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lagomoz · 5 months

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Proseka headcanons

-as rui’s childhood friend, nene has extensive fire safety knowledge

-shizuku is adopted, hence why she looks so different from shiho. she was adopted shortly before the moon rabbit event and it contributed to her clinginess

-shiho forgets this fact sometimes. she’ll casually mention something like shizuku got all mom’s good genes so unfair and ichika has to be. um. shiho

-kanade is mildly nearsighted/myopic but spends so much time at her computer she hasn’t noticed

-emu is buff. she climbs multiple stories without breaking a sweat and is canonically part of the swimming, handball and rhythmic gymnastic clubs, you can’t tell me she doesn’t have some muscle

-saki helps out as a human notepad for tsukasa, reminding of him things he would otherwise forget within 5 minutes

-the vocaloids also help. at first it was unnerving to have hatsune miku be an extension of his psyche that knows his darkest secret (stole saki’s candy when he was 6) but now his phone has a more reliable catgirl themed reminder system

-you know that classic nightmare of leaving the house without pants? tsukasa has legitimately done that as a kid. he forgor. (saki will never let him live it down)

-in the kamiyama student council/hall monitor room, an has put up at sign saying “_ days since last kamishiro incident”

-the shinonome siblings both figured out the other one was gay before they figured it out about themselves

-airi’s great at trivia from her time as a variety show star. she still can’t beat minori at idol trivia, though

-ena keeps a diary with fort knox level security. try to read it and you’ll lose a finger

-saki learned to crochet from the old ladies in the hospital

-shiho’s most treasured phenny is a somewhat lumpy crocheted phenny holding a very lumpy crocheted bass guitar

-tsukasa snores. he falls asleep in 10 seconds and sounds like a dying lawnmower

-mizuki has learned a small bit of french from their sister and uses it exclusively to teach rui and an how to swear in french

-emu still celebrates her grandfather’s birthday, even if he’s not there to celebrate with her

-ena is allergic to dogs, the middle point to airi’s cat allergy and akito’s dog phobia

-rui has various small scars from his experiments over the years, but nobody ever believes the real causes (rocket launcher, robot bite, exploding balloon animal, etc.) so he just makes up a new cause every time someone asks

-mmj! has had repeated incidents of minori and airi’s little siblings walking into frame when streaming at their houses. shiho understands the concept of a livestream but has still been caught failing at creeping past like that one new broadcast of the guy crawling along the floor

-kanade has pots & eds, this one I have a reason for look at her symptoms. chronic exhaustion, heat and cold intolerance, comorbid sleep issues and depression, dizziness when standing up, fainting after standing up, very pale skin, family history of medical issues, pain at normal physical activities, exercise intolerance, vertigo at mild exertion, she just fucking dies during the entire baseball event, I could go on. she canonically gets pain in her hands from opening a jar girl that is not just being out of shape that is physical disability. this one I will go conspiracy board on listen to me I’m right

-kohane ate bugs as a kid. an is horrified, toya is confused, akito is impressed

-ena and airi got in trouble in middle school because they’d keep starting fist fights in defense of the others honor. if they saw the other in a fight they’d jump in guns blazing no hesitation no questions ask ready to throw the fuck down

-vbs!rin and len were given a skateboard by an and then promptly had the skateboard confiscated by meiko for property destruction

-haruka is horrible with slang. she asks the stream chat what poggers means and immediately uses it completely wrong, killing all viewers on impact

-minori is torn between thinking it’s cute and wanting to die

-toya has been banned from arcades before because he made them lose too much money/they suspected he was cheating

-ena brought kanade over for girls night and nearly scared akito half to death because he went down to get a late night snack and there was some Ghastly Creature looming in his kitchen

-kohane's parents stick out like a sore thumb when going to her live shows. it mortifies her that everyone on vivid street can recognize them as the only milquetoast middle aged couple dressed in normal clothes loudly going YOU'RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE that don't know the first thing about music

-minori knows basic programming. she mostly uses it for forums, blogs, html, other web design things usually related to idols as a hobby, but she's become the groups designated anti-shizuku tech support

-mafuyu has always been able to see ghosts but after adults figured she was just playing pretend as a kid so she shrugged and figured it was normal and not worth bringing up again

-honami has one of those massive extended families and somehow keeps track of them all. at any given time cousin #57 can crawl out of the woodwork and she remembers their new job, favorite food, past three romantic relationships and list of allergic reactions

-mizuki does doll customizing as a hobby. they prefer making human sized clothes, but it's fun to make them miniature too. they've introduced shizuku to it and she loves it, but doesn't have the heart to do anything that would hurt the doll (sawing limbs off, dunking them in boiling water, shoving wires in them, etc.)

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pearbody-squareheads · 2 years

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6/05/22 (429 words) (piece+fix)

23.064 words, 76 pages

Yesterday, I was already thinking "ah I should fix that part" ten minutes after saving the document. Never happened so fast. I fixed it... and now I'm already thinking "ah, I should fix that other part I just wrote". :/

Coming back in the classroom during the break, I see him and a girl of the group trying each other's glasses. I sneak in and ask what are they, both say myopic, like me. I take off my glasses and hand them to him, "try mine" and take his and he does the same. I simply see a but less blurred. He opens his eyes wide, laughs and says "Jesus, name, you see the future."*. Then, before giving me back my glasses, he notices the leopard print-like motif on the frames and proudly says to the girl "See name's got them with the leopard print too? It's stylish."

#and after some days 'pending' thathat finally was the interaction i was waiting for #* i am. like. really myopic. kinda severely #also i think the comment he made was after a girl's mocking on the pattern of his new glasses. though the pattern is almost invisible.#almost unnoticeable.#its also a but weird to see him with glasses after so many months i see him without or rarely with them on #anyway. thank you for validating me too while you were validating yourself! i guess?#id never show/brag about the leopleopard print of my glasses #which i repeat. is almost invisible #ruben one #edit of the next day: im kidding the pattern is so flashy ahahaha #but only in the back. front is plain black. b e t t e r

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comradekatara · 2 months

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trying to explain asami to someone who hasn’t seen lok is actually kind of insane. she’s ridiculously wealthy but she isn’t elitist, pretentious, sheltered, myopic, or snobbish. she’s ridiculously beautiful but she isn’t shallow or vain. she’s ridiculously smart but she isn’t arrogant or domineering. she’s a successful businesswoman but only insofar as she is motivated by a purely altruistic desire to help her community, city, and friends. she can drive any vehicle (including a forklift) except for her moped, apparently. and she can even build any vehicle out of a couple pieces of scrap metal just lying around. she was raised by an abusive father who fostered a very terrifying codependency with her, but she’s also able to renounce him (despite this taking zuko 3 seasons and three extra years beforehand) because her moral compass is just that strong. she is absurdly kind, compassionate, empathetic, caring, giving, and loving. she’s a nonbender but she wins every fight she’s in. her hair is insured for two million dollars. i hear she does car commercials in japan.

and the fact that she is so passive even when she is actively aware that her boyfriend is cheating on her, and forgiving of everyone who has ever wronged her (including fathers who once tried to murder her) is yet another virtue in her list of attributes that are flawless and beyond reproach, and certainly not symptomatic of the lifetime of abuse she surely must have experienced at the hands of hiroshi and her struggle to assert herself as a girl in a male-dominated field being forced to play pseudowife to her grieving father.

eventually she does grow more confident and outspoken the more time she spends with korra, which does prove that the writers, at least somewhat, do consider her passivity a flaw. but there are so many other aspects of her character that deserved to be explored or even really acknowledged at all, including but not limited to her blindspots due to privilege (I mean, korra’s certainly critiqued for her blindspots constantly), the motivations for and consequences of her extremely deliberately cultivated performance of femininity, and, oh, you know, the psychological ramifications of SURVIVING ATTEMPTED FILICIDE.

asami is a fascinating character, not because she is such an irreproachable, beautiful, ingenious, wealthy, friendly, altruistic, compassionate, competent angel, but due to the subtextual implications of something far more compelling going on beneath the surface that are constantly being established, but alas, rarely if ever explored.

#asami #analysis #lok crit #and yet somehow her relationship w korra works perfectly and is beautiful #despite being so infuriatingly underdeveloped #it’s about the IMPLICATIONS

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jackcast2021 · 1 year

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Shortsighted paraplegic wearing strong circle frame spex.

#paraplegic girl #paraplegic #handicapped girl #crippled girl #crippled woman #uses a wheelchair #wears glasses #girl wearing glasses #WEARS SPECTACLES #wears eyeglasses #myopic woman #myopic girl

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talesfrommedinastation · 3 months

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Only daughter of five here, and the second oldest kid in the family. Parentified since forever and still pulling the most emotional labor.

Stoutly disagree on this.

No guilt tripped knifeboi here for me. No.

Give me a dependable, sassy, easy-breezy, focused, quick thinking, efficient guy who is in the background making sure my oil’s changed, all schedule’s are completed, he’s done the taxes already, and we’re going out to dinner because he found a Groupon for a kid- friendly restaurant.

“Focus on your work, baby, it’s under control.”

Give me….this myopic dingaling with his Receding Hairline of Glory.

“Get in, loser—we’re dropping the girls off at your moms and then going to a death metal concert!” - my IRL husband on my birthday

BRIDES OF TECH UNITED!

#tbb #cloneforce99 #thebadbatch #the bad batch #tbb tech #tech the bad batch #brides of tech #starwars the clone wars #tech clone force 99 #the bad batch hunter #bad batch hunter #sergeant hunter #oh hunter #just saying

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unremarkablehouse · 8 months

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When you realize that The Ghost That Stole Christmas is the first year after Emily died it takes on a new meaning as to why Mulder pushes her to go to the house with him. He knows Scully is going to be surrounded by family who don’t understand and have to put on a front while she’s hurting. He also knows that Scully deals with grief by working so he concocts a fake X file to distract her. I think the ghosts are wrong that he was doing it for selfish reasons and to avoid being alone. While he can be self centered and myopic, Mulder has spent 30+ Christmas eves alone, the only one he tricks Scully into spending it with him is the anniversary of her daughter’s death. I will concede that I’m sure he is also grieving the death of the little girl too and wants to be with Scully, who understands what it’s like to miss someone you barely got to know.

#the x files #txf #fox mulder #dana scully #msr #txf meta #I watched both eps randomly last night #I love the x files

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eisforeidolon · 3 months

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You know, as a Dean girl I do sometimes get annoyed when Sam girls imply there is nothing interesting about Dean beyond his relationship to Sam. Sure I personally think it's rather condescending and myopic, but it's at least an opinion clearly related to the actual show - Dean's life is inextricably tied to Sam, pilot to finale.

Conversely, that poll about whether or not you'd watch an SPN revival without Castiel is the second time today I've run across stans implying the same shit about Dean only being worthwhile as an accessory to their fave ... but in regards to Castiel. Marvel with me at the baffling stupidity of assertions like "a real deangirl wouldn't do SHIT without cas just like dean himself" - as if that was actually true of canon Dean, literally ever. Like, I can't see how you'd believe that even just watching episodes with Castiel in them it's so obviously untrue! Or "you cannot be a Dean fan without feeling compelled to defend Cas from his enemies" - not like Castiel repeatedly fucked Dean over in ways a Dean fan might be bothered by or anything. Not like they ~*somehow*~ find it very easy to separate Sam from Dean despite how close they are, that's ~*different*~! (Which doesn't even get into the questionably creepy framing of real people who don't like a fictional character as 'enemies'.)

I run across takes I don't agree with about the canon all the time, but that's just what I'd expect of fandom - especially one this big and varied. The extent to which some people have overwritten the actual show with weird obsessed shipper tumblr brainrot batshit in their heads still manages to catch me off guard sometimes, though.

#anti character stans #fandom issues #destihellers #do they just say this shit #to try and make the brains #of fans of the actual show #short circuit #hoping that we'll be left with as few #working brain cells as they seem to have?

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 2 months

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Muffin, what is your favorite March sister from Little Women? Do you think Jo or any of her sisters would survive Edward?

Well, I'll answer your second question first.

Who Survives Edward?

The funny thing is that most people survive Edward quite easily. If you're an ordinary person who's not on Edward's 1920's hit list then he pays you very little mind and you never really interact with him. For all Jessica annoyed him, she was never in danger from him, nor was Angela, nor many of the other characters we meet.

Even Mike wasn't Edward's concern until Edward became obsessed with Bella and decided Mike was his rival.

So, the March sisters would all be absolutely fine. The likelihood of them smelling as good as Bella is very small, remember Aro's 3500 years old and he hasn't come across his own singer once. Edward's probably not going to run into another singer and it's very unlikely to be one of the March girls.

Now, if they smelled as good as Bella...

Beth and Meg have the best shot at it. Jo is too assertive and too myopic, Edward wouldn't approve of her treatment of Laurie and then her getting upset when Laurie goes and marries Amy. Amy is too self-centered (look, guys, the recent movie was made by Amy stans and I have to go off the book here but even in the recent movie Edward would see it this way).

Beth is incredibly sweet and caring and actually kind of what Edward believes he loves in Bella. She's caring at great cost to herself and with no resentment after scarlet fever destroys her health, she's the heart of keeping her dysfunctional family together, she even sweetly plays piano. Her sickly nature after the fever would also be a bonus for Edward as it means that they're in a doomed romance where woe he could turn her and remove all her health problems but he can't and she's very likely to die young. It also means she'll always need him to care for her and adds to her Victorian style frailty. Beth, for her own part, being the youngest and generally overlooked for her sisters because of her health/youngness/sweetness would probably be very flattered and into this mysterious hot boy who is paying attention to her.

Beth might very well survive until she dies of health complications.

Meg might get by in that she's generally... tolerable. She does what's best for her/the family, does what Aunt Marge thinks is best, and quietly gets married and lives her life the way she's supposed to. The trouble is if she attracts Edward's notice...

Without Bella's mental shield I don't think he's convincing himself she has an entirely different personality and I don't see him being into her. I take it back, Meg dies.

My Favorite March Sisters

I like all of them except Meg, I find Meg boring, which is kind of the point of her, so I guess it works out.

EDIT:

I forgot Beth is the second youngest, not the youngest who is Amy.

#little women #little women meta #little women headcanon #twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #jo march #meg march #amy march #beth march #the march sisters #edward cullen #anti edward cullen #anti meg march #anti amy march #meta #headcanon #opinion

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theerurishipper · 7 months

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Hello! I have a question about Marinette. It's clear to me that she struggles with control and may sometimes mistreat her partner, in my personal opinion. It appears that she lacks trust in Chat Noir, which is not only upsetting but also confusing.

Marinette seems to have a stable home life, and her school experiences, while not as dramatic as some fans portray, seem relatively normal. Her parents have a loving relationship, so it raises the question of why Marinette behaves this way. Where do her controlling tendencies stem from? It's perplexing to me that she doesn't seem to trust her own partner. It's almost as if she treats him as if he could potentially turn into a villain. Chat Noir goes to great lengths for her, yet we rarely see her reciprocate in kind. Her interactions often seem limited to positive affirmations and superficial gestures. I wonder whether this inability to comfort someone or communicate effectively is a result of her environment influencing her or if it's perhaps a consequence of her newfound powers affecting her ego.

I don't mean to criticize her character, but it seems that Marinette's acquisition of powers and constant praise, coupled with the lack of discipline or guidance from Master Fu and Su-han, has left her without a mentor or anyone to hold her accountable for her actions. Her role as the guardian and leader exacerbates this issue because she struggles with being upfront and truthful, especially with Chat Noir. The morality of the story seems quite protagonist-centered, and I can't help but wonder how things might have been different if Ladybug had a more assertive partner or a mentor to guide her in the right direction.

Marinette like my least favorite at least with Western Magical girl shows because of what she chose in the finale. I don't believe her intentions are necessarily malicious, but her actions in previous seasons have been frustrating to watch.

So, the thing about Marinette is that she sets very high expectations for herself. Just look at her arc about not being able to confess her feelings. She catastrophizes, she plans all these elaborate schemes accounting for every detail, she can't bear to let anything go wrong, because she has such high standards for herself and a fear of failure. She can't confess to Adrien because she's afraid of his rejection, and she spends the series trying to find the perfect plan to ensure that he won't reject her. Once she becomes Guardian, she has all these new responsibilities, these new burdens, and she doesn't want to fail, she doesn't want anything to go wrong. And so, she tries to control everything. Her controlling tendencies stem from her fear of failure and her high expectations of herself.

For the record, I will say that Marinette does trust Chat Noir. She trusts him with her life. But just because she trusts him doesn't mean her fears aren't there, and it doesn't stop her from acting in ways that don't quite convey that trust that she has in him. Marinette can get myopic about her problems, and she often has trouble understanding things from others' perspectives. She has the tendency to, for lack of a better term, make things about herself. Like in Illusion, for instance, when Adrien was being taken out of school by Gabriel because of Nino's plan, Marinette instantly starts talking about how she is a curse for Adrien and how she should stay away from him, instead of about Adrien. Does this mean she doesn't care about Adrien? Of course not. But she still gets so caught up in her own feelings that she fails to consider the feelings of those around her. She spends so much time trying to make sure that nothing goes wrong with her current situation that she fails to notice the bigger picture.

For example, see Hack-san. Marinette is leaving Paris, and so she focuses on the immediate problem that she is facing, that she's leaving Paris without a protector. And she finds a simple solution, give her Miraculous to Alya. Easy, problem solved, right? Except it's not, because she accounts for herself but not for her partner, who is understandably blindsided by a new substitute appearing instead of Ladybug. In the same episode, we see another example. Marinette is stressed and struggling and hurting, and she confesses to Alya that she is Ladybug in Gang of Secrets. Now Marinette has the support of her BFF and her stress is being alleviated, so everything is fine, right? Except, she doesn't consider how Chat Noir might feel about her breaking the rule they set together and that she should tell him (this is not salt on Marinette for telling Alya, she had every right to do so).

Marinette isn't the most empathetic person. She is very kind, very compassionate, very sympathetic, and she is overall a wonderful person. But she has trouble putting herself in other people's shoes and understanding their perspectives unless they tell her herself. She understands that the people around her are struggling and she feels the desire to help them, but she also doesn't quite understand their feelings themselves, and that can lead her to making her own conclusions. See Guilttrip, where Marinette (and the whole class actually) just jumps all over Rose when she learns she's not well without considering how she might feel about it. In Crocoduel, she tries to distance herself from Luka because she doesn't want to hurt him, without considering that, well, she is hurting him.

Marinette has the desire to help others and be there for others, and it is that compassion and kindness that make her so wonderful. But she can also find it difficult to understand others or put herself in their shoes. She doesn't easily understand other people's emotions, and she can't often look beyond her own perspective and her problems to see how she's affecting other people. Oftentimes, when Marinette has hurt someone, her remarks will be more self-deprecating than apologetic. Which is not to say that she isn't sorry, and I am not saying that Marinette doesn't ever consider other people's feelings, but it doesn't come easily to her, and she often requires other people to point it out to her. Alya points out to her that she is hurting Luka by avoiding him, Alya tells her to talk to Chat Noir, Chat Noir tells her to speak to Chloe about not giving her a Miraculous anymore... things like that. And naturally, not considering others' views on things also has the effect of making her feel like she knows best and dismissing others' perspectives, like in Dearest Family, when she dismissed the Kwamis' advice about Tikki's cosmic hunger, because she thinks the only way to handle things is her way.

So, what happens when you have a tendency to want to control things, a myopic outlook on your problems, and a lack of ability to consider other people's perspectives? Why, you get the Ladynoir conflict of Season 4.

Marinette in Season 4 spirals down a web of controlling information and deceiving her partner by keeping secrets and lying to him due to her new role as Guardian and also in part because of her trauma from Chat Blanc. None of this is malicious. Marinette trusts Chat Noir. When she says she'll never abandon him, she means it. When she says she wants him around, she means it. But that's not enough. Marinette wants to control all the information and stay in control so badly that she fails to see how badly it is affecting her partner. She feels like it's the only way to do things and fails to consider her partner's feelings and perspective because she thinks she knows best how to handle it. She gets defensive and irritated when he asks her to let him help. And it shows itself most clearly in episodes like Ephemeral, where in an attempt to stay in control of everything, she is ready to violate Chat Noir's trust in her and reveal his identity to Su-Han without his consent.

It simply doesn't occur to Marinette that she should do more than try to smooth things over with Chat Noir. Despite understanding that he feels left out, she smooths over the situation with assurances that she doesn't even end up keeping. Of course, Chat Noir isn't an open book, but he did make his displeasure clear, and she still didn't do anything to fix their issues. Look at Kuro Neko. Chat Noir gets upset and quits, but Marinette still doesn't introspect and think that maybe she did something wrong and hurt him. She doesn't apologize for her outburst; she doesn't try to think of what went wrong. In the end, Chat Noir apologizes to her for having emotions and she just gives him another "I still want you around," line that quickly loses meaning when Ladybug is bantering with Rena Furtive like she's her favorite in Risk. Even when Marinette says something, her actions prove otherwise.

But I will say, this is all alright. It's a realistic flaw to have, to not be able to consider other people's feelings all the time. Everyone does it to some degree. Marinette isn't doing this because of any malicious intent, she's doing this because she's stressed and tired and traumatized. Her outburst isn't good, but it is understandable. She shouldn't have yelled at Chat Noir, but she isn't a bad person. She's allowed to learn to do better and grow from this.

What does make Marinette seem bad, though, isn't even due to Marinette herself as a person. What makes Marinette hard to like, is when her flaws are met with the protagonist centered morality stick that Miraculous loves so much.

Because Marinette never has to actually confront her mistakes. She yells at Chat Noir in Kuro Neko, and the episode is full of Chat Noir telling her she did nothing wrong and ends with him apologizing to her. In the end of Strikeback, Marinette admits to her mistakes, but Chat Noir sees her distress and swoops in to absolve her of her wrongdoings, and she carries on without fixing anything or changing anything. She admits to her mistakes, but it falls flat because, well, they didn't really result in anything. She was never wrong to do any of it, really. It's not her fault that Felix stole the Miraculous. Chat Noir already accepted that he's just another one of her sidekicks now, and he previously learned the lesson that she didn't do anything wrong and that he is the one is being sensitive about it. Marinette is never truly wrong, and so she doesn't ever have to fix her mistakes or address her flaws. She doesn't have to learn to communicate better with others, she doesn't have to apologize for her mistakes, because she is never truly in the wrong and everyone will go out of their way to excuse and absolve her of everything.

And this protagonist centered morality is the reason for the Season 5 finale. Marinette lying to Adrien about his existence isn't framed as bad because she's the one doing it, and because Marinette is Good™, it's not a bad thing for her to do. She didn't learn anything from Season 4, because the writers don't think she did anything wrong. She's the best leader, she's the most amazing superhero ever, and the story bends over backwards to justify her mistakes and her flaws by having other characters simply forgive her or take on the blame themselves (and by other characters I mean Adrien). And when she does make mistakes that actually have lasting consequences, it isn't actually her fault, like when Felix stole the Miraculous from her. And this protagonist centered morality makes it so that Marinette doesn't really have to grow or change as much as she just has to allow the other characters to prop her up and relinquish their agency to allow her to shine. She never has to try to understand them, she never has to do all that weak emotional support shit, because she's the all-powerful and amazing Marinette, and Adrien is just her prize for when she wins and her emotional support partner.

You mentioned in your ask that she never offers support to Chat Noir like he does for her, and that she is never held accountable for her actions, and this is all the protagonist centered morality at work. The world revolves around Marinette, whatever she does is Good and Right regardless of what it is, even if it is something like gaslighting her boyfriend into loving his abuser. And unfortunately, that isn't something that is out of character for Marinette. She's been established to be someone who will do whatever it takes to protect people, and who's flaw is that she doesn't often consider their feelings on the matter when making choices that affect them, even when it comes from a place of love and care. And because of the protagonist centered morality, the show makes this seem like it's a good thing instead of portraying it as a flaw. That is what ruins her character for me.

I hope this answers your question. Thank you for your ask!

#MLB #Miraculous Ladybug #Marinette Dupain Cheng #Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #Chat Noir #Alya Cesaire #Rena Rouge #ML Salt #Marinette Salt #Ladybug Salt #ML Writing Salt #ML Writers Salt #Meta #My meta #Asks #Ladynoir conflict

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stillness-in-green · 2 months

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

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

The Formula: The Hero vs. The Critic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Critics of My Hero Academia

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

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

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

> Case 1: Izumi Kouta

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

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

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

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

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

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

> Case 2: Shimura Kotarou

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

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

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

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

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

> Case 3: Shigaraki Tomura

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

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

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

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

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

Hosoda Mamoru’s Belle

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

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

Or is she…?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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