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bitacrytic · 2 years

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Power imbalance in a relationship is not a bad thing as long as its negotiated.

The novel is based on BDSM relationships (whether its badly depicted is an entirely different thing, but that's D*emi for you). You can't judge BDSM relationships based on normal (equal balanced) relationships.

Porsche is grown enough to decide whether he wants to leave Kinn or not, he's done it at least 2 times during the show. Porsche is not obligated to date Kinn and Kinn doesn't treat any of his bodyguards like he did Porsche, meaning, he's only been an asshole to him incited by his father. Porsche is not a kid and can hold his own and has always done his own thing even when being told not to (that's literally the entire argument between Kinn tin hatters and Porsche defenders).

If Porsche has gone from "my life is mine" -> "my life is yours" it's because Kinn, at the beginning, did not earn nor was deserving of Porsche's respect or obedience.

@/lutawolf has posts upon posts explaining their relationship from a BDSM point of view.

: Porsche being a brat submissive who needs their Dom to earn their respect and obedience. Apo explained his opinion on Porsche wanting affection and to belong to someone in reference to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

I think its pretty clear that Kinn and Porsche, as characters, are content with the D/s power imbalance even if it isn't explicitly shown on screen.

The real problem is Korn who holds the (unwanted and under negotiated) power over everyone.

Like I said, Porsche was not hired to be Kinn's boyfriend, he was hired to be his bodyguard, he's not obligated to stay as his boyfriend.

Fans need to stop infantilizing Porsche as if he's a damsel in distress incapable of defending himself and setting boundaries as if he isn't a mouthy little shit since the beginning and didn't slap the living shit out of a dangerous mafia heir in a bathroom half naked.

Please 🙄

Like, the entire show is based on power imbalance for all the couples; already the socioeconomic situation of Porsche and Chay set up that premise before the romance even began.

If it isn't fans' cup of tea, that's fine, but not everyone sees having a rich boyfriend whose also your boss as a bad thing even if there is a power imbalance. Thus, the D/s relationship between Kinn and Porsche.

My point is, there isn't anything inherently bad with a power imbalance in a relationship. Kinn and Porsche's problem hadn't been (except in the beginning, but obviously, they'd just met.) about the power imbalance, its about mistrust- mostly incited by Vegas and Tawan. That's it. Not the relationship, after dating, itself.

Ummm, Anon, I'm sorry, but I disagree with you. Anyone is able to like or dislike whatever they want about this show. I do not have to like Kinn to enjoy him as a character. I do not have to accept every bit of Porsche's behaviour to love him the most.

Now, Porsche's boundaries would be a sensible thing to take into consideration if they were actually enforced. Porsche said no, so Kinn took his house. Porsche left the mansion in ep5, so Kinn went after him. Porsche chose to go with Vegas so Kinn shamed him for it. Over and over again. And then when Porsche left a note telling Kinn that he would be coming back, what did kinn do????? He ignored it and ran after Porsche.

I'm not infanitlising Porsche. I'm pointing out that Kinn doesn't listen. Because you might say he changed, but the note was in the 13th episode. Kinn heard Porsche ask him for a moment and he said no. He ignored that boundary, even after they'd agreed to trust each other. Which would be terrible on it's own. But when you include the power imbalance in the relationship and Kinn's history of wanting to possess Porsche???? What does that say about the strength of Porsche's boundaries?

Power imbalances could be healthy, but what we have between these two is far from it. Let's not pretend. You can like things and still point out how bad they are.

As has been pointed out on this blog, Porsche made his decision in the finale. Yes, he left Kinn. But he came back. I've also made a post about how Porsche accepted that he belongs to Kinn. On his own. Unprompted. He said it himself. As an adult. I accept that.

I do not, however, have to like it.

I do not agree with most people's takes on BDSM relationships on this show. Mostly because I am very uncomfortable giving powerful, abusive people the dominant role in a relationship. It's not for me. I do not like it. I will enjoy the show and follow Kinn's and Porsche's journey, but I do not have to like every part of it. Anyone who likes everything in every relationship on this show? Good for them. But I find that humans aren't perfect. I do not expect them to be. But I will still talk about it.

Even though I hate the power imbalance in this ship, I still ship them because:

1. The chemistry is 10000/10. Mile and Apo are working with witchcraft levels of chemistry here

2. The badassery they both exhibit on their own. I wish we'd gotten more fights with them on the same side.

3. Because I love Porsche and Porsche loves Kinn, so I am following his romantic journey from enemies to lovers like a sucker.

However...

As you've said, Korn's power over Porsche/kinnporsche ship is unwanted and under negotiated. You phrased that as a bad thing.

So, please, point me to the moment before the finale where Porsche and Kinn negotiated the d/s roles in their relationship. Because, as far as I'm concerned, everything that happened before that conversation in the final scene was abuse of power. From ep1-14

Now, you can go ahead and see Kinn's behaviour as sexy and dominant. That's fine for you. But what is more infanitlising than attributing every bit of Porsche's behaviour to submission or brat behaviour? He agrees, he's submissive. He argues, he's a brat. What? Porsche is his own person. His entire being shouldn't be summed up to d/s.

Porsche had to lie about Yok's health to get out of the mansion. Does that sound like evidence of good negotiation to you? If your friend was making excuses to visit you because his "dominant" boyfriend wouldn't allow it, otherwise, would you think that was alright?

Please, no.

So yeah, some of their problems stem from Kinn's inability to trust Porsche. But you will never convince me that that is the only problem. Because Kinn's need to possess Porsche BEFORE Porsche agreed to it, plus the power imbalance, have played just as big a role in all their problems as trust issues.

#kinnporsche

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

Text

Part 2 of the response to this ask:

Part 1 was about where I think Geten’s story is going, and if I think it’s likely that Dabi will kill him; it dealt mainly with how those characters are set up in canon. Part 2 is far more about the fandom, and the assumptions people make that lead them to theories like the one above--specifically, the assumption that the League was always planning on bailing on the PLF. Hit the jump below with me and I'll go over why I think the common arguments for that are misguided at best, and willfully misreading the text at worst.

WARNING: Contains some generalizations about parts of the fandom that I have mostly taken steps to avoid seeing on my dash, so some of my characterizations may be out of date. I’ve tried to desalinate this post as much as possible, but as an unapologetic fan of the MLA and of Spinner (who I do not bring up incidentally), this is a topic I feel particularly strongly about. Apologies, but I Have Seen Things.

DISCLAIMER: I like Geten better than Dabi. I don't think he's better developed; I don't think he's a better character--I just like him better. This is largely down to the fact that I find the MLA fascinating from a worldbuilding perspective and its members compelling personally, whereas I’m less interested in Dabi personally than I am the Todoroki Drama on the whole, and have been tired of Fanon Dabi for approximately 83 years. I’ll also be the first to admit that my take on Dabi is pretty mercenary--hardly the irredeemable psychopath the Hero Stans on Twitter see, but nothing close to Secretly Soft Big Brother Touya, either. If that’s not your bag, you may want to skip this one.

So, here's a bullet point list of the reasons I have personally seen on why the League was always planning to turn on the MLA:

Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them.

Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

[Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

So, let's go over those, shall we? Note that a lot of what I'm going to lay out below isn't conclusive. What I want to establish is simply that the canonical evidence isn't conclusive, certainly not as much so as the people who support this view espouse.

|| Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

In responses to my recent Overhaul post, I defended Viz’s official translation as an accurate rendering of the dialogue in question. In general, I feel like Caleb Cook is pretty reliable in his translations, if sometimes kind of stiff or dry in localization. However, there are times he makes assumptions about lines--as indeed a translator for a currently-running series will sometimes have to--and sometimes, those assumptions don’t pan out. This is one of those times.

Dabi's line, "Shall we get started early?" is based on an assumption Cook made about a line that doesn't have an actual subject. In the original dialogue--Hayame ni hajimaru ka--there is no “we,” not even in the form of some implicit collective in Dabi’s grammatical inflection, nor is there a question of "should." All Dabi’s doing is musing that the start (again, there’s no subject, and so no indication of the start of what, or the start as initiated by who) is happening early.

Toga's line communicates much the same, save that she does specify that the schedule/plan/arrangement is happening earlier than expected--which is totally true, since her line is in response to Dabi observing that Machia moving must mean Shigaraki's awake, and Shigaraki was supposed to be down for another month.

Shigaraki's line, like Dabi's, lacks a subject to describe what exactly is supposed to start as soon as Shigaraki wakes. He's saying something that would, in a more stilted way, be, "I wake up and then it's the start, right?"

None of these lines suggest that the characters are necessarily talking about any plan other than the one the PLF laid out. Yes, it looks somewhat damning that Shigaraki's first action (after getting himself a cape, anyway) is to have Machia bring him the League, but heck, maybe that was always the plan. Just because Shigaraki wants to rejoin his comrades doesn't mean the rest of the PLF didn't already have machinations that they were supposed to set into motion the moment Machia left. After all, the plan as Hawks understood it did involve simultaneous attacks on major cities--maybe the League was going to be spearheading one of those attacks. Further, Shigaraki knew something was wrong from the moment he regained consciousness, and we don’t know how that knowledge affected the call he made. Hell, maybe the original plan was for the League to be brought to meet him somewhere in a chartered limo; we don’t know.

It's telling that this idea that the League had a Secret Plan to screw over the MLA rarely seems to account for Mr. Compress and Spinner being confused over the suddenness of events. The response to questions about this seems to be that the "villain trio" knew about it, so the ignorance of the rest of the League can just be handwaved--the important members knew, and that's enough. This is ungenerous towards both Twice and Mr. Compress, but I have got particularly little time for Spinner, the narrator of MVA and guy who decided to devote his all to Shigaraki, being disrespected in this fashion. More on that later.

|| Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

Shigaraki does say he won't forgive the MLA, but consider what he did to the MLA and its leader. He destroyed most of their stronghold, killed scores of them, is directly responsible for Re-Destro losing his legs, and saw that vaunted descendant of Destro about six inches shy of full forehead-on-the-ground dogeza. The League Shigaraki commands killed a great many more of them, including one of their inner circle. He commandeered the Liberation Army, its resources, and its grand cause. I think it’s safe to say he’s more than responded in kind!

I'm not saying Shigaraki feels for the MLA the same way he does about the League, far from it, but I do think he's practical enough after two hundred chapters of character development not to throw them away out of spite. In Chapter 246, he tells Ujiko explicitly, "When someone offers me something, I take it," and, "I'm done taking the heroes lightly. I'll use everything I've got to obliterate the dregs All Might left behind." From a purely practical standpoint, if he intends to throw everything he has at the heroes, he has no reason to throw the MLA under the bus, and 116,000 reasons to keep them around. I'm altogether sure that, so long as they stood to be useful to his plans, he would have kept them around.

|| The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them. + || Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

I hadn’t seen the second point in the wild, but I suppose it must be how the “The League will betray the MLA” theorists are getting around Dabi and Skeptic’s clear collaboration and how that collaboration totally scuttles the first point, huh? Hilarious.

Anyway, setting aside the fact that Dabi showed up to the one planning session we were shown when even Geten didn’t, there’s evidence in the canon that Dabi was working with Skeptic since even before the raid. Consider that Dabi’s video was filmed at the villa (the wall paneling and the style of the couch both match) and ask yourself where the camera he used came from. Once the filming was complete, where was the video stored such that Skeptic could access it from his laptop? If Dabi’d had it on an SD card and Skeptic was seeing it for the first time, why didn’t Spinner, Compress and Toga watch it alongside him? Surely Skeptic would need to watch it through at least once to know when to splice in the footage of Jin’s death for maximum dramatic impact? On that note, by far the most telling piece of evidence is this: if Dabi wasn't already working with Skeptic, then why was he wearing one of Skeptic's body cameras during his confrontation with Hawks?

Further, Skeptic's protest when he’s pulled onto Machia isn't that he doesn’t want to be with the League; it’s that he doesn’t want to leave Re-Destro behind. Once he's resigned that it's going to happen, though, he's cocky about his talents and complimentary of Dabi's big reveal, even if he is exasperated about the League's antics. It's ambiguous, I admit, but given that Dabi's wearing his cameras, he had to have known Dabi had a reason for them--and given that he is both abrasive and mouthy, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have demanded to know what that reason was.

Hell, Dabi even thanks Skeptic for his editing work, which is more direct positive approval than he's ever shown anyone in the League (give or take the high-five with Twice, which, genuine or not, he would have known he was doing on camera). That much-vaunted panel of Spinner telling Toga to come back to the League? Dabi's grinning, which in isolation you could read as a certain rueful affection, but with the full context of the chapter, it becomes apparent that Dabi is grinning at Skeptic's laptop, seconds after telling Skeptic to "hurry up." Skeptic is, at that moment, probably gearing up the video to project nationwide, and Dabi’s more focused on that than he is Toga’s crisis, even when Compress directly appeals to him for aid. He tells Compress he doesn’t care, the same way he told Hawks he doesn't give a damn about the League.

Let me be clear here: I'm inclined to take Dabi at his word. I think Dabi hangs around the League because, for all that he says one man's conviction can shake the world, he also knows his own limits, and the League offers safety in numbers and an avenue to pursue his revenge. Maybe he finds them acceptable enough company, maybe he even does like them a bit despite himself, but I think any affection he might have for them is entirely incidental to his views on their usefulness. In the same way, while he's willing to bail on the MLA when the heroes attack, I don't think it was his plan to do so, especially not given his apparent immediate regard for Skeptic, as seen in the deleted scene here. Sure, he dislikes Geten, but ultimately, Geten is a stupid kid too tied up in his care for Re-Destro--who's now worshipping the ground Shigaraki walks on--to really be getting in Dabi's way.

Maybe if the MLA really were as quirk supremacist as Geten makes them out to be, Dabi would be actively looking for a way to see ‘em burn, but as I’ve said countless times before, Geten is not a reliable narrator vis a vis the MLA's doctrine. Now, obviously I don't expect Dabi to give them an unearned benefit of the doubt,(1) not after what he heard Geten say, but if Dabi has been working with Skeptic, it doesn't take a genius to realize that while Anthropomorph is a perfectly good quirk, it is categorically not what primarily defines Skeptic’s "worth" in the MLA societal microcosm.

Nothing that Skeptic does reflects the way Geten talks about "elevating one's ability" or "sheer strength" in the way that HeroAca fandom tends to understand as referring to flashy and offensive quirks. And yet, Skeptic is a ranked advisor warranting an introductory panel with RD's inner circle and Geten is not. Perhaps, just perhaps, this might have led Dabi to reevaluating his initial assessment just slightly?

|| Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

So, this one's pretty wild, because, in the same chapter that had people crowing about Mr. Compress's dialogue, Mr. Compress's actions show the exact opposite of the conclusion this theory would demand. Specifically, if it was always the League's plan to ditch the MLA, Mr. Compress would have darted right past Skeptic, ignoring the man's cries for help. He doesn't--he picks Skeptic up on the way past and (at least in the volume corrections) deposits him safe with Dabi in Spinner's scarf. Of course, Skeptic still stands to be useful, but if one acknowledges that Skeptic's usefulness is reason enough not to abandon him, then what exactly is the argument for leaving 116,000 perfectly useful warm bodies behind?

But let's set aside Compress rescuing Skeptic and focus on the actual point, because that point in itself is still flawed. Mr. Compress's thoughts on the PLF in the specific talk bubble in question are somewhat ambiguous. It's another case of the Viz translation making a couple of assumptions that are just that--assumptions.

Compress's words in the Japanese are as follows:

Chōjō Kaihō Sensen.… Viran rengo no Shigaraki Tomura ga…

Viz then renders the line like so:

The Paranormal Liberation Front's… No, the League of Villain's Shigaraki…

Note that in the Japanese, the possessive no is only included once, to indicate Shigaraki's association with the League. Further, the original doesn't indicate any negation in Compress's thoughts. Yes, he could be rejecting the PLF association for Shigaraki, but he could as easily be narrowing his scope to Shigaraki as the figure he represents to the League, rather than the figure he represents to the PLF--not rejecting wholesale, but rather becoming more specific. Compress might also be thinking first of the PLF as a general organization, then narrowing down to Shigaraki specifically.

Rather than reading this line as an indication that Compress regards the PLF as temporary, I was heartened by the fact that Compress thought about the PLF at all! If the League really had been planning to discard them this entire time, then there's no reason for Compress to have ever taken the Front seriously enough to have thought about them in that moment of crisis. You can carry this back further, too. In Chapter 258, when Twice is asking Hawks for help, he says that Spinner and Compress have been in meetings for days. Coupled with Compress's first thought about the entity that will carry out Harima's desired reformation being the Liberation Front (or possibly "the Liberation Front's Shigaraki"), this indicates to me that Compress was taking it seriously, not just gorging himself on sushi on the MLA's dime.

Indeed, back in Ujiko's lab, when it was just Shigaraki talking about his backstory and his dreams of destruction, Compress looks the opposite of impressed; we know from his narration in 294 that he liked the League because they didn't place any importance on one another’s pasts. Yet, at some point, his view shifted to believing that fulfilling his ancestor's ambition, his bloodline’s duty, really might be back on the table. We as readers don't quite know when that shift happened, but given, again, his initial mental invocation of the PLF, I think we can assume that it's tied to that alliance, those resources. And sure, when the moment of crisis happens and he's really defining who and what Shigaraki is to him, and where his values and priorities lie, it's with the League and Shigaraki as the leader of the League. But that doesn't mean he never had his hopes for the PLF at all, or was partaking in plans to ditch them.

Also too, this is a man who was lamenting the loss of their partnership with Overhaul, a man who personally maimed him, on top of killing a comrade. You're telling me the guy who shrugged off his animosity towards Overhaul would willingly allow the League to plot sabotage against even wealthier collaborators against whom he has even less reason to hold a grudge? Come on, guys.

|| Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

This one's easy: Toga pretty explicitly hated Curious, but she's even more explicit that she likes the MLA because she thinks the world they want to create is wonderful. She says this verbatim at the end of 225, after Curious has spent the entire chapter hounding her with explosions and intrusive questions. What turns her animosity on Curious is not some reveal that the MLA's world would be terrible after all, but Curious calling Toga's "normal" miserable and tragic. Essentially, she doesn't object to the world the MLA wants to bring about; she objects to being turned into a martyr for that world, especially when that martyrdom requires that the things that make Toga happy be characterized as horrific misfortunes.

Toga doesn't like Curious; she kills Curious. And then she comes into a position of leadership, and we don't know a lot about how that position takes her, but she seems delighted to be walking out onto the stage to be announced as such, and she makes active contributions to the discussion of the PLF's plans in Chapter 245. We are, again, given no indication that her lethal response to Curious means that she's planning to ditch the MLA on the whole.

Incidentally, Curious asserts what she does about Toga only in the context of the world as it stands. The world's rejection of Toga's normal, and the extremes that rejection drove Toga to, are what Curious considers tragic and miserable, not Toga's fascination with blood in and of itself. She clearly believes that, in the world the MLA envisions, Toga's life would not be so miserable because she would never have been oppressed to the degree that she snapped. And frankly, Curious isn't wrong. The only reason she is a villain in that scene is that she's willing to murder Toga to project that tragedy to the world. If she'd been willing to sit down and have a civil interview with Toga to print it in a relevant magazine, she would have been fine.

|| Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

You know, this is a totally fair point. It is, however, somewhat complicated by the fact that Giran himself never left the PLF. Now, there’s almost certainly something to be said about Giran’s whole information broker shtick being terminally compromised by his capture, his maiming, his client list being hacked, etc. He had a bunch of identifying items strewn all over the country that were covered in the national news, items that people who associated with him closely certainly would have recognized. Maybe he’s laying low for a while?

I don’t know why Giran was still around by the time of the raid. I can theorize about his pragmatism or what have you, but the canon really doesn’t give us anything to go on. Still, if he really hated the MLA all that much, as he would be totally justified in doing, it’s pretty bizarre that Horikoshi showed him twice in PLF crowd scenes post-Deika looking nothing worse than kind of confused and uneasy. Heck, you’d think he would at least have merited a better seat in the crowd for the big merger announcement.

Giran aside, the fact that Twice never does hit it off with anyone in his regiment is, I think, telling. If there’s anyone in the League that intentionally kept himself at a distance from the MLA because of hard feelings, it’s likely Twice. After all, if he had befriended anyone, he presumably wouldn’t have needed to go to Hawks for tutoring almost an entire month after Deika. That said, the fact that Twice does go running to Hawks for tutoring shows that he’s at least doing his best to act in accordance with what he thinks Shigaraki and the rest want. That doesn’t preclude the League having a secret plan that he’s either in on and playing along with, or hasn’t been told about because he might not be able to stop himself from vocalizing about it. Still, while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, obviously absence of evidence is not evidence of presence. So, lacking any sign that the rest of the League is planning treachery, I’m not inclined to assume Twice’s lack of forgiveness is indicative of anything other than his own feelings.

|| [Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

:: INCOMING SALT WARNING :: INCOMING SALT WARNING ::

This is the one that really gets to me. I have never seen an argument that the League is planning to betray the PLF that convincingly explains the fact that Spinner, to all available evidence, threw himself wholeheartedly into trying to make the PLF succeed. To be more precise, I have seen one explanation, and that explanation is that the plan to ditch the MLA was a secret that only Shigaraki, Dabi and sometimes Toga knew about, and to reiterate, that is bullshit.

In my experience, this is an explanation proposed by people who care about Spinner only insofar as he can be a Soft Gaymer Boyfriend or score them rhetorical points, but have little to no interest in his ongoing--and, indeed, increasing--importance to the League generally and Shigaraki’s arc specifically. The dude who talked about how Twice’s home was the League, who got through to Toga while still respecting her choice when no one else could, the guy who recognized the hollowness within Shigaraki but also bonded with him over video games, the man who Mr. Compress said was Shigaraki’s most devoted follower(2)--this man did not do all of that for people in this fandom to say, “Oh, well, the others probably just kept it a secret from him because they thought he’d be bad at lying.”

Really? “Bad at lying?” And that’s an adequate justification, is it, for Shigaraki letting Spinner toil for months under false pretenses? For lying to the man who adores him the most? Of course it isn’t, but the people who theorize this don’t really care about Spinner’s adoration for Shigaraki, or the fact that Shigaraki rewarding Spinner’s feelings by allowing him to dedicate himself unstintingly to something Shigaraki was planning to discard from the beginning would be a blatant abuse of Spinner’s trust.

I have never seen anyone try to argue that Spinner was in on a plan to betray the MLA all along. That’s because it’s patently obvious that Spinner--forthright, direct Spinner, who named the merged organization with Re-Destro, spends all his time in meetings, has a direct exchange with Re-Destro about the state of their plans, and is probably the reason RD started wearing polka dots--went all-in on the PLF. But for the people who propose the “the League was always going to bail” theory, Spinner and his labors are an afterthought.

Spinner is not an afterthought. Where Mr. Compress has been captured, Toga could hypothetically be peeled away from the League via Uraraka, and Dabi almost certainly will be peeled away via the Todoroki plot, Spinner’s driving motivation at this point is Shigaraki himself. He connected to Shigaraki’s nihilism, his hatred, but also his humanity--the humanity in Shigaraki Tomura, not in Shimura Tenko. His empathy didn’t spring from contrived psychic glimpses of crying 5-year-olds, but from long months of observation, doubt, and gradually deepening wonder. He’s the only person currently with Shigaraki that I can see caring enough about Shigaraki’s welfare that he might sacrifice his own goals and desires to help Deku save him.

Spinner is not an afterthought, and I refuse to build or entertain theories that treat him that way. So as to his opinions on the MLA? Despite having his own reasons to be leery of them based on how shabbily Trumpet treated him, he was obviously trying to make the Paranormal Liberation Front succeed, which means he must have believed that Shigaraki wanted it to succeed. Therefore, unless you’re prepared to assert that Shigaraki (and everyone else who was in on it!) was cruel enough to lie to Spinner about something he was devoting so much time and energy to, the inescapable conclusion is that Shigaraki also wanted the Front to succeed.

(Note: After letting a friend pre-read this, I have been informed that there is, in fact, one explanation offered for Spinner knowing the League was going to abandon the PLF but working his ass off on the venture anyway, and that explanation is, “Something something wants to prove himself because low self-esteem.” This is so ridiculous I can’t even bring myself to edit this post accordingly. Low self-esteem! Because nothing would alleviate Spinner's low self-esteem like toiling for months over something that holds no worth to the people he actually cares about, right? Right?? Bah. Humbug!)

And but so, to wrap all that up: I fundamentally disagree that the League viewed the Paranormal Liberation Front as a temporary arrangement, at least to the extent that they were actively planning to betray their newfound--new won--allies. The fact that I don't think the League intended to discard the MLA out of hand does, thus, influence my opinion that, whatever Geten's fate will be, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be, "He gets murdered in a way that resembles nothing so much as a sick revenge fantasy dozens of chapters after the last point when such a death would have been remotely tonally appropriate."

Thanks for the ask, anon! Sorry about-- *waves at all of this*

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

(1) Not that Mr. “Burns Random Delinquents Alive For Not Measuring Up To His Standards For Villainy” has any moral standing to criticize others for how they determine the value of peoples’ lives, mind.

(2) Other translations for the verb in Mr. Compress’s Japanese line of, “You are the one who ____s Shigaraki the most,” include yearn for, long for, pine for, miss, love dearly, adore, idolize, and revere. “Most devoted follower” is accurate enough, but considerably less homo than some of the things we could have gotten there.

#bnha #stillness answers #paranormal liberation front #league of villains #stillness has salt #spinner defense squad

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shinidamachu · 3 years

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I got a complaint about Sunrise's execution of Yashahime. Ignoring the ships&animation: 1. Intent was to make Yashahime accessible to younger audience. Problem: Yashahime relies heavily on call backs to OG series&fan favorite characters. It doesn't work as standalone series. This alienates some fans. 2. Follows format of OG series with filler stories direct from Inu manga. Problem: We're now in a binge/streaming culture. OG series was produced when 'seasons' did not have breaks in-between (1/2)

Filler eps made only for call backs to OG series in 24 ep season format reduces proper story progression and satisfying character growth. 3) Lack of outside input. RT has said she asked Kag's VA for opinions (also rumors exist that Sunrise loved working with Kikyo's VA, thus Kikyo appears more). OG cast of VAs, some VERY big names, have shown surprise and differences in opinions (sort of a big deal to admit publicly in Japan). This leads to 4) Many expected RT-style storytelling.

Many saw the cash grab but Sunrise assured multiple times RT approved all, thus 'she must be heavily involved.' Problem: VA has mentioned RT's surprise at some story elements & RT clarified her opinion on some topics. Sunrise exaggerated or lied of RT's 'heavy' involvement & lacks outside opinions. Franchise with sequels relying on one person to make big decisions... *cough*starwars*cough* HNY could've been a good generic standalone anime. But no. Relies heavily on call backs

You are absolutely right and you should say it. You know, I’ve recently read Yashahime: Where Did The Inuyasha Spin-Off Go Wrong? by Alan Hobbs and let me tell you: it is spot on, just like your complaints. Everyone interested should give it a read sometime.

I’d say the problem isn’t even that Yashahime relies heavily on call backs to the original series, is that call backs to the original series are the only thing Yashahime has to offer. And it manages to fail even at that. Let’s be honest here: right now, who is Yashahime’s audience? Mostly adult hardcore Inuyasha fans. Why are they still watching? Because of the original characters. We know those characters. We care deeply about them. But the new viewers won’t, because the new main characters don’t give them a reason to, so they aren’t drawn by nostalgia like we are. People who have never seen Inuyasha are getting nothing out of it. And lately not even nostalgia is enough to keep ratings up. Not when there’s literally thousands of more interesting shows to watch out there.

They intended to use the original character as bait for us to come, but forgot to write compelling plots characters for us to stay. In fact, they went out of their way to deliver a story that pretty much insulted the original, so not only most of us left, we made a point out of screaming to whoever would listen how bad of an experience this whole thing was on our way out.

If they were trying to make Yashahime accessible to younger audience they miscalculated splendidly, but in the end of the day, I feel like Yashahime was just a move to recover some of the big, old Inuyasha hype in order to sell more merch, because look at the decisions they have made so far. They were always going to alienate a part of the fans. There’s no way they didn’t take that in consideration.

And sure, because of the streaming culture, the format of Inuyasha, which Yashahime tries to follow, may have fallen out of use, but the difference is that Inuyasha’s fillers were needed as a breather from the plot. Yashahime has no plot, which makes the fillers unnecessary and frustrating rather than funny or cute like most of Inuyasha’s were.

The lack of outside input was their fault. They either didn’t search around the fandom to see what we truly wanted from this show or they did and completely ignored it because they thought we were gonna eat whatever crap they fed us anyway, so why bother? If they had stopped and actually listened, they would have come to the conclusion this series was a bomb (derogatory). But it doesn’t matter how much we hate it, as long as we keep buying their products, it was all worth it for them.

And, finally, you can’t expect Takahashi-style storytelling without Takahashi. That’s why everyone feels out of character. That’s why the story is so dull. It has no soul. Inuyasha was charming enough that we could overlook its flaws. Yashahime falls unbelievably flat in comparison because is trying way too hard and not trying at all at the same time. Takahashi’s level of involvement wasn’t the only thing Sunrise nastily lied to us about.

I can only hope they lose a lot of money over it and never touch the Inuyasha franchise again.

#You guys are on fire today #Good Lord #Anti Sessrin #Anti Yashahime #Anti Sunrise

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yhminah · 3 years

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so, y'all lovely people, here i am to introduce you my baby, nam minah! she's actually a revamp of a muse that i had not so long ago and i wanted to bring her back since i missed her so much. as usual, here is her profile and here is her bio; and here a not very good plots page! i can plot through here or discord, i don't really have a preference so just let me know if you guys do, i have no problem giving my discord then! so yeah, i think this is it? i can't wait to plot with everyone 🥰️

as always under the cut a quick rundown of minah and pls do ♡ this post if anything catches your eye and i'll pop up in your ims!

nam minah. 26 years. freelance artist. she was actually born and mostly raised in yunhwa! but moved to seoul for high school and then to paris to attend an art college/school because she actually got an scholarship, so there is where she was living (still sort of is) until she decided to visit her family in yunhwa.

lives in sunjaro street, above the tavern with a roommate actually! (i'll submit a wc about it later) since she didn't want to impose at her parents' house because her sister still lives there. she's working on their relationship with baby steps.

the epitome of being there for the fun and experience, that's basically the reason why she does 99.9% of the things that she does. isn't afraid to try new things (and is usually good at them even in her first try) or do adventurous things, so you know, call her to do anything and high chances she'll always say yes.

very chill and friendly, good at small talking. social skills above 8000 and is mostly minding her business unless for some reason you make your business her business.

seems like an airhead, but she really is not. she's actually pretty smart (pls, look at her perfect grades even during high school) and is very perceptive of her surroundings and people in general.

sort of fickle with anyone that isn't part of her family. she gets attached to people as easily as she gets detached which could affect some friendships and especially romantic relationships (especially when she goes through some of them because she was just curious to where it'd lead), but she's always sincere and doesn't really lead anyone on (idk if this makes sense?? hope it does)

lowkey famous in the art community (so any fans?? as a possible plot??) and she has a couple of important awards that she won back at her apartment in paris. once she was very proud of them but now they sort of feel like a burden.

is going through a very hard artist block and that's why she decided to come back to yunhwa to sort of try to reconnect with her roots and to try to make amends with her sister so talking about which—

they have a very rocky relationship to say the very least. whether it was the case or not, minah was always treated as the favorite daughter in one way or another because she was the pretty daughter and the one good at everything, so her little sister ended up on her shadow more often than not. that made her resent minah a lot even when minah tried her best to save it.

she has always shown a little more affinity to the arts, especially painting, since she was young even if she was basically good at everything that she tried (and since she has always been the curious type, she tried a lot of things) so her parents sent her to seoul to live with an uncle so she could have more chances to explore her affinity with the arts.

her sister, feeling like she'd be left behind, decided to go as well even if she was still in middle school. a long argument ensued, but they both ended up going to seoul. the uncle didn't really... care for them or looked after them that well, he left them alone a lot so minah sort of took charge. besides getting busy with part times so her parents didn't need to spend too much money on her and her sister's lives in seoul.

got more recognition during high school for her paintings and even won some competitions which got her into an art college/school in paris, france after her graduation. sort of settled in there until her art block started and here she is in yunhwa again.

fun fact: got scouted for an entertainment agency during high school but refused the audition because one she was already busy enough as she was and two she never dreamed of being an idol anyway, at that point already having decided to pursue an artistic career, but she does like to wonder sometimes what would've happened if she had been to the audition and got accepted.

#( ❀. ooc )#introyh #clearly i didn't know how to end this ksdhfkj

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fluffyferalkacchan · 3 years

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Kacchan & Deku: Win to Save and Save to Win - A circular path of parallels (part 1)

Okay so it had probably already been talked to death by now, but i'd like to write a detailed list of how Midoriya and Bakugou's respective paths are and had always been paralleled since the beginning. And it's not just with the whole "save to win and win to save" thing, which is the most obvious textual part of it, but there are a lot of more subtle hints along the way too. I mean in nearly every single arcs, for each of Midoriya development, Bakugou had one too (albeit in a completely opposite direction).

This post is also partly in response to some anime-only fans who complained about Bakugou's development in the Joint Training Arc coming from the left field... Which actually isn't? Like Kirishima said it had never been as obvious before but there were definite hints about it and I'll try to show them as thoroughly as possible in this post.

Warning ! This post will be quite long and will contain Manga Spoilers up to chapter 317 in part 3!

¤ From the Pre-UA era To Deku vs Kacchan: their starting lines

(more under the cut)

When I said that the parallel started early, I really meant early. In fact, it started as early as the very first panel they were in.

I think it is very telling that the first time we saw them, Midoriya is trying to defend another kid, while Bakugou is seen using his quirk (and actually introducing the reader/viewer to the whole concept of quirk in the first place). It tells us right here, right then on the very first second, that Midoriya Izuku is physically weak but a savior at heart and Bakugou Katsuki has a strong quirk but is a bully asserting his dominance.

This of course led to diametrical beliefs on what a hero is and should be and we've got those two very iconic moments to illustrate:

And of course it reflected into their behaviors, even as kids.

What I find really interesting in the way those flashbacks were presented is that Midoriya's saving moment was told through Bakugou's POV, while Bakugou's winning side was seen through Midoriya's eyes.

Those moments were deemed important because they deeply impacted the witnessing party and not actually the "wining/saving" one.

(I think someone commented once that while the river scene was highly pivotal for Bakugou, Midoriya probably doesn't even remember it. And likewise Bakugou probably doesn't remember fighting and winning against some random older kids, but Midoriya definitively does. And I totally agree!)

At those moment both Bakugou and Midoriya saw in the other something that they were clearly lacking and their reactions to this realization were wildly different as well.

"He doesn't take himself into account, you know. Something doesn't feel right. It makes me wanna keep him at arm's length. Back then, I ignored my own weakness, so I ended up bullying him" - Bakugou Katsuki

"You who had so many things I didn't have... To me, you were an amazing person much closer than All Might! That's why I keep chasing after you!!" - Midoriya Izuku

Midoriya saw this amazing kid kicking ass with his strong quirks and his first reaction was admiration and wanting to get as close as possible to this person, because he was all too aware of his own weakness and shortcoming.

Bakugou saw this selfless kid trying to help him and displaying qualities that he didn't have and his first reaction was to lash out and push that kid as far away as possible because he didn't want to recognize his own weaknesses and shortcomings.

Which, you know, probably describes their entire childhood dynamics haha...

... and then the sludge villain happened.

And it brought with it the iconic "My legs moved on their own" and "Your eyes were begging for help" moments which we all know about of course, but this scene also had another more immediate parallel that I'd like to talk about.

Bakugou tried to fight the sludge villain on his own but ultimately failed to win.

Midoriya tried to rescue Bakugou on his own from the sludge villain but ultimately failed to save him.

The sludge villain was a reality check for both of them, in a "Nope kiddos, you might aspire to be heroes, but you still have a very long way to go. Here let's insert an All Might to show you just how far away your goal is," kind of way?

Anyway fast-forward 10 months of intense training to prepare for the UA entrance exam.... and really do I even have to mention this?

I mean the only way it could have been even more textually obvious is if Midoriya had been ranked sixth instead of seventh so that his name would be right next to Bakugou's... like there's even this panel explicitly pointing everything out.

So yeah... nothing to add there, *shrugs*

After that came the Quirk Assessment Test:

I'm going to come back to this later on in a more detailed way, but regarding their personal development; Midoriya's development is external while Bakugou's is internal. And I don't quite consider the quirk assessment test as "progress" for any of them yet because both of them sort of completely miss the point.

Aizawa told Midoriya "How can you save anyone if you can't move after one hit?" which had the underlying message of "It's not okay to hurt yourself"... But Midoriya totally went like, "Okay then I'll just hurt myself in a way in which I can still move afterward!" So yeah he is just sidestepping the problem here, but well there probably wasn't anything else he could do here.

As for Bakugou, he had always feel threatened by Midoriya's presence, but not in a fighting skills context. They are not really competing on the same field and it had never occurred to Bakugou that Midoriya could really beat him in a one-to-one fight.

As hilarious as the thought of Bakugou truly believing that somehow Deku had managed to take head on building-high robots quirkless is, I think what really happened is... Bakugou saw his own 0 rescue points and thought "Oh... so that's how Deku got in. Damn nerd probably went and save shitty extras left and right!". Which is a more realistic feat to manage quirkless. Anyway my point is, Bakugou realizing Midoriya isn't quirkless should have been a "Shit! He's leveling the field and standing on my playground now!" moment...

But no, what overpowered him here is the thought that the whole time Midoriya had been hiding his quirk from him and went like "What? Am I not good enough for you to use your quirk on me?! STOP LOOKING DOWN ON ME!!! EXPLAIN YOURSELF RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, SHITTY DEKU!!"

So yeah... kind of missing the point too.

Which is why the quirk assessment test wasn't really their starting point but more like them trying to look for it but missing it?

Speaking of starting lines... Let's move on to the Deku vs. Kacchan first round.

B"From watching the match, it appears Bakugou acted n to surpass Bakugou, All Might pointed that those were the first passionate emotions Midoriya had shown other than "I want to be a hero!". This was the very first moment where Midoriya's desire to win was stronger than his desire to save.

As for Bakugou, this was the moment where he truly he realized that Deku is a threat and not just through his natural heroic/saving disposition like before but on the battlefield which used to be 100% Bakugou's area of expertise. And if even with his non-existent control of quirk Deku had managed to win to such extent, what would happen when Deku managed to truly master his own quirk? Total defeat?! Bakugou is self-aware enough to realize that while his own fighting skills and quirk mastery could still progress, they were already near the top with a not wide enough margin for improvement.

This was the moment where Bakugou realized where he truly stood compared to everyone else around him and that if he wanted to reach the very top again, then only relying on his fighting skills and his quirk control would never be enough. This is what prompted out his feelings of "I have to change or I'll be left in the dust".

And since Deku went and encroached on Bakugou's playground and beat him in the process, there's no way in hell Mr Complete and Irrefutable Win over there wouldn't aim to do exactly the same at some point.

Anyway the two gifs above showed us their motivation to reach their respective Win/Save side of the spectrum, but they both have big issues they need to work on in order to do so.

"From watching the match, it appears Bakugou-san acted on his own because of an obviously personal grudge. As as All Might-sensei said previously, it is foolish to launch a large-scale attack indoors.

In the same way, taking into consideration the damage he received, Midoriya-san's plan was also rash." - Yaoyorozu Momo

Yaoyorozu's analysis was super spot on and hit straight where their weaknesses lie: Bakugou needs to stop acting on his own and learn to cooperate with/trust his teammates and Midoriya needs to stop hurting himself/self-sacrifice and learn to properly control his quirk.

Both of them also have these super heavy shackles that keep pulling them down and impeding their progress at every turn:

Bakugou's complex feelings and emotionally explosive baggage towards Midoriya that makes him go feral and irrational at the drop of a hat and clearly prevents him from properly considering Midoriya as the rival that would keep pulling him up

Midoriya's total and utter idolization of All Might that gives him a tendency to imitate his idol and clearly prevents him from properly realizing and unlocking the potential of his own quirk

And at that point, they clearly don't realize how cumbersome those shackles could be if left unaddressed too long.

Anyway... this episode/chapter was called "Bakugou Katsuki: Starting line", but I think it can be considered both their starting lines, because this is when they were made aware of what they are lacking and showed their resolve to change.

Midoriya's progress and development is intrinsically linked to his quirk mastery and fighting style, which are inherently physical skills (which is where Bakugou's excels in). It stands to reason then that his progress would therefore be very flashy, hard to miss, and highly praised due to the external aspect of his development.

On the other hand Bakugou's progress and development hinges on him properly getting in touch with his emotions and connecting to other people in healthy way, which are inherently inner-strength qualities (which Midoriya has no shortage of) . It stands to reason then that his progress would therefore be very subtle, mostly unnoticed, and hardly taken into account due to the internal aspect of his development. (Like it'd probably only takes him having a full meltdown or throwing himself in front of someone else for other people to notice how far he had gone!)

#bakudeku #bnha #bnha manga spoilers #kacchan & deku #meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #win to save save to win #all the parallels #bnha re watch

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blackfemmecharacterdependency · 4 years

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BFCD Reviews by Nesha: Grace Monroe & The Infinity Train on HBO Max

Disclaimer: Post includes spoilers and also, this viewer does not deem Infinity Train as a children's show and my views are not subjected to the idea that this is a children's show, but I do regard the characters as children.

I’m not a psychiatrist. I haven’t taken a psychology class in many years. My work with children has been primarily trauma centered children, and I haven’t worked with typical children for a decade, so most of my opinions are from my personal life experience, my work experience, my children’s rights advocacy and activism, and the guidelines from my childcare specialist work for children in the system in the state of Texas. I don’t have a lot of information these days on typical children and I don’t know the culture of children all over the country or world, but I basically know a little something about traumatized children.

And as always, be nice, because I can be mean too (and will). 😉

Special thanks to @i-am-a-passenger for listening to me and being a SOUND sounding board for my thoughts through this experience that was season 3 of Infinity Train.

To be honest, I thought that it was extremely brave of the creators to go the route that they did with the story line. Not everybody can be saved is a take that we don’t see nearly enough, and whenever we do, usually a POC, oftentimes a Black girl is on the losing end of the tale. That didn’t happen here and despite some problems with some of the way that things played out in front of us, it was STILL a monumental moment for many fans and Grace’s redemption arc was valid and reasonable, so I loved it and I live for it. Now, I’m gonna give my review of the season and what I noticed about the characters...

First off, I think that the writing of this season was phenomenal. The style of the way the story was told impressed me from start to finish. There were moments that I didn’t expect, but I understood from a writing standpoint and for the characters presented. I’m not a professional writer, but it’s been a passion since I was 7 years old, so I have some experience with passion for writing and stories and a great narrative is my WEAKNESS, and I do believe that Infinity Train provides great narratives.

This season has been my favorite thus far. I would have appreciated it for the story content, even if they had switched the characters’ arcs or went in a different direction with the redemption arc, but the fact that I was able to see an example of a Black girl being able to BE HUMAN, at my age - 38 - is still such new content that I was honestly overwhelmed by the simple fact that the creators decided that this Black girl was worthy of not only redemption, but the attention to detail and consideration was enough for me to love this season.

The girl in question: 18 year old Grace Monroe, whose been on this train for something like 7 years.

It’s rare to see a dark skinned, brown skinned, Black girl with natural hair be shown in anything but stereotypes and/or plot devices for other characters. This character has a story of her own. A beautifully written and fully realized story of a child who got confused, made bad decisions, did terrible things, learned the truth, and sought to change.

Whenever we first meet Grace and Simon, she’s announced as the leader of the Apex, and Simon is announced as her second in command and given the credentials from her, “I trust him with my life.” Something that is later a bittersweet thought as he becomes the biggest threat of her life since she got onto this train. They’re clearly very close and only seem to disagree on how they respond to negativity.

One of my favorite things about Grace was that she was given layers. One of my LEAST favorite things about Grace was that she was given unfair head canons by the fandom extremely early on (all of which nobody ever proved but remained diligently devoted to believing).

In this season, when the two are taken out of their comfort zone and traveling with outsiders, Grace and Simon are faced with lives that they haven’t thought about previously and wind up choosing very separate paths. Honestly, these paths they went on made perfect sense to me. I see both of them as traumatized children without any guidance and while one of them is very careless and reckless (Grace), the other is deliberate about what he does and has goals and plans.

The biggest influence, I think, was their interactions with denizens prior to forming the Apex. Grace admittedly never got to know any while Simon was betrayed by one whenever she left him behind to potentially die. Simon carried this rage inside of him while Grace had nothing but apathy to guide her attitude of the denizens. Grace needed attention and she was able to get that from Simon and the Apex, so she made a life built on what that gave her.

While Grace tends to seem to try to sweeten the issue or charm people. Simon is more short with others and a bit rude. They handle things much differently, though they have created a lifestyle together and formatted a society of children that they lead.

All too frequently, if a character looks like Grace, she is there as fodder for whoever her (usually white) counterparts are. But Grace has a unique situation in which she shares center stage with her white male counterpart and we watch them develop together from two peas in a pod to mortal enemies. It is a sad separation, but one that felt necessary for the direction of the story. But here’s why Grace matters so much, despite the fact that she and Simon built a child army and killed we don’t even know how many denizens:

Grace changed for the better. When both of them met and got to know a denizen, she began to change. She didn’t understand it at first and took some time to admit to herself that she was even changing. She thought that something was wrong with her because her number was going down and that wasn’t supposed to be how it was. What she thought was that it made her look weak and she didn’t want Simon or the Apex to see her that way.

And saying that Grace changed for the better is sort of shaky, too. Because Grace wasn’t a bad person to begin with. She was a child who got on the wrong track. Going from being extremely alone to having one friend to having hundreds or however many Apex kids of followers changed her for the worse, but she was a good kid at her core. She was lonely in the real world and she acted out, then wound up on this train, had a life changing event by having to see “The Conductor” and translate what happened to her as someone saving her, and she went on to help save others, or so she thought, to some degree.

Whenever she saved Simon, she had literally no reason to, other than she saw a kid in trouble and she knew she could help.She had just as little life skills and social skills as this kid in front of her, but... he was crying and she reached out to try to make him feel better, reminding him that even though life on the train was hard, he was alright now. Then, another life changing thing happened - Simon noticed that her number was higher and asked her how she got it so high. She knew just as much as him, and said that she was really good at life on the train, and the way she took that ghom out - she wasn’t completely wrong, but them being children and having only time and their limited views started a cult.

What I found interesting about this memory was the fact that Simon was telling Grace’s story for her. She tagged her charm onto it, but Simon (the writer of their laws and apparently a trilogy that not even Grace, who likes to read things wanted to read while they were besties) is telling the story to the kids. Probably embellishing, and Grace loves to be noticed, so she keeps this up until they’ve formatted an entire belief system. It was basically just I presumed whenever I questioned the reputation this fandom gave Grace as a manipulator who filled Simon’s head with hatred for denizens and Apex theology.It confirmed that people were wrong about her, which unfortunately didn’t make them change their minds, but they ain’t gotta. Grace lived and Simon died and that’s how this turns out sometimes.

I was able to at least acknowledge that his death was atrocious and it’s very unfortunate that he didn’t change for the better. He wanted control. He wanted power. He wanted to reign. Those things were more important to him than believing anything that went against his ideals. They were more important than Grace and his relationship with her. Meanwhile, Grace, up until even after he was gone cared about him. She defended herself whenever he attacked her, but she tried not to hurt him. She even tried to talk to him and he once again refused to listen. She saved his life AGAIN, and he still tried to kill her. Despite it all, when he was gone, she cried. Her friend was gone. Another life had been taken, and life meant something else to her now.

Even paper birds mattered now, and thanks to that difference inside of her, she didn’t die. But, I expected her to. Not even because it would’ve made sense or helped the story in any way, but because that’s how it usually goes for characters like her, characters who LOOK like her. The fact that it didn’t brought tears to my eyes. This season was amazing. This ending was amazing. This character was amazing. I’m so pleased with it and it was more than I expected, because instead of setting expectations, I let them tell me the story. They did an excellent job.

I've been asking people since she first appeared in season 2 why they thought that Simon was some helpless and she was this dominating figure that bossed him into this lifestyle and mostly it came back to her higher number. i didn't think we were being shown that, so I've been suspicious every time someone has suggested that Grace got Simon started in this or taught him this and now that it's been debunked, I'm even more irritated with the suggestion that her redemption doesn't make sense or wasn't right.

The thing about Simon was that he seemed fine. He seemed innocent, at times. He seemed like someone to sympathize with... What a lot of his fan base doesn't seem to realize is that is the case with every abuser. That is the case with many killers. Bad backgrounds and hard times coming up don't make for an excuse. Just because I GET his personality, doesn't mean he deserves respect or consideration. But then, we have Grace, on this other end who can't even get the recognition she earned through her decision making when she literally had the same childhood as him whenever they got there. Idk. Shit feels suspicious to me to not acknowledge Grace's redemption as well written. And the idea that Simon was doing these things for or because of Grace was proven as untrue, so there should have been a shift in her favor and there wasn't and my god that's some top shelf bullshit to me...

People frequently speak of Grace's manipulating Simon, possibly because they haven't had to try to use what you have to smooth someone over. The fact that Grace has been consoling Simon since they were children (THEY WERE CHILDREN), Because I see "Simon is a child" everyday, and always speak of his trauma, like Grace had none and like she's not the same age or near it. But, that's another thing that gets done to Black girls - they're aged up in people's prejudiced minds and expected to be more accountable than their peers. This GIRL has been repeatedly blamed for the issues of her friend.

And her "betrayal?" A lie she told to preserve life.

Simon proceeds to use her tape against her, leave her trapped inside of it (knowing it was dangerous, because the cat told him), sow lies about her in the Apex, pressure children that she knew to kill her, literally tried to beat her up and murder her, and kicks her as hard as he can after she saved his life AGAIN... He still gets more grace than Grace from the audience. I don't think people see Grace's humanity. People even assumed that her number was higher because she killed so many denizens... Like literally every wrong move doesn't affect numbers. And when faced with the story, which gives us a vulnerable Grace with flaws but also compassion, she's still been sidelined by fans of the show and nobody has given me any good reason as to why, so you already know, like we been knew. 😒

People have even tried to downgrade Simon's toxicity towards her because she led the Apex (and these people pretty much had similar things to say as people who didn't believe that my ex sexually abused me because of some examples of me being strong while arguing with him)...

THIS was triggering as fuck, but I've barely seen a PEEP about it. I'm going to presume that problematic takes of Grace are from a place of discrimination and dehumanization against another Black girl character like fandoms usually do.

But that just makes her matter more.

Good job, Grace. I knew there was good in you all along, and I didn't have to make up anything about you in my brain. ♥️♥️♥️

*Grace mourning a man that just tried to destroy her multiple times for telling a lie to keep him from killing a small child...

SPEAKING OF... The man double kicked her off that damn train in front of the kids AFTER they all saw her rescue him. Them kids might be messed up because of the Apex, but you can't tell me that Simon ain't further fuck them up with his reign. At least we know Grace was always nice to them. I'm glad they'll have each other to figure it all out.

#BFCD Reviews by Nesha #Infinity Train #Nesha Watches Infinity Train #Grace Monroe #Nesha Watches

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