437 posts
Latest Posts by tessrry - Page 11
I know everyone’s been inundated with information this week, so I’ll try to make this short. Given the content of this blog it would be hypocritical to not say anything, so here are some points in absolute briefest terms:
If you can protest, protest. If you’re constrained to participating in non-risky peaceful protests that don’t violate curfew (because of your age, your ability, or other factors), then participate! But also be prepared for things to turn ugly. If you can’t protest:
Donate.
Volunteer – a lot of cities have clean-up crews and pop-up food pantries that could really use extra hands.
Help protestors by giving out supplies (bottled water, snacks, PPE), being someone’s point of contact, offering transportation, babysitting, etc. There are more ways to help with your time and energy than only protesting.
There’s a bunch of donation links going around as well, so I won’t list them, but if you have a hard time making a choice (like me), this page will split your donation between 70+ organizations at once. If you have only a small amount of money to give, consider donating to Jamee Johnson or Destiny Harrison, whose funds have not yet reached their goal (all links from the BLM carrd). You can also contribute to Chrystul Kizer’s (warning for non-graphic mentions of CSA in link) or Miss Major’s fund. If you like choices, the BLM carrd has an extensive donation list, in addition to other information and resources.
Lastly, a couple short readings:
POLICING SLAVES SINCE THE 1600’S: WHITE SUPREMACY, SLAVERY, AND MODERN US POLICE DEPARTMENTS
POLICE AND THE LIBERAL FANTASY
WHY VIOLENCE WORKS (I disagree with many assessments here, mainly about other countries, but it’s a relatively short and accessible read about how violence informs political life)
AGAINST INNOCENCE
If there’s anything else people would like help finding (specific information, local opportunities, etc.), let me know and I’ll do my best when I’m around.
Hm. Yeah. I think this may be an extension of me being a cynical hater but there’s a thin line ok not thin but fandom analysis really makes it seem this way lol in storytelling between “marginalization drives people to crime when society fails them” and “people with issues *wink wink nudge nudge* are inherently more prone to crime,” and I think BNHA leans more heavily on the second side than the first.
ok but i guess it IS kind of funny and stupid that he keeps trying to make things poignant and touching using his dead villains like their ghosts have a will to support the agenda of (more often than not) THE hero who killed them????
ngl as someone who's dad to deal with parents similar to EndNevWhore I'd pay money to see Shouto have some sort of break down or Anything because of him but Nope Never Gonna Happen
this is a super good point bcs in addition to all the sucking up to endv going on, the effects of abuse are not dealt with at all?? right now, it feels like the worst consequence of abuse is hurt feelings that can be apologized for, rather than lasting impacts on a survivor’s psychology that can take so many years and so much therapy to get over, if that’s at all possible. :/
You’re right. Horikoshi does a disservice by framing abuse through the abuser’s perspective. What’s even more irksome is that he glorifies Endeavor’s minimal efforts to atone while downplaying the victims’ own efforts to heal. I mean, no one in-universe is making a big deal out of Rei potentially getting better enough to be discharged after 10 years in the hospital?
he glorifies Endeavor’s minimal efforts to atone
yeh, this this thiiiis. the past chapter was all about how big of a realization it was for the dude to just. fucking leave his family alone. i know it probably is a huge realization for a self-centered ex-abuser, but so many readers have all been saying it was necessary as like a basic first step; so why make it a Big Deal by writing it from his perspective, rather than from the perspective of anyone else so they can have a “wow so it’s finally clicking for him, huh?? huh????” moment. that’s all it takes to flip the narrative from being about how Tragic the dude’s decision is, to making it about how he’s taking his first baby steps!! to being a decent person.
on ur point about the victims, that’s another big issue i have!!! like…where did all the trauma go sdfkljsfkljg. where are the lasting consequences of growing up with an abusive or neglectful parent? why is everyone just okay, and the biggest hurdle to overcome is their willingness or unwillingness to forgive? i hate that the story is going ‘well all he has to do is make up for things sufficiently and then they can maybe be a happy family!!’ like, where is the ptsd and the complexes you develop from being unloved by a parent?? why can’t we see the lasting effects that domestic violence had on rei, rather than just being told?? why not show us the work the victims put in to get to a mentally stable place?? i mean, the answer is obvious, but i hate it lmfao.
pssst. while forgiveness is an option that the survivor can make for their own sake, the way it’s written in bnha is not a good handling of a forgiveness narrative. this is because all of the arcs dealing with forgiveness have so far been narrated through an abuser’s thoughts, prioritizing his hopes and unfulfilled desires (desires that are unfulfilled because of his abuse), rather than the emotional journey of his victims. shouto started softening his stance not when the story explored shouto’s thoughts, but when the story began exploring the thoughts of his abuser. as a result, what happens on the page is the abuser stops abusing and starts to feel bad, and therefore shouto begins to have a more positive relationship with him. rather than forgiveness resulting from a survivor coming to terms with his abuse and making the decision to forgive for his own peace of mind, the forgiveness is primarily framed as the abuser doing and feeling things, and therefore forgiveness happens. shouto does not make a decision to start forgiving; his abuser makes a decision and gets forgiveness in return.
forgiveness can be an empowering decision when made by a survivor with their full agency. its portrayal in fiction is not always empowering, especially when the narrative focuses on the feelings and thoughts of the abuser over the survivor. that is propaganda, plain and simple, particularly when we as a society already vastly overestimate the importance of an abuser’s feelings both in general, and in relation to stopping their abuse. in a social climate that already promotes forgiveness—not for the sake of the survivor but for the abuser—it’s difficult to write about forgiveness in a way that won’t be taken as modeling the behavior of “good” victims. we cannot treat characters like independent human beings, who all make “valid” decisions in response to their abuse. how are their decisions framed? who are we being told to sympathize with? who is being prioritized narratively? we can’t engage in discussions about representations in fiction without considering these kinds of questions.
one of my issues with the MLA arc resolution is that it just feels like a very incomplete understanding of ideology and praxis. it reminds me of people trying to ‘debate away’ nazis or antivaxxers or terfs or whatnot, bcs there’s this idea that the ideology will just… go away if you “win” somehow?? which is a very liberal understanding of ideological conflict imo. there are a lot of ideologies that are illogical, and which rely on the denial of facts and the invention of conspiracy theories to sustain themselves, which is why it’s so impossible to “win” against those people. but even when you move away from those ideologies and get into ones that are more liberal or leftist, you still get ideological conflict, and you’re often met with clashes of fundamental values, and opinions about what is morally acceptable or necessary, and so forth. ideology is a whole system of ideas, built from the ground-up, and you often have to work long and hard to get to the foundation to significantly change it (eg: marxism isn’t just about being anti-capitalist, it comes with a whole set of ideas about human dignity, and human desires, and what constitutes human nature, and through what kind of means capitalism strips them away or modifies them, and why capitalism does this, etc. even before you get to anti-capitalism, a marxist and a neoliberal will probably already disagree about, like, human nature, and who deserves dignity and what dignity even means).
that’s why Redestro giving in so easily is so unsatisfying to me, because that’s rarely how it happens ime. given how many people complain about their jobs and their wages, but refuse to take the logical next step to complain about the economic system they live under, it makes no sense to me that this guy who benefits from hero society and that kind of societal order would want to expand his concept of “freedom” to include Shigaraki’s view. the change shouldn’t be as simple as Shigaraki showing off his quirk, i want to know: why does Redestro accept this as his new vision of freedom? where does he feel like the MLA’s own ideology fits in? if he discards the MLA’s ideology entirely, why does he think Shigaraki’s is better? where does he see himself fitting into Shigaraki’s final goal? there’s just so much that goes into the formation and adoption of an ideology that this abrupt about-face, without so much as touching upon those questions, makes it feel unrealistic, because it’s never just as easy as debunking one idea. it’s an entire system of beliefs, and if Shigaraki managed to change enough of it for Redestro to willingly and happily follow him, I need to know what changed, and why, and how it leads to this conclusion.
for the people who like crime as much as i do here is my league of villains uquiz. i am having the time of my life
Wake up chat. Japanese fandom developed the theory of the multiverse. (they also call 429 the real ending, 430 Kacchan's heroine route, 431 Ochaco's heroine route lol)
I was gonna save this for my fic Interference by Half but let’s be real, idk when I’ll ever update that and this is an idea I’ve always wanted to share because I’ve hated the ‘just wear gloves’ “solution” for Tenko/Tomura, so:
If you give Tomura (pre-Deika) a pencil, and he touches it with five fingers, it’ll disintegrate. As long as he doesn’t touch the pencil with five fingers, it’ll be okay and he’ll be able to use it. Which is why Tomura is always shown grabbing things with only a few fingers, and why he was unable to decay ‘Sand’ in Chapter 160.
Gloves - whether with some of the fingers cut off, as is most often headcanon’d, or each finger is made of different material - is one solution. We see little Tenko with gloves when he is taken in by AfO after manifesting his quirk:
But, see, I’ve always thought, how annoying. How uncomfortable it must be to have to keep gloves on 24/7. Sure, you can get some super-soft, thin-cloth ones; but it must still be bothersome, wearing, washing, getting it wet, etc. What if he gets a rash? So it always made sense to me that instead, Shigaraki would learn to have meticulous control over his fingers - free hands, and able to use his quirk whenever should he need to.
For a child just starting to learn to use his quirk, this can be hard, true. So how to practice? How to keep his hands free? How can you accommodate a quirk like Decay? Instead of forcing Tenko/Tomura to wear gloves, what about spicing up his surroundings?
So I thought, to use the pencil example above, why not wrap the pencil in ribbons or yarn?
Strings of different yarn, ribbons; stickers and fancy tape; patchwork cloth of different materials. On pencils, controllers, toothbrushes, doorknobs, cups, etc. Semi-yarn-bomb the house! Decorate! It doesn’t impede anyone else living with him or using the same objects.
So that he’s never actually touching an object with five fingers. One finger on wood, one finger on a sticker, one finger on a the yarn.
It’s not a perfect solution, it’s not 100% decay-proof. There will be unlucky mistakes. Maybe I have the parameters for his quirk wrong. It’ll probably be useless once he’s in post-Deika self (or even, pre-massacre/he never loses his memories?)
But I think, for AU fics that have Tenko growing up normally or rescued, it’s worth considering what his caretakers might do to help him out, adapt his environment to his circumstances, embrace how he is, stuff like that. ‘Solutions’ or changes or a different perspective that make him feel a bit more normal, instead of “The kid who has to wear gloves 24/7 because his quirk is that dangerous”, maybe.
Keep reading
That post about fly me to the moon and let me kick its fucking ass has permanently changed me.
u guys want tomura to be ur possessive boyfriend so bad when hes one of the least possessive characters in the series…there is another shigaraki who is actually possessive like that but idk if u wanna hear that one out
this might be unhinged, but I figured out that at the beginning of that manga (Year Class 1A entered UA/All the events up to and including Deika), Shigaraki Tomura’s Birthday (4/4) likely occurred either on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.
In Chapter 7, All Might confronts Aizawa on the first day of classes, and he says that “April Fool’s was a week ago.”
Of course, it doesn’t absolutely mean All Might meant it exactly one week ago, but still. With this information, let’s say the first day was on April 8.
April 8 can either be on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. This is because Chapters 5 to 12 covers three school days consecutively. First day was Aizawa’s test; Second day was Battle Training; Third day was when the media rushed the school.
The first day can’t be earlier than a Monday. The third day can’t be later than a Friday. Thus, those first three days of school, April 8 to 10, can only be Monday-to-Wednesday, Tuesday-to-Thursday, or Wednesday-to-Friday.
This means that Shigaraki’s 20th Birthday on April 4, four days before April 8, could only be on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.
*
The end of Chapter 11 is when we first meet Shigaraki Tomura, who starts plotting ‘What if I kill All Might’, and this was on the evening of the day of the Battle Training (April 9).
Immediately the next day (April 10), on the morning of that third day with the media frenzy, Shigaraki Tomura is there at UA to disintegrate the gates.
*
The USJ invasion would be the next week, on a Wednesday.
It could not have been on the same first week of school because, as above, the first week’s Wednesday was either occupied by Aizawa’s test, battle training, or media frenzy. USJ invasion must happen in the second week of school, on dates April 15th, 16th or 17th.
this game is good actually bc Dabi starts negging you every time you try to level him up
A+ game mechanic
MAJOR BNHA 423 SPOILERS
this line is so jarring to me because if shigaraki really is gone... where are his friends waiting?
up until now we always took their survival for granted, no matter the situation they ended up in. toga's blood loss. dabi's quirk awakening at the brink of death.
but calling back on shiggy's line "even if [...] i turned into an empty shell, i'd still need to become a hero to those guys"
suddenly has me worried about the fate of toga and dabi.
they're waiting for him.
but where?
touya and fuyumi are all lashes and doe eyes while natsuo and shouto are football headed stewie griffins with sticky fingers and eye crusties… this is the baby todoroki divide
Boy, the heroes of MHA sure do find their questionable actions needing defences like “but it’s a war” or “AFO/Shigaraki/Twice is/was so dangerous though” or “well the villains are committing war crimes too” lately. You don’t really see other media’s heroes needing those excuses; at least not the ones going for MHA’s optimistic tone. I’d like to talk about why for a bit, as well as why MHA changing that script doesn’t really work for the heroes.
You see; while we on Tumblr like to make fun of how villains in media are always trying to fix something but kick a puppy so you know we’re supposed to side with the people not trying to fix things: the way it’s supposed to be is that villains, at least the well-(enough-)intentioned extremist types like the League & most of the PLF, try to better the world but go *dramatic voice* too far in the process. Meanwhile the heroes harden their resolve and take them down by the book through ingenuity and determination; and although they are protecting the status quo, in the process of this victory the heroes prove that whatever problems initially sparked the conflict can be solved in *dramatic voice* a better way.
But if the heroes also go *dramatic voice* too far in their efforts to protect the status quo, as they do in BNHA, well that kind of undercuts their platform. I mean what’s the message there? That there actually isn’t a better way because underhanded & sketchy tactics are the only way to get things done? That message sucks and so do these heroes.
I can see why the manga keep trying to ignore or brush aside the heroes’ moral darkening, clumsily hand-waving Machia’s brainwashing or framing Hawks as still a good guy ‘cause he’s so optimistic and the like. It makes it really hard for them to be inspiring with all their ‘light of hope’ talk if you don’t forget all that. I know because I make a point not to forget this stuff and I don’t find these heroes inspiring at all.
Just a girl: Why Ochako and Toga matter.
(Disclaimer: For purpose of this analysis, I'm going to be operating under the assumtpion that the young hero trio of Shouto, Izuku and Ochako are going to be succesfull in saving their respective villain counterparts, reinforcing one of the main themes of bnha that everyone deserves to be saved, and a true hero will not give up on anyone. This hasn't happened yet, so I might be proven wrong and this meta will be outdated, but personally I find that to be unlikely)
I love this trio, and I think they are all essential to expressing the themes that they do. But out of the three, Ochako and her villain counterpart Himiko have definitely gotten the least narrative focus. Understandable, since the other duos consist of 1: the literal protagonist and the series' most prominent villain (and i suspect horikoshi's personal favorite character) and 2: the lynchpins of the most popular and interesting subplot in the entire series, as well as two of the best-written characters of the manga and fan favorites
Ochako and Himiko are both major characters and definitely the most developed female characters of bnha, but compared to the other 4 they seem... less important. And so here i'll be arguing why without the two of them, the entire theme bnha is trying to express through the kids saving their respective villains crumbles, and how that perceived ordinariness is exactly WHY they're so vital.
So, arguably the main question bnha is trying to answer besides "what is a hero?" is "is it possible to save everyone?" This is expressed mainly through the characters of all might (and the other ofa holders to an extent) Mirio and Izuku himself.
All Might, the greatest hero of all time, was still not able to save everyone on his own, which is why he constructed the symbol of peace, wanting to make even those he couldn't save feel like he was watching over them. We have seen, most obviously through tenko, how this approach has not worked. It has instead made people overly reliant on the symbol of peace, and left those that fell through the cracks to feel completely abandoned by society. The message received was "If all might won't save you, no one will."
Mirio, while a side character, is an immensely powerful hero and was considered to be a possible heir of one for all. He, too, knows he can't save everyone on his own, and nakes himself lemillion to vow to himself that even if he can't save everyone, he will save at least one million people. He is, in a sense, a mini all might. If he can't save everyone, the least he can do is get as close as possible, right?
But Mirio, too, is wrong. Like all might was. He rushes ahead during the overhaul raid and pays the price for it by (temporarily) losing his quirk. But his fault was not that he wasn't strong enoigh to take on overhaul alone, it's thst he tried to do it alone at all instead of fighting side by side with his allies. The reason Mirio can't be all might's successor is becaise he is too much liek him,and woudl make thexsame ksitakes.
Izuku, on the other hand, learns to have trust in his friends during the rogue arc, he tries to run off on his own and is proven wrong by them. Going into the endgame, he knows that he needs to let his allies walk by his side and work with them if he wants to achieve his goal. So through these three characters, bnha answers the question of "can you have everyone" with "yes, but not alone." Which is cheesy, sure, but what did you expect from a shounen superhero manga? And as far as arguments for collectivism and reformative justice go, it holds up.
So, back to our trio: why do we need Ochako?
Because without her that argument of collectivism falls apart.
Let me be clear, "together" in this context means not just 1a, not just pro-heroes, it means society at large. Communities that stand up for each other, people that don't look the other way when they see a hungry child walk past. Collectivism needs to include normal people.
And Todoroki Shouto and Midoriya Izuku are not normal people.
Shouto is the son of the number one hero, the perfect heir that has surpassed his father not because of him but in spite of him. He is literally "the boy born with everything." And Shouto isn't just saving any villain, he is saving his brother. He knows, better than anyone, why Touya is the way he is, and cares about him more deeply than he would a villain he didn't know who experienced the same kind of abuse. Would he still care? Sure, he's a good kid and a good hero, but would he care as much? No. And can you blame him? This is his family!
And Midoroya Izuku is our protagonist, our moral center, the heir of one for all. Aside from key character flaws, that are always clearly marked as such, what he does and aims to do is what the series wants us to think is right. Izuku is special, his empathy is boundless and his will unbreakable. Of course Izuku, good boy extraordinaire, wants to and actually can save everyone!
And Dabi and Shigaraki are not ordinary villains either. Touya is the son of the current number one hero, a living testiment to the monster that he was, to what he put their family through. A walking corpse too angry to die, dead set on revenge. There is nothing subtle or normal about Touya, everything is larger than life.
Tomura, meanwhile, is the descendant of a previous user of one for all, has been taken in and groomed by all for one since childhood. He's inherited a century old fight between two brothers and the two strongest powers in this world. He too a testament to the flaws of hero society, a dark mirror to the symbol of peace and those he leaves behind.
So we have the two children of the number one hero, and the heirs of one for all and all for one respectively. With just these two pairs, a reader couldn't be faulted for thinking that Dabi was saved only because he had a true hero in his family who cared for him more than anyone not his relative would. And that Izuku, in all his shounen portagonist-y goodness, is just so much better than everyone else that only HE could have saved tenko. Which is the opposite of, you know, the actual theme of the story.
So then we have... Ochako. Who is not that special, not related to anyone of note. Not the moral center who we can always trust to do the right thing because of their paragon goodness. She's kind, of course. But Stain, who saw in Izuku a true hero on par with All Might, would have judged her for going into heroism for the money. She's not greedy, she wants that money to support her parents, but she is not a beacon of selflessness.
Ochako is just a girl who saw another girl cry. And she wanted to help her, because that's what people do when we see others in pain. She did not know Himiko, had no special reason to care about her. She's a girl who saw another girl in pain and wanted to understand her.
And Himiko is also just a girl. She was a girl with a not-so-acceptable quirk, and not-so-good parents, who forced her to hide herself until she snapped. She's a girl who didn't fit into mainstream society and had to seek solace with other outsiders, and is scared that peoe like her might not be seen as people by those who are supposed to save them. Like the other two villains (and many others) she's also a testament to hero society's failures, but in a way that we could imagine many others also being, while Dabi and Shigaraki are unique and alone. There are others like Himiko. Dozens, maybe even hundreds. Kids who are cast out and find criminal life to be the only place they're allowed to exist. They might find ordinary gangs instead of the league of villains. But that's a matter of circumstance, not anything innnate to her.
And so Ochako and Himiko are the affirmation that this is an ideal that can and should be achieved by regular people. Yes they are still a hero and a villain, but they are not incomprehensibly different from everyday citizens like the others.
The trio are three pillars together holding up the theme. Izuku representing the ideal of heroism, Shouto representing family/friends/communities looking out for those close to them, because they understand them better than law enforcement could, and Ochako represents regular plain kindness. The kind that everyday people display all the time. No supernatural vestiges, no blood bond, just a girl seeing another girl crying and wanting to help.
wait, do people who read bnha realize that there's no such thing as 'quirk suppressants' or 'quirk-cancelling' handcuffs/drugs/etc. in the HeroAca World currently? There's nothing. There's only Eraserhead and heavy sedatives to stop a person's conscious altogether (and formerly Overhaul's bullets that were the first of its kind).
Like, that's the reason for why Heroes are allowed to use heavy force, and why Tartarus and it's straightjackets are a thing? A good part of the conflict hinges on the fact that the world can't easily take away a person's supernatural ability - that's why quirk use is so suppressed and Villains are treated so harshly and no one had any idea what to do with kids like Toga or Eri (before being taken in by UA/Eraserhead) who couldn't control their quirks besides telling them to not do it, or that they're bad for not controlling themselves, and finally abandoning them.
When you have no good way to inhibit someone's quirk with a simple injection or electronic collar, you'd end up trying to prevent them from using their quirk in whatever physical way possible: restrain them by tying up their arms or putting a muzzle on them, lock their hands in metal boxes, put them in a confined space with a gun trained on them, keep them under anesthesia for months on end, and so on. You end up treating them like they're feral, rabid beasts that can't be controlled, as ticking time bombs monsters who are capable of any thing at any moment and needs to be subdued as quickly and completely as possible.