my beautiful Raven boy🕊😍
underrated trope: “i’ve lost my memory and idk who you are but i just have this feeling that i’m supposed to trust you”
This - but the feeling is absolutely, completely, 100% wrong.
Person 1: “I don’t know what it is about you…I just know that I can trust you.”
Person 2, their actual, literal worst enemy: “Excuse me, what?”
Cue enemies to friends to lovers speedrun.
Person A: I feel like you're important to me... oh! That must mean I trust you
Person B: ... no, no that doesn... Do I look like someone you should trust?
Person A (no hesitation): yes
Person B (tearing up): ok
okay but wenwu breaking the man who insulted him by impersonating him out of prison to initially kill him but then deciding to keep him around cos he's funny??? peak villain behaviour. this is what all villains should be from now on
Shang Chi: How did you find me?
Wenwu: Well it wasn't very difficult ngl you're kind of everywhere
i’ve had this odd semi-nonsensical reoccurring thought lately,,, of dabi just fucking u, and yk he’s already always ruthless when he fucks u, but u recently found out abt his birth name (idk he told u or some shit who cares details are not important here) and so u experiment, moaning out touya instead of dabi,,,
and he just fucking loses it, goes absolutely feral, fucking u so hard that the force of his thrusts are shoving ur body up the mattress, sharp hipbones digging into the soft flesh of ur inner thighs, little growls ripping from deep in his chest as he demands that you say it again
The After
This arc is ending. What comes after?
I have very little sympathy for Hawks right now (and think this icarus-like fall is good for him narrative-wise) but I’m curious how much harm Best Jeanist being and alive and whatever Hawks recorded (and why) is going to do to Dabi’s argument.
There’s no salvaging Hawks’s career, but the lack of fully correct facts in Dabi’s statement about Hawks means unfortunately people are going to argue about the parts with Endeavor, and there’s going to be at least some people saying Dabi’s lack of consistency means the whole thing is in question. It’s similar to how facts are debated these days in the media to the point where everything is polarized, even the ‘truth’.
But, also, there’s also a different angle here: what linking Hawks to a criminal father does. Bare with me, but I think there’s several things at play here:
1. Lots of scrutiny at the HC for not being able to ‘rehabilitate’ Hawks enough from his roots (you spent all this time on him and he ended up being a murderer anyway)
2. Depending on what Hawks’s villainous dad looks like, well, Dabi canonly has a huge blind spot when it comes to heteromorphs. The thing is with the breaking of hero society, there’s going to be lots of power vacuums created and lots of opportunities for reactionary groups (much like the MLA) to take hold. We’ve seen that these anti-heteromorph groups already exist.
Any narrative that says Hawks definitely evil because his father was a villain (and there will be people who take it like that) will also have to deal with the fact that Hawks (and given last names) Thief Takami are heteromorphs, and have raptor mutations.
Is it fair to link murderous and criminal tendencies to heteromorphs? No. Will it happen? Absolutely. I don’t expect to play a huge part but we might see mention of heteromorph discrimination in the background following this arc.
3. But on that note, that note of condemning hawks for a villainous background might sound very strange to readers because that’s like saying all villains are now evil, right? But something to remember:
While the League have different ideas of what they want, ultimately, none of them have stated a desire to make a truly better society re: outside of heroes. Toga and Twice have hit on it with their desires, but Dabi just delights in the destruction and exposure of the falsity of the hero society that facilitated his family’s abuse and father’s veneration. Spinner wants what Tomura wants, Compress is still a mystery.
What does Shigaraki want?
Nothing.
Nothing but the end.
Shigaraki Tomura says it straight up, “Even if this hero society comes crashing down, even if I rise up to rule the underworld, that weight on my heart is never gonna go away.. So why not destroy it all? Why not destroy everything?”
You would think given Dabi asking why there’s never sympathy for villains, Dabi wouldn’t link Hawks’s behavior to a villainous father. But… something to keep in mind, is that there’s likely no picture for what comes after.
It’s just the end. There’s no reformation in Shigaraki’s mind; everything just ends, destroyed, except what the League likes.
And it’s likely Dabi hasn’t thought through an ‘after’ besides the collapse of the system that created him because he doesn’t expect there to be an after for him. He’s likely made peace with the idea he’s going to die with his father right after this reveal.
So, what happens if Dabi doesn’t get what he wants? What happens if he burned down hero society but now has to deal with the repercussions of an After?
I think, as much as a victory this is for the League and villains in general, they’re going to have to deal with the fact that there’s no such thing as a finite end. The world keeps turning and won’t wait for them to discover that there’s an after all.
batneko