, which is interesting cause five is basically the star student and he can be quite cold vs vanya who is the black sheep of the family.
I also like how five likes her powers even when she caused the apocalypse he spent the majority of his life in lol. Like its a popular hc that five is just a wife guy and i love that.
I see vanya as the type who has a lot of love to give, and she sometimes has unrealistic expectations of what her partner can give. Betrayal and lies really angers her, but also when her partner cannot meet her expectations of love she gets very upset bec its also an indication of how shes not good enough, or not loveable enough to be able to have this in the relationship (her insecurity means every failing always comes back to her, even if its out of her control).
I feel like five would be a level-headed person enough in the relationship to not be afraid to say 'vanya ur being stupid' (ie. the s2 confrontation lmao). Also, five's personality means she will never have to doubt his actions bec she knows hes the type who will not give u the moment of the day if hes not interested.
Not to mention they also have the whole apocalypse vs. saviour, hero/villain thing. Theres just a lot to explore!
3. I probably have several. But mostly I dont mind five being a dick to vanya bec first, even if the appeal is hes soft to her hes already kind of a dick in canon lmao. Also, vanya isnt a child. Shes grown and she can handle petty af things like five telling her shes not good at cooking lol. I also dont mind it cause I feel like people are getting too afraid to write... conflict for fear or portraying an abusive relationship or smth. Like, chill. Conflict is fine, resolving it is how u get a story. However in saying that, nobody should be obligated to write any way unless you want to! Fanfic is for comfort so if what your doing is making u happy then its good enough!
horrance which i also ship but i love the platonic and romantic relationship equally:
1. I came in tua in general not shipping anything so Im honestly not sure. I do remember someone doing a meta before s2 came out that was basically how ben acted weird when klaus summoned dave in s1 that made me go 👀 Otherwise, tua s2 rlly made me like them cause tua FED horrance shippers. Like..... the fact that klaus didnt want ben to leave him, and ben knows thats why he stayed 😢 or the fact that klaus was all over him for some reason???? Somebody also mentioned gay ben once and I resonate with that deeply. Like i get that jill exists but i resonate with gay ben deeply.
2. I love their bickering, theyre so cute together. I just like ben being angry bec hes self aware that hes got both shit and amazing taste. Shit bec he cant believes he likes Klaus (and also amazing also bec Klaus). I think the idea of them being kind of underdogs, theyre not rlly leader types and dont want to be, helps them bond together even in platonic horrance. They're both down to earth, and even tho they can annoy each other, they also know if they want a space to feel comfortable its with each other. Theyre not pressured by rivalry over leadership, or any sort of competition.
I love the idea that even tho ben is like klaus's ''conscience'', hes also down for chaos and bitchy. I feel like klaus rlly enabled that side of him, its not exactly a good thing but its p funny lol
3. I know some people think their dynamic is unhealthy but i dont care lol
alluther. So id say i dont ship this, mostly due to the fact that im not invested? Just like all tua ships so far I rlly came out not wanting anything but platonic relationships cause I feel tua doesnt do romance very well. With alluther, theyre so cute but im not super invested in either of their chars so they havent stuck for me. I appreciate seeing them and talking about them tho, and I'm def open to exploring them further.
1. I think tua canon romances are just so lackluster 😔 Idk who writes the romances but I was just like 'nice' but afterwards I dont really think about them. I love their dance scene and the message behind it! Otherwise, theyre sweet like most of the tua romances but im not super invested, same with all the non canon ships.
2. I really feel like tua needs to decide on what their relationship is. Like, just say its incest or not and stick with it 👀 Or if you wanna support it or not, just make up ur mind. I think I would've liked it better if I found the characters more interesting. Allison especially I feel like suffers from the fact that tua just doesn't want to make her ''mean''. They want to make her supportive and are less interested in making her flawed (ie. she should've had a conflict with Vanya in s2, but the writers didnt want to write the girls fighting which is stupid imo and not what that conflict is about).
In regards to Alluther, the scene where Allison gets annoyed at Luther for sleeping with someone else felt out of line. Like, how are you marrying other people and moving on but Luther isn't allowed to? But honestly, I don't mind if they actually just acknowledge it and make it a deliberate part of Allison's trait that Allison can expect a certain loyalty automatically from other people (which can tie in to her childhood being a star, and the rumour).
Luther is a big simp for Allison, which is sweet, but at the same time it would be nice to have him explore himself for a bit, and who he is outside of the academy. Then maybe they can rekindle their relationship again as new people and see where they go from there.
3. I don't hate them, but they're ok. I'm not super invested in them, just like all the tua canon romance. But I wouldn't mind making content for them if I were a bit more invested in their characters. I love their dance scene in s1 and I feel like its super a underrated portrayal of what their relationship is meant to be. I know no one talks about it but it's just such a great scene, and I'm pretty sure the choreographer was into interpretive dance? The scene had a lot of meaning that I don't see people dig around with.
Essentially I'm pretty sure the fairy lights are obviously a throwback to their childhood together, spending time outside of Reggie. So the dance scene kind of symbolized that pocket of space they made for each other in their life (even if theyre far away, or with other people, they will always have that space for each other).
The way they danced was more like playfighting than dancing, which means their relationship isn't sensual. It's more ''pure'', and romantic. Its basically two kids rekindling their love as adults. I also think this is a response to the incest, cause in s1 tua klaus literally said that 'thank god Regg is not their real father' right before Allison and Luther meet lmao. So its kinda like saying Allison x Luther isnt supposed to be 'ohh step sibling hot' but two people who experienced the same trauma as kids and finding comfort with each other (and rekindling that love after many years).
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tw/venting (the usual)
im so fucking sad its not even funny. like it is?? because im literally fucking pathetic like i cant just let go of shit, and not make myself suffer by just doing too much. but maybe it’s just the social isolation talking. it probably is because im literally so tired of being inside day after day. going outside is fun, sure, but what good is that? if it’s not too hot, it’s raining. and it seems like everyone is doing something fun, and not driving themselves to insanity like me. which is good for them. but why does everyone seem to be doing so well? did i do something to deserve all this? probably. it hasnt fucking ended, so i must really need to get better. and there’s no end to it. no end in sight. people arent getting vaccinated, my parents probably wont let me see my friends in town, or give them a hug? what’s the fucking use then. and school is just the cherry on fucking top. i’ve got two more years of this shit after this year, and for what? college and student loan debt? taxes and living alone until someone comes along to bunk with? then dying at the end. i feel like im being fucking robbed of something. i was boring as hell, and never really went anywhere before the pandemic, but i would beg to go skating, or see a movie. my “teen experience” is just gonna be the sad, depressing, lonely, and anxiety-ridden hellhole that nobody wants to talk about. all the media does is want to talk about how shitty young kids are, and how fucked up we are, but i feel like they may be talking to the wrong people. or maybe i’m just the only one who’s different out of everyone. “ah yeah, younger kids really dont care about the elders, they just want their jobs” i...kinda do care about the elders. all of them actually. queer or not, older people still deserve a fucking seat at the table. i just feel like im on the outside looking in of everything. this country. my own body. gen z. i just feel like shit. absolute shit. and it’s over the same things. literally it never gets better from this like what the hell? what am i supposed to do with the rest of my life if i cant let go of a friendship? or stop being jealous of people having fun when im rotting away inside my room. and for just feeling like a fucking loser, and a bitch who’s personality traits are fictional characters and fun facts about animals. how am i supposed to interact with other people my age? nobody fucking knows who loki is?? no other 15 year old where i live would drag on and on about how fucked up this country is, from an economic, racial, and literally SO MANY STANDPOINTS. no other kid my age, where im from would fucking listen to me talking about characters. because i guess im the only one who fucking cares about this shit. i make myself lonely at this point. like?? could i not have such obscure interests and fixations? cant i just be normal, and be a normal kid? apparently not. and it’s my fault, you cant tell me any different. i could’ve picked any other fun thing in the world, but of course it’s writing fanfiction, and sewing, and getting excited over puckered sleeved shirts. and talking about how certain fish are trans. like? im literally setting myself up for failure, anyways.
 im fucking done with myself.
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starsgivemehp · 3 years
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The Argument Against and Defense of Hetalia
Let me preface this by saying that I have not watched the show or read the manga in a few years now, and thus I am working mostly off of memory and what fan content I see these days, which is not a lot. Also, I am a gentile, and I don’t claim to know a lot about the Jewish community or traditions. I am, however, a writer and I have plenty of practice analyzing and criticizing works of fiction from multiple angles. With that in mind, this essay is an attempt to explain everything that is wrong and not wrong with the show, the comic strips, and the fandom.
I’m putting this under a read more for sheer length, this was 11 pages on Google docs.
Let us start with the list of grievances assembled largely from one post, the majority of which I had to go digging for as the original person in this post who mentioned Hetalia said, and I quote, “i dont feel the need to link a source for [hetalia] because…” and then listed two things, one of which is incorrect entirely. But I digress, I will address each one at a time. The list of grievances is as follows:
It is called ‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia
One of the main characters is a personification of Nazi Germany
The entire point of the series is:
Advocating for eugenics
Racial fetishization
Advocating for fascism
Nazi sympathizing/propaganda
The entire franchise is terrible due to rape jokes, racism, and Holocaust jokes
Hetalia fans are all terrible due to rape jokes and other issues
Death of the author cannot apply to this fandom
There may be more that are in other reblogs of the post in question, and I may add addendums further in this essay, but for the time being, I will address each of these grievances and explain the validity or non-validity of each, from a position understanding of both fans and of non-fans. Thus, in order:
‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia
When people talk about Hetalia, they usually are referring to the anime due to its widespread popularity. However, Hetalia began as a series of strip comics posted on a forum by Hidekaz Himaruya (and I spent a while trying to actually find the original comics, but I can’t, there are links to his blogs there in what I’ve provided). It later was formatted into a manga, and then later became an anime. While it was originally titled Axis Powers: Hetalia and the first two seasons of the show are named as such, it usually is only referred to as Hetalia. The anime seasons after said first two seasons have all been ‘world’ focused: Seasons three and four were titled World Series, season five was titled Beautiful World, season six was titled World Twinkle, and the upcoming season seven is titled World Stars.
For the purposes of tagging everything, I tend to see the tags ‘hetalia’ and ‘hws,’ which is short for Hetalia: World Series. This name of the third and fourth anime seasons is the most widely accepted and used name for the series as a whole. While it is true that, years ago, people referred to it as ‘aph’ for Axis Powers Hetalia, the fans and the series have put that behind them, for good reason. It is understandable, even righteous, to not accept the title ‘Axis Powers.’ It does draw focus to the WW2 era, and place the fascists and nazis as the ‘main characters,’ or even, ‘the good guys,’ which is not the case. Obviously, the Nazis were terrible and the entirety of the Axis Powers did horrible, unspeakable things during the war.
It must be noted, to anybody who has not seen the show or read the manga, that the first one to two seasons do have a ‘focus’ on the WW2 era, per se, but it largely talks about interactions between countries, as they are the personified party, and makes extremely few allusions to the war itself, and none to the Holocaust. I will address that in a later section. For now, the point to make is that after these original two seasons, Hetalia branches out into a much wider worldview, adds several more characters, and focuses more on said characters in individual arcs and offerings of historical facts - as generalized as they may be. Nobody claimed that Hetalia was correct in everything it said, but it aims to play out some historical information in a simplified and humorous way. This is due to the fact that the characters are all singular people meant to personify entire countries, which leads us to point two.
The Personification of Nazi Germany
This is the second complaint of the strand of the post in question that I was presented with, quoted as “one of the main characters is a personification of nazi germany.” This is an entirely incorrect statement. ‘Nazi Germany,’ as people call it, is the state of Germany during the era leading up to and of World War 2. The country is still Germany, the people were still German, the Nazi part comes from the political regime in power, a real world nightmare. In the Hetalia series, the characters are called by their country names, because that is who they personify. This may change at times. For example, the character now known as Turkey was previously called Ottoman Empire. They come to be when civilization starts or a colony is introduced to a place. This can be seen in the strip or episode where China ‘finds’ Japan as a small boy and begins to teach him reading and writing - and Japan thereafter invents hiragana. It can also be seen in the comic where a young child, Iceland, questions who he is and why he knows his people are “different beings” than him. The country that speaks to him (I only have the comic here in my likes in that list, the name isn’t mentioned and it’s been a while, but it might be another of the Scandinavian countries) explains that he is Mr. Iceland, they don’t know why he is Mr. Iceland, but they know he is.
What I am attempting to explain with all of these other examples is that there is no ‘Nazi Germany’ character. There is a character called Germany (or Mr. Germany), and all of his adult life, he has been called Germany. He is never addressed by anything else. He does, however, look remarkably similar to a childhood friend of Italy’s, Holy Roman Empire (or just Holy Rome), but as far as it has been explained in canon, Holy Rome went off somewhere and, later on Germany and Italy met as strangers. The general consensus is, due to the area where the Holy Roman Empire used to be is around-ish Germany, the characters are the same. But never, in any of the comics, anime, or movie, is Germany referred to as Nazi Germany. I don’t believe the word ‘Nazi’ appears at any point in time, even, though I cannot claim I have seen every shred of content, so I may be wrong. But I doubt that very much, as it is not in the nature of the series to do such a thing. Moving on.
Advocating for Eugenics
I will start and end this section by saying that Hetalia was, in the original post, roped in with Attack on Titan, of which (as far as I know) the author advocates for eugenics - or the idea that certain people should not be allowed to produce offspring due to their race or other factors. There is no example of Hetalia content wherein this disgusting opinion is ever mentioned or supported in any way. This is at worst a flat-out lie, and at best lumping Hetalia in with a much worse show that does do this (but I won’t get into that, I have never seen more than a few episodes of Attack on Titan and I don’t care to see any more of it. Throw your opinions or defenses elsewhere, I care 0% about it entirely). I have no more need to prepare a more detailed response to this accusation. It simply is not true.
Racial Fetishization
This particular accusation is a difficult one. Fetishization may be a strong word, as the series is largely a comedy. Everyone gets their turn in the spotlight, so to speak, so I find it hard to plainly state that any one character is fetishized or displayed as the most powerful. There is, of course, Rome, who only appears in small segments as Italy’s grandfather and is, in the series, touted as an amazing empire who had it all. I do not believe this is what the accusation is referring to. This accusation seems to be some sort of insistence that the show and creator believe that white people (or possibly just Germans/Nazis/the Aryan race?) are touted as the most powerful and nobody else can compare. I can confidently say that while that is never said anywhere, there are a few issues. Hetalia, particularly the animated series, had (and may still have) a longstanding issue of whitewashing countries that should not be white. This includes Egypt and Seychelles (who both later got a darker skin tone, probably still not dark enough though) as the worst offenders, and even Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Romano (southern Italy), and so on. Yes, this is a big problem. There is no defense against that. It should not be the case. These characters obviously should have darker skin. I will note, however, that many fans are already completely aware of this, have been complaining about it since the beginning, and tend to draw these characters with more correct skin tones in their fanart. This is a case where yes, the original content is not good, but the fans make their own fixes. If you are angry at Hetalia for whitewashing, good. You should be. But I do not believe this should reflect on the entirety of the content and the fandom (And note that I am not linking any particular fanart here, because I want nobody to go attack any fans).
It is also important to note that yes, a large majority of the series builds upon stereotypes. No, stereotypes are not good. No, you should not assume that the personifications of the countries encompass all citizens of said countries. The entire premise of the show is one person = the embodiment of a country, and that person changes and adapts with the times in terms of uniform and personality. It is extremely hard to do this without stereotyping. Most serious fans are aware of this, and do not in any way believe that these characters represent everyone from these countries. It may be true that much younger fans used to, and it may be true that people do not want to watch the show because stereotypes are, arguably, bad. But do remember that this is a comedy, and every character is picked on. Every one. And it is understandable if this branch of humor is not for you. I, personally, don’t like Family Guy or South Park or any shows like that for their humor. I also don’t attack the people who do. I ignore it.
Advocating for Fascism
This is another area wherein I believe the accuser is simply lumping Hetalia in with the original poster’s subject, Attack on Titan. Again, I will not defend or attack that show, as I do not care about it at all. However, regarding Hetalia, I can confidently say that it does not advocate for fascism. While the first two seasons are (sort of) set in WW2 era, as previously mentioned, the fighting is not really a big part, and nobody is touted as correct - only struggling in the conflict. For example, there is a scene where Germany, post WW1, is shown making cuckoo clocks by hand and lamenting the fact that he has to make so many thousands in order to pay back France. This is by no means painting fascism as a good thing, or explaining anything about how poverty and other struggles lead to the formation and rise of the Nazi party. It is simply a scene where we see a man frustratedly making cuckoo clocks and complaining while France’s big head jeers at him in his imagination. The surrounding scenes and the end of this one are making note of how Italy keeps coming over to his house to try and be friends and Germany keeps kicking him out because Italy is annoying and whiny. The episode further goes on to mention that Germany is attacking France again, and Italy has suddenly become his ally, and he is not happy about it for the aforementioned reasons. Again, this does not in any way paint Germany as being ‘right.’ The purpose of the segment(s) is/are to show him disliking the annoying Italy (whom the show is named for) and trying to get him out of his house before eventually giving up and accepting that they can be friends. Is it all 100% historically accurate? No, not by a long shot. Does it paint him as sympathetic? Sort of, you feel bad for the guy making a thousand cuckoo clocks, but only in the sense that he is one person doing a lot of work, a completely fictional situation. But Italy - and the audience - obviously know that attacking France again is not a good thing, so does it advocate the Nazis or fascism? Also no.
Nazi Sympathizing/Propaganda
I pretty well covered this in the previous section, but I will expand. I have alluded to the first two seasons as “focusing” on WW2, in a way, and also mentioned that this is a generalization of sorts, so here I will attempt to clarify. The first few episodes do, indeed, touch on ‘the way they all met’ in a sense; Germany is starting a war and he reluctantly becomes allies with Italy, and less reluctantly becomes allies with Japan, who examines both of them and decides he is content with this situation. However, none of it is very serious, and these ‘formalities’ give way easily to more humorous personable interactions, such as Italy hugging Japan without warning and the touch-anxious Japan pushing him off and getting flustered, Italy petting a cat and then freaking out when he is licked because a cat’s tongue is rough, the two of them ‘training’ by doing your regular old exercising and jogging and Italy being late, etc etc. Stupid, personable jokes.
On the flip side, the show covers the Allied Powers quite a bit too. A lot of this is the five big ones - America, Britain (/England/UK), France, Russia, and China - all meeting around one table and squabbling about various things. I fondly recall one scene where China arrives late and has a bunch of workers suddenly building a Chinatown in the meeting room because he was hungry and wanted his own food, and the others protesting. They are then offered food and become okay with it, because food. Other such nonsense plays out in other, similar meetings. There is also a segment where the Axis powers are all stranded on an island for… some unknown reason… and they set about attempting to survive via campfire and fishing and such. Twice (three times?) the Allied powers ‘attack’ them on this island via China whacking them each with a wok and, as the three of them are in a sad heap, something interrupts the scene to make the Allies retreat. One time, it is Rome’s sudden and also unexplained entrance across the sky singing a song, and another time, it is England’s preoccupation with a cursed chair. Also, at one point, Austria is playing a piano. Does any of this magic logical, real life sense? No. It’s stupid and funny and has nothing to do with war. These are just personable characters thrown into weird situations so they can be funny, with some extremely mild historical context along the way.
I will note again that WW2 is pretty much completely dropped after these two seasons, with the war hardly addressed at all, and future seasons focus more on other characters. The Scandinavians get to all have fun together, the Baltic trio is mentioned, there is a lot about Switzerland taking care of Liechtenstein (wow I spelled it right after all these years, go me) and being stiff and formal with Austria. There is also plenty about people mistaking Canada for America, and England and France squabbling throughout the years, and Spain finding Romano cute but also very grumpy, etc etc… This series is largely Eurasia-focused, yes, and it can be criticized for not being as diverse as it should be. But boiling it down to ‘Nazi propaganda’ is outright, obliviously false.
I don’t know if this is the best place to put this particular note, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to place it, so here it will go. I would like to mention that in the series, some characters, like Germany and Russia, express outright fear of their ‘bosses’ in certain points in history. It is important to realize that Germany, Japan, America, etc… these characters are not the actual, real-life humans in charge of these countries, but people of a fictional, separate species than humans who grow up as the nation grows and have lives that are affected by these world leaders (we even watch in the show America shooting up from child to young adult as the colonies expand, and England comments on how quickly he grew up - but not as quickly as his people, of course. We’ll get to Davie later). The president of the United States is America’s ‘boss,’ and naturally, that boss changes every time the president changes. The emperor of China is China’s ‘boss.’ It follows, thusly, that at one point, Hitler was Germany’s ‘boss.’ The terrible person himself was alluded to, as far as I know, exactly one time, not by name, and no face was shown. In a very brief scene, Germany laments that his new boss is scary and he was just ordered to go force Austria to come live with him. Said boss is shown as, I believe, an evilly laughing shadowy figure. That’s it. That’s the scene. There is no other mention of Hitler, nor is there any mention of the Holocaust anywhere. One could argue that the show is then trying to say that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but I think such an accusation is frankly absurd. It’s a comedy, it was always a comedy, and what in the fuck would be comedic about a mass genocide in any way? Nothing. None of it is funny. Of course it is not brought up in a comedy.
Rape Jokes, Racism, and Holocaust Jokes
While I did somewhat address racism already in the section about whitewashing and racial fetishization, I have another clarification to make, especially regarding the jokes. A lot of people complain that there are rape jokes throughout the series, and that there are two Holocaust jokes. I will begin by saying yes, this is all true, those things did happen during the course of the show. However, it is important to note that all of those things happened in the English dub of the animated show, and none of these terrible jokes exist in the Japanese/subbed version, or the original comic strips.
The English dub is, on all accounts, pretty terrible. Everyone has an over exaggerated accent, there are the aforementioned jokes, there are name changes (England referred to as Britain, among them, very confusing), and the voice actors themselves make mention in commentaries that their goal in this job was, to paraphrase because I haven’t listened in a while, ‘to be as offensive as possible to absolutely everyone’ (and one of the English dub voice actors is even a convicted sex offender, but that’s it’s own mess).  Not the most glamorous or noble of goals. One could say ‘at least if it’s everyone, it’s not really racism, is it? Just humor?’ There is a case for that. Many comedians will say that they poke fun at everyone to avoid singling anybody out as inherently superior. It cannot be said to be the best way to make humor, but it cannot be said to be the worst way, also. Overall, I don’t like the English dub, I don’t watch it, I prefer the subs. And yes, the subbed version has a few issues of its own, but I can say that at least, no, it does not make any Holocaust or rape jokes. Are those kinds of jokes excusable? Fuck no. They’re completely inappropriate. Should you judge the whole series and fandom based on the grossness of the English dubs? Also no, the people who did the English dubs have zero to do with the original creator, the animators, and the fans. Screw them.
The Fandom Being Terrible
I must again preface by saying I was never super active in the fandom at large. I had my own little niche of friends and I stuck to them and I didn’t often branch out. I did, however, go to cons back in those days, and saw plenty of cosplayers. The main complaint I see regarding the fandom is that most of the fans are completely rabid, make a bunch of rape jokes, and even dress up as ‘Nazi Germany’ (iron cross and red armband and all) and pretend to shoot up synagogues. Now, I have not seen cosplayers do the nazi solute or do such photoshoots, but I can believe that people have done it. I have seen plenty of rabid fans, and some of the OCs created for Hetalia, especially many interpretations of individual states (or Antarctica), were extremely cringey, racist, and overall just not good. And yes, these things are undeniably bad. They are very bad things! Those people should be ashamed. They should know better, regardless of their ages or anything, for fuck’s sake. The nazi salute is not a thing you do jokingly, pretending to shoot people is not a joke. Everyone is aware of this. The people who did, or maybe even still do, those things need a serious sit-down and to be woken the fuck up, because they are acting terrible.
However, it is extremely unfair to paint all Hetalia fans in the same light. That is a very stereotypical thing to do, no? As I mentioned earlier, I stuck to my little niche friend group of fans, and while we all had our own flaws and were younger and kinda dumber, we never did things like that. I never did things like that. Rape jokes were never funny, I never liked them, I never accepted them. I have people I still know who still like Hetalia and they never made those kinds of jokes either. I think, as the years have gone by, a lot of the more rabid fans have died out of the fandom. They’ve either grown the fuck up or they’ve went off to pollute some other fandom. Recognize that, especially in the beginning, the anime was low-budget and had a lot of that old and gross queerbaiting and stuff like that, so it was undeniably a magnet for crazy yaoi fans. But the majority of fanart, fanfics, and just overall fan stuff that I see these days are nothing like that. Overall, the fandom has seriously calmed down. A lot of the focus is much more on taking these characters and applying them to other historical events with more accuracy than the show might give. The history in these fanfics and fanarts may also be of questionable accuracy at times. I personally once wrote a fic where I made allusions to the death of Joan d’Arc and, later, the death of Elizabeth I, but did I add much historic fact? No, do I look like a history major spilling all this? The point of the fic was England - the character - maturing through starting to love one of his rulers and recognizing a terrible thing that he did before. It’s not the best piece of work out there, and maybe someone could point out a few things I did wrong with it, but for what it’s meant to be, it’s harmless. Takes on characters not actually in the series, like Ireland, Scotland, etc etc are generally pretty mature from what I see, fanart tends to just be the characters in various poses and styles. The overall love the fandom has, I think, is in the better character designs and in the very concept of the countries as people who laugh and cry and live through war and peace for thousands of years. And here is where I address the final grievance that I personally saw in the notes of the post which started this whole thought process and essay.
The Death of the Author
A lot of people might not fully understand what ‘The Death of the Author’ means. The death of the author is a belief rooted in the 20th century that the personal intentions, beliefs, and prejudices of the authors of certain works can have no bearing on their produced content, because once it is out in the public, every reader may then have their own interpretation and belief system. By publicizing the content, the author ‘dies’ and the reader is born.
There are some scenarios where this cannot apply. One example is JK Rowling, a very special case of a very problematic woman who happens to be so powerful, and so rich, that consuming any type of official (or even unofficial) Harry Potter anything can and will give her that much more power to spread her TERF bullshit. Let me be frank: Any time that consuming a product is allowing a bigoted or problematic person to gain extra money or extra power that they then use for evil, the death of the author cannot apply. You cannot use it as a moral justification. You might perhaps use it as the reason why you struggle to let go of a fandom near and dear to you, as Harry Potter is to so many people, but you absolutely must recognize that purchasing the books, the movies, or any other official content is outright supporting a TERF.
That in mind, there are dozens of other cases where the death of the author absolutely can apply. The easiest, of course, is with authors who are actually dead, such as Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a complete bigot and racist, an overall terrible person, and his works are saturated in that racism. But he is dead, and his work is very popular, and there are ways to take and use his work that do not contribute further to racism and bigotry. All you have to do is slap a non-racist cthulhu on a page. Make that cthulhu eat everyone equally. That’s a good cthulhu right there, a nice, safe cthulhu.
So where does Hetalia fall in this spectrum of can or cannot have death of the author? I believe it leans more to the side of yes, you can apply it. For one thing, you can definitely find the show for free in some places, and watch it without giving Himaruya a single cent. The comics are also available online for free, and while you might be giving your ‘support’ by being a viewer, I think overall, that’s not only negligible, but does not contribute anything bad? The author of Attack on Titan has many charges levied against him in the post which prompted this, and arguably, giving him any money is bad. But as far as I have seen, while Himaruya might have started out with a flawed premise and may have some whitewashing issues, I have seen nowhere that he funds any kind of racist, nationalistic, fascist, etc anything of any kind. This is not like Chick-Fil-A, where offering any kind of patronage is (or maybe used to be) sinking funds into terrible organizations. This is not supporting literal Nazis, as the complaints claim. This is a largely mediocre series with good parts and bad parts and zero ties to horrific organizations or ideals. Consuming good fan content does not make someone a racist or a bigot or a nazi sympathizer. Even rewatching some old favorite scenes or checking out the new season doesn’t make someone that. By all accounts, the show is flawed but not a means to fund nazis.
The Bad Anything Else
I will now take some time to talk about some other problems Hetalia has, because no, it is by no means flawless. I already discussed the whitewashing and stereotypes and the mess of the English dub, but there is more. I made mention of the fact that battles and seriously bad events such as the Holocaust are not mentioned, and this holds true throughout pretty much all of the series. There are certain points where ‘battles’ of a sort are seen, but only flash moments. One scene in particular that I really enjoyed as a tween and can now see the problems with is the whole revolutionary war scene. This was a scene split into two episodes (for some weird reason, even an unrelated episode in between, like, what? Why??) about a particular (unnamed) battle in the American Revolution where England faced down America, they each had a gun with a bayonet, and England charged America and his bayonet deeply scratched America’s gun, and America declared he was no longer England’s little brother, and the whole thing was played out as an extremely emotional scene. England is lost in the past of seeing America as a cute little kid he took care of, who has now grown up and is being reckless and stupid, and America is all righteous and independent and proving he’s a grown up, it’s all very emotional, I cried, other fans cried, there was much fanart.
This scene is problematic in a way. Boiling down an extremely nasty conflict following lots of really bad laws and protests to this one scene doesn’t do history any justice. It says nothing about the struggles of the American colonists, the struggles of the British empire, the awful things the colonists did to the natives, etc etc. It is one small scene and it focuses on these characters as humanoid, with feelings, and completely ignores the complexities of history. And yes, in a way, that is bad. But it is bad in the sense that nobody can - or at least should - take this show to be the end-all be-all of history. It is not. It is not often entirely correct, and it picks and chooses what points in the past several thousand years to play with, and trying to use it as a map for history is a bad idea. However, this focus on the countries as human-like and struggling can also be a good thing.
It is also important to note that there have been other problems. The portrayal of South Korea, for example, is extremely controversial, and while I do not know all of the specifics, I believe that it was banned in Korea due to this, and the character was entirely removed from the anime, among other things. Obviously, a bad take, a bad character. There are also just straight up not great characterizations in certain cases. I don’t, for example, like anything about how Belarus is portrayed as a crazy psycho constantly begging Russia (her big brother) to marry her? I think that that is ridiculous, and I know nothing about Belarus as a country but I am pretty darn sure that that is not how one ought to go about portraying the country. There are a few other examples, but my purpose here was not to pull up a list of every country and explain what is correct or incorrect about each characterization. It is enough to say that some characters were not portrayed perfectly. But with that in mind...
The Good Anything Else
It is the most important to remember that this, all of this, is fiction. This is a silly, silly fantasy series. The countries are not humans, they are some weird semi-immortal species that share a universal language and know they are not human and are referenced by humans as ‘those people.’ They are fictional constructs. But the good out of all of this is that they explore human emotions. The American Revolution scene should not be taken as how the revolution was, and who might have been right or wrong. But it is a very emotional story of a big brother unable to accept that his little brother has grown up and wants to make his own choices. That, right there, is a heartfelt scene that I’m sure plenty of real people can feel something about. And there are plenty of other scenes that really grab you by the heartstrings, especially given how crazy, stupid, and humor-oriented the rest of the show is. And I will take a moment and enthuse about some of the more popular scenes that I think are, in fact, pretty good.
There is one episode in season 5, Beautiful World, where an American woman visits France (the place). This woman, Lisa, is blond and bears a striking resemblance to Joan d’Arc. While visiting some historical place somewhere or another in Paris, France (the person) spots her and rushes up with an odd look. When she questions him, he apologizes and offers to give her a tour of the area, which she accepts. He then proceeds to lead her around and explain some history and show off some beautiful sights, and he mentions some stuff about Joan d’Arc. She butts in and lists off some stuff she knows, he beams and looks proud and says yes, she’s right. The end of the scene has the two of them standing alone somewhere and him commenting how young Joan was when she was killed, and that he always wished she could have had a better, nicer life. He then states that he is very happy that she got it, while giving this American tourist a gentle smile. She looks away for a moment, distracted by something perhaps, and when she looks back to ask just who the heck he really is, talking about a historical figure like he knew her, he is gone. It’s a very emotional scene in a quiet sort of way, because the watcher/reader understands that he took one look at this woman and instantly believed that she was, in fact, Joan d’Arc reincarnated into a totally different and totally average life, and he is so genuinely happy that a woman he saw as a hero gets this chance to live normally. Whether or not you may personally believe in reincarnation, and regardless of how often other times in the show France is shown as an obnoxious sexaholic, this is an extremely tender scene that lots of fans seriously love. It is very ‘human.’ And I feel like this is what the series as a whole strives to offer. These human moments. They may be peppered in a sort of lackadaisical style in the anime, but they are far more prominent in the comic strips, so it is important to realize that that kind of scene is more of what the creator likes to focus on.
Another very popular and touted scene is the Davie scene. I don’t remember if it was put in the anime or not, I read it as a comic. It was a scene set in colonial America, where the man himself was just a very small child. Little baby America was hanging out in a field with a rabbit and sees this boy, who introduces himself as Davie. Davie brings America to his house and opens up a botany book and points out a blue flower (possibly a forget-me-not) that he wants to see but that isn’t in the New World. America assures Davie that he will find him one of those flowers, and goes off to do so. He fails his search and goes back to Davie, who is older now, but Davie looks embarrassed and turns and walks away. Distressed, America runs to England and explains about the flower, and England says the flower is not there, but they do grow at home, and he will bring some the next time he leaves and comes back. America happily waits, and when England returns with a bouquet of the blue flowers, America takes them and runs off to Davie’s house. He is let in by a boy who looks just like Davie and presents the flowers, and the boy then puts them on (or maybe in) a coffin of an elderly man. America, smiling, does not seem to understand what is going on, and hopefully calls the boy Davie.
This entire scene, in the comic, has very few words. Davie’s name is repeated a few times, but most of the rest of the ‘dialogue’ is in images. The flower, England saying it is not there, etc. This makes the scene extremely poignant, and when we reach the end, we, the audience, realize suddenly that while baby America was fixated on finding a special flower for his new friend, years and years went by, and that friend grew up and got married and had children and eventually died, all while America remained looking the exact same age and understanding the exact same things. Look, folks, I don’t know about you, but that is some angsty stuff right there. I cried. We all cried. We all miss Davie. Mention the name to fans and you will get sobs. We love you, Davie.
Which brings me to my penultimate point, that this series is heartfelt and, while it avoids a lot of the bad of history, can be very poignant about what human nature is like. Human lives are long, very long, but also so very short, they fly by. Some lives end in tragedy, others are mostly peaceful, and maybe we get second chances if you believe in reincarnation, maybe not. Maybe it’s good that our lives are so short, maybe the fate of living forever and watching people you connect with die is tragic. Or maybe it would actually be really fun, having friends for thousands of years that you may squabble with at times but ultimately care for. Maybe nothing is simple and life is about finding joy where you can, and everyone needs to sometimes take a step back and realize that everyone is flawed, and there might be good and evil but the vast majority of people are in a grey area, trying to live their own lives and do what good they can for whatever reason they might give. I want to end with one last topic, one I have not yet addressed this whole time. The big white alien in the room, if you will.
Paint it: White!
There is a Hetalia movie, folks, if you didn’t know it, and it’s called Paint It White. This movie has just as many silly parts as any other Hetalia thing, but it also has a plot! In this movie, strange, all-white aliens are starting to invade the Earth. They arrive and anything they touch, they turn into completely identical white humanoid blobs, even the country personifications. With this scary and seemingly-unstoppable threat, the main eight - America, England, Russia, China, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy - all try to infiltrate the alien spaceship in frankly hideous uniforms to find out more and figure out a way to defeat them. Hijinks and disaster ensues, and at the end, each of them is fighting a mob and gradually being defeated. Italy is the last one standing, and as Germany is slowly being transformed into a blob along with the others, he tells Italy to smile. Italy then finds (or has? the plot isn’t great, it’s just there) a black marker and he suddenly starts going around drawing ridiculous faces on everyone. He draws fitting faces on each of his friend blobs, like a stern face on Germany-blob, a deadpan face on Japan-blob, etc etc. The invaders suddenly stop. They look at each other, marker-faced, and start to laugh. Then their leader of sorts comes out and is basically like “wow, we thought you were all stupid and you have wars and stuff, but this? This is beautiful. Wow. We all look exactly identical on our world, and these faces are cool and new and unique. We’ll turn everyone on your planet back if we can have this magical thingie you’re holding.” And of course Italy hands the marker right over, and everyone is put back to normal, and crybaby, scaredy-cat, useless Italy saves the world.
The plot is, obviously, not super great. It’s not going to win anybody any awards. But it has a very poetic premise. The strength of humans is that they are all unique. Every human has a different face, a different body, a different life. Our differences may cause conflict, but they are also something to celebrate. At the end of the day, Hetalia is an okay show that can get you hooked on history and tries its best to teach you that we’re all only human and there might be war and conflict and bad things, but you have to reach for the good things and find yourself good friends and have stupid laughs and enjoy life, however long or short it may be. I think that that’s a pretty decent message to send out to people.
The Bottom Line
In the end, this is a fandom like many others. Hetalia has its flaws and its cringe moments, and it certainly had its fair share of awful fans. But I truly believe that painting it overall as nazi propoganda and one of the most problematic and harmful shows out there is a blatant lie and disregards… just about everything of the actual content. I think it is difficult for someone to concretely say anything is super good or super bad without seeing at least some of it, or doing some research, and this business of blithely going along with what everyone else says just because they use big danger words does not do anybody any favors. Spreading misinformation is, I’m sure, the exact opposite of what most people want to do. And make no mistake, I am definitely not saying that everyone needs to like, or even watch, the show. If you never ever want to watch this show in your life, that is absolutely fine. Go forth and never watch it. But mindlessly following the herd and yelling overgeneralized, unsupported opinions about it is not a good thing. I beg of you, do research on the things you want to form or share an opinion on, think critically, and for the love of God, do not swipe a giant paintbrush to forsake every single individual fan of a show as a terrible, awful person. By all means, hate nazis, they are pieces of shit. Boycott things that support genocide and fascism, yes, fight for equality, yes. But do not go accusing without thinking, and do not overgeneralize. I leave you with the words of my old laptop bag that I bought years ago at a convention:
Make pasta, not war.
Thank you for reading.
14 notes · View notes
nbapprentice · 4 years
Note
You said a while back that while Supergiant games (Bastion, Transistor, Hades) was mostly okay, you had some words about them. I was curious as to what those words were, since Hades' full release is soon.
okay. alright. ive been playing hades lately so i definitely want to give my two cents (or dollars by the size this is gonna get). but let’s go Step by Step
the good: i want to throw a whole Endorsement over supergiant games with the art direction and its characters, which is what keeps me coming back again and again, and what i can assume is that most people are attracted to. 
gameplaywise, they have a Format they stick to which has become their staple, not to their detriment but to their advantage, like... gameplay tropes, so to speak, that they stick to (such as the addition of special conditions that give a disadvantage in exchange for more long-term rewards)
i fucking adore that they take one concept per game, go for it, and when they’re done they are Done; they don’t bother with sequels, they don’t want to run things to the ground and i fucking respect that. They have their themes, and they stick to them (to various degrees of success).
that said, like every piece of media, they are not perfect and this has to be analysed and spoken about
CONTENT WARNINGS: genocide and ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, suicide, and mentions of incest, and a general Spoilers warning
bastion: touches on ethnic cleansing, and not in a way i’d say is satisfactory. our narrator and one of our Sympathetic characters is one of the men who worked on a world-ending weapon meant to use against the Ura (a group of people coded as East Asian) which after a bit of googling is literally called “the final solution” if there was ever a war between the Ura and the Cael (who feel like rly tan white people to me). jesus fucking CHRIST.
we also meet more Ura other than our two named characters and we have to kill most of them. so that fucking blows.
the game tries for “being a genocidal monster will get you fucked up and blown up” which duh, but i feel we shouldn’t have had a person responsible for war crimes be one of our friends no matter how bad he feels about the whole thing, or the people victim of war crimes become villains in the latter half of the game. zia’s father could’ve taken ruck’s role ez pz.
transistor: the weakest of their games, imo; the lore and writing are fairly flimsy and i did not come out feeling Satisfied, especially because it had this rly good build-up that did not pay off. not to mention... their villains? 3/4 were gay people. lol. two married guys (not even explicit, you only realize by their shared last names) and the ps*cho lesbian trope (iirc she wanted to kill the protagonist’s lover or something). the female protagonist also ends up killing herself to live forever in a digital paradise with her dead lover. it’s. god. 
very Aesthetic, GORGEOUS music, interesting gameplay; had potential, i do not feel like it lived up to it at least as far as the story goes.
pyre: now this one. this one’s BEEFY. where transistor felt flimsy, pyre is rich; lots to sink your teeth into, rich in lore and loveable characters, again w the beautiful music, themes of cooperation and togetherness. my favorite of the cast is volfred sandalwood, the only Black (or, well, Black-coded) revolutionary i’ve ever seen portrayed with this amount of sympathy.
onto the bad: they literally have a Class of character named “Savage”; there’s the “mystical mentally ill person” trope; there is an overwhelming amount of explicit m/f pairs (one of them being. a romance that formed in a single day and then both of the characters were somehow willing to risk it all for each other? PLEASE) while the only hints of gayness are... hints. especially when Jodariel (another of my favs) is teased to have feelings for the player regardless of gender then only gets an ending with a male character with whom she has nothing in common 🙃
hades: and now. this one. music: gorgeous. character designs: spectacular (aphrodite is straight up naked but it’s so... natural and casual, it doesn’t feel sexualized at all). voice acting amazing. character interactions charming and endearing. as a greek mythology nerd, it was nice to see them go for the obscure shit like Zagreus at all, NOT portray Persephone and Hades as a loving couple, AND portrayed the gods as the bunch of petty assholes (some more benevolent than others) that they are. imo they’re too generous with their portrayal of achilles but i’ll allow it.
and finally... it seems all those criticisms about having all the gay characters hidden in the shadows paid off, cuz we got (aside of patroclus and achilles) a bisexual polyamorous protag. Holy Shit! and it’s not even playersexual, romance whomever you want shit without the routes recognizing each other: he explicitly talks about how he’s thinking abt them both (though it’s like “yeah usually mortals take one lover but gods love many huh” polyamory is a human thing too bro!!!!!)
and this is where it all goes, well, at least vaguely downhill lol. ok so the incest warning i gave up there? well. it’s not... outright incestuous. but it has some ugly implications. i want to emphasize: the characters never refer to each other as siblings, nor do they treat each other as such (thanatos, in fact, only recognizes hypnos as his brother, and megaera only sees the other furies as her sisters), but they were all raised by the same woman, Nyx... zagreus and thanatos even grew up together (im assuming megaera didnt meet zagreus until he was fully grown).
this is complicated even worse by the fact that they tried to trick zagreus into believing Nyx was his mother. he realized pretty early on this was not true but like... adoptive mothers, anyone? granted i can believe that bc of the attempt at deception that probably ruptured any attempt at actual familial closeness, and it’s not like hypnos and thanatos saw zagreus as their brother at any point, so they were p much aware of the truth too. with the fact that thanatos even looks like goth miles edgeworth (im not kidding you can google him up right now its literally edgeworth in a cowl) i rly feel they were aiming for Childhood Friend Anime Rival Man than the “surprise kiss bc ur not actually related <3″ shit. zagreus never once refers to nyx as his mother in-game, and also refers to thanatos and hypnos as her sons, never his brothers.
so yeah, like. if one’s feeling generous, zagreus and thanatos are more of a “my father is emotionally closed off and neglects me so my best friend’s mother basically raised me” kind of situation... just pulled off in, perhaps, the worst way possible (why didnt they just say Zagreus was told Hekate was his mom, that’s such an easy fix? or that he was born of nobody other than Hades??? [gestures at athena])
but then, the gods. aaaaaaaahhhhahahahh the gods. demeter shows up! and she calls zeus, hades and poseidon... her foster-brothers. which somehow would make the persephone thing less fucking awful, apparently. they really. really really did not need to do that. she could’ve just said “my fellow gods” or whatever. or my “god-brothers” or something, to pretend it was just a weird god alliance thing??? i dont know but implying that foster family isn’t family is just... bro, the dynamics still exist.
Don’t Like That.
i even contacted supergiant games over this. they reassured me they were even trying to avoid the incest of the original myths bc they didn’t want to mess with such a heavy theme. i believe them... but i really think they didn’t think this through. compared to something like fire emblem fates this is nearly benign, but the implications don’t look good :/
tl;dr of the tl;drs: i admire their artistic philosophy and the heavy emphasis on fresh gameplay, characters and their relationships; i appreciate that it seems that they listen to criticism?; i don’t appreciate that they didn’t think to at LEAST talk to adoptees when making a game about family.
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shunsatan · 4 years
Note
Headcanons for if Kaidou’s sister got a crush on Saiki
Fic time here we go babeyy. Starring the lovely Kaidou Sora.
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It was a rough and cold day. One with winds that whipped you back and forth with no mercy. It was the kind of day that would gain your trust by having the sun tickle your skin, and then destroy the fragile warmth with a booming and freezing breeze. Sora wished she had stayed inside instead of going to the store to buy eggs for her mother. She cursed under her breath as another dreaded wind came and tangled her hair.
"Shun...? Shun!" She spotted her older brother loitering outside of another grocery store.
[[MORE]]
"...Sora?" He jumped, turning to face the smaller female "Oh, hey. Heading home?" She nodded.
"Well, I have Saiki with me. I can drive you home though" he turns to the pink haired boy who was still eyeing a rack of coffee jelly from outside of the store window.
"Drive? You can't drive. This isn't America, dumbass. You're not old enough to get a license and you don't even have any type of vehicle with.... you..." she slowed her words upon seeing him walk up and start a motorcycle with some unappealing (not to mention, chuuni) decorations; only shun would decorate something to look that stupid.
"I forgot you had one.." she awed. Though, the last thing she needed was more wind slapping her face "But no thanks. I'll walk. You don't even have an extra helmet."
Saiki turned to the bike he had been pure pressured into bringing. 'Yare yare' he mumbled as he sat down too fast, causing his head to ache. This place was crowded, so it made sense that his head would hurt naturally- or, that's what he thought until he saw Shun's sister getting kidnapped. Good grief. No way to sit still after seeing that.
'Hey' saiki called out to her, placing a helmet on her head. 'You can ride on the back of mine. It's going to be dark soon and then it'll get even colder.' He said, walking back to his motorcycle.
"Alright, fine" she got onto the seat behind him. Shun smiled at Saiki before starting his bike down the road, and the psychic then followed.
The wind came strong and angry. Sharp and bitter. It threatened to kick her off of the bike and caused her to have to wrap her arms tighter around the boy infront of her. He didn't care much for the wind. Nothing special, no reason for his heart to race because with his powers, his instincts don't sense danger. It wasn't much painfully cold, either. With his pyrotechnics it wasn't a problem at all.
Maybe I should tell him to stop... this is too cold Sora thought to herself
Saiki sighed as he used his fire power very carefully to bring heat to her body as well. He can't have Shun coming to school crying about his sister everyday. Especially when it's so easy to avoid.
This feeling...
Oh no.
it's gotten so warm... next to Saiki.. no, it must be that I... I have a crush..?
Good grief... this is uncomfortable the psychic thought
.....
And in days to come, the Jet Black Wing's sister would come to bother him about his friends. After that, her crush began to develop in a similar way to Chiyo. She would watch him with eyes that saw a round eyed prince. She would admire how smart and well mannered he is, and she would act especially polite when he made his presence infront of her.
Saiki Kusuo, was also thinking about her often. However; not in the way you might be thinking. He was forming strategies on how to avoid her. All of which were miserably failing. With her mother and his mother on her side, she couldn't fail. Discovering his family power structure, she would have Shun call Kurumi (his mother) and invite him over.
And with her own mother bothering Shun to hang out with his two "genius" friends everytime his grades would slip. Of course, Nendou rarely came because he was "always busy" (in reality, Shun didn't want Nendou and his mother interacting anymore in fear of her finding out that he's an idiot)
So, of course, this all worked out best for Sora.
.....
The group of four walked home like usual. Kuboyasu, Nendou, Saiki and Kaidou. They were discussing which character in Shounen Jump is the weakest while Saiki was praying for Nendou to ask them to ramen so that he didn't have to go to Kaidou's house again. Sora had been coming up with gifts for her crush so that he would take notice and start a conversation with her. Of course, she had almost no idea what would peak the boy's interest.
"Hey, Saiki. I thought maybe it would be a good time to ask you" Kuboyasu, the former delinquent spoke up. "Heard there's somethin' weird behind that 100 yen store. Wanna come check it out?" He offered.
Saiki almost shook his head and provided an excuse on instinct before remembering his main goal (to bLow up and act I like dont know nobody aghaghaghaa.) So he simply nodded.
"I wish I could come see!" Kaidou beamed before looking back down to the ground dramatically "yes... I wish I still had time to question those weird things around me... to leisure in activities like such. Though, I have a sacred duty at hand..." he clenched his bandaged fist
"Gotta take a shit? Me too" Nendou chimed in.
"NO, IDIOT! I have cram sch-- I um.. I m..mean I have to meet with the phantom force! Th-that I'm helping train to work as soldiers against dark reunion!!" He stumbled all over his sentence before finally turning his body to strut off over to the direction of his house.
"Shun. I need you to help me with.. homework" his sister quickly requested and dragged him into her room, pushing him on the floor infront of the small table that sat in the middle of the room, just like his.
"What can you tell me about your friends? Start with Saiki kun" she reached for a notepad and a pen.
"Shouldn't you be referring to him as senpai or something because he's a second year?" He mentioned before being cut with her glare. "R..Right! Okay, sorry... he likes sweets an-"
"Sweets and what!? Why'd you stop??" Sora pressed
"Why do you need to know about my friends? Is this a homework assignment..?" He questioned her
"Yeah sure." She rushed "he likes sweets and what?"
"Ohh! I think I remember having this assignment in middle school, too! You're supposed to write about your closest friends and their interests right~?" He thought back to his middle school year and looked at her with warm eyes. Empathy began filling his soft face, adjusting his features on her. "Sora, I couldn't make any friends in middle school either, so...!" He began "I've noticed you've been really nice to Saiki.. so if you want to be friends with my friends-!"
"I can make friends. I'm not some lonely loser like you who needs a hero complex to interact with people his age." She interrupted, sending an imaginary arrow through the highschooler's chest.
"Guh-- well if you don't want my help then in leaving!!" He stood up and caught notice of a small hand stopping him
"Wait! I'm sorry.." She got onto her feet and bowed "I'm just... embarrassed about not having friends." She lied, not wanting her brother to know she had the hots for his bestfriend.
Her phone chimed, once, and then again. It was three of her friends trying to reach her to hang out at the movies. Then she got a phone call, interrupted by another phone call.
"You should answer those" shun said
She hesitantly picked up the phone and answered the call.
"Put it on speaker" her brother ordered.
"...okay.."
<"heyyyy! Sora where have you been? Me and everyone else wanted to go to the movies with you. You're always knee-deep in studying so we wanted to help you relax a bit for once. You've been out of school for like, three days just shadowing and checking out Pk academy. It's still a while before we get into high school, grandma~! Anyway, the 7 of us wanted to show we love you by taking you to see that movie you mentioned wanting to see. So get ready, we want to be there by 7:30"> the girl on the phone ranted on before Sora could speak up against it, and hung up.
".....Shun-"
"SEVEN!?" he exclaimed as Sora rushed into another apology. This must be the first time he's ever made HER scared of HIM.
"Don't apologize Sora!! That's amazing, I'm so happy you have great friends... ahyuuu...." he teared up
"Oh... thanks, I guess"
"But one thing" he said and stopped her from leaving the room
"Huh?"
"Why did you need to know about my friends for that project?" He tilted his head
She looked over to the door knob as if she was begging it for help as her face was overpowered by a dark red hue. "W....we-well-- Sh...shut up! Get out! I need to get dressed!!" She pushed him out.
"Ow!! Ouch~! I'll leave!!" He practically screeched as he was rushed out. "But I'll stand outside of the door until you admit!"
A few minutes later, she yanked open the door and sprinted down the hallway. She knew her small brother wouldn't be able to catch her with how weak and slow he is.
But her little brother could.
She tripped and landed on her face after having her legs caught and wrapped in bandages by Toki Kaidou.
"Now tell me why!" Shun stood proudly over her despite not having done anything.
Toki went back to his room as Sora nearly freed her feat from the poorly tied bandages, that is before Shun, someone who actually knew how to tie a knot, fixed them.
"Fine!! Just let me go!" She yelled at him "I... is there any reason for it? I think he's cool. You can always have new friends. You're just stupid and think that 7 is the max" her face was once again drenched in a dark pink color.
"Oh my god." He said
"What!?"
"You like him!!!" His eyes widened as he stood up frantically. "You have a crush on Saiki!!"
"Yeah, so what about it!?" Sora snapped at him
Shun gasped "Sora!! You're only in middle school-"
"Yet I'm more put together than you are" she said defensively
"But that's still kind of wrong.. we're about to be third years and you're not even in highschool yet..."
"I will be by the time you're third years though!!" She shouted, then slumped down.
"Yes- bu-" he began, getting cut off
"I know. I just... I really like him and I've never liked a guy before. I know it's stupid." She sighed, defeated
"No no, Sora I'm sorry... You can't control who you like, right? I was being mean-" he began
"It's fine, you're right about it being weird. Just untie me so I can go to my room"
"What about the movies with your friends?"
"...whatever"
....
'Yare yare,' Saiki sighed, taking another bite from one of the homemade cookies Sora had anonymously sent him before placing it down and uncrossing his eyes. (he had checked with his powers and knows the cookies were from her)
'I guess it can't be helped' he sighed once more before sending out a telepathic signal
"Sora!" She sang as she knocked on the large door infront of her.
"Hello?" Shun answered and opened the door wider for the girl to come in "you're one od her friends!" He chirped "She said she isn't feeling well enough for the movies; I think you should try cheering her up."
"Oh, okay... um, where would her room be?" Upon entering the house, the girl suddenly grew nervous. For some reason.
"Here, I'll show you" Shun lead her to Sora's door and sprinted away to hide before the girl could knock on it.
"What do you want." Sora snapped after hearing the door knock
"Eek! Sorry, I just.. uhm...wa it's Yui! your b..brother let me in" she stuttered unlike how she spoke on the phone
The door opened and inside was a girl with messy hair and red eyes. An embrace came soon after.
I thought you might've needed a hug... Yui intended to say, but instead voiced out:
"You... h.,,hug. Yeah. Needed yes...mn"
Sora laughed, at first came a weak chuckle, then as the hug parted it became a strong belly laugh (upon seeing Yui's flustered face)
.....
"Shun!" Sora called, making the timid boy jump and start shaking from fear
"Y-yes?" He was sweating bullets
"I'm going to the movies with my girlfriend." She took Yui's clammy hand and headed towards the door.
Shun blinked. "Wh--"
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bondsmagii · 4 years
Note
I mean to ask this genuinely, no hostility, but can you explain how you correlate scp to being in a cult? I dont disagree, I just cant articulate the reasoning as to why I dont disagree, and would like to see where youre coming from with this. Also, could you tag it with cults or cult discussion or something similar, please? Thanks! Have a good day.
OK [cracks knuckles] I will try and keep this as short as possible, but you have to understand I’ve been observing the wiki in the wild literally since its inception, so there is a lot of stuff to consider. anyway let’s buckle up.
[EDIT: after finishing, this is obnoxiously long. sorry. I encourage people to read it though, because yikes.]
I base this theory on a set of guidelines set out for spotting if an organisation might be a cult. generally cults are religiously based; obviously this does not apply here. as far as I’m aware, nobody sees the SCP wiki as a religion (yet). because of this a couple of the points regarding spotting a cult are irrelevant (they concern things like separation from the Church which obviously doesn’t apply) but nearly all of the others (even some religious ones) can apply if we provide context. so without further ado:
Signs You’re In A Cult and How the SCP Wiki Literally Fits Into All of Them
let’s start with the most obvious:
opposing critical thinking
something that has long pissed me off about the SCP wiki has been its complete inability to think critically. staff will literally ban people for criticising them, and the parameters of “criticism” have only grown wider and wider over the years. anything that is the “party line” is sacred; nothing can be improved upon because it’s already perfect, and Staff Knows Best. any policy changes are law, and any dissenting voices are silenced – even among younger staff members (length of service wise, not age wise). I have seen staff put on probation or demoted for arguing against pointless or pedantic policy changes; I have seen people of all levels banned for arguing with staff. if this doesn’t happen right away, arguing with staff over their decisions will absolutely get a target on your back, and they will find a way to ban or demote you as soon as they can.
any criticism on the wiki is frowned upon unless it comes from the Major Staff Members – these are people at the top of the hierarchy who can do no wrong, and as you can imagine, they’ve done some shit. staff has always had a problem with elitism, bullying, and even abusive behaviour (blah blah blah #NotAllStaff, but the ratio is quite concerning) and any criticism of their behaviour or even pointing this fact out is dangerous if you want to remain on the wiki. hell, I know many people who are aware of this who don’t speak up because they’re genuinely scared of retaliation. a lot of staff are really nasty people, and because of this attitude they are beyond criticism.
isolating members and penalising them for leaving
the penalising them for leaving part isn’t strictly accurate, because as far as I know, nobody has ever been bullied or threatened into staying on the wiki. however, I do remember a while back (2011/2012-ish) when the Foundation RP community began to show up on Tumblr, and the wiki began to get a fanbase that wasn’t contained on the site itself. staff were not happy about this and to this day they still constantly try and get a monopoly on all off-site locations. they have an official Offsite Outreach Team (yes, that’s its real name) who “reach out” to communities on other platforms (YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, etc) and set up an Official Presence there, and then they encourage everyone to use the Official Presence rather than the fan-made ones (which are often more established and better/more consistently run). there have been several off-site spats between staff and the fandom, because they arrive demanding the authority and respect they have on the wiki and get Big Mad when they don’t get it. just recently one (now ex) staff member, djkaktus, went absolutely primal on Reddit and banned a whole bunch of the community for daring to say that they didn’t like the new LGBT logo for pride month (many of these people were LGBT themselves and felt as though it was pandering/putting targets on their backs); several more years ago (2014, I believe?) I myself had a run in with the Outreach Team and it was one fucking hell of a headache that ended in a malicious smear campaign against me, so like. yeah.
as for isolating members, they do this via elitism. the above is an example of it (making everyone feel a sense of obligation or loyalty to the Official Presence), but a huge part of it has always been the elitist attitude prevalent on the wiki. the SCP wiki has high standards for writing (allegedly… I’ve seen some garbage on there tbh, same as any other website) and it uses this to bully and demean its users. criticism of writing is overly harsh but highly encouraged; anyone complaining that it was too cruel (which it often is) is ridiculed for being too sensitive. (staff have been working on this for years, but really nothing has changed; people have just gotten more between-the-lines about it.) this encourages a kind of desperation among new users to “rise up the ranks” and earn respect so they can be the ones dishing out the criticism instead; they will do so and then immediately act in accordance to their status, bullying others how they were bullied and sticking to their own “rank”. brief interruption: staff and bootlickers if you’re reading this and thinking of reblogging to defend yourself, the code word is yeet. if I do not see the word yeet in your reply I will know you have not read this thoroughly and tell me why I should then bother reading anything you have to say.staff themselves is incredibly removed and closed off from the rest of the community; they have a bunch of private chat rooms they hang out in, and inter-dating is common. they don’t tend to interact much outside the flock, and are the definition of cliquey. joining this rank is supposed to be an achievement, but really it’s probably the most dangerous place to be. I have seen so many staff members have literal, clinical mental breakdowns over the strain and treatment they suffer.
(there’s nowhere to neatly slot this in, so: I don’t know how many people have noticed this, but SCP fans, when you spot them on other platforms, are snooty. not casual fans, but those involved with the wiki? I can spot them from a mile away, because whenever the Foundation is mentioned, there they are, acting like they’re part of some cool club. some of these people are innocent (they’re just mimicking the behaviour of other members) but some of them really do seem to think that their site is somehow better than whatever site they’re on, and it’s really creepy to see.)
emphasising special doctrines outside of scripture
obviously this is religion-specific, but with context it can fit. if we take scripture to mean SCP lore, and special doctrines to mean differing headcanons, ideas, writing styles, etc… oh boy.
there’s something that’s often said on the wiki: there is no canon. buddy, there is. yes, you can write whatever you want technically, and you can disregard headcanons you don’t like and you can build on different things and theoretically people can just ignore your shit if they don’t like it, but that is not what happens. there is absolutely a canon, and deviating from it will get you downvoted into oblivion and even personally attacked. people will accuse you of the most ridiculous shit, like desecrating the wiki or betraying the universe or whatever. so where does the emphasising part of this come in?
why, it’s simple! if one of these special doctrines (headcanons or whatever) comes from staff or an Approved Member, it’s fine. go nuts. even if it’s something that anybody else would be absolutely slaughtered for, it’s fine if staff approves. there is no creative freedom on that wiki, and anyone attempting to carve a piece out for themselves will suffer for it. one of my close friends still gets hate for an SCP he wrote featuring heavy headcanons and building on existing lore about a well-known character, and some of this hate is because he didn’t set the fucking article out “how it should be”. 
seeking inappropriate loyalty to their leaders
oh boy. staff are god on that website. they’ll deny it, but they know it’s true. many of them are arrogant and, in my opinion, some of them are pathologically narcissistic. they think they are hot shit, and they encourage people on the site to believe the same. a huge majority of users on the wiki are high school students, so 15-18 years old. the next huge group are college-aged, so 19-22 or so. several staff members are in their mid-20s up to 30s, maybe even coming 40s or early 40s now. when you’re in your mid-20s, it’s very easy to look cool to a 15-year-old. it’s very easy to look at a young userbase and convince them that you’re hot shit, and that’s what staff do. they act like it; most users respond to it, and if anyone dissents? see point one.
staff have always had double standards. from the very beginning of staff, they have gotten away with a lot more than the average user. staff have been allowed to bully, ridicule, harass, dismiss, shit upon, and target people with reckless abandon, usually only meeting punishment when other staff members feel too inconvenienced by them. a lot of the time when they’re punished, it’s a lot lighter than it would have been for an average user (a month ban rather than a permaban, for example). this is seen as almost a point of hilarity for a lot of people, who think it’s cool and just a right you get when you’re staff. you know best, you’ve seen some shit – who can blame you for slamdunking a 15-year-old’s first SCP?
the amount of respect and adoration these people demand is ridiculous, and anybody daring to criticise them ends up on a shitlist. staff show up in other areas (Tumblr or Reddit) and expect that same amount of respect, even among people outside of the wiki who might just be casual fans. they act a lot more important than they are, and demand that everyone treats them appropriately. I’ve seen staff members throw shitfits because they didn’t get enough upvotes for their articles, and many staff members’ quality of work declines when they make staff, simply because they know that they’ll get easy upvotes as soon as people realise it’s a staff member who wrote it. downvotes are enough to get you put on a shitlist. 
publicly, their word is law. you are not allowed to debate with them in the forums if they put a “stop” on the topic; the same applies in the IRC chat. if staff says “stop”, you will be punished if you mention it again. you are allowed to discuss it with them privately, but I think that’s rather insidious, as staff have been known to twist facts and withhold information before. this gives them a public persona of always being right – and something else that cults do is silence dissenting voices so nobody who might agree can see other people saying the same things and feel encouraged/emboldened. 
crossing Biblical boundaries of behaviour
again, we’ll need to contextualise this. if Biblical boundaries are things like sins and all the stuff the Bible says Do Not Do, then in this context these are the wiki rules. staff (and their friends) will constantly cross the rules, as previously mentioned, and they will get away with it.
the wiki rules say “don’t be a dick”. I have caught staff bullying people countless times, and no doubt there’s more I haven’t caught. even out in the open, staff are argumentative, dismissive, rude, intimidating, and oftentimes plain nasty. the wiki rules say “don’t coldpost articles; get feedback”. staff is just out there throwing their shit onto the wiki and expecting an avalanche of upvotes in five minutes Or Else. policies are made that set parameters and staff changes them whenever convenient – for example, the long-standing rule that things that occur off-site are not the responsibility of the Disciplinary Committee (yes, its name.). unless, of course, it’s someone they don’t like. a major staff member bullies somebody on Tumblr? “sorry, it was offsite, not our problem”. someone staff doesn’t like gets into a brief spat on Reddit? banned for harassment. 
there are countless examples of this, from small things to major things like bullying, harassment, and even abuse (or enabling of abuse). staff will punish people for transgressions and then turn a blind eye to a fellow staff member committing a transgression that was ten times worse. they have even protected rapists and sexual predators in the past – another kind of behaviour common in cults, because that’s what happens when you combine narcissism and entitlement with total authority.
that’s the main bulk of it
but now the context has been established, here are a few more concerning things I’ve noticed (quickfire now):
cults shit on former members
and the wiki does the same. any staff member that’s grown fed up of the groupthink and the cliquey attitude and how nasty people are or who has been mistreated by staff themselves; any regular user who feels the same and vocally quits? shat upon. lauded as a bastion of whatever is wrong with the wiki. declared an Enemy and rallied against. it is so creepy.
cults use Us vs Them mentality, especially in language
broad declarations establishing a community and a community spirit in the face of adversity are common in cults. appeals to emotion and loyalty are used in a very manipulative way. catastrophising and fearmongering is common, too. I’m seeing this in how the recent drama with the legal issues is being handled. broad appeals to “defend the wiki”, hashtags being encouraged, emotional speeches from staff about how it’s a make or break situation… 
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…and this is being reflected in the absolutely insane comments people are responding with.
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this is a fucking writing website. the above is not a normal reaction at all.
the attitudes of regular users quickly grow concerning
people very quickly get obsessed with the wiki and it defines their lives. they seem to feel as though they owe something to it or they need to serve some kind of a purpose; many people try and “get the word out” and become voluntary spokespeople. they go around practically preaching, and I do not see the users of any other website doing this.
cults want full control over how they’re seen by outsiders
and the scp wiki does the same. as mentioned previously, when the fandom grew and spiralled off the wiki to other sites, staff debated for weeks over what to do. brief interruption the second code is shrek is life.they were not comfortable with the idea of the wiki having an independent fandom, and for years now they have been in constant struggle with offsite communities, trying to gain the same amount of control they have over the wiki. it’s impossible to do so thoroughly, and it’s clearly an annoyance for them.
cult leaders will let “lesser” members do their dirty work for them
and guess what staff does? rather than wade in there and get their hands dirty with internet arguments, they’ll sit back and let regular users dogpile on dissenters and say all the things staff shouldn’t be seen to say in public. note how even if this would violate the bullying policies, they’ll just get a warning so long as staff agrees. 
in conclusion
@ everyone on the scp wiki: yall know you’re in a cult, right?
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Medieval/ending AU: Knight!Mirio as childhood friends with F!Sorcceer s/o?
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Top tier encouraging buddies!
Yes. I'm 100% here for this.
Similar to how you and Mirio are 100% there for eachother eyyyyyy
I should not be writing these while sleepy oof
You two met one day in the forest surrounding your small village; mirio was looking for animals to save and assist, and you were working on your water transmutation spells by the creek!
You'd been having trouble getting the spell just right, only able to levitate the water instead of transmuting it into another material.
You were getting more and more frustrated by the moment when a cheerful voice interrupted the soft forest ambience.
"Wowie!! I've never seen anyone levitate water up close before"
"ACK"
As you tense up, the water transmutes into iron momentarily before splashing into the creek, water once again.
"Gosh, I'm sorry miss! I didnt mean to break your concentration!"
You turn and there's Mirio, scraps of metal tied on him like some makeshift armor, smiling like a beam of sunlight.
"Uh.....that's alright, I had it for a second there! I'll get it again if I keep trying."
"Ooooh are you a magicky user?"
"Heheh, I think sorceress-in-training would suit me better. What about you? Are you training to be a knight?"
"Mhm! I wanna grow up and help keep people safe!! Oh oh! And maybe save a princess or prince! Or uh....somebody in a tower that needs help, because-
He looks around and whispers, as if he's giving you a very coveted piece of information
"I'm a preeeeetty good climber!"
And so begins your very sweet friendship!
Everyone in the village thinks you two are adorable, always walking around trying to help people, Mirio helping you find things for spells, both of you proudly telling the other adults about how amazing and talented the other is.
"Y/n is the coolest magicky user I know!"
"Uh- Mirio.."
"Hm? Oh sorry y/n!"
*ahem*
"Y/n is the coolest sorceress-in-training that I know!"
"And Mirio is the bravest knight I know!!"
Nobody and nothing could get between you and Mirio's friendship, well except one thing-
Your ding dang feelings for eachother.
Fast forward and You are the apprentice to your kingdoms wizard, and Mirio is second in command to the head knight of the kingdom's royal guard.
It was around this time you both started realizing your love for the other might have grown into something a bit more than platonic.
You both enjoyed eachothers company, felt the others absence when apart, and there was this weird.....want.....to kiss???smooch?? HHUUUUUUHHHH!?
But of course, in true anime fashion, neither of you want to confess at first, opting to go the "haha no we're just best buds! Amigos! Pals! Totally not in love!" Route.
Mirio especially is worried about ruining your friendship, he adores you! He loves your honesty, the immense knowledge you have about magical history and terminology, and well.....everything about you!
He didnt wanna lose you, but on the other hand.
This felt like torture.
Lovey dovey, sugary, syrupy, and tremendous torture.
Decides if he's going down? He's gonna go down in the most romantic ad over-the-top way possible.
You wake up to flowers at your doorstep.
A lot of flowers.
No seriously it's a bit concerning how many flowers there are, who in their right mind would send this many???
Shortly after thinking this a cluster of the children in your village gather and each take a bunch of flowers in their arms
What in the world??
It takes a second, but the children start gently taking the petals and making a path, and as you slowly follow them, you start to recognize the area?? It looks the same as the rest of the forest, trees, bushes, more trees....why does this feel so-
"Keep moving forward miss! He's waiting for you!"
One of the children whispers, as they scamper away with the rest of their group.
"He? Wait do you mean Miriaaaaaand they're gone, right then"
You wander through the forest, still confused about what's happening, and hope you're going the right way.
And you are, which you realize when you notice another path of petals, and begin to follow.
It's driving you crazy, why is this place familiar? Why do you feel so calm here? Why.......oh......ohgoodness....
"Hello y/n, glad you the kiddos didn't accidentally set you in the wrong direction!"
"Mirio what's going on?"
He smiles as he walks over, softly taking your hand in his, speaking in a tone much quieter than his usual loud, energetic voice.
"Do you remember y/n? This place?"
".....yes......I believe I do....."
This......this was where you two met for the first time, though it looked a bit different, the trees were taller and the creek had grown a bit wider, kinda cool how this spot had in a way grown with you and Mirio over the years.
"So....y/n"
"...............yeaaah Mirio?"
"I did all this and brought you here to ask you something super important"
Still caressing your hands he steps closer.
"Y/n l/n, you've been my closest friend, confidant, comforter, and general.....uh.... best...person- gosh I should've written this down uhm-"
Wait.....are his hands shaking??......
Why...does he look flustered? Mirio never looks flustered why is he nervous why....
Oh...OH......OH GOODNESS.....
"MIRIO"
"Y-yes y/n?"
"I LIKE YOU, I WANNA BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND, AND LIKE, I DONT KNOW, CUDDLE AND STUFF"
You did it! Heck yes
now, his reaction is delayed, but after a few moments of scilence he's pulling you close and laughing
"Darn it y/n, that was adorable but you really stole my thunder there!"
"Heh, sorry! Once I realized what you were trying to do it kinda just...happened"
"It's alright love I don't mind"
Hes smiling and hugging you
".........did you just call me "love" "
"Yup! I cant tell ya how long I've been wanting to do that, I am so siked to just-
He lovingly pulls a strand of hair away from your face.
"To just shower and spoil you with so much love, babe you're gonna get cavities from all the sugar I'll be giving!"
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Did it take me this long to get to some actual general headcanons? Yes.
Was it worth it? I'd like to think so!
Now, it goes without saying Mirio is immensly supportive of your sorcery.
He really loves watching you work on plant spells especially.
Really enjoys watching you manipulate how ivy grows up a wall, or making sure all the morning glories open each day at dawn, he just finds it interesting!
Talks about you all the time at work
His knight friends find it both sweet and kinda frustrating, because as much as they admire Mirio, he will literally talk about how the light hits your hair for half an hour, and patient as they are everyone has a limit 😂
Pffft a lot of interactions like this:
"Oh oh! Babe do the thing!"
*you make a flower grow from your hand and put it in Mirio's hair*
Mirio: "so cooool!" :D
Even though you're both older, Mirio never seems to lose that sense of awe and wonder when he watches you do the magics
Takes you on picnic dates whenever he can, loves spending the after noon cuddling on a blanket in the sunshine! Also it's ion these picnic dates that he's the little spoon!!
He actually asks and it doesnt matter if it's the 1st or 59th time, he looks so shy just quietly going "y/n.....could you hold me please?"
His job has him dealing with tough people, and even tougher situations most of the time, so being able to just spend time with you? Reminds him of why he wanted to be a knight in the first place: to save and protect the good in this world.
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smutav · 4 years
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So i posted the pictures I had for my xray and comic in this post here and I said id wait a year but I’ve decided I need to lay this project to rest and move on to what comes next. Its under the cut because its mad king heavy
the old man part was fully scripted out so I’m going to throw the script in here first then it’ll be just notes for the general plotline
(M) Old Man   = O1 / (J) Old Man   = O2 / Xray          = X / Vav           = V
we come in on Xray and Vav coming onto the scene but we start lookin at the old men
O2: "Uh Oh, the calvaries here" O1: "issit the popo? tell them they cant make me go back... to that horrible home... fulla old people..." O2: "No.. its those spandex kids again" O1: "Oh, the blue one confused me... so blue jus like those dirty cops" O2: "YOU'LL NEVER TAKE US ALIVE" [O2 throws something that lands nowhere near xray and vav] V : "Look you have to stop causing a ruckus!" O1: "ah ah ah prettyboy we got da bomb" O2: "Thats right if you get in our way it'll be a real stinker!" O1: "Uh Ohhhh"
X : "you have got to be kidding me" O1: "I'm too old for kidding, im old-ding over here" V : "What are you doing with a bomb!?" O2: "We've got demands!" O1: "Oh yeah lots of demands!" O2: "We want.... Pudding!" O1: "Oh yeah and none of that rice shit in there" O2: "get that rice out of our pudding no chunks!" O1: "itsa chokin hazard, I almost died when they had that at the home" O2: "thats why we left they was tryna kill us" O1: "But you only show up to stop two guys havin fun" O2: "Ya punks!" [Vav has snuck over to the obviously hidden 'stink bomb' and gags when he sees whats under the cover]
O2: "Ey!" [he smacks Vav with a cane] "gettaway from there" O1: "These two have no manners" O2: "they jus go touchin stuff that doesnt belong to them!" O1: "Well two can play at that game" [he moves towards Xray pointing at his glasses] "I want those" X : "How about I give you this instead" [he shoots a lazer at the old guy but it bounces off his walker] O1: "uh oh you shouldn't have done that" X : "oh yeah what if i do it again" [it really has the same result smart guy]
[Vav at the same time is dealing with.. a really slow old guy. and he dodges a punch an the old guy just keeps goin down and hits the ground] O2: "Ah! I'm hit thats it for me! [he tries to get up but just knocks himself over again] it's over for me I'm deadd. You killed me ya bastard" V : "I really didn--" O2: "this blood is on your handssss ohhh im goinnnn" [Vav backs off while the old man keeps slowly 'dying' to help out with Xray who's wrestling for his glasses from O1]
X : "Youre smudging up my glasses!" O1: "oh i'll do more than that" [he moves to take a lick at them] X : "no you dont!" [He punches the old man square in the jaw] O1: [catches himself on the walker] "you want a boxing match, i used ta have the belt ya know" [he lands a punch on xray who doesnt even flinch]
V : [Vav comes up from behind and pulls the old man away] O1: "No he's got me!" [he flails a bit but ineffectively to get out] "this is just like the 40s you cant stop all this" V : "We're sending you both back to the old folks home just stay there this time!" O1: "You'll never keep us caged! We'll always be ba-- Oh no is this a heart attack? Ma is that you in the light I'm-- I'm comin... comin to kick your dead ass" [and he's dead]
[Xray and Vav dump the old guys on an elderly bus they're used to dealing with these guys 'dying' and approach the stink bomb which is the stink jug but theres wires and stuff attached to supposedly detonate it] X: "Well I guess we'll have to deal with this" [he kicks the 'stink bomb' and Vav goes green] V: "I guess it'd be best to get it to Hilda she'll know how to get rid of it" X: "right lets go" [he starts walking leaving Vav to carry the barrel, poor vav]
I hope the notes after this make sense plot wise a lot of it was going to be explored deeper as we get drawing XDD ((also you get all my note writing jokes that i make to myself))
V = xray and vav / K = mad king / R  = rimmy tim / M = mogar
(V) - I need,, some basic everyday hero biz to start the story with - tIME TO THROW THE OLD MEN IN THERE (K) - He decides to try out his powers a lil test run ((around Hilda's lab)) - Xray and Vav crash the party ofc - He gets by them EASY slow mo can't do much against teleporting - He didn't have much of a goal for it but, now he knows he has the upper hand on Xray and Vav - He leaves victorious (V) - He gets the business end of a run in with ender ryan - What was that?? he can teleport?? - Well we have to figure something out! (R) - Rimmy Tim runs into Mad King - Which is wild! thought he was dead! - but he does have some weird ass shit going on (K) - Wow running into Rimmy Tim isnt that neat? - He pays no mind to the Battle Buddy (R) - Rimmy Tim is crashing at Jake's place ((to be relevant)) - He also meets Xray and Vav but nobody knows what his full deal is ((and theyre distracted from having they ass kicked))
(V) - Vav is the plan guy - They get intel that he has a weird power source - it gave him the powers so if they can figure it out maybe they can take them away! - We'll need to be stealthy boys... - MOGAR! - ask mogar for help, he distract while they sneak in and nab the gem (M) - The plan involves Mogar fighting Mad King up front - Mogar runs into Rimmy Tim and is suspicious of him (K) - Ofc he knew Xray and Vav would make a plan - Mogar comes to fight him aw they just decided to send a fwiend - Mad King is busy beating Mogar and doesn't notice that they got the gem ((Uh Oh! Plothole!)) (M) - They dont see him at the meeting place (K) - He Notices when he decides to experiment with it and tries out a lesser power source - Resulting in Zombie Mogar
(V) - They HAVE to find Mogar - poking around the outside for a sign of him they find his sword in the dumpster - thats,,, not good - its really heavy but if vav straps it to his back he can handle it - they wind up splitting up for any sign of Mogar (K) - Well if you're going to be rude about it - [teleports in the streets] - Have it your way do what you want - [and he leaves Mogar there] - when he teleports back Rimmy Tim is there and he quips ab how convenient tping is (R) - MK has him get rid of the new power source obviously a failure (V) - It gets dark but vav hears a noise in the alley - He finds Mogar! But he's eating something - Mogar growls and starts running at him - *british screaming* - As he BOOKS IT around a corner Xray runs into him and Vav just grabs his arm - NO TIME TO EXPLAIN - so what the plans just fucking run - oh wait thats Jake's van - *climbs in* wEHAVE TO GO HIT THE GAS - bro its a red light - iTS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT THERES NO TRAFFIC JUST - Mogar jumps on the vAAAAAAAA - Thats enough to convince Jake she slams on the gas - " you guys are paying for any tickets i get"
((for context, Jake is my oc she has an ask blog that I was planning to use to be like in between she and rimmy tim are hanging out and you might find out things from interacting w her. But for character knowledge she’s an appliance installer that works with The Monarchy’s Servants. Which that is the company that installs the stuff that comes out of Monarch Labs. there was also a whole bit where she and rimmy tim would be hanging out and he’d be joking like oh do you ever go in like “ah m’lord!! is this installation to your liking thank you m’lord!!” and she’d goof back if he ever had a house for her to install shit in she’d do it just for him.
and for how Jake and Rimmy tim met it was at 3am dennys a few years ago and they been buds ever since))
(R) - Jake's checking on her van later and Rimmy Tim comes out to give a hand - and he asks what happened and she's shaking a lil - she just leaves it as hero biz as usual she thinks (V) - bloody hell we have to help mogar! - yeah what did Mad King do to him! - they gotta bait and catch him (R) - Jake gets a call from xray and vav asking for help getting mogar to a lab - Rimmy Tim tags along and gets to see Mogar (M) - Xray and Vav catch mogar and have him leashed in the lab - But?? Is he dangerous?? Can he contaminate others??
(R) - This is wrong - RYAN is wrong - Rimmy Tim,, Has to do something - discussion doesnt work, Ryan's just a wall discussion wise - theres no talking him out of anything he's too absorbed (V) - Mogar has good moments - reference the rotten flesh test w vav (K) - Rimmy Tim is getting increasingly worried ab him - Rimmy Tim mentions Mogar - Well it wasn't on PURPOSE - but yeah i did that - No, I don't particularly know how to reverse it (R) - Rimmy Tim tries talking hey what if we just did this partner like - Nothing can beat the battle buddies then this can all be done right? - Mad King brushes him off and tells him to stay out of his business - Ryan gets caught in the rain - He claws Rimmy's face oh no! his money maker! - Rimmy Tim decides enough is enough and leaves to help Xray and Vav fix this,,, fix him,,, (V) - They hear Mad King in the rain - hhhhh i dont want to deal with more monsterrrrssss - Rimmy Tim joins the team! - he explains his history with Mad King - and how he's worried - wORRIED LOOK WHAT HE'S DONE TO MOGAR - He digs out the lesser power source that was used on Mogar - THIS made THAT *points at Mogar* (K) - Mad King is bandaged and goes to sleep off the pain and *emotions* (gross) of the evening - as he drifts off instead of dreaming he finds himself seeing through Jeremy's damaged eye - He just sees xray and vav but he cant hear a word - needless to say he feel betrayed
(Finale leadup)
- they need a plan to catch MK - Xray and Vav decide to drill RT ab possible weaknesses - he doesnt have much to contribute though they havent worked together in years and he didnt have all this magic junk going on. - and all RT's seen of the magic junk is teleporting - Well have you seen his hideout? can you explain like layout or whats going on there - oh fuck yeah i guess that is intel lemme sketch it out
- Hilda is playing around with whats the difference between the gem they stole from MK and the one that RT says changed Mogar - Mayhaps after some experimentation gone wrong she figures they cant use the thing against him but need a device that'll remove that specific energy - so you know a SUCKING machine - While she's working so closely with this she starts having enderhilda dreams but like when she's awake shes like yeah thats neat but you aint caught my interest you dumb gem
- Wait RT if you and MK used to be in cahoots do you have any powers that can beat him? - I got guns we were guns for hire you know battle buddies - wot MK doesnt use guns he plays mind games - well yeah NOW he does he uh-- didnt have it all together after our last mission
(flashback)
- Battle buddies are cleaning up after a mission - they're both pretty angry like we wound up being the bad guys AGAIN how does this keep happening - RT agrees he's not a fan of dirty cash - MK comes to the conclusion if i controlled these sheeple nobody would be calling my shots and makin me do the wrong thing - come on ryan ya cant control people thats wrong - whats a little more blood on my hands if it means making things better on the whole - and MK winds up leaving the battle buddies :C
(Finale)
- Hilda comes in like hey i got your guys's sucking machine go suck off mad king or whatever - and vavs like Alright! lets make a plan lads! - then we go to MK - he can see them coming, he's gotten practice watching through RT's eyes - he gets the machine from them as theyre barely through the door - "well I was curious what this would do but what does it matter anyways" - and he's got like some full ender shadow clones to help with the fight and they all pair off ((not like an army literally just enough to pair off MK dont need an army to beat these guys)) - the real MK personally faces off RT though :) - RT "why do i get the real ryan why couldnt you face off with like vav or something" - MK "im curious if you could shoot me 'buddy'" - RT "well I doubt i'll do something but i do owe you one ;)" and he do shoot him but yeah the bullets are stopped and do nothing - MK "I do hope you brought something else if youre turning against the MAD KING you have best be prepared" - RT "what can i say" [drops gun] "I stick to my guns" [throw punch]
- but yeah after the fighting and witty dialogue clears it looks like MK do have the upper hand - RT was left bleeding out ((stabbed through with pointy fingers oooo MK got his blood literally on his hands)) - While MK is monologuing RT sneaks into the bathroom which MK pauses mid monologue when he sees a flash of RT's bloody hand reaching for the showerhead - cant believe that fuck - and RT comes out and hoses him down ((yes it reaches that far LOOK its got a long hose)) - then MK's on the ground fucking sizzling - vav's like oh right! and jumps up to get the sucking machine and they use it on MK
(epilogue)
- Jake drops RT off where they got MK locked up and shes like "do what u gotta do man" and RT's like "thanks for understanding bud" - and he gets in MK shifts to look at him - RT starts to apologize for ruining his plan but gets interrupted as MK says "you were right" - which is a SHOCKING thing to hear from that guy - and mad king is like "thank you" - and we end on "anytime buddy."
so that was my plot I havent been kidding when I said it was a long comic plan. Its been heartbreaking to have this whole thing ripped from me but I can’t tell a story about friendship w a manipulator. 
I’m not sure how long it’ll be until I actually get another thing started but I hope its soon because I was very excited to share a good long story with the xray and vav fandom and I thought this plot wouldve been like a good season worth of content
I had some draws tagged under “#its all connected” and they were all me working on this idea before I actually decided to write it out and try for a whole comic after being inspired by some close friends and the good at being bad animation collab
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blackasmidnightcats · 4 years
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Continued discussion about Sophie's "redemption arc"
Original post from @agathasarmy
@agathasarmy I've moved this to a new post cause I have a lot of feelings and still want to continue this discussion and I hope you don't mind
So anyways...
(this wouldve been also a great way to introduce the concept of legacies, especially with the past vs. present. vs. future theme and it would also parallel tedros’ storyline as they’re both dealing with the fallout of carrying their predecessor’s glory)
YESSSS
All of them have big shoes to fill because of the people who've nurtured and believed in them
One thing I really hated in the camelot years was the lack of mourning that Agatha and Sophie did for Callis and Lady Lesso respectively.
That is the kind of anguish that I was looking for. Just them being children and missing their parent/parental figure and wishing that they could still be someone's child who could look out for them and motivate them when they needed.
Like Sophie remembering that Lady Lesso believed in her the way that Sophie could never do and Agatha remembering how her mother would have wanted her daughter to live out her life with with love and adventure.
Let's not even get with Tedros (that's a whole other meta in itself)
so far all i got was lesso and hester being the best examples of it, but what i also got from them was that Evil wasnt being cruel but serving as the balance to Good like ok???? what exactly does that entail??
Exactly, I'm really frustrated about this because as much as Soman has tried to make us understand that Good and Evil are equals, he has never actually shown us how equal they can be since all the Evil figures that we have are usually helping Good.
I'm really pissed that the Coven's quest involve them finding a new School Master when they have absolutely no need to do that. They should be doing their own stuff instead. It's the one thing I shame Prof Dovey for.
that was what I expected the series would be: Tedros and Agatha as Good because Good always stands stronger together, and Sophie as Evil because Evil is best alone, but not lonely
I stand behind your point about "Alone but not Lonely" quote because if that does not describe Sophie's biggest problem than I don't know what does. She can have all the fans that she wants and build the whole School for Evil in her tribute and pretend that she's a strong independent woman who doesn't need a man but she'll still feel the loneliness seep through if she doesn't have a closure with her insecurities and envy
instead Soman subverted our expectations in the worst way possible since GoT S8 (dont @ me)
I will stand by you with the hate for GoT s8. That was a trainwreck so badly done it imploded on itself. Recently, writers that have big productions have been having a hard time gracefully ending their stories
EXACTLY I JUST KNOW SOMAN’S GONNA BRUSH IT OFF OR BARELY MENTION IT WHEN THIS KIND OF DIALOGUE IS MORE IMPORTANT TO THE MESSAGE OF THE STORY THAN SOMAN RANDOMLY INSERTING DOVEY AS TEDROS’ GODMOTHER OR REAPER BEING KING FOR PLOT CONVENIENCE
I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL. I WILL NOT STOP BEING SO FREAKING BITTER ABOUT IT.
Soman was off with a good start on that one. I would have been more interested with Sophie trying to handle her narcissistic desires vs her need to actually be a decent Dean to all the new students just like how Lady Lesso was for her. Her understanding how to be Evil and be herself would have been a nice read.
if soman had to bring back a trope from the last era, it would be the discussion of dichotomies i.e. Good vs. Evil, instead of the evil lover trope cos aint nobody got the time for that
YESSS
It's still technically the school for GOOD AND EVIL SERIES even if we go to a new era I was hoping that Soman would still have these as the roots but NOOOO.
His obsession with Sophie obsessing over boys that obsess over her is a strong one apparently.
like at this point it’ just really blatantly obvious how much Soman favors Sophie and I wouldnt be that bothered if he didnt sacrifice the plot or the other characters’ brain cells to go along with it cos to this day I refuse to believe that people really would just accept Rhian like that after reading The Tale of Sophie and Agatha
EXCATLY. I HONESTLY COULD NOT UNDERSTAND SOME OF THE DECISIONS OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS ABOUT THIS.
Like did no one still understand that not everything is what it seems?!
I am baffled with how easy they trusted a comeplete stranger over Agatha who has proven over and over and over again that she fights for the good of EVERYONE and is perfecrly willing to sacrifice her happiness for theirs.
Like at this point I'm thinking that her fairy tale propably does not do justice for everything that she's been through cause if the other people of the Woods read her story the way we did, there would be no doubt that we would stand behind Agatha for a lifetime
like cmon people we went through this already?? a random hot stranger coming out of nowhere??? ITS THE RED FLAG
In defense with them, (and I am saying this very, very off handedly) Rhian did come around saving everyone's asses and was a pretty decent guy (NOT).
WHAT I AM REALLY SURPISED ABOUT IS THAT THEY WANT A PIECE OF HIM AND HOW EASILY THEY TRUSTED HIM WITH EVERYTHING
I THOUGHT THE POINT OF THIS SERIES WAS TO SHOW THAT ROMANCE WASN’T THE ONLY HIGHEST MANIFESTATION OF LOVE, BUT A LOVE BETWEEN FAMILY OR A LOVE FOR ONE’S SELF WAS JUST AS IMPORTANT????
One of my biggest beefs with Soman's writing. He highlights romance too much compared to platonic and self love. I want a moment with Sophie like the one in TLEA where Agatha was getting stressed about letting Sophie and Tedros grow closer and Soman managed to pretty realistically portray that; Agatha was being insecure and possessive and jealous but she let herself reflect on her actions. She made peace with it and faced it with bravery even though it really hurts her. Because she understood that she would never have closure for this if she didn't let it happen.
AGGIE IS THE BEST. I LOVE HER
Why the hell can't Soman write something similar like this for Sophie.
WHY SOMAN PUTTING THIS AMATONORMATIVE BS IN THIS STORY AGAIN LIKE WE ARE TIRED
In fairness, Sophie getting into ANOTHER romantic relationship I will PASS SO HARD.
But for everyone else that deserves some romantic love (TAGATHA PLS) I will accept crawling
also I like your ideas on what could’ve happened instead, with Rhian being more proactive towards Tedros and Agatha instead of Sophie - it would play well into the Camelot myths and themes that I was really expecting in the new era
I KNOW RIGHT?!?!?!
If Soman could only just get over his Sophie Obsession, then he would understand that Tedros was the perfect target for Rhian's manipulations and Sophie was the perfect target for the downfall.
I have no idea how the hell did Rhian think (but apparently it worked because soman plot) that seducing Sophie would win him the love of the Woods.
plus it wouldve been a chance for Sophie to actively help them instead of tearing them apart like in the last 3 books?? like she’s kinda doing that rn but it would’ve been nice if she didn’t have a hand in stealing their happiness like she’s always done too
Well...for me she doesn't seem like she's tearing them apart anymore but I stand with your point about her stealing their happiness.
This could have been good, good character development for her. Her realizing that she keeps making tagatha miserable and stealing what belongs to them and the complexity that comes with her inner struggle between her envy vs love for her best friends.
PLUS CHADDICK DESERVED TO LIVE INSTEAD OF BEING KILLED FOR PLOT CONVENIENCE LITERALLY IT’S THE WORST DEATH IN THE SERIES NOT COS IT’S SAD BUT COS IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE AND MAKES FOR TERRIBLE WRITING IMHO
"NOT COS IT'S SAD BUT BECAUSE IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE"
SCREAM IT A BIT LOUDER SO SOMAN CAN HEAR IT AT THE BACK!!!!
Soman, I will never forgive you for doing this to this boy.
You could have made Tedros and Chaddick have a falling out. I mean the last time that they interacted was during AWWP and Chaddick treated Tedros as crap. I know that all of us headcanon that these two are each other's best mates but they've barely had significant interactions for me to consider that a case.
They'd be so pressured about not followong the legacy of Arthur and Lance that a small problem could propably tear these two apart.
also, on another point, you would think Sophie would be more sympathetic to Tedros situation given that they’re both leading populations, essentially
plus Sophie learned to understand Tedros’ mind better in awwp??? where the hell did that relationship development went (even if she was Filip at the time)??
I am honestly more suprised at how viciously Tedros seems to treat her.
Like it wasn't that long after TLEA that Tedros was perfectly willing to let Sophie stay in Camelot and even asked her to visit but come his coronation (which was like less than a day after) he keeps on proclaiming about how happy he is with her out his life and in aCoT his distrust for her was off the roof.
Then there is the Handbook ordeal with Sophie just completely roasting Tedros like what happend to the two of you?
I don't even understand Soman's decision about this. It doesn't even affect the actual storyline in anyway. It's just Sophie and Tedros at each other's throats.
Tedros has been treated the crappiest out of the main trio (let’s be honest) as if the game was built to oppose him, meanwhile Sophie gets major Soman privilege and is given the role ONCE AGAIN that could change the game
THIS
It's the reason why I can't even read AWWP anymore. It hurts too much to have to read at how badly the other characters treat him. Just reading the first line of that book gets me anxious.
And PREACH THAT SOPHIE HAS MAJOR SOMAN PRIVILEGES.
This is why I was actually suprised that Soman shared that he planned on killing Sophie off at the end of TLEA but we'll never how that story went
like if the School Years was for Sophie to realize and accept her Evilness, couldnt Soman have decided to give Tedros and Agatha the deciding roles this time around given that, you know, it’s called the CAMELOT YEARS ERA???
Honestly, I just want Tedros to have the most agency out of all the characters. Like make his decisions actually matter to the plot. Make him the center of the plot and revolve Rhian's plans around him instead of being against him cause that's exactly how Agatha's role in the school years era was for Rafal.
The basic formula goes like this;
Sophie important to the Rafal's/Rhian's/Japeth's/hell even Evelyn Sader's plan
Agatha/Tedros are in the way of that plan so they have to go
Agatha/Tedros saves Sophie's ass
Sophie making the big decision
Like didn't Soman say that he didn't want to be that repetitive writer? That's why he changed the ending of AWWP because it was too similar to the first book?
WTF SOMAN?
she’s still out here wanting someone to look at her the tedros looks at agatha (honestly big mood right there) but I wish this didn’t have to be her main conflict
This is actually why I'm not that mad that Sophie fell for Rhian. Because at the end of the day Sophie will be Sophie.
But I agree I kinda hoped that she wouldn't be as guilible
the girl is smart and knows her worth so I can’t really understand why she decided to get ENGAGED to the next person (Hort obviously cant count cos plot) who tells her she looks pretty???
NOW THIS. THIS IS MY BEEF WITH SOPHIE.
I can understand why she'd date him but MARRIAGE?! That was going a little bit too far.
You'd think after her engagement with Rafal that she'd be TRAUMATIZE for the next one.
And honestly it would have been hella funny if she did feel this way. Imagine Rhian nearly getting all that he needed but Sophie just straight up leaves him on the stage cause she's still got issues with it.
Would have been my favorite scene
And Hort, poor boy, he needs character development of his own. I'm not his fan honestly and currently, he's not winning me over.
ALSO THE FACT THAT SHE ENDS UP BEING CONSIDERED FOR THE ROLE OF QUEEN OF CAMELOT INFURIATES ME SO MUCH COS WE WENT THROUGH THAT SHIT IN TLEA???? WHY ARE WE BRINGING THIS UP AGAIN????
THIS. THIS IS MY BEEF WITH SOMAN
Can he not understand that she would be crap as QUEEN?
A parallel I noticed with Rhian and Sophie is that they both completely remodeled their respective castles in their image. Not even considering anyone else. And they both treat their faculty as crap.
Kinda tells us that she really would be crap as queen.
At least the Camelot citizens had enough braincells not to fall for this crap
Every other kingdom in the Woods though. They better be budgeting gold to Tedros and Agatha once they're back on the throne.
(and im so so tired of Sophie stealing Agatha’s Ever After from her, indirectly or not, like cant she just be happy for her best friend and move the plot in some way other than this???)
I really do believe envy is only one of the things that Sophie needs to sort out. The fact that she admitted at the end of TLEA that she does, in fact, feel envious that Agatha gets to be a queen and her little episode in the Ever Never Roundtable about how she's the one with the official title of queen and that Agatha isn't even a princess says a lot.
I wouldn't have minded if Sophie had a slight blackout and just lost it and saying mean things about Agatha but instantly regreting it because no matter what, deep down in the foundations of her soul, she loves Agatha with everything that she has. And is she has the be in a constant battle with herself about this fact then she's willing to keep on fighting. That would have been satisfying to read.
I mean just imagine if Sophie was there when Agatha was leading her army and Hester mentions that Agatha is Queen in the School, in Camelot, or anywhere elsse in the Woods. They would follow her. Willingly.
Sophie would have had a panic attack.
This girl needs to learn that she can't force people to be loyal and follow her by making every physical reminder of how amazing she is but instead she needs to lead and make some sacrifices of her own because she's doing these sacrifices in the benefit of Evil and its future instead of herself.
Sophie appreciating people?? Not only remembering them when she needs something from them??? Like @ soman im not asking her to be the next Mother Theresa but I’ll take this character development pls and thank u
I am all in for Sophie appreciating everyone. If she can't do it for other people, then she better do it for Evil.
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danganronpa-tng · 4 years
Text
Chapter 5 - The Trial Of Kamron Naegi
*Trigger Warning; brief mention of hanging later in the trial. Read at your own discretion*
- - -
Kamron was found collapsed out in the hallway of the dormitory corridor. He had a couple of bruises on barely visible areas, such ad his stomach or legs. His sunglasses were missing. Due to the fact four people encountered the body at the same time, one out of the four could still be a suspect, hkwever this is not certain.
Cause of death was blood loss. He was found with his right hand severed, laying several feet away from him. The weapon used to sever the hand is unknown, but the cut makes it look like a sharp blade. There were clear signs of a struggle, including blood splatters in the middle of the hallway. It seems he was propped up against the wall rather than collapsing against it.
The victim was killed at approximately 1PM. He was discovered at approximately 9AM that day.
- - -
“So, he died at 1AM?”
“Yep... anything on your mind, Sara?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing really. I just find it odd he was still fully clothed at 1AM, that’s all. Well, bar his sunglasses, but you know.”
“That’s true, actually... thanks, Sara!”
“Anytime! Good luck.”
- - -
“I-I can’t believe this... Kamron... as s-soon as I learn we’re related...”
“Hey, hey Kass... it’s gonna be OK. We’re gonna find his killer, no matter what! Ok?”
“Yeah... yeah, I know you can. We all can. I just can’t let this slide. Someone’s- someone’s gonna pay!”
“Right.”
- - -
“Greetings, Hayden.”
“Oh, Katelyn! You ok? You look panicked.”
She’s smoothing out her clothes and panting.
“No, not panicked per say... more so, kind of nervous. I was chatting to Aspen last night, and we talked about how we were sure nobody else would be killed from now on... I suppose we were wrong.”
“Oh...”
“Anyways, I did my usual check to the weapons room, as I tend to do.”
“And?”
“I, surprisingly didn't see anything out of place. Nobody had moved anything since the masquerade.”
“Really? That’s odd... anyways, thanks Katelyn.”
“Anytime. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
- - -
“M-morning, Aeja...”
“Hello, Hayden. Apologies for my message earlier, please disregard it.”
“Huh? I mean, we can still talk if you want-”
“No, it’s quite alright. Now, what did you come over here for?”
“Ah, well, I just wanted to see what evidence you had.”
“Is that it? Hm. Well then, all I’ve found so far isn’t properly solid evidence, but I noticed that almost everyone came out of their room in their pyjamas, as you can see. However, three people didn’t. Aspen, Katelyn and Estrella. Not proper evidence.”
“Well, it’s still worth noting! Thanks, Aeja.”
“You’re welcome. Now, please leave me be. I’m thinking.”
“Ah. Ok.”
- - -
“Estrella-?”
“Hm? Hmm? Is that a voice? No, must have been the wind.”
“Estrella-”
“Oh, there it is again! It sure is drafty in here.”
“Estrella please, I just wanna talk about evi-”
“Ugh, a leader as supreme as me shouldn't be putting up with a cold room. I’ll be taking my leave now.”
“Wait-! Aaaaaaaand she’s gone.”
- - -
“Hm? Vera? Oh, you can write it down. Cool.”
Yes. Well, I was just wondering, has anyone checked the kitchen to see if all the knives are still there? It might be a worthy idea.
“Oh, no actually! I didn’t even think of that. Thanks, Vera!”
- - -
The Trial
- - -
“So, does anyone have a solid alibi?”
“For 1AM?”
“Ah... fair point. So let me rephrase that; was anybody in someone else’s dorm last night? As in, sleeping over?”
Yes, I was staying in Sara’s room last night.
“Ah, ok! So, we can pretty safely assume those two are clear then.”
“Nice! Thanks, Vera!”
“Was anyone else with another person? For any amount of time?”
I looked over at Estrella and Aeja. They were looking anywhere but at each other, avoiding eye contact like it was the Black Plague. I pitied the two. I debated whether or not I should admit I saw them. But before I could, the conversation topic changed.
- - -
“So, I don’t suppose anyone checked the weaponry room, did they?”
“Yes, I did, in fact.”
“Oh! See anything, Katelyn?”
“No, actually. Nothing was out of place, so it seems nothing has moved since our last investigation.”
“Oh, that’s odd...”
“...hey, Vera? Didn't you say you thought about checking the kitchen?”
She nods.
“Did you get a chance to?”
She nodded again, starting to write. I suppose writing is easier then having everything translated.
Yes. One knife was in the rack still, but bloodied, so we can assume a kitchen knife is what severed his hand. And I also noticed a glass while I was there, one that still had ice in it. Which means...
“Someone only put it back this morning?”
She nods.
- - -
“Estrella, you’ve been pretty quiet.”
“Hm? Oh, sorry. I just didn’t feel like wasting my breath on you.”
“Wow, rude.”
“Really? Quite honestly Sara, I hadn’t cared to notice.”
“What’s up with you? You’ve been in a pretty good mood since the whole-”
“Yeah, well, things change, People change. Or rather, they don’t. See, I was trying to be a but nicer, but after a certain incident I realised that- well, who am I kidding? I’ve built this role for myself, and I’m never gonna be able to shake it off, so might as well live up to it.”
She folds her arms.
“I’m the evil leader that’s only here to confuse and irritate people. I’m the walking embodiment of a bad joke! So, if you plan on figuring out who stabbed Spy Kid over there, I suggest you shut the fuck up and keep going with the trial.”
Sara just looked away, slightly disheartened.
“I thought we’d become friends now... Aren’t we friends?”
“Do you really want to be friends with someone like me?”
- - -
“Well, let’s get back to alibis, since we don’t have much to go off. Where was everyone? Alone, or with someone else?”
“I- like I said earlier, I was with Vera.”
“Right. Karma?”
“I was alone. I stayed up a bit late though, so I only woke up when the body announcement went off.”
“Ok. Kassidy?”
“I-I said goodbye to Kamron and then went back to my room... I went asleep pretty quickly.”
“Alright. Katelyn?”
“Unlike almost everyone here, I have an alibi. I stayed in Aspen’s room last night, then went back to mine and got changed. I was up before the announcement, so-”
“Wait a sec.”
“Hm? Something wrong, Aspen?”
“Katelyn... you never came to my room last night.”
- - -
“Katelyn..? Care to defend yourself?”
“Wh- oh, shut up, copycat. Have you not even considered your dear girlfriend over there? You should have seen her face when we saw the body! She didn’t even look surprised, she looked like she already knew! She-”
“That’s because I did.”
“...what?”
“Estrella, what do you mean by-?”
“Isn't it obvious, Mr No Talent? I saw the murder happen. I was on my way back to my room when I heard a fight, so I went to check it out, and... well, I simply decided to not give him a hand, haha!”
“Really?! You're serious?”
“Most likely.”
“Well, who did it?”
“I thought that was obvious, too. I decided not to tell you because I’m pissed off! I’m a petty bitch, as you know, and as such I decided to let this play out.”
“Estrella, stop being childish-”
“DON’T talk to me about childish, Aeja! I’m not the one who tried to hang them self when they got scared!”
The room fell horribly silent. Aeja looked away, and Estrella reached up to her own cheek, where her cut was. Something started to click into place.
“Wait, Aeja tried to-”
“Fine then, Estrella. If you're going to be like that, shut up and dont disrupt this trial. This isn't about our business, it’s about finding Kamron’s killer. So, now that we’re back on topic and abandoning that last conversation... Katelyn? Aspen?”
Aspen looked at Katelyn, who didn’t meet his eyes.
“K-Katelyn? Kate? Please, please tell me you just got mixed up. You got mixed up, right? Yeah. Yeah!”
“...Aspen.”
“...no. No, no, no, please don’t say it.”
- - -
“Why? Why did you do it, Katelyn?”
“I- Hayden. You have to understand, I hold my parents in... very high regard. He was insulting them, insulting me! I-I couldn’t just let that stand. I got mad, so I- I got a knife from the kitchen and went back, just to threaten him! I never planned on actually hurting him... but I guess he panicked, and he lunged at me. So I panicked, and- I accidentally-”
“...chopped his hand off.”
“...If I could go back in time, I would change what I did. But, it’s in the past now. I... this shouldn't have happened, I know.”
“...you can’t be serious, right Katelyn? Right?! It was Estrella. Yeah, it was! You’re just covering for her because- because- you don't wanna watch the same execution again!”
“...no.”
“...this doesn’t compute. There’s something wrong here, right? RIGHT?!”
- - -
“Well, Hayden, I do not wish to put up a fight. Care to unravel this case?”
That quickly? Hm...
“Ok. This- *sigh*.”
This all starts... Last night, I believe. The killer was out in the corridor with Kamron, with whom they hadn't interacted, until the killer made some off-handed comment about their parents, which caught Kamron’s attention. He started talking about the parents of the other participants, including the killer’s. They seemed to have a particular distaste for their parents, particularly their deceased father, for reasons unknown, as they started to slander them, insulting them and the killer. The killer, enraged by this, leaves Kamron there and goes to the kitchen. They grab a knife, which they must have thought was blunt, to threaten him. However, when they got there, Kamron saw the weapon in their hand and panicked. They tried to lunge for the killer, but was swiftly cut off- literally- as the killer also panics and swings the knife with unusual force. This blow, to their dismay, manages to cut off Kamron’s hand. He stumbles backwards and collapsed, bleeding out. The killer, panicking, returns to their room. They stash the weapon and go straight to bed, trying to act natural. 
They wake up slightly earlier than everyone else to hide the evidence. They wake up a bit too late though, and don't have as much time as they thought to clean the weapon. They simply slip it back into the knife rack and grab a quick drink, before heading back to their room. Five minutes later, they hear me scream and run outside, ‘finding’ the body along with me and two others.
That’s what happened, and our killer is...
Katelyn Momota, the Ultimate Psychiatrist!
“...it sounds so horrible when it’s repeated back to me. But, I must face the facts. I’m-”
- - -
*mumbling*
“Aspen? Did you say somethi-”
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
“ ! ”
“I told you not to get mad! I told you not to hurt anyone, and look what you did! You’ve... you’ve gone and killed someone, and now I’m going to lose you. I’m gonna lose you, Katelyn!”
“Aspen... Aspen, no. You can’t be upset over me, ok? I’m a killer now. I’m a bad person here.”
“No you’re not! I don’t care what you’ve done, you’re still special to me! I-I can’t lose you! Please don’t go... please...”
Aspen was doubled over on himself, and... I think he was crying oil? 
“I didn’t know the robot could cry-”
“Shut up, Estrella.”
Katelyn looked genuinely confused and concerned. She shook her head.
“No, you... you’re not supposed to be upset over me. You... you shouldn’t be upset over me. You can’t.”
Aspen and Katelyn finally locked eyes. Neither said anything for a moment. Eventually, Katelyn sighed.
“I... I know there is no escaping my fate. But... I wish to do one more thing before I am killed. Monokuma, may I? I will make no attempt to escape.”
Monokuma shrugged.
“Sure, knock yourself out. ...wait, what are you doing?”
And suddenly, Katelyn was running. Not to the exit, not to Aspen, but to...
“...Eh-?! GAH-!”
Katelyn was on her knees either side of a now toppled over Estrella, with her hands around Estrella’s neck. Estrella was grabbing at Katelyn’s Arms, trying to free herself. She was being strangled.
“You BITCH! I should have wasted my damn murder on you!”
“KATELYN!”
“ESTRELLA!”
Two people ran over; Aspen and Aeja. Aeja reached them first, full on jumping at Katelyn and pushing her off Estrella. Aspen helped Estrella sit up, the girl in question being purple in the face and gasping for air. Aeja had Katelyn pinned by her wrists.
“Hah... hah...” 
Estrella looked over at the girls, panting. She looked between them, and I couldn't tell which person confused her more. She nodded at Aspen, trying to stand herself up.
“Katelyn... the fuck?!”
“You... you know what you did to me, you bitch!”
After a moment, Estrella took a deep breath and grinned, placing her arms behind her head.
“Of course I do! And I don’t regret it either, you know. I’m glad I did!”
Katelyn literally growled, and suddenly she shoved Aeja off her, standing up. Estrella jumped a bit, backing up. Aeja looked at Monokuma.
“Monokuma- MONOKUMA!”
Even Monokuma looked surprised at the whole outburst, but he quickly resumed normal behaviour.
“I have a very special punishment for Katelyn Momota, Ultimate Psychiatr- SHIT-!”
With Katelyn quickly approaching Aspen, Monokuma slammed his hammer down on his button.
“Wait- Katelyn!”
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bigskydreaming · 5 years
Note
hi, im new to reading actual comics and i just read the court of owls. this was the first time id ever seen bruce actually hit dick—does that happen a lot? i was honestly shocked at it. and bruce never apologized. im trying to understand why bruce would do that—why do you think? i dont think the comic was glorifying it at all but it was still there and im a little dumbfounded as to why the writers thought that was appropriate to put in there. what are your thoughts?
Its shitty writing. That’s the ultimate answer. Every instance of Bruce’s kids ever has been an instance of shitty writing, because it never gets addressed or followed up on, and its not like there’s EVER a good reason to write a father hitting his kids unless you’re specifically centering the kids and trying to write a story of abuse and learning to recognize and accept that yes, this is actually happening to them now what do they do with that awareness and understanding....and let’s be frank, that’s not a story that DC has ever desired or intended to write with Bruce in the position of that father.
So flat out, no equivocation, every instance of Bruce hitting his kids ever, has been shitty, unacceptable writing, no matter the context or the follow-up, because the end takeaway at the heart of the matter is always, always, always, that whatever each writer’s actual intention when writing those scenes, they definitively did not ‘intend’ for it to be seen as abusive.
But that means jack shit in terms of whether what was actually shown on the page, was in fact abusive. Which has been the case, more than once, and with more than one of his kids.
So unfortunately, he has been physically violent with Dick on more than one occasion, in which there was no chance of it being spun as mind control or like, them fighting as equals because of some story position or whatever, where it was just definitively, a father hitting his son for his own emotional reasons or whatever. It happened after Jason’s death, it happened in the Court of Owls arc, it happened after Dick briefly died and was resuscitated in Forever Evil and Bruce was trying to get him to go undercover without anyone else knowing he’d survived yet. There have been a couple other times where the two of them have come to mutual blows in a fight that started as just a verbal argument, but I tend not to focus on those for a number of reasons but tbh, mostly just because its an uphill battle getting people to address even the times when its most clear that Bruce is without a doubt unjustified and dishing out abuse that is in no way reciprocated. There’s no real chance to even get around to the scenes that are complicated by additional layers.
And again to be clear, this kind of shit writing isn’t just limited to Dick. Bruce has been physically violent with Jason ever since he came back as the Red Hood in more than one altercation, with there being the flimsy justification in some of these stories that well, technically Jason is ‘the bad guy’ and Bruce is just doing what he has to in order to stop him....but with more than one instance of Bruce being overly violent with Jason in ways that he isn’t with even some of the worst criminals or villains in other stories, thus making it impossible to interpret as anything other than Bruce’s aggression being heightened by his emotional turmoil at Jason’s actions, the fact that he’s fighting his own son, Bruce’s own issues, etc, etc....
Which ultimately all just boils down to...Bruce is violent with Jason and to degrees that he isn’t with even his most notorious villains, and his own emotional state is the only explanation possible, which makes the over the top nature of Bruce’s violence in these scenes outright abuse, no matter the existence of the ‘well Jason technically was doing something that Bruce was trying to stop, it was more of a hero vs antihero thing rather than a father vs son thing’ attempt at spinning it otherwise. Notable and notorious instances of this are Bruce’s way of ‘finishing’ things in UTRH, RHATO #25, etc.
With Tim, the only real instance so far has been Batman #71, the King written bullshit I spoke of, and tbh I’m still so steamed at his attempt at justifying that, like, just read the latest issue to see the full story there because I refuse to even dignify that particular bit of abuse apologism with a paraphrasing.
And unfortunately, Bruce has definitely been written being emotionally abusive with all his kids at various points or another, with again the real culprit usually being dumbass fuckferrett writer assholes who wouldn’t know how to write a healthy parent/child interaction if your Higher Power of Choice directly appeared in their room, shining with benevolence and full-on “Do Not Test Me On This”  wattage, and then handing them a script that word for word laid out how to write out a healthy parent/child interaction for the scene they were beginning....like, they’d STILL find a way to fuck it up, that’s how bad these particular writers are at recognizing This Is A Good Action and This is A Bad Action, Bad, B-A-D, DON’T DO IT.
And the thing is, that’s not Bruce Wayne at his core characterization. I don’t believe it is anymore than even the most die-hard Bruce fan, which I most decidedly am not. I’m here for his kids, he can stay when he’s doting and on his best Dadly behavior, but he’s always on thin ice with me at this point and on his own, I’m usually just like meh, wouldn’t adopting an orphan right about now be a better use of your time?
But for sure, Bruce absolutely has been written as a good parent in canon as well, and has everything he needs character wise to constantly have that portrayal of him upheld and prioritized instead of his worse traits but like. We have definitely gotten Bad Dad Bruce in canon, and more frequently than any of us would like....which is where we usually turn to fandom, for fix-its.
And there’s lots of Good Dad Bruce Wayne in fanfics. Its even its own tag. And I have no problem with most of those fics in spirit, or the concept in general, I’m just very opinionated and knee-jerk about abuse apologism across the board, so I mean...if it were up to me, I’d much rather normalize tags like “Bruce Wayne Can Be A Good Dad” and “Bruce Wayne Can Be A Bad Dad.” I don’t generally like broad-sweeping declarations made about characters that no one person can ever ensure consistent characterization for, so no matter how understandable the intent, I object to the idea of Good Dad Bruce Wayne protection squads or tags on the basis of like...how easily that can lead straight into abuse apologism, with people making the claim “Bruce would never do what he did in canon story (x)....because Bruce is a Good Dad and good dads don’t do that.” Well no, they don’t. In theory. Cuz problem is in reality, supposedly good dads do things like that all the time, because nobody IMO is truly good or bad, they just do good or bad things and even a person with a track record of doing mostly good things can occasionally surprise people, even themselves, by doing something horrific.
 And like, when we’re talking about fictional characters I’m all for arguing that something was out of character because with fiction you CAN actually consider a writer’s intent and compare and contrast it with what’s on the page, like you CAN technically say well, the writer SAID in this interview here, that they did this because they were thinking x, y and z....and then you could feasibly point to the actual on the page depiction of that scene and say okay but look at x, y and z here...what we actually got clearly isn’t what they claim they were actually going for, so they fucked it up, it wasn’t even their own intention, so like....I argue that this was out of character and shouldn’t be given too much weight. 
You can’t do that in reality. Impact is what matters. The effect. Not the cause. The intent. No matter how uncharacteristic an up until that point  ‘good dad’ striking their kid is for them....they’re not a character. They’re a person. It CAN’T be out of character, its them that did it, their action that caused the effect of their kid being abused, with no take backs for that, no rewind that will ever undo whatever effect that has on the rest of their relationship from that day forward, or whether they even have one at all.
And people have trouble setting firm boundaries on what they will defend in fiction versus what they will defend or call out as indefensible in reality, it isn’t nearly as either or as a lot of people try and tell themselves it is, IMO....like, my stance tends to be that if you can’t even condemn a fictional character for doing a clearly abusive thing, how do you think you can definitively say you’re sure you’d be able to condemn a loved one for doing a clearly abusive thing? Y’know? Its not as easy to separate as people like to make it out to be, so I’m hugely against abuse apologism in fandom because I think a lot of times....the way we react to these things in terms of favorite fictional characters can potentially end up a training ground for how we react to these things in real life, if they end up happening at a later point.
So I’m very critical of Bruce in a lot of my posts, but its not because I don’t want him to be good for his kids or don’t think he can be written that way....and not even because I don’t get the thought process behind ‘well I don’t view his character as being capable of that when he’s written the ways that drew me to his character in the first place, and this kind of behavior isn’t what I’m here for, it isn’t escapism for me and it just depresses me so I choose not to interact with or acknowledge these specific parts of canon.’
My issues arise from the specific ways a lot of fans attempt to write around these instances of canon, in order to not have to factor it into Bruce’s character and their view and depiction of it...while often times failing to apply similarly transformative energy to the characters Bruce hurt in these instances of canon. And when that happens, its a problem, IMO....because you end up writing Good Dad Bruce Wayne....and his kids who are at times resentful or bitter or argumentative or wary...as they are shown at times to be in canon....largely BECAUSE of those moments in canon where he’s written at his worst and does fucked up things. But without acknowledging those parts of canon at all, AND without similarly rewriting the course of events in his KIDS’ lives as much as you do in Bruce’s himself.....the end result often ends up being that you have Good Dad Bruce Wayne and a bunch of stubborn brats that according to this narrative spin have no reason for being as resentful or bitter or argumentative or wary as they’re being here...since THEY’RE still being written according to their full, overall canon characterization, with no specific chunks chiseled out.
And then of course, my other major issue with abuse apologism in fandom arises from how often fans seem willing to tackle the possibility or instances of Bad Dad Bruce Wayne in order to write fix-it fics and headcanons and meta for the times he’s hurt Jason or Tim or Damian, etc.....but then selectively erase or ignore the instances he’s done similar shit to Dick...because so much of this fandom insists on this take that he’s specifically favored by Bruce and has received special treatment that justifies the others’ occasional resentment of him, and the resentment of their fans for him. So there’s this kinda thing where you end up with a lot of fandom ignoring or refusing to acknowledging some fairly pivotal canon events because Bruce Would Never Do That, He’s A Good Dad.....AND then on top of that you have a lot of the rest of fandom ignoring or refusing to acknowledge some equally pivotal canon events because Bruce Would Never Do That To Dick, He’s A Good Dad To Dick...Its Just Everyone Else He Fucks Up With.
And that kind of selective acknowledgment of abuse for reasons of personal character preference like...get under my skin, BIG TIME. *Shrugs*
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Text
Sugar Lips | Huang Renjun
Genre: floof
Word count: 1.7k
A/n: this is one of the longest fics I've ever written and not at all based off of a boy from my school whom I dislike sorry about the rushed ending I didnt know where I was going with that :/
~~~~~
You and Renjun had never gotten along. He sat behind you in math and was constantly picking on you. Yeah, you could have destroyed him with some sick burns, but you held your tongue out of consideration for his gigantic ego. Half the school thought you two liked each other and the other knew that yall were mortal enemies. The thought of you liking Renjun made you want to stab your eyes out with sporks. However, you couldnt deny that Renjun was hot. Like, this boi had been hand sculpted by God himself. Seriously damn. You had to give credit where credit is due. But, as I said, you do NOT like Renjun.
After the rumors started that you and Renjun like each other, you tried to react less to him. You no longer argued and paid little attention to him. Much to your dismay, your teachers seemed to find your ability to ignore Renjun as a good quality that most of the others students lacked. This resulted in you sitting by him in most of your classes. But obviously you didnt let this affect you. You just had to sit there and pay him no attention. Easier said than done. You were always trying to not notice him, despite always looking at him because hes hot.
One night your friend, let's call her Ryn for fun, forced you out to a party and then ditched you. Skew you, Ryn! You weren't the biggest fan of parties so you sat on one of the counters in the kitchen, by yourself, patiently waiting for Ryn to be ready to leave. That's when something caught your eye. Renjun was also alone in the kitchen and he was looking right at you. Or at least, you thought he was, but he could easily be looking at something else. Why would he be looking at you anyways? You looked back down at your drink, avoiding any eye contact with the boy you have to ignore.
By this point in the year, you had gotten very good at ignoring him. You didnt even notice when he started walking towards you. And you didnt even react when he grabbed your hand. You paid him no attention as he led you into an empty room. All you had to do was not pay attention to Renjun. That's seriously all you had to do. So you didnt pay attention to him as he leaned towards you. But he grabbed your chin, causing you to look him in the eye. Shoot. Just dont react, you thought to yourself. You tried not reacting as he leaned closer and closer. Until..
He stopped? "Do you want me to stop" he asks innocently, a blush leaking onto his cheeks. Okay stay calm, just dont do anything rash- You tried to tell yourself but instead you grabbed his shirt in a fist and pulled him until the little space between you was now nonexistent. His lips were sweet, like sugar. They were as forbidden as they were sweet. And you were completely aware that you should not be doing what you were doing. Yet, you did not pull away. Thankfully, neither did Renjun. He just wrapped his arms around your waist and held you as close as he physically could.
The next thing you knew, your phone was going off. The musical tone signaling a call from Ryn who, to your dismay, was ready to leave and looking for you. Renjun took a small step back, wiped his mouth, and walked out of the room you to had shared. He didnt even say anything. Confused, you left as well, in search of Ryn. You found her by the door and explained everything that happened on your way home. Leaving out no details, it was a bit hard to believe considering Renjun was known to be you mortal enemy. What will happen when you sit by him in class tomorrow? Will he say something about it to embarrass you? Or will he stay quiet and pretend it never happened? Oh gosh, what if he says it was only because he was drunk? Thinking back to your memory, his mouth didnt taste like alcohol at all, so even if he tried to blame it on drinking, it wasnt feasible. But now you were thinking about kissing him,,, and that thought didnt go away easily.
~
You walk into your first class to see him already there surrounded by the other boys. You had planned to avoid eye contact and avoid him in general because you were worried about what he would do. But you locked eyes and to your dismay, he just smirked. Dare you say, is was a really handsome smirk too. Luckily nobody was paying attention so this interaction went unnoticed as you sat at your seat beside him.
Half the class went by without mishap and you hoped you would never have to deal with Renjun again. However, you are not that fortunate. He slid you a note discreetly.
Y/N, for acting like you have a pole stuck up your ass 80% of the time, you're a surprisingly good kisser ;)
You tried so hard to hold yourself back. To not react. To go back to how things were with Renjun as your enemy of mutual disgust. But you could help but write back.
Only 80% of the time?
You busy later?
I am completely free tonight
Good, my family is out for the night
And then the bell rang and you were off to your next class which you didnt have with Renjun. Before you knew it the school day had ended and you were rushing to leave. Maybe you were going too fast because you didnt see the person in front of you until after you ran right into them.
"Y/N! Can you fucking watch where you're going?!" Renjun said. You were taken aback by his antics because he was acting so weird in your classes today. I guess this makes it seem like nothing has changed between you two to the rest of the school.
"Watch where you're going, Renjun, you stepped out right in front of me." You spit back before you walked away without another word.
~
You arrived at Renjuns house around 5. When he opened the door, you could tell he was nervous but tried to play it off. You wanted to kiss him again, but he hadnt made another move. Yolo! You grabbed his shirt in a fist and aggressively pulled him towards you. His eyes were big, surprised by your actions. He kissed you back more delicately than before. It was as if he was no longer fueled by the lust he had at the party.
Renjun was the first to pull away. His face was bright red as he invited you further into his home. "Are you hungry?" He asked. "Yeah, maybe a little" He then went to his kitchen and got some snacks. "Listen, Y/N" his voice was shakey, "I know that we made out at that party and we havent really gotten along before but what I'm trying to say is" his eyes fell to the snacks in his hands, "I actually like you." Your jaw actually hit the floor when he admitted this. Obviously your reaction didnt do much help for Renjuns nerves. He scratched the back of his head when you didnt respond and spoke again, " I know I act like I hate you and that's because you hate me, dont you? So I'm not expecting you to like me, but I just thought I'd let you know the truth."
You couldnt believe what the boy was saying. Right now he looked so shy and small compared to his usual cocky, confident self. "I dont hate you, Renjun." You tried to say but it only came out in a whisper. His face lit up. "You dont, well then I have a slight chance- shit I meant to say that in my head" Yeah, this boy is supposed to be your enemy, but you have always found him attractive. You spent years pretending to hate each other because you both thought that the other did. Maybe Renjun isnt as bad as you thought. You decided to see where this would take you. "Do you wanna watch a movie?"
Again, his face lit up as he smiled at you handing you a bag of gummy worms, "Thatd be great."
You two wound up picking out a movie that you barely remember because you're sitting very close to Renjun. You cant help but stare, and your heart flutters a little. He turns to look at you, catching you off guard, meeting eyes. This time he took the initiative and grabbed either side of your face and kissed you softly. You wrapped your arms around his neck with your hands playing with his hair. Before you knew it the movie had ended and the credits were playing. You pulled away from Renjun a little dizzy from the lack of oxygen while you had been kissing. You didnt want to leave but it was a school night and you had to get home. You smiled shyly as you stood from his couch. "I'll see you tomorrow." Renjun nodded and followed you out, watching as you drove away.
~
The next day when you entered your class, Renjun was already there, again. But this time he got up from the group of boys and came over to you. He smirked before grabbing your hand and kissing your cheek. Queue everyone's reactions ( .O.) You knew he was just playing it cool but you were still blushing like you have too much blood in your body and it happens to all be in your face. Some people claimed they called it or knew or whatever. None of that was important to you two.
Yall would go on cute dates pretty much anywhere. The park, a picnic, the arcade, literally anywhere was fun with Renjun. Sometimes you'll even go to his house just to nap and cling onto him. Due to this, Renjun bought you a big plushie to hug for whenever he cant be there for you. What I'm trying to say here is that you two are goals and cute af and so on.
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gothsic · 5 years
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▌𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄: jonathan velazquez vastielle. good luck learning his real name, though perhaps the more precocious of those he interacts with will find out what it is...
▌𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍: single ( and honestly? that’s for the best. ). ▌𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐒: he’s just a guy who’s pretty good at writing and drawing, but he hallucinates entire landscapes thanks to his horrific insomnia and paranoia issues. so, not a superpower. ▌𝐄𝐘𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐑: dark brown - some say his eyes look so dark that they could very well be abyssal black holes. ▌𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐑: black. has been dyed all the colors of the rainbow in the past, however. ▌𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐒: juan velazquez ( his father; close to deceased ), esmeralda velazquez ( his mother; deceased ), alejandra velazquez ( his older sister; she is the oldest of the three ), and guillermo velazquez ( his older brother; he is the middle child ). he also has a few nieces and nephews as a result of his siblings having families. he is known as “the cool uncle” by all of them.  ▌𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐒: monster, the miniature schnauzer. ▌𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄: jo loathes that he has let his life come to the point it’s at currently. he knows that it’s his fault, but he cannot properly acknowledge it. if anything, he is complacent in just how much at fault he truly is for so many things that have gone wrong in his life. also? point it out to him, and he will get violently irritable and probably have little to do with you after the fact. don’t expect an apology, either, unless he really likes you. ▌𝐇𝐎𝐁𝐁𝐈𝐄𝐒 / 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒: besides drawing and writing, he also enjoys playing video games - especially shitty ones that he can laugh at. however, he also enjoys reading in his spare time, and will actively hunt out new and exciting books that pique his interest. ▌𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐔𝐑𝐓 𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄: maybe not physically, but jonathan has definitely hurt so many people emotionally ( annie comes to mind, as does adri and just about anyone he has dated ). he has lost friends, like jessica, because of his problems coming to terms with his anger and general lack of empathy towards other people. ▌𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄: his mother, after he angrily pushed her down the stairs, which broke her neck and killed her. ▌𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌: coyotes. ▌𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐒: lately, the most obvious has been his smoking habit, but his anger issues definitely come to mind. he will lash out at others when he feels uncomfortable, or will just generally be disagreeable if he feels envious, disturbed, or bothered by someone’s presence. this can be younger people who are more successful than him, or really anyone that fits the bill for any of the above. ▌𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐒: nobody specific, other than maybe cartoonist gerald scarfe and edward gorey. though he references h.p. lovecraft a lot, he is more fond of the atmosphere he created and the imagination he had rather than the man himself. ▌𝐒𝐄𝐗𝐔𝐀𝐋 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: bisexual. ▌𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐆𝐄 / 𝐊𝐈𝐃𝐒: jo knows he is unsuitable to be a father, and would rather be a partner first than have a responsibility like a child. that said, he is definitely not a great partner either... at the moment. that could change with time. ▌𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄: this is a kicker - he has a hard time loving anyone, and though he thinks he’s in love with annie, he is not. if anything, he is actually obsessed with her because she got away. he cannot understand loving others because he is too deep into his own sense of self-loathing and problems to even bother looking outside himself. this, too, could change with time and with the right person - however, he will never be fixed. he will only come to slowly understand what it means to even attempt to love someone else unconditionally. he wants to be loved unconditionally, and not make much of an effort in that department. ▌𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐂𝐇 𝐓𝐎 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏𝐒: people that are generally going to help him remain relevant are usually those he keeps around. however, there are some people he genuinely likes being with because, well, they make him laugh or they warm his heart ( now THOSE are a rarity ). friendship is something he is very cautious about, in general, as he is not an open person to begin with. ▌𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐊: ramune or melon soda. ▌𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑��𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐀𝐓: home, though he really enjoys heading out to venice beach at night and walking along the shore when nobody is there. this is the most calming place of all for him, and it helps brings his thoughts back into focus. ▌𝐒𝐖𝐈𝐌 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐂𝐄𝐀𝐍: the ocean; though, part of him is terrified by the place. he cannot quite understand why, though part of him is aware that it is because the ocean is a godless and endless place where one could sink to the very bottom and never get back to the surface. a metaphor for his life, really. ▌𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄: very smart, has a bite, and can stand on the same platform as him ( though, this is an entire essay in it of itself ). he basically likes people he deems equal to himself, considering he’s wildly intelligent and very sarcastic. people who appreciate his jokes and understand that he really is not to be taken seriously are people he loves having around in the long run. he gets bored easily, too, so people who always keep him on his toes are always a plus to have. ▌𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐎𝐑𝐒: indoors. jonathan hates camping ( though he goes occasionally if he really feels the need to get away from everything ). he feels he can get everything he needs out of remaining at home.
tagged by: @pistolbitten ( i h8 u! jk i dont i love u ;) )
tagging: anybody who wants to, feel free to tag me !
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bakedpieceofchicken · 5 years
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5am long personal vent
dont interact with this
note: this post mentions endeavor a lot.
context (very important!): I pretty much binge-read an entire tumblr user’s meta posts and I found them interesting and very informative. 
I also read through their salt tag and now I’m compelled to gather my thoughts together considering the literal title I’ve held for months now is “Hawks is a lov member already”. I’m extremely socially awkward, even on this online platform, so I’m not going to mention the aforementioned tumblr user’s name because I’m too anxiety-ridden to try to contact them. This is in no way shape or form an attack on the person’s opinions nor their character. It’s me... rambling about my thoughts about their opinions at 4 am. 
Is it defending myself? Well, not really, because I don’t feel personally attacked. Just because we have a difference of opinion doesn’t mean we have to resort to attacking each other. I found their opinions thought-provoking and wanted to pick my own brain... I picked this time purposely so nobody would see this post :eyes: so like uhm yeah
note 2: “you” refers to unnamed tumblr user. sorry about weird point of view...
anyways let’s get into the meat 
villain hawks
yay or... nay...?
Well, in fanon it would be such a fun idea to play around with. Personally I think there’s potential for League of Villain interactions with Hawks. I would LOVE to see Hawks interacting with the other pro heroes, but the only pro-to-pro interaction we get with Hawks is between Hawks and Endeavor. Because the atmosphere between the pro-heroes feels... disconnected.
Now, hear me out.
Let’s contrast it with the idealized version of hero society provided in future fics. Or hell, comparing the top ten pro heroes to Class 1-A itself. We want to think all the heroes are friendly with each other and have some sort of camaraderie with each other
But Horikoshi doesn’t present it like that. 
The closest thing to that we get is Endeavor and Hawks. Other than that, the atmosphere between hawks and the other heroes seem more strained or tense (the whole miruko hawks thing is fanon). And even then, it’s... well... Endeavor and Hawks don’t truly know each other. Hawks only knows the public perception and image of Endeavor, which is the only thing he’s been given while Endeavor doesn’t truly knows Hawks either. I’m not saying the interactions are fake, but... would Hawks be acting the way he was if he knew about Endeavor’s past?
No. I don’t have any predictor to how differently Hawks would act, but I definitely sense there’d be a lot of disappointment and loss of respect for the man he was rooting for. To what extent? Would Hawks just be in complete disbelief? Or would he react with immediate anger? There are parallels to Hawks and Todoroki Rei--both were picked from the crowd and had their lives controlled because of their “value” determined by Endeavor/The Hero Commission respectively.
But honestly from an objective standpoint, I have nothing to go off of other than the fact that Hawks deeply respects and idolizes Endeavor the most out of anyone in the manga we’ve seen and the fallout of that would be of an equally shattering magnitude...
Ahh i went off on a tangent. the point is... do we really know Hawks? Does Hawks ever get a chance to just.. be himself? Maybe we see a bit of that shine when he’s alone with Endeavor, but as we saw clearly in chapter 186 he puts on a care-free facade for his fans. But in reality... he’s always working because he’s one of the hero commission’s greatest assets. 
and... here’s where our opinions clash. I truly, in the depths of my heart, believe that Hawks is building a reality where heroes have more free time comes from a more selfish desire for himself. Don’t get me wrong--I don’t want to disservice what Hawks has done for society. But also it feels like he’s the type who overworks himself because he feels moral obligation to society when... technically he doesn’t owe anything to society. 
Yes, in superhero shows and whatnot, it’s usually a positive trait that “hey this person’s been born with an amazing power and they’ve chosen to use it for the greater good! Look what they’re sacrificing!!!” But let’s say theoretically that person decides “hey i don’t want to be a hero i just want to be a writer!” Are they morally wrong for deciding not to be a hero even though they would theoretically be good at it? Even though it’s not something they want for themselves?
Because I don’t think Hawks wants to be a hero. But he also doesn’t want people to die. He’s tied himself with these moral obligations to the point where he can’t leave now because he feels it would be selfish of him to. And that is speculation, but Horikoshi isn’t exactly spelling it out for us! So, that’s how I interpret Hawks’ character. Yes, he is a true hero in that he wants to save as many people as he can, even at the cost of his pride his dignity his fucking freedom...
but also, he never wished for that. he never asked to be one who has to deal with all of this. But now that he is, what choice does he have? 
So, yes, we agree on that. But I also feel that his personal desire plays as big of a part. Because we, as humans, naturally want things for ourselves. Our personal desire for ourselves shouldn’t be downplayed at all! That’s why I believe his inner thoughts are worded “more free time” rather than “make society more safe”. Because he has his priorities! He wants the best of both worlds-- it’s a form of negotiation. He can still play the hero and less lives would be taken but he can also having some breathing room for himself like he’s always wanted.
To free himself just a little bit from the stressful life of being a hero. 
There is nothing wrong with being motivated by personal desires. Hawks is one of the most grounded heroes we’ve seen--I think he’s cynical enough that he’s self aware of this selfish desire for a freer life. And it’s selfish to him only because he knows that it would never happen without the expense of a few lives-- lives that he knew he would never forgive himself for letting slip.
I think it’s a toxic mindset.
Because as heroic as placing others above yourself... that attitude is completely unhealthy and I don’t think it should be celebrated. What I want to see from Hawks’ natural progression as a character is recognizing that it’s okay to prioritize yourself. Hell, Midoriya learned this during the summer training arc and failed to retain that lesson during the Overhaul arc! THESE HEROES DON’T TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES!!! (ok i get midoriya’s trying). 
And if it’s selfish to desire more free time for yourself off from work, is it really that wrong of someone to do so? To want more control over your life? To want to do things you want to do rather than what others want you to do?
What does this have to do with villain Hawks? Well, I think a large desire for villain hawks is because it shows the departure of that mindset! Hawks doesn’t need to be confined to his hero persona anymore, he can finally do things he wants to do and be the free bird he’s always wanted to be.
But him becoming a complete villain is... far-fetched. This myself I recognize. I’ve only written villain!hawks once and that was because he snapped after the hero commission executed shigaraki and dabi as a show of power rather than going through the effort of trying to re-integrate the men back into hero society. I don’t want to go too deep because this isn’t the point I’m trying to make, but Hawks realizes how power-obsessed society is to the point where he doubts the legitimacy of the hero commission itself and what they do for society and its people.
But, again, that’s not going to ever happen in canon so I won’t bring it up another time. The point I was trying to make is yeah, you’re right that Hawks would never become a villain. He wouldn’t become a murderer- if he does, he definitely needs more incentive than what we can go off from canon.
And ohhh boy here we go, reaching the erm elephant in the room.
(These are the points made in the salt tag btw)
Is Villain!Hawks just an excuse to write hotwings? And what is the plausibility of Hawks turning to villainy? Would Endeavor being exposed as a child abuser be the trigger if Hawks were to turn villain at some point in the story?
Eh...
I don’t know if I even want to go into the whole “this is just an excuse to make hawks and dabi evil boyfriends” because I’ve never used villain!hawks as justification for that personally. And I’m actually not as attached to hotwings as I am to something like shigahawks... I don’t have any points to counteract this other than my desire to see Hawks interact with the entire league. Because it would be fun to see him interact in an environment he’s not wholly familiar with. With Endeavor or the other heroes or even the hero commission, he has some semblance of control or understanding so he thinks/acts like he knows what’s going on. 
Meanwhile, the League is a huge mess and they don’t have their shit together and wouldn’t it be funny to see Hawks as a part of their crew suffering with them!!! Well, that’s bias. My bias. For fanon. And for the jokes. So sad :(
So... I don’t just want to see more Dabi and Hawks interaction. I want to see more Hawks and League interaction. or just more hawks and anyone interactions overall. maybe thats all i crave
Actually going through the points one by one, let’s talk plausibility.
I already talked about villain!hawks being a... departure from Hawks’ faults in his own character. But it is pretty extreme, I’ll admit. If Hawks were ever to join the League of Villains, he’d probably never use killing as first resort. As we’ve seen in chapter 220, it’s not like the League targets only heroes... but i get the salt tag was made like 5 months ago so it’s not like new information hasn’t been released at the time of posting.
Reminds me of domestichobgoblins’ shigadabihawks fic where shigaraki even acknowledges “Whatever bullshit you’ve been telling Dabi, you aren’t a killer either, are you? So what, exactly, am I supposed to do with you?” And you know? The both are you are right. Hawks isn’t a killer and he wouldn’t become a killer willingly... unless he was pushed by some other greater force but I’m not here to address any of that. He could still provide support to the league in other ways, arguably, or just joining the league could be some kind of message to the heroes or supporters of hero society.
You are right to a degree. Hawks’ sole motivator to become a villain wouldn’t be because “OH ENDEAVOR IS AN ABUSER GUESS I GOTTA TURN EVIL NOW”.
Okay pushing past that, so why would Hawks be motivated to become a villain? In canon? I’ve already warped a lot of this post with my own fanon but I’m trying to keep within the realm of canon for this point specifically since you could take a second to push Hawks over the edge in fanon and be done with it. But why would Horikoshi specificially do it?
The fact is hero society sucks. A lot. And I think Hawks recognizes that fact being the most “grounded” and cynical of the bunch. His views and visions of hero society aren’t warped by fantasies and such (which is probably why he doesn’t like All Might...) so he understands what’s happening around him. He understands the mechanisms of hero society and how “valuable” quirks are viewed as in their capitalist society.
But also, he doesn’t  have that much of an option other than trying to lessen the burden placed upon him. Because he’s a single man, and even with his influence, he can’t change society. He’s powerless to do so, even considering who he is. He’s seen as a role model to those in society, but it’s because of his ranking that ironically fuels why people even look up to him: denouncing that would be kind of silly considering it’s the reason why people would listen in the first place.
And this is the point where I say... Shigaraki had a point. Hero society is flawed. It shouldn’t be so reliant on one person to carry it all.
But also hero society itself is bullshit. The ranking system? Horrible. The fact that the hero commission views them as tools for their own disposal? Horrible. The mere fact they basically bribe Hawks into becoming a hero? Like? “Hey kid you’re the best at being a hero so that’s what you should do. we’re only going to give you financial support if you become a hero so you might as well” like what is Hawks supposed to do in that sort of situation? Of course he’s going to succumb to the pressure.
I don’t believe in this whole “sacrifice for the greater good” bullshit. If Hawks wants to be a hero, that’s a whole another story, but if Hawks doesn’t, then he shouldn’t have been forced into that role. It’s about agency--it’s about letting him decide for himself if it’s what he wants to do. And it’s... a gray area for morality. “It’d be selfish for him to let people die!” Who is in the right to say whether or not he should use his “powers” for others’ sake? Me? You? The Hero commission?
So if Horikoshi goes down the path of “hey hero society is extremely bad and needs to change” and Hawks recognizes the League as a proponent for that change, then with a lot of development, it’s plausible in the future. I understand that Hawks, as of what we currently see, is too upheld by his own morals to ever even think about crossing that line, but people change. Hell, you recognized how the High End arc changed Endeavor and made miles of metas about it.
So, is it really far-fetched to say villain!Hawks is just a dream?
Maybe I’m a fool or an optimist, but I’d love to see Horikoshi take that path. Not because I’m horny for evil boyfriends, but it’d be a nice change of pace and we’d get to see a complete contrast of Hawks’ experiences. And it wouldn’t be easy-it’d had to be done right. Just like Endeavor’s redemption arc--if Horikoshi is still planning it. (Let’s be honest: High End Arc was not a formal redemption. I think it was Horikoshi letting the readers know “there might be something worth saving in Endeavor!” but i digress because i don’t care enough about endeavor (his character and redemption has 0 appeal to me and thats FINE. YOU DO YOU AND I DO ME, I only talk about him when it’s essential to talk about the influence he has on characters I DO care about).
As to why people like to characterize the moment Hawks decides to quit being a villain being attributed to Hawks learning Endeavor is an abuser...
The fallout, as mentioned earlier, could vary. A lot. Hawks really looked up to Endeavor when he was young. Again, shattering to find out something so nasty about the one you idolized.
To know that the one Hawks looked up used his wife just like how the hero commission used Hawks. Like an object or tool at their disposal. 
Would he be vengeful or spiteful towards Endeavor personally? To others, probably yes. To me? I’m kind of in the “eh” skeptical ballpark so I guess we somewhat agree on that. To me, Endeavor being exposed as an abuser would  crush that small slither of childish hope that hero society represents something bigger than themselves. Did Hawks ever get to have the childhood Deku had where he was still cheering on the heroes from behind the screen, or did it get crushed just as quickly when he realized how hero society truly works?
Because hero society isn’t bigger than themselves. It shouldn’t be idolized so heavily as it is presented in BNHA.
At least, not in its current state. And people who don’t fit in that group or agree with its ideals suffer the consequences. Like Shigaraki. Like Twice and Spinner. Like Gentle.
These are all villains that are products of society that promised to stamp out villains. And when Hawks realizes that it’s just a never ending cycle where the people left in between the cracks are the ones who perpetuate the system itself...
Like you said, Hawks sees the bigger picture. And his goal is to lessen the burden of the workload for heroes. There will never be a shortage of everyday criminals using their quirks for petty crimes but what about the bigger picture organizations? How are they going to be stopped? What about examining the root core of the problem and going from there? No more short-term solutions to problems... What can Hawks, mighty number two hero, do even at the expense of himself? Hmm... 
I don’t know, just some food for thought. Something I’ve seen done for villain!hawks is the hero commission throwing Hawks under the bus for some reason and Hawks either a) joins the league to gleam more information but finds himself willing to stay or b) has nowhere else to go and it’s more of a push for Hawks to orbit towards the League.
I am really thankful for your thoughts! Even though we don’t agree on things, I think discussion is still possible (whenever my anxiety stops bashing me in the head) and I’m always willing to accept I may be wrong about something. At this point in time (3/27/2019), we have less than 10 chapters released that centers around Hawks, but he’s certainly intrigued a lot of people considering he’s already #4 in popularity from so little chapters released! I think he and his introduction to BNHA represent the more cynical side of hero society that we haven’t been able to properly see from Deku’s perspective!
And I’m interested in what direction Horikoshi is going to take Hawks’ character in! The one thing I’m truly against is Hawks staying the “good little hero” in the end--whether he dies, becomes a villain, or hell even just stops being a hero is good enough for me. Free the bird or kill him off is what I’d want to see. That’d be enough of a character arc for me. Characters change, and it’d be silly to expect Hawks to stay the same especially since he has a lot of baggage on his shoulders and his current situation as a double agent for the League is precarious--despite him stating that he was willing to sacrifice his own reputation for the good of everyone, there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t feel at least some degree of hurt over losing the respect of everyone and his colleagues. 
My thoughts are pretty clunky but maybe someone was able to gleam something from my stupid 5 am vent...
I love Dabihawks, even though I’m not as invested in it as say Shigahawks or ShigaDabiHawks (which I’m sure you’d definitely have objections to considering your other salt posts... but not something I want to address here), and I still think DabiHawks is a great ship more so because of the dynamic than the aesthetic. But hey, you ship what you ship, you are allowed to express your disdain for the ship--I’ve certainly expressed my own disdain for the your ship in the past--and your salt posts which probably took like 10 minutes to type out provoked me to type out my own thoughts which took like 2 hours to fully process. Like I said earlier: you do you, I do me.
And again-- I’m not trying to “defend” here nor am I trying to “attack”. I just had things I wanted to say and I hope I DON’T have the attitude of someone looking down on you, because I think you have very valid opinions and thoughts and sometimes discourse can just be healthy discussions about how we interpret different characters. We are literally squeezing everything we can out of one character we love and there’s enough room for different interpretations of the same character ^^ If anything, I actually look up to you, which is why I’m too much of a coward to send this to you because oh my god i am so embarrassed about a lot of the shit that comes out of my mouth and i constantly worry about if im saying wrong things even though im open to people telling me why  im wrong about said things. 
tdlr; villains hawks very good. has nothing to do with dabihawks. villain hawks very good on its own. I agree with tumblr user on a lot of things, yet we see differently on other things. The world keeps spinning--I think it’s more interesting to address differences in opinions rather than ignore them. 
(the person this post was meant for will probably never see this unless i send it to them to whcih im like oh my god what if they roast me to hell and back despite me claiming yes i amn ot trying to destroy them or their reputation i just want to talk about this because i had fun trying to think about why i love villain hawks so much aaaaa maybe i am just a delusional fangirl but im also a delusional fangirl who wrote multiple paragraphs about this so... /shrug)
end. again please dont interact. if you want to talk to me about it, inbox/dm me but i dont want this post to get notes. thank you. hides what have I done... 
this has been sorta meta but not really just chicken fucking around at 6 am and good night. maybe sometime in the next... month... ill have the courage to send this to the tumblr user. maybe when i have confidence... or maybe when i make mel look this over. that was a joke- she couldnt even finish my other meta piece which was shorter than this. :)
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